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White to move and mate in two #615 - Rescue in Denmark [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-01-16
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Knowing the condition of his friend Nielsen, hearing his screams as he was tortured and finally learning of his execution in no way weakened Staffeldt’s resolve to tell the Germans nothing that might harm the underground. Seeing that they were getting nowhere with him, the Germans sent Stafffeldt to Horserød Concentration camp. There he was sentenced to death, but before the sentence was carried out he managed to escape and make his way back to Copenhagen. From October 1, 1944, to November 15, 1944, Staffeldt remained in hiding in the homes of friends. He learned that his younger brother Jørgen had been picked up by the Germans and sent to Neuengamme, where he was later killed. On November 15, Staffeldt, together with fourteen other saboteurs, boarded an old fishing boat in Nyhaven. The saboteurs were stretched out on the floor of the hold of the ship and covered with cases of hearing. Over the herring, surrounding metal tubes through which they breathed, were placed three feet of ice. The herring acted as a buffer between the saboteurs and the ice. While the last of the ice was being put in the hold, several suspicious German soldiers arrived. The fishermen were ordered to remove the ice. When the soldiers saw the fish underneath, they decided to look no further. The ice was replaced and the boat was permitted to leave the dock. Three hours later the boat was met in Swedish waters by a Swedish naval vessel which took Staffeldt and his companions to Sweden.
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In Aarhs, one of the important saboteurs was Mrs. Ina Haxen. After working with Professor Richard Ege in the rescue of the Jews, she had returned to her family in November 1943. She found herself bored in the role of an Aarhus matron, and wanted very much to be part of what was now a growing Danish resistance movement. Her opportunity came a month later when a bearded gentleman calling himself “Mr. Rasmussen” and posing as an engineer showed up in Aarhus. Mr. Haxen discovered that he was in reality the Danish writer Peter P. Rohde, who had just escaped from two years of imprisonment in a German concentration camp. Mrs. Haxen persuaded her husband to let “Mr. Rasmussen” stay at their home, where, during the following year, she helped him edit the nationally distributed resistance newspaper, Free Denmark. In addition, she acted as a courier and arms-carrier in local sabotage actions. In December of 1944, Rohde was captured by the Gestapo. He was tortured until he became deaf. Mrs. Haxen escaped to Sweden. She resolved that after she had learned to shoot a gun she would return to Denmark to kill the man who had tortured Rohde.
The accomplishments of Danish sabotage against the Germans were spectacular. Through underground contact with the English, saboteurs were able to direct R.A.F. bombers to destroy completely Gestapo Headquarters in Copenhagen and Aarhus. In the disruption of German rail communications with Norway, in the blowing up of the huge Dansk Riffelsyndikat and Globus arms factories and in the destruction of German V-2 component factories located in Denmark, the sabotage actions had a significance beyond national boundaries.
One of the most important of the sabotage actions was the general strike throughout Denmark from June 26 to July 3. It is particularly fascinating because it erupted, like the rescue of the Jews, as a spontaneous mass action.
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