Books that read like thrillers do not often turn out to be illu­mi­nat­ing his­tor­i­cal trea­tis­es, but A Light in the North­ern Sea is an excep­tion. Tim Brady’s sto­ry of Denmark’s res­cue of their Jew­ish cit­i­zens dur­ing World War II is exact­ly the type of book that edu­cates, enlight­ens, and great­ly expands our under­stand­ing, as we are giv­en a deep look at a slice of his­to­ry and a wide view of a crit­i­cal event in the end­less saga of the Jew­ish fight for survival.

In riv­et­ing prose, Brady describes how every­day Danes became overnight heroes in the midst of the strife and chaos of the Holo­caust when they devised a dar­ing, civil­ian-led mar­itime oper­a­tion to vir­tu­al­ly steal the Jews out from under the noses of the Nazis and fer­ry them across the Ore­sund Strait to safe haven in Swe­den. Thou­sands of ordi­nary Danes per­formed this dar­ing res­cue of mas­sive scale, and suc­ceed­ed in help­ing nine­ty-five per­cent of Denmark’s 8,000 Jews sur­vive the Holo­caust, the high­est per­cent­age in Europe.

Who were these peo­ple who risked their lives to stand up against Nazi per­se­cu­tion? They were just like all of us – teach­ers, stu­dents, writ­ers, health care work­ers, hotel own­ers. Brady lets us in on the inner work­ings of their psy­ches as they gath­er to per­form a nation­wide act of defi­ance, and we learn how our minds and bod­ies can house courage and strength that we nev­er knew exist­ed. The result of this research and expo­si­tion is a book that inspires us by the exam­ples we grow to admire and, per­haps, might some­day even emu­late, show­ing us a path through a suc­cess­ful grass­roots effort to stand up to tyranny.

Aware of Ger­man atroc­i­ties through­out Europe, the Danes were at first hes­i­tant to coor­di­nate such a bold res­cue oper­a­tion, the likes of which had nev­er been car­ried out by ordi­nary peo­ple with no train­ing and only mod­est resources at their dis­pos­al. But the desire to spit in the face of Nazi occu­pa­tion and Hitler’s grow­ing fix­a­tion on destroy­ing the Jews cre­at­ed a spir­it of coa­les­cence that unit­ed the Dan­ish cit­i­zen­ry and pushed them to make a plan and car­ry it through.

The nar­ra­tive pro­vides a col­or­ful pic­ture of the resis­tance fight­ers and the devel­op­ment of their increas­ing­ly dar­ing sab­o­tage efforts, and explains how this led to Hitler’s rage and the Nazis’ plan to round up the Jews on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, Octo­ber 1, 1943. The Danes had to spring into action if they were going to save the Jews, and they first had to work to con­vince the reluc­tant Swedes to accept them. They had to get the word out in secret about the planned evac­u­a­tion, and find a way to plan a smug­gling route that would take them through the strait between the two nations when it was swarm­ing with Gestapo. And they had to find the peo­ple will­ing to sab­o­tage the Nazis, plus enough pri­vate boats and skilled boat­men to take the Jews across. 

Brady sees it as a mir­a­cle, and by the end of this sus­pense­ful book, we can only agree. He is an award-win­ning his­to­ry author who has not only writ­ten sev­er­al books, arti­cles and short sto­ries, but has also devel­oped sev­er­al TV doc­u­men­taries, and his ver­sa­til­i­ty shows in his writ­ing. His clear, sharp prose takes us deft­ly through the story.

The book includes detailed maps of Den­mark and Copen­hagen, which help to high­light the jour­ney of the Jews across the water to safe­ty in Swe­den. Divid­ed into three parts, the nar­ra­tive moves from occu­pa­tion to resis­tance, with a stop along the way to help us under­stand the ordi­nary Danes who respond­ed with such extra­or­di­nary courage and cre­ativ­i­ty. The exten­sive notes pro­vide access to the rich trove of source mate­r­i­al and bib­li­og­ra­phy that under­lie the thought­ful schol­ar­ship on which this book is based.