The Boys Who Challenged Hitler Page 9

  But we didn’t just “sit tight”—how could we?

  * * *

  Early on the morning of July 17, 1942, Knud and the other boys were jolted awake by the jangling of keys, and the gruff command “Get dressed!”

  KNUD PEDERSEN: They had placed our very best clothing on the stool outside the cell door. That could mean only one thing: the judge’s verdict was ready. After nine weeks in the local jail, we would now learn of our future. Were we to be executed? Handed over to the Germans? Freed? Or had the Danes and Germans made some sort of deal for us to be punished in Denmark? Now we would find out.

  We were ushered into vans and driven to court. Through our windows we observed trees now in full leaf, shading women in summer dresses and men in shirtsleeves. We inhaled the beautiful aroma of hot pastries sold from corner kiosks. German wagons filled with soldiers rattled toward the waterfront.

  Our guards led us into the courtroom. I had no idea what our fate would be. I certainly had no regrets for what I had done—except that I had been captured. I doubt that my mates did either. We were patriots. Our enemies were the Germans who had stolen our nation and the Danes who had stood by and let them take it. Our heroes were still the Norwegians who continued to fight bravely and the outnumbered British pilots who heroically defended their country from the Nazis’ relentless aerial attack. We were at war, and I was simply a soldier who had been captured. I was prepared for any outcome.

  The courtroom already held the morning heat. The German monitor was at his table, face expressionless, uniform pressed, notebook open. Judge Andersen rose with a yellow paper in his hand and called us to approach his desk. Our prosecutor and our defense lawyer climbed to their feet as well. The judge read out our names and the charges against us: Wanton destruction of property. Arson. Theft of weapons from the German Army. He pronounced us all guilty as charged. We were to be punished by imprisonment at Nyborg State Prison, an adult penitentiary, southeast of Odense, nearly two hundred miles away. He did not say exactly when we would be transferred.

  We each got different sentences, depending on our age and the number of counts against us. The scorecard read as follows:

  Knud Pedersen: Three years, for twenty-three counts

  Jens Pedersen: Three years, for eight counts (but he was eighteen months older than I, so he and I got the same)

  Uffe Darket: Two years and six months, for six counts

  Eigil Astrup-Frederiksen: Two years, for eight counts

  Mogens Fjellerup: Two years, for eight counts

  Helge Milo: One year and six months, for nine counts

  Mogens Thomsen: One year and six months, for four counts

  Our three older colleagues from Brønderslev received longer sentences, because they were adults in their twenties. The sentences were:

  Knud Hornbo: Five years, for one count (passing the grenades to us)

  Kaj Houlberg: Five years, for one count (same)

  Alf Houlberg: Four years and six months, for four counts

  We were also sentenced to pay court costs—such as the expense of employing our “brilliant” defender, Grunwald. In addition Jens, Uffe, Alf, and I were ordered to repay the German Army for all their property we’d destroyed. The tab was exactly 1,860 million kroner, or 12,538 Reichsmarks (roughly $400,000 today). No problem, we thought. We’ll have a check to you in the morning post.

  Headlines about the Churchill Club’s sentencing from an Aalborg newspaper: “Seven Schoolchildren Sentenced to Prison for Sabotage of the German Wehrmacht / Three to Five Years Imprisonment for Vandalism, Arson, and Weapons Theft in Aalborg / Boys 15–17 Years Old. Also Three Adults Imprisoned”

  According to Danish law, we would be eligible for parole after two-thirds of our sentences had been served—two years and a month in my case and Jens’s. The instant that Judge Andersen banged his gavel and dismissed the case, Grunwald came up to us, waving his arms, and stuck his florid face close to ours, shouting, “Now do you regret it? Now do you regret it? You sure as hell do!”

  As we were leaving the courtroom, Judge Andersen called my name and beckoned me back to his desk. There were tears on his eyelashes, and his voice caught as he spoke. “I learned of your attempt to escape from the jail,” he said. “I have done everything I could for you. Please, promise me one thing … for your own good, Knud. Don’t try to escape again.”

  * * *

  Family visitation day came just after the prisoners were sentenced. There was a big turnout—not surprising since it might be the last they would see each other for a long time. The authorities let the boys mingle as a group in the jail’s front room. Kristine pastry shop sent over cream pies. Relatives brought food, smokes, and reading material. Given the circumstances, it was about as festive as a jail gets.

  KNUD PEDERSEN: At one point, as prisoners and family members embraced, Alf’s younger brother Tage slipped Alf a magazine. Inside was a hacksaw blade, about fourteen inches long. By the time a guard asked to see the magazine, Alf had already concealed the sharp, supple blade, dropping it into a hole in his jacket pocket that he had cut the week before when Tage told him to expect the tool. Later, waving goodbye, he walked it into his cell. We had another chance!

  The roof of King Hans Gades Jail, showing the barred window (in foreground) for which Jens and Alf made a dummy bar

  Jens and Alf—now cellmates—set to work that very afternoon. Forcing a slender blade back and forth against a square metal bar proved to be slow and noisy work. They could only work by daylight, for there was a strict bedtime curfew and mandatory silence at night. Alone in the cell next to them, I tried to provide as much noise as I could. I became a drummer, improvising long sessions with spoons on a metal cake box. Together we Churchill Clubbers howled every song we knew through the window bars in our cells. There were all sorts of songs about Hitler and his henchmen. One went:

  First we grab old Göring

  By his big fat calves.

  Then we knock down Goebbels—

  We don’t do things by halves.

  We’ll dangle Hitler from a rope

  And right beside him Ribbentrop:

  Look how stupid, all in line,

  One, two, three, four Nazi swine.

  With transfer to state prison looming at some unknown date just around the corner, Jens and Alf worked like demons, sawing for our freedom. We had no way of knowing when we’d be moved—days? weeks? months? We just knew we wanted to get out of there before the bus came to take us away.

  The task wasn’t simply to cut out a section of the central bar in the cell window; we also wanted to replace the bar so that no one could notice it was missing during daylight hours. Jens ingeniously constructed the perfect mechanism—a dummy bar with a wooden pin on one end that fit into a slot in the bar. If a guard happened to pull on the bar during our weekly inspection, it would remain firm. The guard would have to push—which was unlikely—for it to move. It was a brilliant device: we could keep the bar on the window during daylight hours, and Jens and Alf could pass in and out of the jail at night. In this way we could continue with sabotage work at night and work out an escape for the entire group—without detection.

  By early September we had opened up a section of the central bar big enough for a slender boy to pass through. But the color of the wooden pin was too light. It didn’t match the rest of the bar. So during yard time we took a stick and smashed a window. The next day when a guard replaced the broken pane, we scraped away some of the wet caulking used to secure the pane in place, applied it to our bar, and painted it over with black ink we had in our cell. It was perfect!

  And then, just after work on the bar was completed and just before we had a chance to try it out, the keys jangled again and my cell door swung open. The guard ordered me to rise and get dressed. I looked around. It was still pitch dark. What was this?

  * * *

  By five o’clock on that September morning, Knud and the other boys were on a bus, each of them handcuffed to a guard, motoring
toward Nyborg State Prison. The authorities had spirited them away from Aalborg in the dead of night so that outraged citizens would not have time to organize a protest on their behalf. On the bus were only the six Cathedral School students and Uffe—the Houlberg brothers and Knud Hornbo had been left behind. The boys rumbled through first morning light toward a bleak, faraway address with their friends and families receding behind them. It was about noon when the bus swung off the highway and they got their first glimpse of their new home.

  As Churchill Club members, they had spent nearly a year striking rapidly, spinning out of harm’s way, and mocking the authorities from a safe distance. One look at Nyborg State Prison told the boys that they had finally run out of cards to play.

  Close-up of King Hans Gades Jail window with dummy bar

  14

  At Large Again?

  October 1942. Danish police and prison authorities scratched their heads as they tried to make sense of the new wave of attacks on German property in Aalborg—especially cars. One German roadster was found in the fjord tipped over on its side like a beached whale. Investigators determined that somebody must have started the engine without using a key, driven it at high speed down to the harbor, and leaped out just before the auto shot out over the wharf like a missile. The German military was stirred up once again. “Get this solved at once,” they harrumphed, “or else we will.” It seemed as if everything was back at square one.

  But who could have done such things? All the young Churchill Club boys from Cathedral School had been transferred to Nyborg State Prison. The three older prisoners—Alf and Kaj Houlberg and Knud Hornbo—were still locked in King Hans Gades Jail in Aalborg. In fact, now they were together in a single cell. Guards squinting through the peephole observed the three young men reading, chatting, piecing together model airplanes, and playing chess. They seemed to yawn and nap a lot, but jail life was hardly exciting.

  The three cellmates settled down for the night like everyone else in the building when lights were out. Or at least that’s how it looked. But as it happened, the cell they inhabited was the one with the dummy bar. When darkness and silence settled over the jail, the three became alert as cats. They got up, fished their shirts and trousers from behind the bed, and scrambled into their clothes. Each night Alf left a piece of paper on a stool in the center of the cell. On it, he scribbled his parents’ telephone number and a brief message to their Danish jailers. “Please don’t call the police,” it read. “Call this number and we will return immediately.”

  Prison yard photograph of the Brønderslev Three: Kaj (8), Alf (9), Knud H. (0)

  Alf usually went out first. He climbed onto a chair, removed the dummy bar, squeezed through the opening, and crawled onto an awning in front of the window. Next came Knud Hornbo, who was a little pudgy. Halfway through the opening on the first attempt he got stuck. He tried not to cry out in fear or pain. Alf pulled from the outside and Kaj pushed from inside until they finally got him out, spraining his arm in the process. Kaj slid out with ease.

  The rest was simple. They crawled over the wire mesh above the outdoor yard and dropped into the prison orchard. Then, after concealing themselves in dense shrubbery until they knew everything was clear, they stepped into the street as free men.

  Knud Hornbo and the Houlberg brothers escaped nineteen nights in a row. The trio got so used to leaving the prison that one day they left too early and found themselves uncomfortably out on the street in broad daylight. They ducked into a movie theater and took seats. Once their eyes adjusted to the darkness, they found that they were seated among German soldiers enjoying a weekly newsreel of German battlefield heroics.

  The escaped prisoners’ nightly routine seldom varied. First they continued the work of the Churchill Club, smashing the instrument panels of unguarded German roadsters and setting them ablaze. When they were finished, the three walked to the Houlberg home and ate dinner with Alf and Kaj’s family. The first-night shock of seeing the boys at the front door soon gave way to elation—and scheming. The boys now set to work trying to find a boat that would take them out of the Limfjorden and sail them to Sweden.

  On the nineteenth night of their freedom, the young men bade the Houlbergs goodbye and started back toward the jail. As they walked they agreed it had been a lovely night: they had found and decommissioned a stylish German roadster, shorting out its electrical system. Dinner had been a festive occasion, with good food and voices raised in song. Old friends had passed in and out of their open door. They had all waved Norwegian and Danish flags. Best of all, Mr. Houlberg announced that a boat had been identified whose captain appeared to be interested in taking them to Sweden. Be ready, Mr. Houlberg had said. It could happen any day now.

  And then, as they walked through the chilly morning air, a siren shattered Aalborg’s predawn silence. They froze in midstep. The streets were nearly empty at 4:00 a.m., so the three young men stood out conspicuously. As the siren screamed on, their minds flooded. What should they do: Run for home? Run for jail? It was too far to reach either. They were supposed to go to a shelter during an air alert, but shelter authorities always asked for identification cards. Theirs had been confiscated at the jail. The trio ducked into the entranceway of a nearby building to gather their thoughts and make a plan. Two police officers detected their movement. One shone his flashlight into the dark recess and found six rabbit-red eyes. “May I see your identity cards?” he asked.

  Soon everyone was at the police station, where stunned officers recognized but could no longer protect the three escape artists. German soldiers took them into custody and rounded up the rest of the Houlberg family. Interrogators quickly cleared up the mystery of the destroyed German property. Alf and Kaj Houlberg and Knud Hornbo were swiftly tried and convicted in German military court and transported to a German prison. Each received a sentence of more than ten years.

  Danish officials loudly protested. Crimes allegedly committed by Danes on Danish soil were to be prosecuted by Danes—that was the agreement they had made. Denmark insisted that the three be returned. But German authorities weren’t budging. They accused the Danish police chief of being in on the dummy window bar. Prisoners couldn’t have done something like that alone, they charged. It would have made too much noise. They had to have had help.

  Either way, the Churchill Club was now completely sidelined. For ten months, from marking walls with blue paint and twisting signs to stealing weapons and destroying important German assets, Denmark’s first occupation resisters had bedeviled their “protectors” and awakened the courage of many Danes. But with the Brønderslev three in German captivity and the younger seven locked up at Nyborg, for now at least, it seemed the Churchill Club was history.

  German soldiers outside a Danish prison, 1943

  15

  Nyborg State Prison

  The fortress known as Nyborg Statsfaengsel held eight hundred adult men behind a maze of red-brick walls and barbed wire. Many inmates were serving sentences for violent crimes. Sometimes they were packed four to a cell. Armed and uniformed guards patrolled a walkway above the perimeter wall.

  About noon on a September day in 1942, seven handcuffed teens spilled out of their bus and stood uneasily while paperwork was completed. As the bus pulled away for Aalborg, with the driver waving them good luck, they were taken into custody by guards in black uniforms with gold buttons. The new prisoners were ushered into the high-ceilinged main building. One of the boys nervously cracked a joke, which brought a guard whirling around. “All conversation is prohibited!” he shouted.

  The boys were separated. Each was directed to empty the contents of his pockets. Every possession was confiscated, even eyeglasses and family photos. They were forced to strip naked, bend over, and receive rectal examinations.

  They were issued prison uniforms—long pants and a jacket that buttoned all the way down. Knud Pedersen’s arms and legs poked out as usual. Next the barber got his turn. Clumps of the teenagers’ carefully groomed hair fell
to the floor beneath an electric razor. “When I lost most of my hair I also lost a big part of me,” Eigil Astrup-Frederiksen later recalled.

  The boys were led to the youth wing of the prison—Division K. They were the only occupants. Each boy was issued a cell number and a personal number. Knud Pedersen, now prisoner 28, stepped into cell 1. Jens Pedersen, prisoner number 30, was locked into cell 2. From then on, guards addressed the boys by their numbers—“Get up, 30!”—instead of their names.

  Each cramped cell contained an iron-framed bed, a table, and a chair. The toilet was a clay pot to be cleaned by the prisoner. Each boy got two sheets of toilet paper per day. As in the King Hans Gades Jail, the cells consisted of four solid walls. The entrance was a heavy door with no handle on the inside but a peephole for looking in. A small barred window looked out onto a high red-brick wall patrolled by a Danish guard. “I would watch the guy,” Knud recalled. “He was so bored that sometimes I could see him counting the number of bricks in the wall with his finger. That’s all he had to do.”

  They were governed by countless rules, relentlessly applied. Parents could visit only once every three months, and then for only twenty minutes. Family conversations were monitored by guards. Prisoners were expected to snap to rigid attention and salute whenever the warden appeared. When it was time to go for a brief morning walk they lined up with their noses against a brick wall, arms at their sides. When released by a command, they walked ten feet apart and remained absolutely silent. A smile could cost a meal.