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Esther
By Peter Christensen
Esther, a nurse, was active in the Resistance during the time that Denmark was occupied by the German led Wehrmacht. Denmark was occupied early in the war as its strategic position in the North Sea guarded access to German ports.
Nazis occupied two large buildings in downtown Copenhagen and kept records on many people. Many Danes were Nazi sympathizers so it was particularly dangerous to work for the Resistance. Nevertheless, as the war progressed the Danish Resistance grew stronger and bolder carrying out numerous raids on German armament factories and Nazi occupied buildings. They boldly shepherded many downed airmen and hundreds of individuals to neutral Sweden. One of the reasons that the Danish Resistance was so active was to prevent the Allies from bombing Denmark, it was understood that as long as the Resistance was active bombing would not be needed.
At the beginning of the war Esther worked in a medical clinic owned by a Jewish doctor and there they manufactured and issued false identity papers to Danish Jews in preparation for and during the early evacuation of 7,000 Jewish citizens from Denmark to Sweden.
Esther said you could trust absolutely no one, yet many times she stuffed a package given to her by an unknown person into her underclothes and then delivered it to yet another unknown person.
There were mornings when Esther, along with many other workers, would on their way to work be ordered to lie down on the street. “Ruas, Raus!” Get out, the SS soldiers would shout and mud, rain or summer heat the entire working entourage would lay down where they stood or be shot. Then nearby buildings would be raided, maybe someone running along a roof would be seen trying to escape the shooters. The soldiers would move on and quick as everyone had obeyed they rose together and hurried on their way heads bowed, not looking.
Later she worked in a large hospital in Copenhagen which was guarded around the clock by Nazi SS soldiers. A soldier was in place on every floor and at many stations constantly checking the names of individuals that were admitted; the activities of many medical people in Denmark were suspect.
From time to time the hospital staff would hide a saboteur or a liquidation squad Resistance person that had been found out. They would be brought into the hospital as burn victims, their faces and bodies swathed in bandages. After a few weeks the medical staff would find a reason to transfer or dismiss them from the wards.
The “fugitive” would be freed of their bandages given new clothes and identity cards and then early in the morning be lowered to street level where they would hide among garbage cans and shrubbery till the morning rush hour of people going to work would go by; they would then join in the throng of bicycles and walkers and simply walk away.
During these operations a Nazi guard would have been posted outside the door of the ward. Esther took big risks as did many others; some of whom were tortured for aiding the Resistance and shot by Wehrmacht firing squads.
One afternoon when she was leaving the hospital after her shift a Wehrmacht officer was walking next to her; a liquidation Resistance person rode his bicycle up beside the Officer and shot him. She said everyone just kept walking.
There are other stories from Esther’s involvement in the Danish Resistance that I could retell, but let’s jump ahead.
My father immigrated to Canada in the 1920s when he was 19. He made a trip back to Denmark in 1938 and Esther and Paul fell in love. He tried to convince her to come to Canada; however, she decided to stay in Denmark and practice as a nurse as she had just graduated from nursing college. At that time in Denmark a nursing diploma was a six-year education and internship. Then the war.
There was no communication between them during the war or until two years after when in1947 my father, Paul, wrote to Esther and asked if she would marry and come to Canada. By that time my father was 40 and Esther 32 years of age. She said “yes.”
Paul travelled by train from Banff across the continent and then to New York, then by ship to Denmark. I have a picture of the two of them, newly married, arriving in New York from Denmark looking longingly over the rail from the ship at the New York skyline.
When my father brought Esther to Edgewater, whereby that time he had acquired a 20 acre ‘orchard homestead’ with a bachelor shack on it, she took one look at it, refused to live there and they kept going to Vancouver. There they got jobs running an Old Folks Home for retired Danish fishermen. Esther said it was a huge amount of work as they had to cook and clean, can and put up all the food for home and as well as look after the patients.
After a couple of years, they decided to try Alberta. My father had annually migrated from Edgewater to Alberta for work on the farms during harvest and while there gotten to know a few families in Central Alberta, near Dickson, a Danish farming settlement.
Eventually with the help of a community Patriarch they purchased a quarter section and slowly built up a farming enterprise. Over many years they kept a strong connection with the East Kootenay migrating in the fall to cut Christmas trees.
Like many rural communities of that day the church was the centre of social activities. Esther was one of the very few people in the community who had any education beyond grade 8 and by default because of her nursing background she became the Emergency Services person people sought out when in need.
One time a couple came to get her as their small boy had fallen in the water trough. He was of course drowned so there was little she could do. But they came and got her because they did not want to believe that God would allow such a thing to happen.
Mrs. Svendsen lived a half a mile away, she was the mother of 12 boys and two girls, her husband was a professional soldier, a Sargent, and had been in both the first and second world wars. As a professional soldier’s wife the government afforded her a half section, she rented out the crop land, raised the children and kept a huge flock of turkeys.
One day she arrived at our house with her ring finger chopped to the bone. I remember seeing her wedding ring hanging by a tendon. She had been beheading turkeys and missed. We were a long way from hospitals so Esther sewed her finger on, bandaged it and sent her home.
In those early days there was little intellectual discourse in the community, the Sunday sermon was the only exposure that people had to didactic discourse. My mother, who had lived a cosmopolitan lifestyle in Copenhagen and had been surrounded by intellectuals, found rural values and people’s lack of education and learning stifling.
Out of desperation for social interaction she attended for a time the weekly Ladies Aid Bible Studies that the Pastor of the congregation led and for which he set the agenda; this meeting would consist of reading bible passages, discussion and prayers asking for understanding. Most of the members of the Dickson Ladies Aid were older women from the community many of them widows who were in need of company and reassurance.
Esther began attending these meetings at first as a social event and then in hopes of some lively discussions but the doctrines and their explanations were set script and she soon become agitated by lack of substance in the discussions and the docility of the members. So screwing up her courage she would ask difficult questions like, “Why does God permit evil?”
Given her background and the atrocities she had witnessed these questions troubled her deeply but the best answer that the Dickson Ladies Aid could come up with was something to the effect that, “God is all knowing Esther.” Or the Ladies Aid matrons would gang up on her, “how could she say such things,” and then Esther would be advised to pray to God for understanding and ask him to forgive her for her lack of faith.
But sometimes out of sheer stubbornness or desperation she pressed the question by telling stories from the war. The response to this telling from these unworldly and frightened ‘old hens’ would be, “The end is near Esther, the end is near.” To this she would respond, ‘Well, I suppose it is for you dear.’
And then the Pastor would visit the farm and have a talk with my father about Esther, informing him that she was upsetting the Ladies Aid prayer meetings with her stories and questions and, perhaps she should consider not attending. Something that the Ladies Aid had of course put him up to as they were afraid to tell her themselves.
A private prayer session led by him to help Esther ask forgiveness for her doubts would be better for all, he thought. I don’t know that Esther ever took him up on his offer. However, she did not attend Ladies Aid and sought refuge in the choir where she sang heartily in her not so polished voice.
If you are interested in stories from the Danish Resistance I recommend a book titled, Hitler’s Savage Canary A History of the Danish Resistance in World War ll by David Lampe published in 2010 and distributed in Canada by Arcade Publishing.
Peter Christensen is a Columbia Valley writer and poet.
