November 30, 2004

Let’s step out of the newsroom for a bit. For this lesson in leadership, I’m taking you to Denmark.


I traveled there in November at the request of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation to do some teaching in the area of journalistic credibility. While there, I was determined to visit one place: The Museum of Danish Resistance.


The museum tells a most powerful story of leadership and courage. During World War II, the Danes –- as a people –- helped more than 7,000 Danish Jews escape to Sweden. No other European country protected its Jewish citizenry from the Nazis so effectively.


I first learned about the Danish rescue effort through my recent graduate studies in a course that examined the moral and ethical perspectives of leadership. We dug into the stories of holocaust rescuers –- why they chose to act when so many others did not.


Most of the stories were about individuals. But the Danish story was one of collective courage. That’s why, given the chance to visit the country, I wanted to learn more about this endeavor, and its leadership lessons.


The basic story is this: On April 9, 1940, Hitler attacked Denmark. Greatly outmanned, the Danish government yielded, with a Nazi promise to let the Danes run their domestic affairs.


Under the arrangement, the Danish government was able to shield the country’s Jewish citizens, and keep commerce healthy. In exchange, the government was expected to suppress opposition to the German occupation.


But a resistance movement grew, fueled by an effective underground press that blossomed by late 1941 and clandestine radio operations that were introduced in 1943. Resistance members committed acts of sabotage against the Germans, targeting machine works, ship and auto repair yards. Whole towns went on strike.


In August of 1943, Germany cracked down, declaring martial law. The uneasy peace with the Danish government was shattered. The Nazis decided to move against Danish Jews. But word of the Nazi intent to round up Danish Jews was leaked to Danish leaders, who alerted rabbis.


Danish citizens hid their Jewish neighbors in their homes. Others were hidden in hospitals, passed off as patients under care. Meanwhile, Danish citizens organized boatlifts, often using fishing boats. In less than a month, more than 7,000 Jews were smuggled to safety in Sweden, which had offered refuge. When the Allies liberated Europe, most Danish Jews returned to find their homes and belongings had been cared for by their neighbors.


There are plentiful leadership lessons in this story. Among them:


Anyone can lead: The Danish resistance movement was an amalgamation of many different people -– Communists, conservatives, even former Boy Scouts. The rescuers were often average citizens who stood up against injustice.


Values matter: The Danes who took action did so because of their values. Citizens looked at each other first and foremost as countrymen. King Christian X, academics, and church leaders spoke out against the Nazis. The bishop of the country’s largely Lutheran population wrote a letter to the faithful that was read from pulpits across the country, calling for support for the Jews saying

…it is stated in our constitution that all Danish citizens have an equal right and responsibility towards the law, and they have freedom of religion, and a right to worship God in accordance with their vocation and conscience and so that race or religion can never in itself become the cause of deprivation of anybody’s rights, freedom, or property. Irrespective of diverging religious opinions we shall fight for the right of our Jewish brothers and sisters to keep the freedom that we ourselves value more highly than life.

Share the credit: Go to the website of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority and you will find something remarkable. There is a section of the archives that recognizes, country by country, the names of non-Jews whose validated acts of heroism earned them the honor of being called “Righteous Among the Nations.” But there are asterisks next to Denmark, and a note that reads: “The Danish Underground requested that all its members who participated in the rescue of the Jewish Community not be listed individually, but as one group.”


Don’t believe your clippings: The Danes have taken pains to keep their good deeds from being inflated beyond truth. Publications about the rescue are careful to point out that not all Danish Jews were rescued. Nearly 500, many of them from old-age homes, were apprehended and sent to a detention camp called Theresienstadt, from which most were eventually liberated. Danish publications point out some boat captains tried to profit from transporting Jews, and how the Danes dealt with the profiteers. And the Danes also debunk a lovely myth: That King Christian X, in support of the Jews, wore a yellow star. Go to the website of the Royal Danish Embassy or to the Museum of Danish Resistance, as I did, and you’ll see it in print: Denmark’s Jews were never required to wear stars, and the King did not wear one either. But he did write a letter of sympathy to Rabbi Marcus Melchior after a 1941 act of arson in the synagogue of Copenhagen.


Remember the power of the press: As I walked through the museum, I lingered at the display of underground printing presses, the illegal papers, and forbidden radio transmitters. It reminded me that the first victim of tyranny, and the strongest weapon against injustice, is a free press.


Those of us who have never had to risk our lives in the service of truth and justice are humbled by this story of leadership and courage. Those who have, are honored by it.


And every one of us who does the work of leading journalists and journalism, can learn from it.

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Jill Geisler is the inaugural Bill Plante Chair in Leadership and Media Integrity, a position designed to connect Loyola’s School of Communication with the needs…
Jill Geisler

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