Portrait photograph by Judy Glickman of Jewish man sitting rescued as a boy

Herbert Nachum Pundik was born into a Jewish family on September 23, 1927, in Copenhagen, Denmark. His father, Mendel, was born in 1898 and his mother, Eva, was born in 1903. He was 12 years old when the Germans invaded Denmark on April 9, 1940. Life changed little for the Danes under occupation; the Germans allowed them to control their own domestic affairs and did not impose restrictions. On August 29, 1943, in response to increasing sabotage and violent acts of resistance against the occupation, the Germans declared martial law. Herbert joined the resistance movement. Sixteen year old Herbert attended the Metropolitan School and was in French class on September 29, when non-Jewish citizens learned from German officials that Jews were going to be deported. The principal entered and asked anyone of Jewish origin to step out. Herbert, 2 friends, and the teacher were told of the deportation and sent home. His father had been warned at work and had his family packed and ready to go when Herbert arrived home. They hid in the home of a business acquaintance and on the night of October 3, left Denmark on a fishing boat. From the time the boat left Denmark until they were safe in neutral Swedish waters was 37 minutes. In 1945 Herbert volunteered with the Danish Brigade in Sweden and returned to Denmark after Germany surrendered in May 1945. He graduated high school in 1947 and left for Israel in spring of 1948. He fought in the Israeli War of Independence in 1948-1949. In the fall of 1949, he returned to Denmark and studied Economics at the University of Copenhagen. He married Susie Ginzborg in 1951. They emigrated to Israel in 1954 and had 3 children. Herbert pursued a career in journalism and worked at Danish and Israeli newspapers, and was an agent for Mossad, the Israeli secret service. In 1963 he worked for the Danish newspaper Politiken, became editor-in-chief in 1970, and retired in 1993. He authored many books, was the recipient of journalism and humanitarian awards, and co-founded the Danish-Israeli culture committee. His father died in 1963 at 65 years old, and his mother in 1995, at 92. His oldest son was a soldier killed in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Judy Ellis Glickman is a photographer and the daughter of Dr. Irving Bennett and Louise Ellis. Her father was a noted CAlifornia pictorialist photographer in the 1930s and 1940s. She pursued photography at a young age and obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1959 from the University of California at Los Angeles. She studied photography at UCLA from 1978-1985, the Maine Photographic Workshop from 1978-87, and the Portland School of Art from 1984-1985. Her grandparents emigrated to the United States at the turn of the 20th century, and her mother and grandmother in 1914. Though not a child of a Holocaust survivor, it was while visiting concentration camps in Poland in 1988 that she began to wonder how many unknown family members perished. During this trip, the work became more personal, real, and meaningful to her. She returns to Europe every year to visit and photograph Holocaust sites. She was asked by the Thanks to Scandinavia Foundation to create a photographic narrative documenting the Danish rescue effort. She has exhibited extensively and won numerous awards. Both her sons are rabbis. She is on the board of the Portland Museum of Art in Maine and is a fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in England.

The photograph was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2010 by Judith Ellis Glickman.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Judith Ellis Glickman

Funding Note: The cataloging of this artifact has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.