On occasion of the 80th commemoration of the rescue of the Jews from Denmark to Sweden in October 1943, the Royal Danish Embassy in Berlin presents the new Danish-German travel exhibition "Oktober 1943 – Das Schicksal der Juden aus Dänemark" from 5.-29. October 2023 in the Felleshus of the Nordic Embassies.

On the night of 1. October 1943, the German occupying power in Denmark organized a raid to capture and deport the Jews in Denmark, forcing more than 7,000 men, women and children into hiding. Up until that night, the policy of cooperation between the Danish government and the German occupying forces had protected the Jewish community in Denmark from deportation to the Nazi extermination camps, where more than six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. Many Danes reacted quickly and collectively, organizing risky boat rescue operations to bring their Jewish neighbours to safety in Sweden. These rescue operations saved the vast majority of the Danish Jews, but almost 500 were caught or denounced by collaborators and sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto.

The travel exhibition "Oktober 1943 – Das Schicksal der Juden aus Dänemark" is designed in the shape of a refugee boat. The exhibition tells of Jewish life in Denmark, allows different voices to have their say and vividly describes the rescue operation in October 1943.

The Felleshus of the Nordic Embassies in Berlin is the first exhibition venue for this new travel exhibition created by Danish journalist Simon Kratholm Ankjærgaard and German historian Dr. Christian Schölzel. Further exhibition stations in Germany and Denmark will follow.

The realization of the exhibition was kindly made possible by the financial support of the Federal Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The animated 18-minute documentary "Voices in the Void" about the future Rabbi Bent Melchior, who fled to Sweden with his family in 1943 as a 14-year-old boy, will accompany the exhibition in the Felleshus of the Nordic Embassies.

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