Truth & Conviction: The Helmuth Hubener Story (Teenage Nazi resistance fighter)

[Music] thank you [Music] yes [Music] [Music] after 1933 the speeches of adolf hitler could be heard throughout all of germany he promised work to those without he spoke of strength and national pride he promised a better life in a better germany he could stand and i mean [Music] i mean he had the power in his speeches to move the masses early in hitler's regime there was some opposition among the working class but soon they too were either supportive or silent it was sort of making a pact with the devil but not knowing where that it was the devil that you made the pact with and where that would end up as the nazi police state tightened its grip there was a struggling underground movement but relatively few organized resistance groups in 1942 the white rose group led by college students hans and sophie scholl disseminated anti-nazi leaflets in 1944 klaus von stauffenberg and other military leaders made an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate hitler in an ill-fated bombing but before these movements had emerged there was another resistance group forming in the port city of hamburg in 1941 a young man named helmut hubiner led a resistance movement comprised of himself and two childhood friends from his church congregation helmut hubenar was sixteen rudolf vobe was fifteen and carl heinz schnibby was seventeen carl heinz is the last surviving member of the group most people they have they have no idea how it was in nazi germany how dangerous it was in nazi germany to tell the truth was a deadly luxury my friend helmut thought that was his christian obligation to warn the people and tell him what happens helmut was really smart not smart alecky you know but bright he was a thinker he was uh the kind of person who was interested in even as a young man in the big questions in life i just didn't enjoy when when he uh talked to the elders in our in our church he quick asked question he knew they don't know how to answer you know they he liked to embarrass them a little bit i told him i said don't do that that is not nice you know you know he said i i got a kick out of it i said hey don't do that the humor was intelligent but to over emphasize his intelligence is i think a mistake i mean he was intelligent but he was not some kind of remarkable genius on the level of wolfgang amadeus mozart who may never come along again in the history of the earth he was a reasonably intelligent open interesting and interested person but also to be politically sagacious at this age and at the same time to be as well read in the scriptures to know theology as well as he did there's an interesting wrinkle in the story it involves helmut having written a a very strongly pro-hitler essay in school and reportedly having been quite happy contented hitler youth and he was very well liked in the hitler use he did exactly what he had to do apparently he enjoyed it and hamwood politically he he knew a lot you know he knew a lot and that when we asked questions he hear the answers he had answers for us you know and i like that the light sort of went on for him in in seeing how the national socialist the gestapo treated jews and this experience to my way of thinking is a central defining one for the young helmut my life actually changed in november 1938. we had the very infamous ice crystalnacht the night of broken glass all over germany the jewish stores were destroyed the synagogues were burning and the merchandise laid in the gutter when i came home my mother was upset she said where have you been this is late my gosh you never came that late and and then i said oh mom it is terrible and then i started crying and my mom said what happened so i told her i said why what what what is wrong and my mom said to me this is from now on most likely our life so you better forget it i could not forget it [Music] just before kristallnacht a new religious leader a branch president was called in the congregation where hebner schniber were members since joining the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints 12 years earlier arthur zonder had been a committed member of this mormon branch he was also a strong supporter of the nazi party not only was he the branch president but he was also so to speak the father of the ranch he also wanted to do as much good as he could for the party when i talked to my students about this case um at byu and the honors program and i tell them the story of the uh the the hubner story and and they find out that there was a branch president who was a member of the nazi party they were pretty shocked and and then i say wait a minute how shocked would you be to find out that your bishop is a republican or a democrat i mean this was nazi germany there were nazis in nazi germany you know big surprise he wanted to show that that latter-day saints were good germans and there was a tremendous amount of pressure that was put on by the government and the party to quickly separate those who are who are good germans and those who aren't he wanted to lock the doors so nobody can get out and all the members had to listen to viewers speech and then he had in mind once to start the meeting with hitler and there was another leader in our church otto bernd you know he was his counselor he said no way this is not a political organization this is a church it was then out to a sunday bit on granted when it came to my father because my father was not at all for this salute and hit the speeches and lock in the doors and so forth my friend helmut he was the honorary secretary from our branch president he got very upset he got very upset final straw for helmut may have been his view that nazi ideas and nazi behavior was coming over into the latter day saints we went to church to our church house and there was a sign on the door which read yoon is that such jews not allowed to enter and we had one jewish member in our branch solomon schwartz you know and they didn't let that young man in he stood outside the door and when we opened up this opening him he was crying but they didn't let him in the other branch houses generally did not have this apparently this was unique in germany at the time among lds branches that someone had put a sign up like that i believe sandra and put that up there partly as an expression of his support for the regime and partly to communicate that latter-day saints were good citizens in the third reich and partly perhaps to protect his own flock september 1st 1939 the same day that hitler invaded poland he enacted a law that restricted listening to any radio broadcasts other than the approved party stations propaganda minister joseph goebbels increased his efforts to control what information the german people received those caught listening to foreign broadcasts could be sentenced to death any group of politicians or government leaders who place enormous emphasis on propaganda by their own government are inevitably afraid of the propaganda of other governments and this is partly helps to explain why goebbels was so sensitive to the foreign broadcasts and why it made listening to them illegal so you have to realize in germany we had what we call the foxenfinger the people's radio and you could only hear three stations visit hammock munich and berlin so we had to believe what they tell us now there was still a lot of illegal sets around the place which the gestapo tried to round up but often soldiers would bring radios back with them on leave after the french army was defeated hamul's brother came home on furley and he bought home a little shortwave radio marquerola there was a little bit wrong with it and hamwood had it fixed you know and then his brother left back to his unit helmut one night ten o'clock a few minutes before turned it on he's played with the scala and there was a little lot of whistling and you know how it goes and then he had it ten o'clock sharp the first three bars from beethoven three times you know victory three times and then a a voice and flew in german said this is bbc london this is bbc london now we give news in the german language when he got this shortwave radio he realized that he had a chance now to hear information that wasn't from the government and as he listens to bbc he is immediately convinced that they're telling the truth and the thing that he says convinced him that the english were right and the germans were wrong about what they were saying on the news was that the british provided much more detail the bbc built up a reputation for timeliness accuracy credibility and therefore the news would have a greater degree of credibility over the german news system so helmet began to be converted and i think it happened very fast to the idea that there was really something here that he had to share with his fellow germans and my friend helmut told me that sunday when i saw him in church again you have to come and listen to this this is very fascinating i said what is it he said i cannot tell you exactly details come and see me so i said okay i'll be there helmut had moved into his grandparents apartment his mother was working nights he didn't get along with his stepfather who was a nazi his grandparents house just around the corner not very far away they're old people they go to bed early so i'm assuming it was a logical thing to ask carl had come over and that was the first time i've heard it i was flabbergasted i said what how do they know you know i didn't believe it and then he said look germany i don't know how many how many hundreds of armies they have you know and then he proved to me on hand from statistics how much gasoline one army needs a day tanks airplanes and trucks and other stuff and he said it had no oil fields he needs he cannot make it you know and that's how it started but i never lost the fear i was always scared every day in the newspaper schwarzer and they call it you know that people were arrested by the gestapo for a listen bbc london and that was very dangerous very dangerous because people don't keep their mouth shut they said to them formula you know what i've heard i tell you and then you know and they don't want to avoid that so i was scared to death but i was nosy enough to wonder no more did helmut ever think about getting caught and what would that mean towards the neighbors and and towards the other members of the church i don't know the church family was truly a family as far as the nazis were concerned and they had something which they called zippenhoft and it meant that if if you have some member of your family who is going against the law that that they can arrest your whole family in this oppressive climate religions throughout germany struggled to find the balance in supporting the nazi government while upholding their christian values again and again they were faced with the question can we be loyal to hitler and at the same time loyal to god though the answer to this question varied within the different denominations everyone knew the ominous consequences of religious objection to the regime so the complexity that is found in every mormon branch is largely a reflection of this delicate balancing act of being good citizens while at the same time doing all we can personally to bring about the god-given human rights that belong to all people and so forth for helmut the issue was am i not raised to tell the truth and to to pass on the truth and so i think this became a a very important issue for him to to tell people what was really happening what he knew and the final link in the chain would have been the fact that he was a kind of unofficial secretary to the branch president arthur sander who would ask him to write letters to the soldiers from the branch and so he assigned young helmut who was who knew how to type and was very verbal to write these letters and helmut agreed to he first took home a portable typewriter and later took home a big desk typewriter so it was clearly the church typewriter got taken to helmut's apartment and helmwood used that typewriter in his home to try to learn for leaflets sometimes with eight carbon count you know hammer really through the paper he got from from his office government paper and then would have a little stem from his office you know the swastika was the eagle and he used that on leaflets stamped it as official nazi party paper and put it on the blackboard but with the typewriter and access to paper as well and the radio broadcasts and the silence of his grandmother's apartment at night so he could stay up as late as he wanted to typing away and listening to the broadcast he really had all the ingredients now for helmut to do this thing and the next thing was for him to recruit a couple of his friends one time in church helmut said come next week a little next week a little early i have a i have another surprise for you i said hey i don't know your surprises there i don't like your surprises they are dangerous he said no come down and so i went down there and i said what's the surprise he said just sit down and then he opened the door and there comes my friend rudy who does and i said rudy what are you doing here and he laughed he said carter what are you doing here and then helmut told me he is the third in our group i said what do you mean the third who is the second now you i said helmut i don't know i was scared i was actually scared because we read in the newspaper every day how severely these people get punished the nazis they don't want you to know the truth you know the truth was deadly and in germany foreign it's ironic that hubiner's vision for this as i see it corresponded with the nazi's fear that his vision might in fact work that that this mass grassroots uprising might occur their fears were consonant with his hopes helmut said well we have to be careful then everything is well you know and then he said let's make a promise he who get caught first takes the blame don't incriminate anybody and that sounds good to me because i thought i'm cool i was the oldest you know i said they don't catch me so i said all right so rudy went that night home with about 15 flyers you know there were postcard sites and helmut typed on it hitler the murderer hitler is the guildivan if you are a friend of the truce and you have a short wave dial and then he give him the name from the station in london the first thing we see is that he's emerged from some kind of a process as a full-blown anti-nazi writing things that are you know very personally uh demeaning to hitler hitler is a murderer hitler is the fairfield or the folks fairfield he puts the prefix ver on the front of the word furor which means that hitler is now not the leader of the people but the seducer of the people and his thinking was gee if it's a matter of lack of information then if i spread this information to others it'll click in them and there'll be this title wave of information flow and things will click and there'll be a chain reaction so he gave me about seven he said what do you want me to do visit he said get rid of him i said okay where is your toilet he said do you know what i mean he said don't be difficult and i i was i i i didn't feel good at all you know but i got rid of him i put him in telephone booths i put him in mail boxes but i came home i was so nervous my mother said you don't look so good i said i don't feel good mom she said you better go to bed right now so i did but the next morning it the world looked okay again i didn't get caught and everything went okay at that age you probably don't don't realize all the consequences of your actions you just want to do it you know you have that drive you you want to tell the the the neighbors the the people around you well what we hear on the propaganda isn't all true the following sunday in church i think it was on only thirsty or something he saw me coming and he waved at me and i waved back and he yelled to the church they haven't arrested you yet half day and i said will you shut up i was you know so that was hamwood joking you know there's a kind of an adventure and there's a sense of of rightness about what they're doing that i think keeps them a little bit from thinking say are we going to get ourselves into some serious trouble and maybe some other people along with us in the meantime hamwood had full size leaflets no flyers anymore the big leaflets and he used the british broadcast and his own knowledge and made these leaflets and they were we had about 29 different titles and and pretty soon he's giving us more and more information uh combined with the slander and the slurs against hitler's person there is now evidence and reasoning behind it and he's saying this is why hitler's a murderer because he's done this and and this is why these guys are lying to you because they've said this and in fact this is the truth but helmut was not so naive to believe that people in the nazi party on their knees no helm would want to make the people think my favorite is the one where the the long doggerel palm it's a very witty thing he ends it with a schiller quotation from a famous play wilhelm tell but he also quotes a very brief quote from hamlet from shakespeare's hamlet so he's throwing out some erudition here in these later pamphlets having some fun with them and another one the voice of conscience that was a religious leaflet where helmut proved and according to the bible and what happens that i meant like hitler cannot win the war it's impossible there's some evidence that they were created by a teenager very enthusiastic and bombastic things but but they impressed the germans at the time they impressed the gestapo these are not the writings of a typical teenager but could have been the writings of a 30 year old university professor one time i was almost home there's still two policemen and they said hey come over here so i went over there he said where have you been this late i said i visit my friend where does he live and i didn't give him with us i had him if another friend across the street and the eliza strasse and i told him and he left that truth so that would no problem he said well you better go home tonight they might come it's a clear night he meant the british you know air it i said yeah i will and was i glad that i could i was really scared to death i was like let's get to this i made it a habit never take a leaflet home to our place if i didn't get rid of all of them i burned them i always had a book of matches in my pocket i burned them so there was nothing in our house from all the leaflets we distribute about eight or nine got turned into the police no more you know so but the gustavo knew there is some group does have work in there you know and in this section where him would live but they don't know exactly where to start you know they was just hoping for a lucky day and they got their lucky day one time my friend helen wood told me how would you feel if we print some leaflets into french because we have some french we have we have a lot of this french prisoner of war in hamburg and they are entitled to know the truth too i said hey first of all you don't speak french and second that's too dangerous leave it alone don't don't try it and helmut said no we have a young man in our office staff his name is verna khans he speaks fluently french i will ask him it's possible that helmholt had some grandiose plan in mind to get all these french prisoners of war you know to rise up but i think it's more likely he was simply using this as an excuse to talk to crons about it he approached vernacans and says werner he said will you do me a favor sure what can i do and he said i i'd like to have something sensitive into friends he said okay give it to me and he gave him one of the leaflets you know and that young man read it and the more he read the matter he get he gave it back to him like there's nowhere he said are you nuts you know what that is this is stevetismus no he said i want nothing to do with it you know okay so this little conversation was watched in the corner there was a glass booth where the party observer from the office staff had his little office in there he had to watch out for patriotism among the office workers because it was a government office and he started conversation so he said verna come here i want to talk to you and he went in and he said what what was that all this was human and he said oh i took care of it forget it it's okay he said no i want to know he said now i don't worry about it and then he said i order you to tell me he could i mean he was a big man in nazi party he said i order you to tell me so he told him and he said this and this happened and and i'm i don't want nothing to do with it and heinrich moans was his name he said oh i'm interested this is interesting i never saw anything like that tell him you do it and let me read one too you know and he said okay so verna crunch went back to helmut and said i changed my mind i will do it i don't know if him would had a little warning and he said well i bring you one whereas the one you had let's destroy it you know so and then ham would let this young man wait for about five six days and then he bought him one this young man didn't even read it he bought it right away to mr moans you know and mr moans got it and while he was reading this he kept the telephone and dialed the gestapo you know i think he stopped was there 10 minutes later it was 5 p.m on february 5th when the gestapo arrested hubiner at his work they took him immediately to his grandparents apartment where he was living at the time there they found the illegal radio several flyers and the typewriter with an unfinished flyer still in it he was then taken to the gestapo headquarters in hamburg here the interrogations began as the gestapo tried to ascertain who else was involved in the conspiracy you know one sunday i went to church helmut wasn't there so i thought maybe he's sick or something you know and then our branch president said brothers and sisters please stay on after our meeting i have a sad announcement to make and when we wait for him he came and then he said i got a phone call from the gestapo and our young brother and friend helmut hubena was arrested he said i had i don't have details but i know it is politically you know and the same moment my mom turned to me and said what happens i said i don't know that was the first time i had to lie to my mother and i it it bothered me it bothered me and i said mom i don't know she said oh come on justin you've been there three times a week you must know i said i really don't then she looked at me like can i believe you i said honestly she said well then it's probably not so bad and he probably comes home and and it's it's okay but i know better you know i thought oh my gosh you know i hope i hope that hamwood kept his promise as one reads the the accounts of the interrogation which thanks to typical german efficiency have been preserved for us to read one gets goosebumps because one realizes that much of the language one is reading is euphemistic it will say in one of these documents helmut hubener was today brought forward and interrogated by our commissioner bengamon and after assiduous persuasion he admitted having distributed the documents now a term like assiduous persuasion can only mean after we beat the heck out of him after we tortured him after we worked him over pretty good when i came home i was prepared usually the gestapo comes four and five o'clock in the morning because they know everybody is home so when i came home from church i thought that as that black mercedes and picks me up there was no mercedes you know so next morning i woke up i have no gestapo pretty clear to me that that he was treated badly uh and and very badly uh battered around and beaten and so it's no wonder that at a certain point helmut uh says to them that he had invited two friends carl and rudy over february 10th i went to work again there was a knock on the door boom boom and i said to my fellow worker i said really really fabric is his name i said really i get it he said okay so he went in the room and sit down and start eating you know i opened the door and there's the two guys about six four six three tall with that long dark leather coat and he lifted up his lapel from the court and there was the badge stats police stopper he said are you carl schnibby kalhan schnibby i said yes i am he said you know why we are here [Music] i said yes i do i had said who me no no idea i would get it right away you just had to look at these guys i mean they had feet that big and hands like a toilet seat i mean they they use it they know how to use it we heard story enough how brutal and and me [ __ ] stopper was i said yes i know he said come visit us i said can i change clothes i had my white son he said you come as you are i said okay so i yelled to billy i said really i i have to leave for a minute he said okay okay leave for a minute seven years and then they drove me downtown to start house where they could stop a headquarters and there the interrogation started he the first question he asked did you listen to bbc london i said yes i did he said hum how often i said oh maybe three four times you're a lion your friend told us many many more i said that's not true then he is lying and i thought oh my god i hope i get away with this if ham would give in and i lied to them i wouldn't sit here they would have killed me the same day you know and then they said they asked that you see some leaflets i said yes i i knew about the leaflets then he asked me do you know rudolf vobby then i knew they have woody too you know then the question came give us names who are the adults behind you i said there are no adults and that triggered it and i got hit you know they could not believe that three young men did this organization this resistant group without any help of adults they could not believe it they thought we are just little fishes they want the big they thought they have a big spiraling now wonderful there were no adults the gestapo was absolutely certain that all that these pamphlets that were written had to have been done and orchestrated by an adult and they were sure that otto barant was the person behind it he was their guest they called it for three days and three nights and he told us and he told us this after the war was over when they fired questions at me i mean he said they came like a machine gun salva okay they came quick fast meant to make sure to irritate him and to say the wrong thing what he said just a minute before and he said something took over for me and they i repeated the same thing again and again and again and they finally after three days they realized that he knew nothing of what had happened with these three young men they said mr byrne you are free to go and he said do you believe me now that i didn't have anything into it didn't know anything about it and then they said if we had the smallest doubt you wouldn't leave this building alive and then they said now remember he said we have to win the war then we have to serve we have to solve the jewish problem he said and then your moments are next he said there is no more room in the new germany for this american church apparently he said the right things and the nazis never did pursue the church connection behind humanoid they were unable to find that source uh bert said the right things uh saunder was clearly on their side and the trail ended with hubiner word of the arrest spread quickly through the mormon community in hamburg the reactions were varied some were troubled by what had happened and worried for the boy's safety others felt they had broken the law betrayed their country and deserved whatever punishment they received but a feeling common to all was quiet concern what would happen to the rest of the mormon community now not only in hamburg but in all of germany ten days after humoner's arrest arthur zander along with another local church leader anton hook excommunicated humoner from the mormon church i believe that both sander and anton hoop believed this implicitly that it was very necessary for them to distance themselves from this young man and to say with with this act as as serious as it is how the church felt about what he had done ironically this might have been helpful in terms of pure survival for the branch because when people came uh plainclothesmen and other kinds of spies came to the branch to find out if there was a connection between what hubiner had done and and what was being taught in this mormon branch apparently they found nothing of this of the kind they found a very loyal party supporter in the in sunder the ranch president they found people condemning hubenar for what he'd done saying that it was out of line and for all practical purposes nothing happened to the branch or the or the members of the branch or the church in hamburg or and in germany generally immediately after the war was over and this case was reviewed it became clear that he had not in fact been properly excommunicated and everything connected with his membership was restored and so that tells us about how the official church felt on this matter for several weeks following their arrest huebner schniber and volba were interrogated at the gestapo headquarters each night they were held at the gestapo prison outside of hamburg where the torture and beatings continued when they stopped at the gestapo prison festival and we got out i had no idea that you have to face the wall about two inches with your nose from the wall i didn't know that but i learned fast then came in as s men by your stomper man and he i don't know he probably had a bad day so he pushed my head against the wall you know and that bust my nose so the whole wall was bloody they punished me for messing up the wall you picked what did you do with our clean walls and oh my gosh you know and i thought what's going on i had no idea and needless to say i couldn't sleep the whole night you know that was so noisy there i've heard men cry and scream women cry and scream and you could hear when they when they got hit it was terrible it was terrible try to imagine what it would have been like for young children who'd never been away from home who'd been raised in lds families in protected circumstances really to suddenly have been arrested by the gestapo put in prison cells and taken daily to the interrogation center run by the gestapo where they were held in this famous hall of mirrors with a bright white paint and then taken off to side rooms to be interrogated there was a big big room i mean it was a large room and we called it the spiegels are the hall of mirrors it was high glass brilliantly white we enameled searchlights all over and you came in there you go like you know it blinds you a little bit and they tell you over there on the wall you could not go cross you have to go all around and then face the wall and stand there if you were lucky they could stop for culture and after an hour half an hour two hours if not you stand there the whole day one time the gestapo made a mistake when they let me in in the hall of mirror and said over there i had to go around to there there's helmut and that should never happened they called it for dongling i should never see him before trial you know somebody made a mistake so when i walked by ham would saw me coming from the corner of his eyes and when i walked by him i slowed down a little bit not much so that wasn't suspicious i saw he had a little grin on his face and then i knew helmut kept his word once the gestapo were satisfied that in fact there were no adults behind the hubena group the boys were transferred to an investigative prison in the center of hamburg to await their trial it was so quiet i said i'm on vacation i thought that was the first night i slept i had no idea that for the next five months this is my home nobody to talk to nothing to read i couldn't lay during the day on the bunker to sit on that little wobbly chair you start talking to yourself that's okay but when you answer then then you've had it you know it was terrible for five months one time they sell open and they served papers to us and was stamped all over secret top secret so when i've read that i didn't give five cents for none of our lives i said this is the endicolous we will be tried for high treason and aiding and debating the enemy in august of 1942 the hubena group was transported to berlin by train here they would stand trial before the highest court in germany where the judges had been selected personally by hitler officially it was called the people's court though the people often referred to it as the blood tribunal the first one who got called to the high bench was my friend helmut and they told him his crime and then they asked him with young men do you honestly believe that germany will lose the war and hamwood said don't you the judges said leave him a lot and leave him or not then they ask do you want to tell me that the german broadcast is wrong and the english is correct and he said exactly his attorney he looked at him and said are you nuts but i think helmut knew that he is his life is gone after short deliberations the judges returned their verdict rudolph voba 10 years in a labor camp carl heinz schnibbett five years in a labor camp and for helmut hubner the sentence was death [Music] and then they asked us if we want to have what to say rudy declined i declined you know and hamwood said yes i do and then the judge said okay so then said i have to die now for no crime at all he said but your turn is next 17 years old so after sentencing they let us down to the basement there was another big room like a prison with iron bars then we got our supper and our friend helmholt they kept his cuff on his back so rory and ivy fed hermods we broke the bed and fed them you know i said hamlet they won't kill you i mean i had my doubts but what can i say this is it you cannot do that you know i said hey what they won't kill you too young he said oh yes they killed me i said no don't talk like that that it hurts me he said look at the wall back then i turned around there was a big wall and i was all scribbled so i walked over there where all the linkmans who got killed that red farewell my love goodbye mom and i mean every little bit it was it was shocking it was shocking you know and i i still couldn't i said hey would know they they will not kill you and then we've had him you know and then all of a sudden the gate opened the big iron gate and god came in and said bobby schnebby pack your things you're going back to hamburg so we had to leave you know now i have to say goodbye to our friend helmut helmut had big blue eyes i mean really big dark blue eyes and i never saw him with emotionally you know he never showed his emotion even when something happened and when i put my arms around him i told him what i see pretty soon his eyes filled with tears [Music] and he said to me i hope you have a better life in a better germany and then he cried [Applause] [Music] in that cell they locked me in that wasn't very far from the prison church that night somebody played the org in there and i couldn't i could hear it very well and then i broke down and i cried and i thought won't this ever end and that was just the beginning that was just the beginning the following day schniber and volvo were sent to a hard labor prison camp outside of hamburg called glossmore hubiner was held at plitzen's a prison in berlin while his family appealed his death sentence huebner waited at 12 noon on october 27th the prison warden and others came to huberner's cell and informed him that his appeal for clemency had been denied by hitler himself and that he would be executed after eight o'clock that night he was granted permission to write three letters one to his mother one to his grandparents and one to his close friends from church the sommerfeld family the letters to his mother and grandparents were destroyed during a bombing raid in 1943 the letter to the sommerfeld survived when we first read it i mean we opened it and we saw you know at the end you could see the ink it was a little blotted out because he must have shed some tears because he knew that was the end of his life on this earth dear sister summerfield and family when you receive this letter i will be dead but before my execution i have been granted one wish to write three letters to my loved ones i want to thank you for the letter you sent to me dear sister summerfield which they withheld from me i also want to thank you for the many happy hours i was able to spend in the circle of your family please remember me kindly i'm very thankful to my heavenly father that this agonizing life is coming to an end this evening i could not stand it any longer anyway my father in heaven knows that i have done nothing wrong i know that god lives and he will be the proper judge of this matter until a happy union and that better world i remain your friend and brother in the gospel helmut this last letter doesn't say i'm sorry i broke the law i'm sorry i impugned the reputation of our fearless leader adolf hitler none of that it's very pure very straightforward very moving and simple but the theological argument is very strong because he realizes he was within a few hours of meeting his maker but it's amazing how calm he is and how quiet in his conscience he appears to be detailed records were kept of hubiner's last day that have provided a precise account of the proceedings just after 8 pm huberner was taken from his cell his hands bound with rope he was led from his cell block to the prison tool shed which had been converted into an execution chamber at 8 13 he entered the chamber the room was divided in half by a black curtain the director of executions read the death sentence and the curtain was opened revealing the guillotine the time from when humoner was brought into the room until his death 18 seconds the following day october 28th notices of huberner's death were posted in hamburg this is when helmut's mother emma heubner learned her son was dead it was her birthday after the fall of the third reich war-torn germany struggled to rebuild but with their efforts to look to the future most of the german people were anxious to bury the past the activities of helmut carl heinz and rudy were quickly fading from memory except to those closest to them but those closest to hubiner his mother and grandparents were killed in the 1943 bombings of hamburg many members of the mormon branch began immigrating to the united states after the war had ended rudy voba returned home from prison in june of nineteen forty five carl heinz though still a political prisoner was forced to march with the german army just weeks before the war ended and was captured by the russian forces he was a prisoner of war in russia for four more years both carl and rudy immigrated to the united states in the early 50s by the late 50s the humane group was virtually forgotten in germany in 1960 a young college student named ulrich zander was given the assignment to write on the resistance movement in hamburg in his research he discovered the account of three teenage boys about his age who spoke out against the hitler regime nearly 20 years after posting its last flyer the huberner group had been rediscovered alisander was about the same age as as hubert and his colleagues had been so it was an exciting thing for a teenager to discover that other hamburg teenagers had been operating of a successful resistance movement against hitler in mind [Music] one of the articles that zonder wrote was read by celebrated german author gunter grass the huberner group's peaceful resistance became a focal point of gross's forthcoming novel local anesthetic published in 1969 [Music] [Music] after gunther grass's novel was published awareness of the humaner group increased helmut hubenar and his friends were officially recognized as resistance fighters against the third right today there are memorials throughout hamburg and berlin that commemorate the resistance efforts of the hubenar group when hitler was gone it was all gone you don't find any streets named after hitler you don't find anything named after any of his henchmen and instead of a thousand year reich you had a crime that will take a thousand years to erase the deutsche fascism [Music] from the hellmuth [Music] these people provided then the moral soil for the rebirth of germany even though the germans did not succeed in overthrowing hitler there were enough germans who really tried to do something about it and paid for it with their own lives you often ask yourself how would i have reacted knowing the punishments involved and i think that each individual should be judged on his or her own merits in terms of the amount of resistance they conducted and i think they all have one thing in common they were all extraordinary courageous people because my students who are very close to the age of helmut huberner uh and who often i think despair of making a contribution in this world because it's a very big world with very complicated problems i believe take courage when they encounter helmand hewner naturally [Music] and his and people like him are key figures to the development of this new peaceful post-war german society i i see it as a very very important link in the transition from a nazi society to what i see today as one of the most peaceful societies the world has ever seen i came home in 49 one saturday my mom said tomorrow we go in the organ concert and there they played cesar frank love it mendelssohn beautiful i mean all the jewish composers they were forbidden in hitler germany and then it happened right during the concert i broke down i started crying and i cried and i cried after that the healing started very fast you know it was a long long hard road but i made it [Music] i don't think young people today can really understand what it was like in nazi germany people were forced to make difficult decisions based on what information they had for many of us it was the time when patriotism and faith were odds it was a time when truth was treason helmut spoke for freedom in the best way he knew how i don't regret what we did but i don't blame those who didn't agree with our actions i guess i feel what helmholtz said is true god will be the proper judge of this matter in 1985 carl heinz schnibber and rudolph voba were invited by the german government to a ceremony where they were honored for their achievements as resistance fighters in 1992 rudy died of cancer at the age of 65. carl heinz lives in salt lake city utah and continues to speak to students and other organizations about his [Music] experiences [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: WØEPD - Rabbit Ears TV

Views: 256,137

Keywords: VHS, Mormon, LDS, Helmuth Huber, Nazi Fighter, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Resistance fighters, nazi resistance fighter

Id: ICswA1YnvA8

Length: 58min 52sec (3532 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 09 2017