Ellen Christensen

Ellen Marie Christensen was a Danish nurse who joined the resistance against the German occupation of Denmark during the Second World War. Born on 30 March 1913 in the parish of Frejlev, southwest of Aalborg, to a well-to-do farming family, she trained as a nurse and worked at Bispebjerg Hospital. She joined the resistance group Frit Danmark, helping to produce and distribute illegal publications. After the Germans began arresting Danish Jews in October 1943, she treated wounded refugees at the hospital, which housed Jewish refugees until they could be taken to Sweden, and she also helped move weapons and explosives and obtain false identity cards. She became the partner of the resistance coordinator Jørgen Haagen Schmith, known as Citronen, and cared for him daily after he was wounded in September 1944. After the war she took Red Cross assignments in Greece and, during the Six Day War of 1967, in Israel. In 1953 she was awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal. She died in 1998.