Denmark’s Forgotten Holocaust

Published February 2025

Denmark’s Forgotten Holocaust: My Family History in Letters

edited by Bodil Jelhof Jensen

Backcover: In October 1943, Max and Rose Hartwig walked into Theresienstadt along with 200 other Jewish Danes. Billed in Nazi propaganda as a model ghetto to resettle European Jews, Theresienstadt was in fact a transit-stop for the death camps and was itself a death camp housing a crematorium with four ovens.

While Max and Rose languished in the camp, their seven children and their families found refuge in Sweden. From there, they did everything possible to free Max and Rose, sending letters, money and care packages. When Max left the camp on a Red Cross bus in April 1945, he smuggled out these letters of love and encouragement. Against all odds, most survived the intervening years.

The actual letters are reproduced here in their entirety as originally handwritten in German with translations to Danish and English. The family history is completed with letters written before and after the war, family photos and official documents. Created as events unfolded by the people who were there, this historical record gives a unique insight into the Holocaust. The book presents a story of love and hope, and for most, survival. A touching story of courage about one family in World War II Denmark.

376 pages, 8.5 by 11 inches. 94 colour plates. Introduction (50 pages); 89 historical documents; 117 family photos.

ISBN 978-0-9864868-5-2 (softcover book)

Price: $125 plus shipping.

Shipping rates: Canada - $25; USA - $30; Europe - $35 (surface); $70 (air).

Two books cost $10 more to ship than one.

Reads like a first-rate novel – CR, Westmount

Max and Rose, 1904

Bodil Jelhof Jensen is one of Max and Rose’s nine grandchildren. She grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, where she graduated in 1970 from the University of Alberta with a B.A. (Honours) in history, followed by an M.A. in 1972 and an LlB in 1979. Her master’s thesis was published as Alberta’s County of Mountain View … A History in 1983. Since then she has translated several of her mother’s books, notably Dilemma, which won the John Glassco translation prize from the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada in 1996 as well as a Canadian Jewish Book Prize for Fiction. She is the author of a children’s book, Sana and Morgana Go to School, soon to be republished in French as Sana et Morgana vont à l’école. After practising law in the Northwest Territories, Alberta and Quebec, she and her husband continue to live near Montreal where they are self-described senior delinquents.

Table of Contents

FOREWORD

PART I – Introduction

Section 1: Overview

Section 2: The Letters

Section 3: The Letter Writers

Section 4: Transport XXV/2

Section 5: Theresienstadt – Subsistence and Death

Section 6: The White Buses

Section 7: My Journey of Discovery

PART II – THE HISTORICAL RECORD

89 letters and documents translated from German and Danish into English

PART III: Family Photos --117 photos from 1890 to 1957

Rose and Max on summer holidays with their

seven children, 1922