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| Image courtesy Reuters |
During my short stay in hospital, gentle reader, I did a little reading.
One of the books I read quickly (easily achieved in a hospital when you are waited on, and aren't interrupted by routine necessary chores) was Mosquito by Rowland White.
I was interested in it because I have an obsession with military aircraft, and find the topic interesting because of personal experience in a variety of these machines in my short and unspectacular military career.
It's an engaging narrative, but more because of its behind-the scenes portrayal of the Danish resistance in World War Two than technical aspects of the aircraft.
De Havilland Mosquitos were used in a spectacular raid on the Shellhaus Gestapo Headquarters in Copenhagen and dropped supplies and personnel to resistance groups.
They also routinely transported ball bearings from Sweden to the UK to maintain the supply of these much needed components during the height of British aircraft construction during the early stages of the conflict.
But what I hadn't expected to find in this monograph was a the simultaneous contextual outline of the Nazi occupation of Denmark, which was portrayed by the Third Reich's propaganda as an exercise in peaceful cooperation between the Danish authorities and the Nazis.
It wasn't, of course, and when the Danish resistance, supported by the allies, began to have an effect the Nazis retaliated.
This retaliation consisted of rounding up about five hundred Jewish members of the Danish community and transporting them to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia.
It could have been a lot worse. Many Danes, with the help of the resistance organised a massive rescue effort. The used boats to ferry Jews across the Oresund strait to Sweden, in an operation coordinated by the resistance, and involving ordinary citizens and some brave members of the Danish police and government. Over seven thousand were saved.
Images of people being herded into railway wagons in August 1943 put me in mind of a similar phenomenon taking place right now in the USA, a country once considered a bastion of democracy.
The people targeted for deportation into South American Gulags in El Salvador aren't Jews. They're allegedly gang members. The process is however eerily similar, separated as it is by over eighty years and taking place in different continents..
Again, history rhymes....
