Jorgen Kieler: Danish Resistance Fighter & Underground Newspaper Publisher

Danish underground newspaper courtesy https://www.pinterest.com/pin/409053578636788304/.

Danish physician Jorgen Kieler, along with his sister Elsebet Kieler, published the Frit Danmark or Free Denmark, an illegal newspaper circulated amongst the resistance in the Second World War.
While the Danes retained their radios, they still relied heavily on the news published in Frit Danmark, one of 600 different underground papers.  At its height, the Danish Resistance included 45,000 members.

Kieler helped dozens of Danish Jews avoid extermination by the Nazis.  In the Fall of 1943, rumour had it that the Gestapo was going to round up all of Denmark's Jews.  Kieler worked with the Resistance to co-ordinate the escape of Danish Jews.  In the dark of night, they met at the docks where they boarded fishing boats, cargo boats and any available, seaworthy vessels to cross the water to neutral Sweden.

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The Danish Resistance sabotaging the Nazis courtesy 

http://civilngo.com/en/danishresistance-movementagainst-nazi-occupiers/.

Ordinary citizens like Kieler played a vital role in the escape.  There were obstacles to surmount, however.  First of all, to secure a place on an evacuation vessel could cost as much as $9,000 a head in today's dollars.  Second of all, the Gestapo became suspicious of activity around the harbours; eighty Jews were arrested in one escape attempt.  Therefore, the fleeing Jews had to be hidden while the preparations took place:  some were "admitted" to hospitals under false names; others took cover in churches; still others hid in holiday homes by the sea.  The crossing was rough.  Pregnant women found it particularly difficult.  The man in charge of one boat knew nothing about navigation.  When the passengers reached land, they realized they were right back where they started at the Danish docks.  All told, at least 7,500 Jews made it to safety in Sweden.

Jorgen Kieler was captured in 1944 and sent to a concentration camp where he remained for the duration of the war.  Upon liberation, he continued his medical studies in the United States.  He took on the fight against cancer just as passionately as the one against the Nazis.  In 1980, he became the director of the Danish Cancer Research Institute, tackling the disease just as passionately as he tackled the Nazis.  Kieler wrote books about both the German occupation and concentration camp syndrome.

Note:  Read Resistance Fighter:  A Personal History of the Danish Resistance Movement, 1940-1945 by Jorgen Kieler.

Danish Jews escape in the dead of night to Sweden courtesy 

http://abcnews.go.com/International/denmark-saved-jews-nazis/story?id=20750027.

A Pile of Books, A Pile of Rocks & A Pile of Shoes

A pile of books sits in a glass case:  Das Kapital by Karl Marx, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, Albert Einstein's works.  These are just some of the thousands of books that were burned on a Berlin street back in 1933, an early sign that Hitler would not tolerate any views but his own.  Some of the greatest thinkers came out of that era, people that would go on to help build the atom bomb and to put the first man on the moon.  But they didn't fit in to Hitler's agenda.  Freedom of thought would not be tolerated. Propaganda would rule for the next twelve years.

Berlin Book Burning circa 1933 courtesy
http://www.dw.com/en/cultural-incineration-80-years-since-nazi-book-burnings/a-16798958

A pile of rocks sits on display, each one perfectly cut in a cube.  Above them hangs a photograph of emaciated humans lugging the rocks up and down a cliff.  Some workers, too weak to move another inch, fall down.  They are punished for their disobedience.  The same scene repeats itself day after day, week after week, month after month.

"Stairs of Death" at Mauthausen courtesy https://www.pinterest.com/pin/325736985526835210/.

A pile of shoes sits in another case, turned green from years of exposure to the elements.  A rubber smell permeates the air.  Despair permeates the soul.  These are the shoes of thousands of Jews who worked at Majdanek, a Nazi concentration camp.  Despite their number, these shoes are just a drop in the bucket.  A map shows us that Majdanek was one of hundreds of Nazi interment camps, work camps and death camps by running by the end of World War II.  Hitler took their ideas, their belongings and their lives.  But he could not take their spirits.

Piles of shoes worn by Jewish victims of Holocaust courtesy www.jewishjournal.com.

We walked past a small wooden boat, one of dozens used to transport Jews across the water from Denmark to Sweden during World War II.  Thanks to this evacuation, nine out of ten Danish Jews survived the war.  But sadly, Poland's 3 million Jews were reduced to 45,000 by the Holocaust.  By war's end, two thirds of Europe's Jews had been murdered.

Later, as we walked down Washington's 12th Avenue to dinner at the Elephant and the Castle, we ran into a women from our tour group.  We mentioned we had just visited the Holocaust Museum.  She said that she would not visit it because she did not want to see "man's inhumanity to man".  I thought to myself that she had hit the nail on the head with that statement.  Although the Holocaust happened decades ago, it could happen again -- with different players.  Let us never forget.