Mr. Holstein is a historian, author and lecturer, and occasionally a public affairs advisor for embassies, companies and private individuals. He is writing on his second book, No-One Thanks Secret Heroes, a collection of surprising and often moving reports about Germans who helped Danish resistance people and Jews during the Nazi occupation of 1940-45 at a pivotal time in Danish history. While it has been known that neither the German army, nor the navy, nor even Nazi officials in Denmark, apart from a few zealots, did very much to stop Danish fishing boats from ferrying loads of refugees to Swedish ports, this book presents an even more nuanced view of Germans, who, at the risk of their lives, acted against Hitler’s direct orders while aiding the Danish resistance movement to conceal or evacuate more than 90% of Denmark’s Jews.
In addition to authoring many articles, his first book was a reference work on the Danish and Norwegian nobility.
We understand your family has a long history in Denmark. Can you tell us a bit about it?
It is a side issue, really, but my family has a longer history in Germany, as we only became Danish in the 1680’s. We were a knightly family from Mecklenburg, whose head became Danish Count of Holsteinborg in 1708 and later the King’s Great Chancellor. His descendent, my great-grandfather, was Prime Minister in 1870 when almost everybody wanted to join Napoleon III to get revenge on Prussia. Holstein and others prevented it. Otherwise, there would probably have been no Denmark today.
What makes you particularly interested in the World War II era?
Originally it was not my focus period even though our parents and grandparents spoke so much about it. My grandmother on my mother’s side was a German, who married a Danish diplomat and landowner. Their manor house was taken over by a German army company, which behaved very correctly. But she resented the German occupation, and ganged up with another foreigner married to a Dane, Monica Wichfeld, neé Massy-Beresford, to help Jews escape to Sweden. They barely caught my Grandmother, but Monica Wichfeld was killed by the Germans.
After all that has been documented about the Danish rescue, what made you feel there was more to be said?
The fact, that we had a ‘Judenaktion’ in Denmark, after which a stunning 99% of Danish Jews survived. How could a new, small, still rather amateurish resistance movement foil the world’s most efficient apparatus for incarceration of Jews?
Something was clearly missing in the equation. I started researching, and realized that in a period of two weeks 12% of Denmark’s Jews were evacuated to Sweden from one point in Copenhagen Harbour – under the protection of the German military. The Wehrmacht surveyed the operation and inspected it three times, but never passed a word to the bad guys. The point is, it was much more than just the odd, unknown German, who turned his blind eye to it. The helpful Germans were no less than indispensable in this.
More is to be said also, because there are so many more incidents, which have never been told before.
How did you unearth this new research?
By Hören-Sagen, as we say in proper Danish! I tell everyone about my ‘mission’, and occasionally someone says: “You should talk with my father-in-law!” or similar. Of course, I check the historical facts, and sometimes manage to get corroborating accounts. I also quote incidents already recorded separately in other contexts. The deeper I get into it, the more stories I get.
Were any of your family members involved in this story?
Well, my German grandmother on my mother’s side, as mentioned. My father and his father were also in the resistance, but I am not aware, that they achieved anything particular.
What meaning do you think these actions of World War II hold for us today?
The fact that so many Germans helped us shows that there will always be courageous and righteous humans on both sides of a conflict. It also shows how history is often incorrectly, or certainly insufficiently rendered.
Interview conducted in September 2018.