The survival of Denmark’s small Jewish population during World War II is often regarded with awe. In the rest of Nazi-occupied Europe, Jews suffered intense persecution and, ultimately, annihilation — sometimes at the hands of local collaborators. Yet in Denmark, ninety percent of the Jewish community survived, having been protected by a large segment of the Danish people.
While Ralph Shayne and Tatiana Goldberg’s graphic novel contains fictionalized elements, it is largely based on the experiences of Shayne’s mother. It’s an ambitious narrative that describes how one group of Jews made it through the war.
Hour of Need opens with a group of Danish government officials confronting the impending invasion of their country. Shayne points out that many Danes, whose culture is famous for its fairy tales, believed in a fantasy of their own: that they could coexist with their Nazi occupiers. They were constantly talking among themselves, questioning whether even minimal cooperation with the enemy could be justified. Some of them became radicalized and joined resistance movements.
The book alternates between two eras in Denmark: the 1940s and 2000s. Mette, a Danish Jewish woman who now lives in America, returns to visit Denmark, bringing her two grandchildren with her. The trip allows Mette to give the next generation an accurate historical account of history. She explains that, early in her childhood, she enjoyed a sense of security. It was only later, when her father revealed to her that their family is Jewish, that everything changed. Her father wasn’t particularly religious himself, but he sometimes attended synagogue “to listen … and belong.”
Shayne raises questions about the moral choices available to individuals in 1940s Denmark. He treats every truism about why Danes behaved differently than other Europeans with a degree of skepticism, without diminishing the nobility of their actions. He also acknowledges that those who helped protect the Jews did so in different ways. Some Danes demanded a fee for transporting Jews to Sweden in their fishing boats, while others refused compensation, or even credit, for their help. One German official, Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, undermined Nazi policy by alerting Jews about their imminent deportation. And Rabbi Marcus Melchior urged his Copenhagen congregation to flee instead of observing Rosh Hashanah.
Rather than focusing exclusively on their rescuers, Shayne depicts Jews in a way that gives them agency. Hour of Need is a story about how the Danish people enabled the survival of Jews like Mette. It is also about a family who nearly lost their Jewish identity — but didn’t.
Emily Schneider writes about literature, feminism, and culture for Tablet, The Forward, The Horn Book, and other publications, and writes about children’s books on her blog. She has a Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures.
