DADS READ: “The Whispering Town” by author Jennifer Elvgren and illustrator Fabio Santomauro

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JER: “The Whispering Town” by author Jennifer Elvgren and illustrator Fabio Santomauro is based on the true story of Danish resistance during World War II.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: “By 1943, the Nazis began to round up the estimated 8,000 Danish Jews and send them to concentration camps.  Danes hid Jews in private homes, warehouses, barns, hotels, and churches.  Then they secured boats and hired fisherman to transport them across the sound to nearby neutral Sweden.  Almost all of the Jews were smuggled out of Denmark.  About 1,700 Jews escaped from the small fishing village of Gilleleje.  One moonless night, the town’s citizens stood in their doorways and whispered in directions to the harbor.”

As I read this story, I couldn’t help tearing up, thinking about the tremendous bravery of these Danes.  It also gave me tremendous pride to know that my ancestors were part that effort.  My great-aunt Gerda Valentiner (the sister of my grandfather Ejler Valentiner), was a school teacher. “When she heard of the Nazi plan to deport Denmark’s Jews, Gerda began to shelter and hide Jewish children in her own home. Then she waited until it was safe to smuggle them to the coast and from there to neutral Sweden.” (Jewish Press, “Gerda Valentiner of Denmark”, 8 October 2018, Menucha Chanani Levin).  After the war was over, she took a leave of absence from her teaching to volunteer as a social worker for two years in the Jewish refugee camps in Austria and Germany.  On July 28, 1968, Yad Vashem (The World Holocaust Remembrance Center) recognized Gerda Valentiner as “Righteous Among the Nations”.  (Yad Vashem, “Teachers Who Rescued Jews During the Holocaust”).   I hope to live up to her memory, and be as brave as she was.

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