AARON HOWARD: Jewish Herald Voice:Houston, TX: Accounts of Rescue and Moral Acts During Nazi Occupation: April 11, 2001

“Between Darkness and Light,” currently on exhibit in the Joseph & Edith Mincberg Gallery at Holocaust Museum Houston brings together two art forms – black and white photography and black and white drawings.  Half of the exhibit is made up of Judith Ellis Glickman’s photographs of living rescuers and actual sites where resistance and rescue took place some 50 years ago.  The other half is made up of Karen Gunderson’s charcoal drawings and paintings on linen-backed paper, including one of Denmark’s King Christian and several depicting the water passage to Sweden.

            When Karen Gunderson was a preschooler in Racine, Wis., her uncle told her the story of King Christian X.  The Danish king would go out for a ride on horseback to greet his subjects each day.  Then on April 9, 1949, the Nazis invaded Denmark and took over the country without a struggle.

            According to the story, the king appeared the next day outside the palace on his horse, as usual.  But on his uniform, in addition to his medals, he wore a large yellow Jewish star.  The king’s gesture sent an immediate message of solidarity to the Danish people.  His countrymen responded by resisting Nazi efforts to deport the country’s 8,000 Jews.

            This King Christian image struck Gunderson’s imagination, and she grew up identifying with these strong Scandinavians, who did the right thing.

            In 1988, Gunderson, now an adult artist, went to a dinner given by the Righteous Foundation, honoring citizens from different countries who had helped Jewish people during the Holocaust.  The event jobbed memories of those childhood King Christian stories.  Gunderson decided that she would paint an image of King Christian.  To research background material, Gunderson read a book by Leo Goldberger on the rescue of Danish Jewry.  As it turns, it is true that the king rode his horse every dday during Nazi occupation.  But, he never wore the yellow star.  Nor did he ever utter the widely attributed response,  “If Jews are forced to wear the yellow star, I and my whole family shall wear it as a badge of honor,” to the Nazi attempt to introduce the yellow badge.