Gerda III, as displayed at Mystic Seaport for the Museum of Jewish Heritage.
Henny’s Boat
The maritime rescue operation that saved Denmark’s Jews and sparked a nationwide revolt against the Nazis.
About the Book
Denmark’s World War II rescue of its Jewish population was a shining example of courage, morality and national resolve.
Three years after they invaded Denmark, the Nazis set a plan in motion to capture the country’s nearly 8,350 Jews in a single night and send them on the path to annihilation. Word of the plan got out seventy-two hours before the Nazis were set to pounce, triggering a nationwide effort to warn and hide the Jews. On the night of the scheduled raids, the Gestapo came up almost empty-handed. The chase, however, had just begun. The only safe place within reach was Sweden, and the only way to get there was by boat.
Danes organized escapes on hundreds of boats from points all along the coast. Gerda III was one of the most successful boats – saving at least 300 Jews during a month of clandestine crossings.
Twenty-two-year-old Henny Sinding was at the heart of Gerda III’s rescue missions. Working with the boat’s four-man crew, a young navy cadet, and a college resistance group, Henny escorted Jews from rendezvous points around Copenhagen to a warehouse attic overlooking the boat and then, in pre-dawn darkness, onto the boat itself. Gerda III’s crew completed the escapes, traveling past German warships and mines to Swedish ports.
When the Jewish rescue operation was done, Henny’s team became leaders in the armed resistance, and Gerda III continued to be a lifeboat for persons hunted by the Nazis. Their story epitomizes the story of a nation that rose from a humbling surrender to battle the Nazis and hand the Gestapo its most glaring defeat.
Reviews
“Howard Veisz’s book is a most welcome educational gem! It narrates in riveting details the remarkable story of a courageous young woman – Henny Sinding – who organized the 1943 escape of hundreds of Jews, on the vessel Gerda III .… The book provides a remarkably comprehensive overview of the historical context within which Gerda III’s daily covert crossings took place under the noses of the Nazi forces arrayed along the coast. It not only makes for exciting reading – but having personally been among those Danish Jews who escaped to Sweden – I can vouch for the historic accuracy of Howard Veisz’s account. Denmark was indeed the country in which ‘the light pierced the darkness’ and it deserves to become better known for the moral lessons it offered. Needless to say, I regard it as a special honor to recommend this book!”
“In this “expanded edition” of his 2017 book, Henny and Her Boat, Veisz adds to his pioneering history of Henny Sinding, a 22-year-old Danish woman who worked with the crew of the ship Gerda III to rescue hundreds of Jews in Nazi-occupied Denmark. An expert sailor in his own right, the author has long served as a volunteer at Connecticut’s Mystic Seaport Museum, where Gerda III is currently docked. Following the disclosure of Nazi plans to “capture all of the country’s Jews in a single night” in October 1943, Sinding and the crew of Gerda III joined a myriad of fishing boats and small vessels to transport Jews across the Øresund, a strait that separates Denmark from Sweden. As recounted by Veisz in thrilling detail, Sinding would make hundreds of trips alongside Jews “through the darkened late-night streets of wartime Copenhagen,” as they hoped to accompany the ship’s “daily covert crossings.” Gerda III would later ferry hundreds of resistance fighters identified by Nazis as well as British and American airmen who had crash-landed in Denmark during the final years of the war. The author’s decadelong research into the history of Gerda III, reflected in the book’s ample endnotes, is most impressive, particularly due to the scarcity of recorded materials left behind by the clandestine resistance movement. In addition to having a solid understanding of the historical literature on the subject, the author traveled to Denmark, where he located and interviewed the descendants of the ship’s survivors and analyzed archival material about Gerda III and the Danish resistance movement. And while the work’s original research may be of value to historians, its harrowing story has broad appeal. At under 200 pages, the book has an engaging writing style that is complemented by the ample inclusion of maps, photographs, and other visual aids. Its contention that Danes “overwhelmingly” chose resistance over collaboration with the Nazi occupiers may be overdrawn, but the volume effectively details an extensive Jewish rescue effort “unique in occupied Europe.”
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