Wow! this reeks of Anti Semitism- Jews this, Jews that poor poor Poles, Danes not angels.
Seriously mate? Have you actually read this thread and what it is about? Or is Dr Keren-Carmel an anti-Semite in your opinion? If so you should perhaps acquaint yourself with her CV and better-still her professional output?
On a more serious point - I think Dr Keren-Carmel hits upon one important factor which goes beyond her area of interest in WW2, Scandinavia. This is that the fate of the Jewish part of the population was very much a reflection - not an exact one by any means but nonetheless - of the fate of the entire population. Those countries hit the hardest by Nazi repression - such as Poland, Greece, Yugoslavia and present day Belarus and Ukraina, suffered the highest percentage losses of both overall and Jewish populations. Those countries that cooperated with the Nazis to a greater or lesser extent suffered less overall and in their Jewish populations. There is also a certain pattern that reinforces this point - when relations between countries and Nazi Germany moved from a more cooperative to a more coercive model, the prospects of the Jewish part of the population nose-dived. Denmark and Hungary can both serve as good examples (albeit, of course, the extent of the nose-dive still depended on the attitude of the Germans).
She also highlights the very relevant truism which is that what fuels mainstream narrative is, in the main, the political and/or economic needs of the day rather than what actually happened in WW2. In the case of Denmark she identifies the close co-operation of Israel with the Scandinavian countries since the 1950s - of benefit to both - as the main driver behind the operating narrative - much of it a myth in the light of the available evidence and research (
Scandinavia and Israel after the Holocaust (2020). Nordisk Judaistik/Scandinavian Jewish Studies 31(2):41-59). This is not to negate the point made by Waleed, that many Danes did help the Jews just that, for example, the testimony of Jewish survivors who experienced Danish kindness is heard while that of those who had not occassioned that kindness or indeed met with indifference or hostility, are left to collect dust on the shelves (
Like lambs to the rescue: the survivors and the rescue of Danish Jewry in the Holocaust (2016). Holocaust Studies 22(4):1-18).
One take-home for me is that there is little hard evidence that anti-semitism in the local population was a decisive factor in the level of Jewish persecution - a commonly held belief, exemplified by the post from another site that WM quotes. It was almost entirely dependent on how viciously the Nazis were willing to treat any given country. The reasons for this are likely two-fold: firstly the direct measures taken against the Jews would be harsher the harsher the treatment of the country as a whole and, secondly, because helping Jews would be more dangerous and therefore less likely to be undertaken.
