The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club

Hours later, the boys are taken from jail to court. In a matter of minutes, the judge extends confinement in jail to four weeks.

At the Cathedral School, the principal makes an announcement about the arrest of the boys. Some students run out of school and stand outside the jail cheering, but the boys do not hear because they are in court. In light of the arrest, it is hard for the students to focus on their schoolwork. Knud’s woodshop teacher, who has long disliked him, makes a table for the Pedersen family to amend for his frequent berating of Knud. When news about the club breaks, “gossip rage[s] in shops, offices, schools, and factories” (97).

German and Dane officials enter intense negotiations over how the boys will be judged. Germans do not want to antagonize the Danes by punishing the boys too severely, but neither do they want to appear to let the boys off easy. The city of Aalborg sends a letter to German officials apologizing for the actions of the Churchill Club. Germany permits Denmark to hold the trial, under the conditions that the principal of the school be removed and exiled, and that the trial will be held under the watch of a German overseer reporting back to Berlin.