Although it doesn't bring previously undisclosed events to light, this history of the Holocaust in Denmark offers a wealth of first-person material, placed within a factually accurate, well-crafted text. The Danes gave a famously cold shoulder to the Germans when they invaded in 1940, and secretly evacuated 7,000 Danish Jews to Sweden when the Germans ordered them deported in 1943. Werner (Reluctant Witnesses), a developmental psychologist and research professor at University of California, Davis, uses accessible concepts (such as people of "good will") to convey what happened, and gives careful accounts of the roles of the Danish Lutheran church, the universities and the large Copenhagen hospital Bispejberg in speaking out against deportation, and mobilizing when it was imminent. Werner devotes a chapter to the refugees' actual passage northward, and a chapter to their reception in Sweden, where some found employment. More than 450 Jews were captured by the Germans and sent to Theresienstadt (the so-called "show place" concentration camp in Czechoslovakia); they were exempted from extermination as a result of tireless Danish lobbying. Werner includes their experiences, as well as those of Jews hidden in Denmark, and of members of the Danish resistance. She concludes by surveying various studies of rescuers and bystanders during the Holocaust, attempting to distill motivations for action or inaction. (Nov.)
