- The Danish people that helped their Jewish neighbors made an incredibly important choice.

Because of that, I'm alive and we have our family.

- I want my children, grandchildren to know that without people like that, none of us would be here.

(bright music) (light music) - My mom was born in Vienna, Austria, and she had, I think, a fairly normal kind of a childhood until Austria was taken over.

At about the age of 14 was when the Nazis took children and sent them to work camps.

So her parents decided that it would be safer for her if they could get her out of the country.

They arranged for her to stay with a family in Denmark.

(bombs exploding) (people chanting) - My father was born in Berlin, and that's where he grew up.

But before he left Germany, he had a chance to say goodbye to his family.

And the...

I remember my father telling me this, the last thing my grandfather told my father when my father was getting on the train to Denmark, he says, "Don't forget there's a God."

How can you say that when you know things are that bad?

(light somber music) (upbeat music) - [New Announcer] The German army rolled across the neutral borders of Little Denmark, and in a matter of hours have occupied the entire country.

- In 1943, the German occupying forces put in place a plan to deport the Jews.

They had planned it out to be the evening of Rosh Hashanah because they knew that most Jews would be at home celebrating with their families.

- The rabbi even told all Jews in synagogue when they went there for the holidays, he says, "Go home.

Call your family.

Call your friends.

Tell 'em to get to the harbor, any harbor.

There'll be boats waiting for you.

You have to get out of there.

The Germans are coming."

- In October, 1943, Danish citizens rescued 7,200 Jewish men, women and children by ferrying them to safety in neutral Sweden by fishing boat.

Danes considered Jews to be their friends, their fellow countrymen, their fellow citizens.

They didn't separate them into some other category.

They were simply Danes.

The rescue took about three weeks.

So three weeks to save 7,200 people.

(somber music) - My mom was about 19 when she escaped to Sweden.

She was told to go into Copenhagen and that a fishing boat would be ready for her.

When the evening came about, she was taken down to the water.

When she got there, there was a woman there carrying two big suitcases and was having difficulty taking them down to the boat.

So she asked the woman, "Can I help you?"

And so she helped this woman drag the suitcases down to the water.

There were two boats that were actually gonna depart from that harbor at that time.

The woman got on the first boat.

My mom was supposed to go on the second boat, but the woman looked at my mom and looked at the captain and said, "I want this girl to go with me."

What my mom found out afterwards was that the second boat was captured and never made it.

So this woman saved my mom's life.

(light somber music) - My mother, she would talk about things.

She was telling me how she was put in the bottom of the boat.

My mother was very claustrophobic, but she had no choice, and she was petrified the whole time.

My father, he left at 10 o'clock at night.

He didn't talk about that.

At the time he went on the boat, he's already lost his whole family.

- My mom, sometime during that time, she found out that her parents and her brother had been taken away to Auschwitz and had been killed there.

And so at that point, she was completely alone and had nobody.

I know that it has to have been very, very hard for her.

It's really not anything that she talked about an awful lot, but it's something that I always was aware of, it being unsaid, but it's still there, and I could feel it.

I could see it.

(bright music) - [Erin] The museum honors the memory of the millions of men, women and children who suffered or died in the Holocaust, and it is dedicated to teaching members of all races and cultures the inherent worth and dignity of all human life in order to prevent future genocides.

- I got involved with the museum over 25 years ago.

One of the reasons that I really wanted to get involved was that they were also going to tell the story of the Danish rescue.

And so one day I called my Danish friend.

- And she says to me, "Margot, I've always wanted a rescue boat to come to the Holocaust Museum.

Do you know anybody who can help us?"

I said, "I don't know."

I was told if there were any rescue boats left in Denmark, there may just be one or two.

- She called an old family friend named Bede.

- I get a phone call from Bede, and she says, "Margot, you can't believe what's going on.

I'm standing here with a broker.

He has a rescue boat."

(cheerful music) - Thor, our fishing boat, was owned by a Danish man named Erik Olson in a town called Koge.

We know the boat was used during the Nazi occupation of Denmark because we have a 1944 log book from Erik Olson with Nazi stamps showing where he was going every time he left the harbor and came back.

Then we spoke with Klaus, his son, to discuss the story that he knew behind it, which was that Erik Olson was asked to move some bearings for a local mill.

On one of these trips, he was asked by a leader of the resistance to take four Jews with him to Sweden.

- His father hadn't really shared this story until he was quite a bit later in his life.

His own wife didn't know the story, and that we could actually get this boat was, it was like a dream.

It's lifted a lot off of me personally, because the story will be told and it'll be told to children and adults and to anybody who wants to know, because it's a story that needs to be told.

- Oh.

(cheerful music) - [Erin] This rescue is unique, because no other occupied country took action the way that the Danish people did.

And not only that, it wasn't from the government down or the king down.

It was from the ground up.

These were ordinary people that took care of their Jewish neighbors.

- Because of that, I'm alive and we have our family.

- [Erin] The Florida Holocaust Museum had a commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the Danish Rescue where members of the public got to meet Thor for the first time.

We're having conservators work on Thor to prepare it for installation here at the Florida Holocaust Museum.

- Thor is going to be placed where you're gonna be able to see both the boxcar and Thor at the same time.

The boxcar was used to transport people to killing centers and to hurt people and to dehumanize people.

- The boxcar represents what can happen when hate goes unchecked.

The boat represents the power of making a choice and to answer the call when people are in trouble.

We're hoping that people understand the power that they have to do the right thing.

- Boats like that rescued my family, her family, and 7,200 other Jewish people from Denmark.

I want people to learn about the story, but I also want them to know if you're kind to people, if you're good to people, so much more can come out of this whole world.

(bright music) - If we are silent about inhumanity, whether it be antisemitism or other forms of hate, I feel that we become complicit.

Having something like Thor here reinforces how important it is that we respect one another's humanity and one another's differences.

I felt it was a very important message, that there is a choice.

There is always a choice.

(light music) (bright music) - [Announcer] Support for Greater St. Petersburg is provided by Curtis Anderson.