{"id":37110,"date":"2017-02-11T01:00:09","date_gmt":"2017-02-11T06:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=37110"},"modified":"2017-04-15T11:12:55","modified_gmt":"2017-04-15T15:12:55","slug":"qotd-the-nazi-final-solution-in-denmark-and-bulgaria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/02\/11\/qotd-the-nazi-final-solution-in-denmark-and-bulgaria\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The Nazi Final Solution in Denmark and Bulgaria"},"content":{"rendered":"

… most nations of Central and Eastern Europe were occupied by or allied with Germany during this period. The Nazis made it clear that deporting their Jews to the concentration camps in Nazi territory was a condition for continued good relations; a serious threat, when bad relations could turn a protectorate-type situation into an outright invasion and occupation.<\/p>\n

Pride of place goes to Denmark and Bulgaria, both of which resisted all Nazi demands despite the Germans having almost complete power over them. Most people have heard the legend of how, when the Germans ordered that all Jews must wear gold stars, the King of Denmark said he would wear one too. These kinds of actions weren\u2019t just symbolic; without cooperation from the Gentile population and common knowledge of who was or wasn\u2019t Jewish, the Nazis had no good way to round people up for concentration camps. Nothing happened until 1943, when Himmler became so annoyed that he sent his personal agent Rolf Gunther to clean things up. Gunther tried hard but found the going impossible. Danish police refused to go door-to-door rounding up Jews, and when Gunther imported police from Germany, the Danes told them that they couldn\u2019t break into apartments or else they would arrest them for breaking and entering. Then the Danish police tipped off Danish Jews not to open their doors to knocks since those might be German police. When it became clear that the Nazis weren\u2019t going to accept any more delays, Danish fishermen offered to ferry Jews to neutral Sweden for free. In the end the Nazis only got a few hundred Danish Jews, and the Danish government made such a \u201cfuss\u201d (Arendt\u2019s word) about them that the Nazis agreed to send them all to Theresienstadt, their less-murderous-than-usual camp, and let Red Cross observers in to make sure they were treated well. In the end, only 48 Danish Jews died in the entire Holocaust.<\/p>\n

Bulgaria\u2019s resistance was less immediately heroic, and looked less like the king proudly proclaiming his identity with oppressed people everywhere than with the whole government just dragging their feet so long that nothing got done. Eichmann sent an agent named Theodor Dannecker to get them moving, but as per Arendt:<\/p>\n