Gregory Morrow wrote:

> > I do. My father was shot down over Denmark during the war, and a lot of
> > Danes risked their lives to help him escape to Sweden. But on a more
> > general note, the thing that has really ****ed off the Moslems is that the
> > Danish prime minister has refused to intervene because he considers it to
> > be a matter of freedom of speech. That is a principle that most of us in
> > the west value and we would hate to see that freedom lost because of
> > threats of violence from fundamentalist thugs.
>
> Remember the Danish resistance to the Nazi occupiers during WWII. They
> managed to evacuate a goodly number of Jews to safe haven (at great
> risk to themselves). IIRC when the Nazis stipulated that Jews must
> wear a yellow Star of David the Danish royal family as a sign of
> solidarity donned yellow Stars too...
>
> Much of this resistance was passive - aggressive and often took
> something of a comical turn - but it was fairly effective. The Danes
> have lessons for us all...

My father had to walk across the island of Sjaelland in 1943. Anyone got helping
him would have been executed by the Germans. On his way across he stopped at a
half dozen farm houses to ask for food and water. Nobody turned him down, and
nobody turned him in. One family invited him in for Easter dinner. Some of the
Resistance people who helped him were the same people who helped get the Jews
out safely.

The Resistance was widespread. My father was taken to the police station in
Copenhagen to get a set of identity papers, and it was the police that provided
the colour code of the day to flash if approached by a German patrol boat.

When he got to Sweden they had to put hm in jail for a few days, but when he was
released the police in Malmo gave him and the Dane who escaped with him a set of
gold cuff links.

The way I figure it is that we have the option of siding with the sort of people
who would fight to maintain the sort of personal freedoms that we value, or to
support the religious fanatics.

I sure am enjoying my Tubourg beer, and Moslems wouldn't let me do that.
:-)