Marcus Choleva

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Marcus Choleva (April 12, 1933) is a Danish billionaire and CEO of a successful Danish concern called KFI (Købmændenes Finansieringsinstitut) which is translated to "The Merchants' financing-institute".

[edit] Life

Marcus Choleva was born (April 12, 1933) in Copenhagen to parents of Latvian-Lithuanian Jewish descent. His great-grandparents fled Eastern Europe due to the rekindled anti-Semitism. The surname Choleva (Originally spelled Cholewa) is a metonymic occupational name for a bootmaker, or a nickname for someone who habitually wore boots, from cholewa ‘boot upper’.

Background

After the battles of Stalingrad and El-Alamein the incidents of resistance, violent and symbolic, increased exponentially in Denmark. In March 1943 the Germans allowed an election that embarrassed them by giving good results to anti-Nazi parties. The election, discontent, and a growing feeling of optimism that Germany would be defeated led to wide spread strikes and civil disturbances in the summer of 1943. The Danish government refused to deal with the situation in a way that would satisfy the Germans, so on 29 August 1943 the Germans officially dissolved the Danish government and instituted martial law. When the collaboration between the Danish and the German government ended, the German policies became more rigorous, and this entailed, among other things, in the persecution of the Danish Jews. While many priviliged Danish Jews fled to Sweden by boat, Marcus Choleva and his family were less fortunate as their neighbours divulged their location to the Gestapo. They were subsequently arrested and sent to a concentration camp called Theresienstadt located in the present-day Czech Republic. The Danish Jews were treated better in Theresienstadt than other European Jews, and were not immediately deported to death camps like many of the other Jews in the camp. Marcus Choleva and most of his family spent a year and a half in the concentration camp, surviving the Holocaust.