Hamlet’s Children

 

 

Communiqué

 

The invasion assault – an unprovoked attack by Germany’s land, sea, and air forces – began before dawn on a Tuesday in early April 1940 and ended before noon the same day with the kingdom of Denmark’s abject surrender. The previous June, at the insistence of German chancellor Adolf Hitler, the two nations had signed a treaty promising not to war on each other.

In the town where I was then living, hardly an hour’s drive north of Copenhagen, there was no sight or sound of the stunning event, but the staff at my school had learned of it from the radio. With somber faces revealing a pro-found state of shock, they sent all of us pupils home early and quickly without explaining why. None of us had to be told.

I biked back from school to my grandparents’ house as fast as I could pedal and found my grandfather Gideon hunched forward on the edge of his worn armchair, looking unaccustomedly grave and listening raptly to the news reports on the large Bang & Olufsen console behind him. Without acknowledging my arrival, he kept dialing back and forth between Radio Denmark and the BBC as if hunting desperately for a few words of solace while I sat on the arm of his chair, silently respecting his unutterable grief.

“We gave up without a fight,” he finally said to me, the charge of cowardice unmistakable in his muted tone. The radio confirmed that only a few shots had been exchanged at the border when the enemy crossed it in overwhelming numbers, and there had been just brief skirmishes outside the king’s palace, where a handful of defenders had died to salvage a sliver of Danish national honor. Berlin had announced, even as the Reich’s onrush-ing soldiers were seizing all of its innocent neighbor’s territory, that the German troops had been sent as protec-tors, not assailants, and promised that the occupation would be peaceable, provided the king and his government surrendered at once. Otherwise, the Luftwaffe bombers, droning above Denmark’s capital like a swarm of steel-winged locusts, would be forced to pulverize it, and any resistance to the invasion elsewhere in the country would likewise be crushed. Under protest that their nation’s long-standing policy of neutrality had been violated, King Christian X and his ministers yielded. In his short statement of capitulation, the sovereign urged his subjects to follow the directives of “everyone exercising authority” and to exhibit “absolutely correct and honorable behavior, as any rash act or utterance can have the most serious consequences

 

 

 

To my grandfather, his king’s words beseeching compliance with the enemy’s ultimatum amounted to outright betrayal of his people. My grandmother Helga, hovering close by, encircled my shoulder with a lean arm and quietly took issue with him. “The crown and the government did the only thing they could,” she said, as if their submis-sion to a sorry fate should be regarded as a consoling, if not ennobling, act of sanity.

“He didn’t have to tell us to roll over,” Grandpa Gideon growled back, “like a pack of whipped dogs at their master’s command.”

“I don’t think that’s what he meant,” Grandma Helga said, pulling me closer. “And don’t start worrying Ter-ence. Everything is going to be all right. You’ll see.”

Grandpa glanced up at us. “Nothing is going to be all right,” he whispered.

“The filthy bastards will lord it over us – and our spineless leaders will make it easy for them.” He had been saying much the same thing since I had arrived the previous summer to live for an unspecified period under my grandparents’ roof, but until that day it had sounded like nothing more than an old man’s chronic nattering.

“You’re overreacting, Gideon. And there’s no need to alarm the boy,” Grandma Helga said, “or to use that de-grading sort of language. We have to stay calm and collected and keep our wits about us, not go flying off the han-dle.”

As it would improbably turn out, both of them were right. But “the boy” was already alarmed by their seemingly irreconcilable responses to the day’s convulsive events. For the first time, I suddenly had to confront the reality that, as a practical matter, I was an orphan, even while surrounded by kin who had fondly taken me in. My own country, which providence had forced me to abandon, was a wide ocean behind me. I felt desperately alone and powerless. That night, wrestling with jagged memories of how and why I’d come to be there, I could only flirt with sleep. I was a stranger in a small kingdom by the sea, where I thought I had found a temporary haven from my brief life’s travails. With the invasion, that dream was over, as events were shortly to prove. What follows here is a painstaking retrieval – based on my best recollection of what I felt and witnessed, plus reports to me by others present when I was not, and a sheaf of salvaged documents – of those crucible years, once daily threatening but now swiftly fleeting, that I have waited most of my lifetime to chronicle.

 

 

 

sister and back at Sarah. “Well, how would you and your family answer the question? Are you Danes first – Danes who happen to be Jews – or the other way around?”

For the first time the gaiety faded from Sarah’s saucer eyes. They narrowed as she hesitated for a moment, then said slowly, “It’s not a distinction we dwell on. We love Denmark, it’s been good to the Seligs, and there’s always a prayer given for the country at our synagogue, though I only attend on the High Holy Days, to be honest.”

“So why are the two of you asking me to draw a distinction,” Torben complained, “especially when I’m not much of a believer in any organized religion, let alone Martin Luther’s views of faith and God?”

“Because you were drawing a distinction in Rosenbaum’s case – or seemed to be,” Rikki said, “and not a very subtle one.”

He turned on her with a flash of anger. “Oh, please, Erika, it was just a small slip of the tongue, and now you’re trying to make me into a Nazi anti-Semite, for chrissakes.”

“You know what Freud says about slips of the tongue. Anyway, you shouldn’t have brought it up in the first place.”

He looked over beseechingly at Sarah. “If I had a problem with Jews, I fucking well wouldn’t be here or dig Børge Rosenbaum, and you both know it, so please get off my back.” He glanced at Louisa and me. “Forgive my gutter language, kids. Now you know your uncle isn’t a complete angel.”

“We’ve heard the word,” my sweet cousin said. “I’m thirteen now, remember?”

“And isn’t that what we’re celebrating tonight?” Sarah asked artfully. “I suggest we change the subject and order some cake in honor of Louisa’s birthday.”

 

9 February 40

Grandma had what sounded like a fight with Eva Rasmussen at Sunday dinner, even though they’re supposed to be close friends. It was about the Jews again, like when Torben and Rikki were arguing over it last month. I don’t really get what the problem is . . .

 

I had known only a couple of Jewish kids at school in Virginia and Asbury Park, but there were none at all, at least not that I knew of, at Riishavn’s middle school. Nor can I recall my mother ever having brought up the subject, though I knew some of her dancing class enrollees, several of our neighbors, and a number of the merchants she dealt with in running her ballroom were Jewish. All I really understood about Jews was that they were supposedly different from Christians because they didn’t believe Jesus was the same as God or was His son and that some people said the Jews killed him or betrayed him to the Romans, which was more or less the same thing. But since I knew Jesus was a Jew, too, none of it made much sense to me, and anyway, I had too much else on my mind to ever worry about it. Mom did tell me, when I asked once, that she was born a Lutheran and that her mother took religion very seriously but not her father, and she said that Luther was a teacher like Jesus had been, but Martin was only a mortal man. I could learn about him someday if I got interested. She, plainly, wasn’t. At any rate, by the time I was shipped to Denmark, I hadn’t grasped how or why Jews were all that different from everyone else.

After I had met my uncle Torben’s new girlfriend, the whole idea of Jewish differentness seemed even more puzzling. Sarah Selig was, so far as I could tell, a Dane like any other, even if, as my cousin Louisa had put it, she was perhaps a bit more “exotic” than most in the looks department.

But soon after that night out I was again confronted by the subject, this time at one of Grandma Helga’s monthly Sunday dinners for the family and their revolving cast of friends and local acquaintances. Her gemütlich get-togethers served as a vehicle for the Ekko’s proprietors to keep up with happenings around town and its environs. Among the guests on this occasion were Benny and Eva Rasmussen, who owned the local pharmacy and had a penchant for indiscreet gossip, which was guilefully mined by my grandparents as an occupational necessity.

The dinner conversation that Sunday was dominated by the men speculating where and when – not if – Hitler would resume spreading his dark dominion. They chose Hungary somewhat arbitrarily as his likeliest target, and Romania would be next, with its rich oilfields, but my grandfather dismissed both

 

 

 

possibilities as unacceptable to the Russians, with whom the Germans maintained a peace treaty. Benny predicted German seizure of the Low Lands as the prelude to a major offensive against the Western Allies, but no one mentioned Denmark or any other part of Scandinavia as an imminent target of the Nazis’ mailed fist – an omission my grandfather dolefully corrected. “Stop burying your heads in the sand,” he said, the mantra he had been reciting in person and through his printed commentary in the Ekko for months now.

At his own dining table, none of the Mundts’ guests cared to label Gideon a tiresome alarmist, so the conversation soon dwindled to small talk, mostly among the women. None of it interested me in the least until, over dessert, Eva Rasmussen confided that she and Benny had finally decided to move out of their flat over the apothecary shop and were looking for a nearby house they could afford.

“The problem is,” Eva remarked offhandedly, “that whatever is for sale in town has become very dear these days. There’s been Jewish money flooding in; it seems they’re buying up every decent cottage for second homes and pricing people like us out of the market.”

Even my callow ear could detect vitriol in Mrs. Rasmussen’s comment, which immediately aroused my grandmother’s concern.

As society editor of the local weekly, she cast herself as observer-in-chief of any shifting demo-graphic tides in town.

“I’m not aware of that,” she told Eva, “and our paper lists all recorded real estate transactions, along with the buyers’ names.”

“Well, it’s going on all the same, from what I was told by the mayor’s brother’s sister-in-law,” Eva replied, “and she’s a real estate agent, so she should know. Maybe they’re using other people’s Christian names to hide their own.”

“That sounds a bit silly,” Helga countered. “You can’t hide your identity for long around here. If I were mean-spirited, Eva dear, I’d suspect you of using an unfounded rumor as an excuse because you and Benny are anxious about invading your savings to make such a substantial purchase – which is completely understandable, what with all the uncertainty over the war and what could happen here.” Eva was offended by the gentle reprimand. “That’s not it at all. And I’m quite sur-prised, Helga. I thought you’d be more sympathetic.”

 

 

 

Rarely combative, my grandmother was nonplussed for the moment. “I’m surprised, too,” she said at length. “I didn’t think you had an issue with this . . . this topic.”

“It’s not my issue,” Eva said. “I didn’t invent the Jews. All I was doing was stating a fact of life here in town – one you’re apparently uninformed about, or don’t care to acknowledge, for some reason.”

“Well, whether it’s a fact or not is what I’m questioning, Eva. Perhaps you’re right. I don’t claim to know everything.”

Eva sat back in momentary triumph. “Well, that’s something.”

“But even if your information is correct,” Helga persisted, uneasy over her friend’s casually dropped ethnic slur, “I’m not sure it’s a bad thing for the community. A strong demand for hous-ing here protects property values and helps local businesses, including yours and Benny’s.”

Eva was unchastened. “I don’t believe having that element around will do either. Next thing, we’ll have a bunch of Gypsies camping in the town square.”

Helga studied her friend with fresh eyes. “Scapegoating the Jews – and the Gypsies, too, from what I read – is the Nazis’ mania,” she said softly yet distinctly, “but you’ve always led us to believe how very unhappy you are about Hitler’s crowd and their conduct –”

“Well, some of it, certainly –”

“– and about quarreling with your parents back in Essen over the party’s tactics, which I took to include their persecution of the Jews.”

Eva tried to fend off her friend’s mildly stinging tone. “Well, it wasn’t any one thing in particular. It was just their party’s crude approach to –”

Helga was not to be diverted. “As it happens, our son is seeing a Jewish girl just now. We know her parents a little. They have a fur shop in the city – lovely people. It also happens that they’ve owned a cottage here for some years. I’m told by Torben it’s quite a modest place –”

“There are others. With lavish places. You’re closing your eyes, Helga –”

“You make it sound as if the Mongol hordes are about to overrun us! My Lord, the Jews are just a tiny fraction of our people, and perfectly civilized ones at that.”

 

 

 

“It’s not just their numbers,” Eva went on. “It’s their money and power. And more are coming now, from what I hear. Refugees from Germany and elsewhere are slipping in –”

Helga shook her head. “Perhaps you and I are on different planets, Eva. We Danes are fine ones at feeling for our needy countrymen, but I’m unaware we’ve gone out of our way in the slightest – any more than other nations – to welcome victims of the Nazis’ hatred.”

That’s not our responsibility!” Eva parried. “Furthermore, I deeply resent your hinting that I’m a secret Hitler lover. But there’s no denying he’s done things to rid Germany of poverty, which is mainly why my parents joined the Party.” Yet they remained devout Lutherans, Eva noted, “just like you and me, Helga, dear,” and they objected to Hitler’s antagonism toward the church and replacing Christianity with his own satanic cult. Even so, she said, the Nazis’ embrace of Luther’s contempt for the sins of Jewry hardly invalidated it. “So I say no wonder Denmark hasn’t thrown its doors open to them. If our Torben has unwisely chosen to court a Jewess, I must of course suppose she’s an exceptional member of her race.”

Now Helga turned momentarily as combative as Gideon in top form. “My dear, devoted Eva,” she said, “our sainted Martin asserted a great many things, most of them magnificent revelations of the Holy Spirit, but several of them are regrettable in hindsight. He was not infallible. We needn’t blind ourselves while keeping faith with his truly enlightened teachings.”

Eva, sensing that she had gravely offended her hostess and that everyone else at the table was following their heated exchange, backed off. “I’m sorry I mentioned the whole thing, Helga, dear. I was just confiding in you as usual, and I certainly meant no offense to your son.”

“None taken,” said Helga, ever the grande dame. Abandoning her stern look, she reached over to pat Eva on the wrist.

Impulsively, as teenagers are wont, I spoke up then, hoping to smooth over the two women’s rift. “The Seligs are awfully nice,” I said to Mrs. Rasmussen. “Next Saturday afternoon Uncle Torben and Sarah – that’s his girlfriend – are going out on the Seligs’ sailboat. They keep it berthed at the sports club marina. Her parents are coming along, and Torben said I could invite any friends of mine 

 

 

 

or the family, so maybe you and Mr. Rasmussen would like to come, too, and meet the Seligs – I mean, if there’s someone who could mind your shop for a few hours?”

For a suspended moment you could have heard the proverbial pin drop, and I knew I had misspoken. Grandma’s eyebrows arched with disapproval, whether of my impudence or naïveté was unclear, but probably both. Yet upon instant reflection she seemed to relish the discomfort my awkward invitation had inflicted, as evidenced by Eva’s shocked expression.

“That’s very thoughtful, Terence,” our guest said softly, “but I’m afraid I have choir practice at our church Saturday afternoons, and Mr. Rasmussen has to tend our shop by himself then since our clerk is off on weekends.”

After our company left, I feared an upbraiding from Helga. Instead, she gave me a hug and said, “Dear boy,” and, after a moment, added, “I’m not sure Eva was pleased to learn that the Seligs have a sailboat they keep at the marina – a luxury I’m sure she and Benny feel they can’t afford. You see, envy does things to people. Perhaps you can invite Bent Hartling. He’s such a nice boy, and the Hartlings are quite well-off, so there’d be no resentment, if you follow . . .”

I followed.