Reaching the Heart

Tonight it feels like we’ve finally reached the heart of the 1943 refugee story – the town of Gilleleje. This fishing village is featured in the book Number the Stars and a Danish film called Across the Waters, among many others.

Ferry First

Our day didn’t start in Gilleleje. First we took a detour to Sweden.

Helsingor, where we stayed last night, is a short ferry ride from Helsingborg, Sweden. So we went!

People go back and forth on this ferry every day, it’s cheap and easy to commute between the two cities – you don’t even need a passport anymore. But with 1943 on our minds, we watched Denmark get smaller and smaller and wondered what it felt like to be a refugee in a place from which you can see home, but can’t return. Persecution and protection, separated by a few miles of calm, blue water.

Arriving in Sweden…15 minutes after we left Denmark.

Helsingborg is larger than we expected, and the Swedish aesthetic is different from Denmark, which I found interesting. Denmark is full of straight, clean lines and Sweden has curves and hills and circles. A funny little detail that made me remember Peter’s comment last night about Denmark and Sweden having a special bond and trust but different cultures.

We spent about two hours in Sweden, and found a memorial to Raoul Wallenberg and the Jewish refugees on the waterfront. A woman and her son translated for us:

Our translator’s mother is a school principal, and she preferred not to be recorded on video. She told us she visited Poland recently with other principals, learning how to teach about the Holocaust using first person accounts. She too firmly believes in the power of individual stories.

The educational focus in Sweden seems to be the persecution of Jews across Europe – there is only a small mention of Sweden’s role in the story of the Danish Jews. The principal believes more could be included about this.

An employee at the hotel near the monument recalled learning in school from a Holocaust survivor, and she talked a bit about neutrality.

What is neutrality?

As she spoke, I wondered whether the downplaying of Sweden’s role in the rescue is wrapped in a layer of guilt over “neutrality” in the face of evil…much like Denmark lives with guilt and anger over quick capitulation to the Germans. Again, I remembered Peter’s words – “everyone was innocent.”

How can we judge decisions made in desperate times? We can’t.

From Boat to Bikes

A quick return ferry ride later, we reunited with our bikes and started pedaling to Gilleleje. Along the way, we stopped in a few more small harbors in search of stories and markers, and everyone we met said a version of the same thing – “go to Gilleleje, you’ll find it all there.”

So here we are. Tonight we took a ride around town to get our bearings, and it seems true – there’s a story everywhere we look. Everything is a hiding place or an escape route to the sea. And everyone seems to know and want to share the town’s history. We stopped to look at a marker on the sidewalk in front of a house and a woman who lives there came out to be sure we knew what it was: