Sandi Toksvig

And it used to make my dad very mad that in Britain, for example, they used to refer to Denmark, not everybody, some people refer to Denmark as Hitler's canary.

And there was a suggestion that the Danes were colluding with the Germans being there.

And it wasn't the case at all.

And he eventually, although very slowly, told me the story of what happened.

So I come from a long line of theatricals and writers.

And my grandmother, my father's mother, was an actress.

She was extremely beautiful.

And my grandfather was a writer and a painter, a scenic artist.

And when Germany occupied Denmark, we didn't have a large Jewish population, perhaps 7,000 or 8,000 people.

It was decided by a number of right-thinking people that what they needed to do was to get the Jewish population out to Sweden.

And the story is remarkable.

So it was very dangerous.

You have to imagine there was the SS troops everywhere, the German troops.

My grandfather created and painted a false wall in their apartment in central Copenhagen.

So it created a sort of a narrow space, maybe three, four feet deep.

But if you looked at it, he put a chaise lounge right in front of it, almost to draw attention to it.

If you looked at it as you walked into the room, you would think that was the end of the room.

That is how he painted it.

And then they hid a Jewish family.

behind this wall and they did have a gun but they hid it in a geranium flower pot and my father who was perhaps 11 at the time ran messages for the underground and then on one occasion they heard that the SS were going to come and search the apartment so they put the Jewish family behind the wall and my grandmother