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

In his last days in prison, Jens takes his university admission exam, receiving the maximum score, to the displeasure of the Nazis. “Minutes crawled by” (138) before their release, and Knud and Jens are finally released on May 24, 1944, after two years and one month. Knud’s mother cries at the sight of the skinny, shorn boys. They go to Odense, where the family puts on a big party for Knud and Jens, making toasts in their honor. They gorge on fresh tomatoes, giving themselves diarrhea after their poor diet in prison. Knud and Jens also meet up with Little Knud.

Knud and Jens go outside to listen to Little Knud’s news of the RAF Club, which expanded while they were in prison and has made many strikes, most notably on a factory that makes mobile homes for soldiers. One of the club’s younger members, however, sent an anonymous letter to Danish police informing them of the club, believing that the police would help them escape to Sweden. The members of the RAF club were taken to a German-run prison. Little Knud confesses he is deeply worried about them, as he knows that resisters in this prison are sometimes executed.