It is Easter, and we are thankful that Jesus gave His life for us. He bore our sins and died a cruel death on a cross. On Easter Sunday, He rose again and led the way for us to live with Him in His resurrection and the hope of eternal life with Him. This life on earth is short and to live with Him means to make every day a day after His will. 

During World War II, many people sacrificed their lives for others in a sudden or planned decision to help in a time of urgent need.  One of those was Egon Henry Johannesen, born in 1918. He was shot dead with his wife as a witness in his home on November 24, 1944. The murder was a so-called clearing’s murder for a failed assassination of a Nazi friendly priest nearby.  

I had never heard about him; Last year, a Stolpersteine, a memorial stone was put at the front of his last address in a suburb to Copenhagen very close to where I grew up. He was involved in helping Jews to a secure place in Sweden during the first days in October 1943 where the Nazi occupiers had decided to catch all our Danish Jews in one sweep and send them to their death in camps in Germany. Copenhagen is situated at the coast not too far from Sweden that was ‘neutral’ during the war. The distance wasn’t far, but the war made it very difficult to take that journey spontaneously with few you could trust.    

The Danish Homepage telling the story of the fates of those on the memorial Stumble Stones offer school children to use their material for historical studies.