Brittle book jacket Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967 book club edition, 441 pages This novel tells the story of a magnificent exploit: the feat of the Danish Underground in 1943 when, in the space of two weeks, virtually all the eight thousand Danish Jews were smuggled to Sweden. For three and a half years the Germans had carried on a rather peaceful occupation of Denmark, with no persecution of the Jewish community. Hitler decided suddenly to deport the Jews, for eventual extermination. The Gestapo selected the High Holy Days as a practicable moment, and everything was efficiently arranged. But it did not work. It did not work because some of the Germans had become corrupted by the decency of the conquered people; and because the unwarlike Danes risked everything (and did it brilliantly) for their fellow Danes, the Jews.