I’ve just finished reading Boats in the Night. A slender but stirring volume, it’s about the Danish resistance to the Nazi occupation of their country during World War II. The book is special because it was given to me by a Danish friend whose own father was a resister. The central figure in Boats in the Night is a man who today, it turns out, resides in the same Northern California town I do. His name is Knud Dyby, and he is ninety-four.

The story begins on the ninth of April, 1940 when German army units cross into Denmark. German paratroopers land throughout the country. A German merchant ship full of soldiers docks in Copenhagen. All this happens at 4:15 a.m. while the Danes are asleep. To avoid casualties, Denmark’s King Christian X and his government capitulate. A negotiated occupation exists from 1940 to 1943 during which Denmark assumes the role of “model protectorate.” Acts of sabotage to damage the German war effort are routine at this time.

The resistance takes hold in earnest in late 1943 when word leaks out that Danish Jews will be rounded up and transported to Nazi concentration camps. The Danes are able to negotiate safe harbor for the Jews in Sweden. It’s getting them across the channel to safety that’s treacherous, and where Dyby plays such an important role.

Dyby serves as a go-between who arranges passage for Jews and resisters hunted by the Germans. He helps skippers prepare their boats to secretly transport the Jews. Should the Germans catch them and their human cargo, all would certainly be killed. Dyby even makes one boat passage himself. By war’s end, most of Denmark’s 8,000 Jews have been rescued and sent to freedom.

There’s a photograph in the book of Knud Dyby pointing to his plaque on the commemorative wall in the Avenue of the Righteous of the Nations at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. His eyes look like they’ve seen much. In the book’s final pages, he recalls his resistance friends and colleagues who died during the war: “They are dead now,” he says. “I speak to their memory.”

I learned, as I researched my novel, The Still Voice, that those gentiles who helped the Jews during the second world war are called “righteous.” In my story, Sophia and her fellow Edelweiss Pirates never consider themselves righteous. They know what they are doing is right and, like Dyby, they keep on doing it.