The Boys Who Challenged Hitler Read online

  I was still in a dark cloud a few afternoons later when, to my total surprise, a car from K Company came screeching up to the monastery. The same men who had dismissed me days before now hailed me warmly and returned my machine gun, ammunition, and signs of grade. What could have happened?

  It turned out that Major General Richard Dewing, the British commander of all military forces in Denmark, had come to my rescue—not that he meant to. Now that liberation had come, he wanted to meet the legendary Churchill Club, Denmark’s first resisters. He would soon be visiting Aalborg. He ordered his staff

  to round up as many Clubbers as they could find and have them at the Hotel Phoenix at a certain time.

  We were all astonished by the meeting. Uffe Darket told us that a British Royal Air Force plane had shown up at his post in Germany, with a pilot whose orders were to take him to Aalborg, Denmark. There was no explanation, just “Let’s go.” Helge, Uffe, the Professor, Alf, all of us—everyone had a similar story.

  General Dewing meeting with the Churchill Club (the general is at the head of the table, Knud is to his immediate right)

  On the day of the meeting we were seated at a long table in the hotel dining room with General Dewing at the head. He greeted us individually, by name. He said he wanted to know our whole story, from Odense to Aalborg to Nyborg State Prison and beyond. So we detailed our lives first as angry schoolboys, then as increasingly bold saboteurs, and then as prison inmates. We gave him the late-night raid on the Fuchs Construction Company’s headquarters at the airport, and remembered how good it felt to use the framed photo of Hitler as a trampoline. We told stories of stolen weapons, ruined autos, and scorched railway cars. He laughed out loud when we came to the dummy bar on the cell window at King Hans Gades Jail. He asked question after question. Finally, he pushed his seat back and stood. “This is a good story,” he said, saluting us. “I’ll tell it to Mr. Churchill.”

  * * *

  Winston Churchill did indeed hear the story, but probably not from General Dewing. Five years later, in the autumn of 1950, Denmark was no longer preoccupied with the war. For the first two or three years after liberation, the air had been thick with accusations and demands for justice to the traitorous collaborators, but now there was a sense in the population of getting on with things, that the horrible hour was at last behind them, that the sun was shining again. The Churchill Club had scattered, and there had never been a reunion. Most of its members were launching careers and starting families.

  KNUD PEDERSEN: I had moved to Copenhagen. At that time I was taking a few classes at law school, but my real love, as always, was art. I spent all the time I could painting and talking late into the night, debating and learning about new trends in modern art. Like all young students in Copenhagen at that time, and especially art students, I barely had enough money to buy a cup of coffee. To get by, I got up each morning at five to deliver newspapers, and I also worked in a brewery, sorting empty bottles. It was about as challenging as the work I had done at Nyborg State Prison.

  One night I got out of a class and was hurrying across a city square to meet some friends when I glanced up at the electronic headline wrapped around the top of a newspaper building. It read, “Churchill Club to Meet Winston Churchill.”

  I stopped. Pedestrians rushed past me as if I were a stone in a stream. I stumbled to a telephone box in the middle of the square, but I couldn’t scrape up the right coins to call home. Just then, my glance went to a broad white banner stretched across the front of a hotel next to the newspaper building: CHURCHILL CLUB MEETING HEADQUARTERS. I gave my name to the lady at the reservation desk and asked for a telephone. She said they had been trying to find me all day.

  Old clubmates trickled in through the night and the next morning. Unfortunately, Jens was working as an engineer in India and could not attend. Some were university students and still knew each other, but I had lost touch with nearly everyone. Several were fathers now—I hoped that was in my future.

  * * *

  Sir Winston Churchill’s main business in Copenhagen was to accept an award for outstanding contributions to European culture. The award ceremony would be held the following night at Copenhagen’s three-thousand-seat KB Hall. The Churchill Club members were still puzzled as to exactly how all this had come about, but they went along with the attention and the opportunity to meet Churchill. The event’s sponsor was a newspaper whose reporters and photographers had endless ideas for publicizing the event, including giving them all big Winston Churchill cigars to smoke while camera shutters snapped.

  The following day, while Winston Churchill and his family lunched with the Danish king at the castle, the Churchill Club enjoyed a luncheon in their honor at the hotel. The master of ceremonies was Ebbe Munck, a resistance hero who had been the contact between the secret British sabotage organization SOE and the Danish military intelligence. When he spoke, the Churchill Club members finally found out how they had come to be honored.

  KNUD PEDERSEN: Ebbe Munck said he had sat next to Churchill on the flight crossing the North Sea from London to Copenhagen just a couple of days before. That gave him the chance to tell Churchill how and why the club was formed, about the work we did, and why we named ourselves after him. Munck told us that Churchill was moved, and felt strongly that our contribution had to be acknowledged. The moment was now—who knew when he would be back in Denmark? Round up as many of them as possible, Mr. Churchill had told Ebbe Munck. And that’s how we came to be gathered—hastily—here at this hotel in Copenhagen. Although Churchill could not focus on the Churchill Club in his acceptance speech, he wished to greet us in an honor parade just before his remarks, acknowledging us much as a general passes by troops on a tour of inspection.

  When the big moment came, I confess that I was absent. I missed the parade. I got separated from the group, and by mistake I went in the wrong door to the hall—in the VIP entrance where Churchill and his wife and the officials entered. I was only two meters from Churchill when we walked in. Our eyes met for a moment. It felt like I was looking into the devilish eyes of a confidant, eyes that almost winkingly said, “Don’t believe all you hear about me.”

  Winston Churchill reviewing the Churchill Club

  An attendant at his side bowed slightly to me and said, “Your card, sir.” I withdrew my invitation from my pocket and showed him. I hadn’t read it and didn’t know what it said. But whatever it was, it was magic. He returned the card and led me to a special VIP box. To my left was Prince Knud, representing the royal family. To my right was Admiral Erhard J. C. Quistgaard, chief of all Danish military forces on land and sea and in the air.

  When the lights went down for Churchill’s acceptance speech I slipped the card from my pocket and drew it close to see what it said that could have possibly landed me in such a high-rent district.

  It was a simple business card. Below my name was my title. It was the same title that had landed me in two Danish prisons. It had inspired robotic guards to try to reduce me to a number. My title had been cursed and lauded in thousands of living rooms and kitchens and workplaces during Denmark’s bleakest hours. It was a title I had taken on as a boy and would wear with pride for the rest of my life. The card read:

  Knud Pedersen

  Member of the Churchill Club

  EPILOGUE

  The Times That Followed

  Churchill Club reunion, 1950, identified by Knud: “Standing, from left: Helge Milo, Jens Pedersen, Eigil Astrup-Frederiksen, Knud Pedersen, Mogens Fjellerup. Seated, from left: Henning Jensen (from Denmark’s Freedom League, whose members were arrested later than us but spent their prison time in the same section as the Churchill Club). Next to him is the only one whose name I have forgotten. He, too, was a member of the Freedom League. Continuing left, Mogens Thomsen, Vagn Jensen (brother to Henning and also member of the Freedom League), Uffe Darket. The photo is taken in the garden of the monastery in 1950.”

  In the years after the liberation of Denmark, the experience
s of imprisonment, war, and sabotage work left many of those in the Churchill Club and the RAF Club scarred for life in various ways. Here is what happened to some of them.

  THE CHURCHILL CLUB’S CATHEDRAL SCHOOL STUDENTS AND YOUNGER MEMBERS

  Knud Pedersen worked briefly after the war as a newspaper reporter, attended law school, and worked for a film company before devoting his life to art. In 1957, Knud founded the world’s first art lending library in Copenhagen’s St. Nikolaus Church, making art available to all people, rich or poor, by lending out original artworks for periods of three weeks. The fee for a loan was, at the beginning, the price of a pack of cigarettes, Knud said proudly during an interview in 2012. The Art Library still exists as an important resource in Copenhagen.

  Knud’s own artwork is represented in New York’s Museum of Modern Art and in the Tate Modern in London, among many other collections; his work with the Fluxus art movement is collected in Denmark’s State Museum of Art. Knud and his wife, Bodil Riskaer, founded the European Film College in Denmark, which has become an international success in the film world.

  * * *

  A Personal Note by Phillip Hoose

  Knud was in his late eighties when we worked on this book. He was in fine health to begin with, but there was always a sense that we had better move fast, for we did not know how much time we had. We wrote e-mail messages back and forth nearly every day, even on weekends, me forwarding drafts from my office in Maine, Knud responding from his Art Library in Copenhagen.

  Just before Christmas 2013, a week went by with no word from Knud. This was unprecedented, and ominous. I wrote again and again with no response. Finally, on January 3, 2014, he tapped out a message from a hospital bed. Pneumonia had nearly taken his life. He said he had actually felt the presence of death in his room. “I had the feeling that a shadow was walking softly around me,” he wrote, “looking for a good place to get through for a final hit … I told it to wait, because you and I were not yet done with our work. I think our work kept me alive. Now I am fit to fight on!”

  So we fought on, finishing the book in late autumn of 2014. Knud was delighted. “The first thing I did after I read it,” he said, “was to forward it to my children and grandchildren.” And then in early December 2014, Knud again fell silent for more than a week. On December 12, he reported from his bed, “I am losing weight dramatically and have no appetite and no energy.”

  After a series of tests, puzzled doctors prepared Knud for a full-body scan. The prospect of entering a narrow tube terrified him. Imprisonment at Nyborg had left him claustrophobic—afraid of being confined. Throughout his life he had refused to take an airplane or even ride in an elevator. “The doctors say that I am fragile,” Knud observed in one of the last notes I received from him. “But how fragile can one be who in eighty-nine years has lived in this most cruel century anybody could dream of? I will keep you updated.”

  * * *

  Knud Pedersen, Churchill Club leader, Danish resistance hero, and one of the most important young people in all of World War II passed away shortly after midnight December 18, 2014. He was treated as a national hero, buried in Copenhagen’s Assistens Cemetery alongside other Danish figures, such as Hans Christian Andersen and Søren Kierkegaard. Knud is survived by his wife and their three children, Klaus, Kristine, and Rasmus.

  Jens Pedersen was a brilliant student who gave up his resistance work to study engineering following his release from Nyborg State Prison. After graduation Jens was hired as a construction engineer by a British firm and sent to India to oversee the building of several bridges. But he became unhappy in India and returned to Denmark, where he lectured at the college he had attended. His health began to decline and he struggled with depression. Lung cancer claimed him in 1988. “He died in a hospital after a very unhappy life,” said his brother Knud. “His death was the result of high intelligence combined with a low tolerance for jails and/or maybe wars.” Jens had two sons, Gorm and Lars, and a daughter, Karen.

  Eigil Astrup-Frederiksen (who changed his last name to Foxberg after the war) was in a German-run hospital in Aalborg recovering from his broken leg on Liberation Day. Once freed, he returned to his studies but had trouble concentrating. Like some of the other Churchill Clubbers, he had what he called “prison scars.” Violent nightmares afflicted him, dreams filled with Gestapo agents. He became depressed, absentminded, and restless. His short-term memory suffered. After two years of treatment with a counselor who had other resisters as patients, he regained his health. He became a civil engineer and was able to work steadily, although his symptoms flared up again and again throughout his life. Eigil died in 2012.

  Børge Ollendorff was arrested with the other Churchill Club members in May 1942, but he was too young to be jailed. Authorities deported Børge to a youth institution in a small town far from Aalborg. His attention was quickly drawn to a heavily traveled bridge between Jylland and Funen. Børge made quick plans to blow it up. But authorities caught wind of his plan when they observed his daily visits to the bridge. He was still too young for jail, so authorities moved him again. He became the leader of a small religious movement after the war and fathered twelve children.

  Mogens Fjellerup, the Professor, studied economics at university and worked for the Council of Arhus, Denmark’s second-largest city. He married and became the father of a son and a daughter. His daughter, Eva Fjellerup, became a world-class fencer, who participated in the 1996 Summer Olympics. Mogens Fjellerup died in 1991.

  Helge Milo became an engineer first employed in Norway and later at the Lindø shipyard in Denmark. In 1971, he started his own engineering firm, working mostly with the shipping industry. He has a son, who is fifty-eight at this writing, and a daughter, twenty-three.

  Uffe Darket, whose boyhood passion was building model airplanes, worked as a pilot and eventually became a flight captain on transcontinental Scandinavian Airline flights. He retired at age sixty and died in 2013.

  Mogens Thomsen became a manager of one of Denmark’s biggest banks. He specialized in arbitrage, the practice of buying something (such as foreign money or gold) in one place and selling it almost immediately in another place where it is worth more.

  THE CHURCHILL CLUB’S BRØNDERSLEV THREE (OLDER MEMBERS)

  Alf Houlberg, Kaj Houlberg, and Knud Hornbo were the only members of the Churchill Club still in prison at the time of liberation. After having been court-martialed by Germany for removing the dummy cell bar and committing sabotage in Aalborg, they were imprisoned in Germany.

  After much political wrangling between Germany and Denmark, the Houlbergs were returned to Horsens State Prison in Denmark and placed in a special unit for political prisoners. In all there were fifteen political prisoners isolated in the prison wing.

  Just before Christmas 1944, a prison pastor offered to help Alf and the others escape. He gave Alf a secret plan. It would be risky, but it was a path to freedom. Alf gathered his fellow prisoners and explained the opportunity. Alf made it clear he was all for it. Every day they stood the risk of being moved to a German prison, and Alf had seen enough of German prisons. But Communist prisoners, comprising half the group, distrusted the plan. The fourteen inmates voted and split evenly—seven to seven.

  The group rehashed it from every angle but remained deadlocked. Finally, a fifteenth prisoner, who had been away from his cell during the discussion, returned. Alf put it before him—the deciding vote. He was an old man, he told them; that wasn’t how he wanted to die. He voted no.

  Alf dutifully reported the result to the pastor but was deeply frustrated, as were the other yes voters. They told the pastor they were willing to act on their own. Alf revealed that he had been preparing to escape for some time. He had already carved a wooden pistol, which, coated with black paint, looked perfectly real. The day before New Year’s Eve, 1944, the prison pastor delivered an authentic pistol to Alf and revealed the plan. At 2:44 p.m., he said, you all will be in the yard on your afternoon walk. When you hear the sound
of a ladder being placed against the yard wall, run toward it. That will be your only signal. It’ll be up to you to find the ladder, which will be lowered from the other side. Climb over the wall and colleagues will be waiting to drive you away. God speed.

  They were all let out for their walk at 2:30. Outside the wall, a truck rolled up at 2:44. Two men clanged a ladder over the wall. Alf pulled his pistol on two of the three guards, and backed toward the ladder. A choke hold from another prisoner—a former boxer—took care of a third guard just before he could reach the alarm.

  The seven prisoners went up over the wall and then down to freedom on the other side. The whole escape took only three and a half minutes.

  The escapees were sent by resistance leaders to different places in Jutland. Alf was given a resistance contact in Randers and reported there. He functioned as a courier between the escapees and their contact point. Most of them wanted to go to Sweden. Alf elected to stay in the country. Why work for Denmark’s freedom, he reasoned, only to go to Sweden? He became second in command for the resistance in Randers and took part in sinking two German ships.

  After the war Alf became a manufacturer of plastic laminated sheets for ID cards. A series of heart attacks paralyzed him. When daily activities became too difficult and he feared he could not survive another seizure, he drove his wheelchair to the Museum of Danish Resistance in Copenhagen and donated his carved pistol to the Churchill Club collection. Then he went home and took his life.

  Kaj Houlberg, the oldest Churchill Clubber, died as a young man. Knud Hornbo emigrated to the United States and became an American citizen.

  THE RAF CLUB

  Knud Hedelund (Little Knud, from Odense) was arrested for sabotage and spent six months in the Odense jail. After the war he enlisted in the British Army and spent several years in India. He died there at an early age.