Hedda Lundh

Hedda Lundh (1921–2012) was a Danish journalist and schoolteacher who, under the German occupation of Denmark in World War II, was a Danish resistance fighter. Based at the time in Aarhus, she is remembered as a railway saboteur, explosives expert and courier in the resistance movement.

Early life Born on 29 September 1921 in Korsør, Hedda Lundh was the daughter of the newspaper editor Theodor Lundh-Jensen (1884–1952) and Alpha Tusnelda Emilie Winckler (1887–1973). The youngest of three sisters, she was brought up in a middle-class home where her father called her his "boy" as she climbed trees, joined the scouts and cut her hair short. She completed her secondary school education at Aurehøj Gymnasium, matriculating in 1940, a few months after the German troops arrived. She then began to study literature at the University of Copenhagen. On 28 December 1940, she married Carl-Einar Maaløe. When her husband began to work in Aarhus in 1942, she continued her studies at Aarhus University.

In June 1944, the two groups Lundh had been involved in were discovered by the Gestapo. Most of the male members were sent to concentration camps in Germany while the women were imprisoned near Padborg. By a stroke of luck, Lundh and her husband avoided arrest and fled to Sweden where they spent the remainder of the war. Maaløe became a member of the Danish Brigade but, as a woman, Lundh was not allowed to join.