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My husband, Johan, helped to produce and distribute an illegal, underground newspaper in Copenhagen during the German occupation. The Germans captured another Dane, who had a list of people involved in printing and distributing the paper and they rounded them up. Johan was taken to Shell House — the Gestapo headquarters for interrogation. We knew that this was liable to be painful and long. He’d been in prison for 4-5 weeks and was interrogated twice. However, whilst Johan was being interrogated the second time the RAF bombed Shell House as requested by the Danish Resistance, who found out that the Germans had accumulated a great deal of information about them, and they had asked the RAF to do a very dangerous daylight raid.

Johan escaped in the confusion, jumped into an ambulance, which was taking the injured to a hospital. The doctor who he saw got him a safe house where he stayed for a few days. He left the city when he had recovered and went to the countryside. However, the Danish Resistance made up and broadcast a story that he had escaped to Sweden to put the Germans off his trail. He died in 1998 in his 80’s in Hereford.

This story was submitted to the People’s War website by John Boileau of the CSV Action Desk at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Hereford and Worcester and has been added to the site with Mrs Barbara Krarup’s permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

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