11 young people, aged 10-17, from Belmont Shul used their Spring half term to participate in a Jewish identity tour of Copenhagen and Malmo. Two key foci of the trip were learning about the rescue of Danish Jewry during WW2 and undertaking a fund raising walk for the local Norwood home.
The programme, which had received a grant from Oxford and St Georges, included hearing from persons, both in London and Copenhagen, who as young children had been on the rescue boats, a lady whose Swedish family had taken in some Danish Jewish refugees in October 1943 and Rabbi Melchior of Denmark, whose great grandfather had been tipped off about the impending destruction of Danish Jewry, and had told the community to go into hiding with local friends.
The Belmont teens also had dinner with 21 Jewish teens from Copenhagen and Malmo, had tours of the beautiful shuls of both cities, visited Elsinore and saw Kronberg castle, the setting for Hamlet, and the Jewish museum of Copenhagen with its deliberately asymmetric and uneven design.
On the final day, the youngsters walked with their rucksacks along the Danish coast to the village of Dragor. In October 1943, the local fisherfolk sailed hundreds of Jews to safety in Sweden, risking their livelihoods and indeed lives in so doing.
The local history volunteers got the last surviving working rescue boat running and we were able to board it. Designated ‘the Freedom walk’ the youngsters raised more than £5,350 for the local Norwood home.
