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World War II had devastating consequences for those countries that were occupied by Nazi Germany. Besides imprisoning or killing those who fought back against the occupiers, restricting freedom of expression, and stripping the country of resources, the Nazi secret police, the Gestapo, sooner or later, systematically looked for and removed Jewish people to concentration camps. Some countries, like France, did not greatly resist this murderous effort. Denmark, a much smaller country and much more vulnerable, did resist. They identified the day of the proposed round-up of the 8000 or so Jewish citizens in Denmark and smuggled out most of them to Sweden and other havens before they could be captured.
To Fight in Silence, by Eva-lis Wuorio (1918 to 1988), is a young adult (middle school to high school) historical novel set in precisely this time. The author was born and raised in Finland, spent many years in the USA, then retired back to Finland, so she has a lot of insight into the Nordic character. The main events take place in Denmark, but the Copenhagen-based Gormsgaard extended family, which supplies the main characters of the story, has connections via marriage to Norway, Sweden, and Germany. In this way, events of the wider war are brought into the story. It is interesting to see the deep cultural and familial connections between the Scandinavian countries, which were variously united politically in one country before the 20th century. The author does a good job of giving the reader a feel for what life was like before the occupation and what life became during the occupation.
Several of the young people from the extended Gormsgaard family become involved in the resistance movement in Norway, helping to save the Norwegian government gold from the Nazis (a nice parallel historical fictional account of this effort can be found in Snow Treasure by Marie McSwigan). The main Danish characters help their newspaper editor father gather secret news to be distributed to the Danish underground. Later in the book, the focus turns towards the rescuing of the Danish Jewish citizens from the Gestapo round-up, which is only possible because of the secret news gathering. The title of the book comes from the initial friction between Norwegians and Danes on how they responded to the Nazi conquerors. The Norwegians fought the invaders and never really surrendered while the Danes surrendered right away. The reason was not differences in bravery between the two countries but differences in terrain. Denmark was flat with open boundaries while Norway had great mountainous regions to which resistance fighters could safely retreat. However, Denmark did resist the occupiers but had to find ways to fight in secret, hence the title of the novel.
After reading To Fight in Silence, I would recommend many of the excellent non-fiction books on World War II in the library, some of which focus on the part of World War II that took place in Denmark and Norway. One could also profitably make a STEM connection. Niels Bohr, a Nobel-Award winning nuclear physicist, was Danish. He was smuggled out of Denmark, by the Danish underground, in 1943 to prevent the Nazis from forcing him to work on their atomic bomb program. After his escape with his family, Bohr joined the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico, helping with the atomic bomb effort. There are several books in the library about his life and about the American/British and German atomic bomb projects during World War II.
Expanding on the above recommendations, I would like to say that in general, historical novels can help in the teaching of history in the following manner, at least for me. I can become greatly interested in an historical area by first reading an excellent historical novel. I turn then to non-fiction history books (again, well-written and not textbooks) to fill in the background that came from the novel. I suggest that this approach may have general application. One can readily follow this approach with the books available in the Plumfield Library system.