by Howard J. Ross, Founder & Chief Learning Officer
Last week I was in Copenhagen to give a diversity related speech about the impact of globalism and culture on our future. My 16-year-old son Jake joined me. We arrived for the weekend and our friends, Buffy and Jacob Illum, took us to a little town called Gillileje, north of Copenhagen on the northeastern-most shore of Denmark.
In October of 1943, Gillilje was one of the key places where the Danish rescue of the Jews began.
For those who are unfamiliar, Denmark was the only country in Europe, with the exception perhaps of England, during World War II, in which the populace collectively conspired to resist oppression, and protect their fellow citizens from the Nazis. With the results that while 60-70% of European Jews were killed, 99% of Danish Jews survived.
The key element of this was the boat lift. In October of 1943, the Danish resistance found out that Hitler had ordered the Danish Jews to be arrested and deported. In other words, exterminated. In a matter of days, Danish citizens hid their Jewish neighbors, and then organized a rescue in which 8000 Jews were taken safely to Sweden over the Oresund Strait in everything from fishing boats to kayaks.
In Gillileje, where 80 people were killed by the Nazis while attempting to escape, we saw one of the boats that has been preserved as a monument, and in it mannequins to represent the people. Tucked into the hold, or huddled on the deck. Carrying their entire life’s possessions in a small suitcase. Having to leave everything they have known. As I stood on the shore, my feet on the very spot that some of them may have stood as they boarded a boat to their safety, I was struck by two things.
The first was a profound sadness that we as human beings are capable of hurting and being hurt so much. That we have a capacity for true darkness. And that darkness has regularly descended upon us throughout history, in Nazi Germany, but also in Rwanda, in Turkey, in Cambodia, in Bosnia, in the Middle Passage, and on the North American Continent. We have to always remember what we are capable of.
And yet, the second thing that struck me was far more impactful. Look what good we are capable of. A community of people comes together in defiance of, arguably, the most frightening military presence of the 20th Century, to protect their neighbors. They did it because their neighbors were a part, not an adjunct, to their community. It is said that when the Nazis approached King Christian X and pressed him on his plans to deal with “the Jewish problem,” the King responded, “we have no Jewish problem.”
What else are we capable of if we see ourselves as a true community instead a collection of separate people?
