Hitler's Savage Canary by Lampe David

Author:Lampe, David [Lampe, David]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2011-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

12

The Island

ON a summer day in 1941 the German commandant on the island of Bornholm raged in to see one of the Danish officials on the island. As the Dane rose from his desk the German roared, ‘Have you seen this damned magazine?’

The official glanced at the Copenhagen weekly. ‘What’s wrong with it?’ he asked.

‘Some damned journalist has written that he’s just got back from a holiday in a place in Denmark where there was no blackout, there were no occupation authorities, and no wartime atmosphere!’

‘Really!’ smiled the Dane.

‘Yes, really!’ the German glowered. ‘And where do you suppose this paradise is? I’ll tell you where it is! It’s eighteen kilometres north-east of Bornholm! It’s Christiansø!’

The Dane smiled but did not reply.

‘Damn it!’ the German continued. ‘Of course there’s no war on Christiansø. That island’s Swedish.’ He paused, for the Danish officer was still smiling. ‘Christiansø is Swedish, isn’t it?’

The Dane slowly shook his head. ‘As a matter of fact, it belongs to the Admiralty and the fishermen there pay rent to the Government. They’re not allowed to build new houses or tear down old ones, and in the summer artists go there. A very quaint place—’ He then described Christianø and the island connected to it by a foot bridge, Frederiksø—together about sixty-four acres of Danish soil.

The German flopped down in a chair, slapped himself on the back of the neck, and said, ‘Well, I’ll be damned! We’ve got to do something about this right away.’

Several days later the Christiansø people were ordered to obey blackout restrictions and German shipping rules. Two German soldiers were stationed there, and more than a year after Copenhagen was occupied, Christiansø began to feel the war.

Bornholm’s occupation history was little less extraordinary than that of Christiansø. About half as big again as the Isle of Wight, Bornholm is a part of Denmark although it lies off the south coast of Sweden. Its people visit Copenhagen on sleek liners or by the regular air services, and speak Danish with a decidedly southern Swedish accent. Rich in agriculture and fishing, dotted with well-known porcelain factories and other relatively small but prosperous industries, its clean villages are mainly clusters of low, half-timbered, pastel-painted houses with orange tile roofs. Similarly coloured tiles are used for the pavements, and the roads are of Bornholm granite. Flat and low in the south, the island has a rocky coastline and craggy hills in the north. Its granite and smoothly tarred high ways weave through some of Denmark’s finest scenery. Born holm is one of those places that cannot avoid being called quaint.

Not under orders from Copenhagen, the Germans who occupied Bornholm were somewhat more lenient than their compatriots in the north. Most of their original force, which varied from two hundred to eight hundred, were sailors at two submarine stations, one on the east side of the island, one on the west. A few Wehrmacht troops patrolled the fishing ports but caused the people relatively little inconvenience. Bornholm’s Gestapo chief, a

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.