Meet the Cast
Annemarie Johansen
Annemarie is just an "ordinary" (4.60) young girl. Or so she thinks. We at Shmoop are pretty sure Annemarie isn't ordinary by any stretch of the imagination. This is a ten-year-old girl who lives t...
Ellen Rosen
Ellen is Annemarie's best friend. That seems like a pretty obvious statement, right? But it's packed with meaning. When someone asks you, "Who is Ellen?" you would probably answer just that way: "s...
Mrs. Johansen (Mama)
The Right StuffLike her husband and the other "good guy" Danish grown-ups we meet in this book, Mama always does the right thing. In fact, she never even considers another option. This lady doesn't...
Uncle Henrik
Time for a Shmoop vocab lesson. Henrik is what we in the dictionary-at-our-fingertips world like to call sanguine. Say it with us: sang-gwin. Basically, this means sturdily cheerful. Sounds like He...
Peter Neilsen
Poor PeterWe can sympathize with pretty much every character in this book. They're all likeable, tough, and determined. Then why do we feel so deeply for Peter? Well, the narrator lays it out for u...
Mr. Johansen (Papa)
The Good GuysAnnemarie's father is a good person through and through. Like his wife and brother-in-law, he never hesitates to do the right thing when confronted with injustice. As soon as he and th...
Lise Johansen
We never actually meet Annemarie's big sister Lise. She died two years before our story begins. Actually, even in a flashback scene, Lise's clothes appear (Mrs. Johansen is embroidering them), but...
Kirsti Johansen
Kirsti is the bratty little sister we all love to hate. But we like to think of her as the portrait of innocence in a far from innocent world. This girl doesn't even realize that foreign soldiers a...
The Nazis
The Nazis are the bad guys. Clear enough?But here's the rub. Usually the hero knows who the bad guy is and can work to fight him directly (think Superman and Lex Luther). But in Nazi-occupied Denma...
Mr. and Mrs. Rosen
Even though they don't get quite as much screen time, Ellen's parents are just as victimized as their daughter. And you know what? They're just as brave, too. They have to abandon their home, their...