Zachor - Commemorate this day
Listen to the audioguide: "Then all the Jews were arrested"
THEN ALL THE JEWS WERE ARRESTED
Fini Andersen became involved in the Resistance movement in the Fredensborg area around the middle of the war. He facilitated weapon drops from the British Royal Air Force by parachute into the Gribskov Woods. When the Jews fled in October 1943, he also aided the illegal evacuations.
On the evening of 6 October, he was in the parish hall on the main street of Gilleleje along with some of the Jews who had not made it aboard the schooner M.A. Flyvbjerg when it had weighed anchor so abruptly because someone in the crowd shouted that the Germans were in the harbour. That’s when I nearly got a bullet in the back, because we were sitting up there [in the parish hall] and then it got dark. Suddenly we could see a car with its lights on – across on the other side of the road when we looked outside the window. There weren’t that many cars at that time, so we thought it was a bit strange, so we decided to take a look. Just as we left by the back door and followed the lighthouse path, the Germans entered through the front door. Obviously, it wasn’t forbidden to walk there, so we walked right past the Germans and saw that it was a German car with a machine gun set up underneath. That was when all the Jews were arrested.
The members of Fini Andersen’s resistance group were lucky, getting through the war unharmed despite several episodes in which German soldiers nearly discovered them.