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

The story that both ordinary Danes and members of the royal family wore clothes with yellow six-pointed stars during World War II dates back several decades. Leon Uris retells it in his novel "Exodus", published in 1958 and filmed in 1960. In Russian cinema, the king was also shown wearing the “Jewish” badge - in the film by Eldar Ryazanov “Andersen. Life without love". Hannah Arendt, one of the major political thinkers of the 20th century, mentions this story in her bookThe Banality of Evil: Eichmann in Jerusalem", one of the main works on the Holocaust. Of course, the legend did not bypass social networks either..

Jews obliged wear decals back in Poland in 1939. Two years later, the German government extended the rule to other occupied lands. All Jews over the age of six were required to sew a six-pointed star with the word “Jew” on their clothes.

Denmark was occupied by German troops in April 1940. The Nazi command argued 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 to help them. Thanks to this, Denmark continued to operate its government, parliament and courts, King Christian X retained the throne, and control over the press and radio remained with local authorities. This model made it possible for three years to convince the occupation administration that there was no “Jewish question” in a country where several thousand Jews lived.

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

The legend exists in several versions. According to the first of them, the king wore a bandage with a yellow star on his arm during daily horseback rides around Copenhagen and thereby inspired his fellow citizens to do the same. According to another, Christian X promised to make a badge after hearing about plans to oblige Jews to wear identification badges. Finally, some retellings claim that the Danes spontaneously began wearing yellow stars as a sign of solidarity with the Jews, and the king followed suit.

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

King Christian X walking around Copenhagen, 1940.
It is clear that there is no yellow star on either the uniform or the sleeve.
Photo from the collection of the National Museum of Denmark (https://en.natmus.dk/)

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

And yet the myth was not born entirely by accident. The Danes may not have worn Star of David patches, but this story reflects the degree of solidarity within Danish society at the time. When the occupation government finally decided to deport local Jews to concentration camps in 1943, hundreds and thousands of citizens participated in smuggling most of them by boat to Sweden. To ordinary Danes succeeded save 7,200 Jews out of nearly 8,000.