Kim Malthe-Bruun (1923–1945)

Kim Malthe-Bruun was born in Canada to a Danish mother. When he was nine years old, his mother took him and his sister Ruth back to her homeland. By the time he was 17, Kim had become a merchant seaman. When Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, he joined the Danish Resistance movement and used his skills as a sailor to transport arms for the underground. He was captured by the Gestapo in December 1944 and executed shortly after at age 21. After the war, his mother Vibeke published a book about him, entitled Heroic Heart (1955), also known as Kim. It contains some of his diary entries and many of his letters both to his mother and to his girlfriend Hanne. Lois Lowry is said to have based the character Peter Neilsen in her Newbery Medal-winning novel Number the Stars (1989) after Kim Malthe-Bruun.