Un livre, une page. Number the stars by Lois Lowry. An exodus

Le sauvetage des Juifs du Danemark eut lieu pendant l'occupation du Danemark par le Troisième Reich lors de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Le 1er octobre 1943, Adolf Hitler ordonna l'arrestation et la déportation des Juifs du Danemark. Malgré de grands risques pour leur vie, la Résistance danoise, avec l'aide de nombreux citoyens danois, parvint à faire évacuer 7 220 des 7 800 Juifs du pays, ainsi que 686 conjoints non-juifs, via la mer à destination de la Suède alors neutre.

Le sauvetage permit à la grande majorité de la population juive du Danemark d'éviter sa capture par les nazis. Il est considéré comme l'une des plus grandes actions de résistance collective dans les pays occupés par l'Allemagne nazie. Grâce à ce sauvetage, et à l'intercession ultérieure des Danois en faveur de 464 autres Juifs danois capturés et déportés au camp de concentration de Theresienstadt en Bohême, environ 98,5% de la population juive du Danemark survécut à l'Holocauste

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How much of Annemarie's story is true? I know I will be asked that. Let me try to tell you, here, where fact ends and fiction begins.

Annemarie Johansen is a child of my imagination though she grew there from the story told to me by a friend Annelise Platt, to whom this book is dedicated, who was herself a child in Copenhagen during the long years of the German Occupation.

I had always been fascinated and moved by Anne-Lise description, not only of the personnal deprivation that her family and their neighbors suffered during those years, and the sacrifices they made, but even more by the greater picture she drew for me of the courage and integrity of the Danish people under the leadership of the king they loved so much, Christian X.

So I created little Annemarie and her family, set them down in a Copenhagen apartment on a street where    I have walked myself, and imagined their life there against the real events of 1943. 

Denmark surrended Germany in 1940, it is true; and it  was true for the reason that papa explained to Annemarie; the country was small and undefended, with no army of any size. The people would have been destroyed has they tried to defend themselves against the huge German forces. So, surely with great sorrow - King Christian surrended, and overnight the soldiers moved in.  From then on, for five years, they occupied the country. Visible on almost every street corner, always armed and spit-shined, they controlled newspapers, the rail system, the government, the schools and hospitals, and the day-to-day existence of the Danish people.

But they never controlled King Christian. It is true that he rode alone on his horse from the Palace every morning, unguarded, and greeted his people; and though it seems so charming as to be a flight of autor's fancy, the story that papa told Annemarie of the soldier who asked the teenager "Who is that man? - that story is recorded in one of the documents that still remains from that time. 

It is true that in August 1943, the Danes sank their own entire navy in Copenhagen harbor as the German approached to take over the ships for their own use. My friend Annelise remembers it, and many who were children at that time would have been awakened, as little Kirsti was, by the explosions and the fiercely lighted sky as the ships burned. 

On the New Year of the Jewish High Holidays in 1943, those who gathered to worship at the synagogue in Copenhagen, as the fictional Rosen family did, were warned by the rabbi that they were to be taken away and "relocated" by the Germans.

Lois Lowry is known for her versatility and invention as a writer and is the author of more than 30 books for young adults. She was born in Hawaï and grew up in New York, Pennsylvania, and Japan. After several year at Brown university, she turned to her family and to writing.

Lois Lowry, née Lois Ann Hammersberg, est une écrivaine américaine. Son père conduit une carrière militaire puisqu'il exerce sa profession de dentiste dans l'armée américaine. La famille est donc amenée à déménager très souvent. Au cours de son enfance, Lois vivra à Brooklyn, New York (1939-1942), Carlisle, Pennsylvanie (1942), Tokyo (1948-1950). Elle fera ses études à New York puis au Pembroke College de l'Université Brown de Rhode Island, en 1954.