According to a widely replicated legend, King Christian X, and behind him, simple Danes during the years of Nazi occupation sewed yellow stars on their clothes as a sign of solidarity with Jews. We checked how it really was.

The story that the ordinary Danes and members of the royal family during the Second World War wore clothes with yellow six -pointed stars several decades ago. Leon Juris retells her in his Roman "Exodus"published in 1958 and filmed in 1960. In domestic cinema, the king was also shown - the king’s patch was also shown - in the film Eldar Ryazanov “Andersen. Life without love ". Hannah Arendt, one of the main political thinkers of the 20th century, mentions this story in the book "Evil Banality: Eichmann in Jerusalem", One of the main works about the Holocaust. Of course, the legend did not bypassed social networks.

Jews Obligated Wear the distinctive signs in Poland in 1939. Two years later, the German government spread the rule to other occupied lands. All Jews older than six years were obliged to sew a six -pointed star with the word “Jew” on clothes.

Denmark was occupied German troops in April 1940. The Nazi command claimed that the seizure of the country was necessary only to control the straits connecting the North Sea with the Baltic, and the local government, in turn, promised them to help. Thanks to this, their government, parliament and courts continued to work in Denmark, King Christian X retained the throne, and control over the press and radio remained with the local authorities. Such a model has allowed to convince the occupation administration for three years that there was no “Jewish question” in the country where several thousand Jews lived.

Largely due to its special position, Denmark turned out to be one of the rare exceptionsWhere neither yellow stars, nor other distinctive signs for Jews were used. Already this alone is enough to understand: the legend is insolvent. Where did she come from then?

Legend exists in several versions. According to the first of them, the king put on his hand a bandage with a yellow star during daily equestrian walks along Copenhagen and thereby inspired fellow citizens to do the same. According to another, Christian X promised to make a strip, hearing about plans to oblige Jews to wear identification marks. Finally, in some retelling it is stated that the Danes spontaneously began to wear yellow stars in solidarity with the Jews and the king followed their example.

For a long time, researchers believed that the myth grew out of a caricature published in the same Swedish newspaper. On it, the Danish king is talking with his prime minister. To the question “what will we do if the Jews are forced to wear yellow stars” Christian X replies that then all the Danes will wear them.

King Christian X for a walk along Copenhagen, 1940.
It can be seen that there is no yellow star either on the uniform or on the sleeve.
Photo from the collection of the National Museum of Denmark (https://en.natmus.dk/)

Outside of Scandinavia (and then all over the world), history has become known “thanks” to the news release The Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The message was transmitted on September 4, 1942. It turns out that there is no reason to associate the legend with the order of the deportation of the Danish Jews a year later, as some authors do. The already mentioned novel “Exodus” and its adaptation were added popularity to this myth.

Nevertheless, the myth was not born quite by accident. Let the Danes do not wear stripes in the form of a star of David, but this story reflects the degree of solidarity within the Danish society at that time. When in 1943 the occupation government nevertheless decided to deport local Jews to concentration camps, hundreds and thousands of citizens participated in secretly transferring most of them by boats to Sweden. Simple Danes succeeded Save 7200 Jews out of almost 8000.