Henny and Her Boat: Righteousness and Resistance in Nazi Occupied Denmark (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781545436783)

Henny and Her Boat provides a fresh perspective on the Danes' defense of their Jewish countrymen during years of Nazi occupation and, ultimately, their heroic rescue of the Danish Jews on a fleet of fishing boats and other small craft. Leo Goldberger, a leading expert on the Danish rescue, hails the book as an "educational gem," which describes the rescue in "riveting detail" by following one participant's rise from youthful bystander to rescuer to armed resister.

Henny Sinding, daughter of a Danish navy officer, teamed with a fledgling resistance group to save three hundred Jews on a lighthouse supply boat named Gerda III. Each night for a month Henny bravely escorted Jews from secret rendezvous points to a dockside warehouse and then slipped them past Nazi sentries into Gerda III's cargo hold. Gerda III's crew completed the escape-motoring daily past German warships and mines to unoccupied Sweden.

After the rescue Henny's team became one of Denmark's leading sabotage groups, while Gerda III continued to save persons hunted by the Nazis.

The story of Gerda III and the people associated with it-Henny; Mix, the dashing young resistance fighter who she loved; and many giants of the Danish resistance-epitomizes the story of a nation that rose from a humbling surrender to battle the Nazis and hand the Gestapo its most glaring defeat.

About the Author

In 2009 Howard Veisz left a litigation career and went to sea. After a two year sailing voyage around the North Atlantic, Howard and his wife settled on Connecticut's Mystic River, and Howard began work as a shipyard volunteer at the Mystic Seaport maritime museum. There, Gerda III, caught his eye.

With a father and grandparents who barely escaped Nazi Germany, Gerda III's role in rescuing Denmark's Jews drew Howard in. While helping to preserve Gerda III, Howard began a four year mission to reconstruct its history. Howard travelled to Denmark to locate and interview descendants of the people who carried out Gerda III's rescue missions; scoured Danish archives; visited the docks from which Gerda III set out; gathered accounts by leaders of the Gerda III rescue group that had never appeared in English; and assembled translators to uncover the fascinating story that had been buried in those writings for over seventy years.