When you look at the old, green, dilapidated Danish fishing boat, the first word that comes to mind might not be hope, but that’s exactly what Thor personifies. She was one of the last of the World War II-era boats left on the harbor in the port city of Gilleleje, Denmark. And while she has certainly pulled in her share of fish, the most significant haul she and her captain, Erik Olsen, would ever ferry, was a Jewish family they rescued by smuggling them out of Denmark’s waters and into Sweden during the Autumn of 1943.
It was the height of the Holocaust, then ten years underway, however, up until this point Denmark had remained uniquely self-governing—they hadn’t put up a fight when the Nazis came to take over and as such, were treated differently than most other nations Germany came to occupy. “Nazis saw Denmark as their model country,”
