https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICswA1YnvA8&ab_channel=W%C3%98EPD-RabbitEarsTV


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thank you
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[Music]
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yes [Music]
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[Music] after 1933 the speeches of adolf hitler could be heard throughout all of germany
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he promised work to those without he spoke of strength and national pride he promised a better life in a better
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germany he could stand and i mean [Music]
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i mean he had the power in his speeches to move the masses
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early in hitler's regime there was some opposition among the working class but soon they too were either supportive
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or silent
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it was sort of making a pact with the devil but not knowing where that it was the devil that you made the
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pact with and where that would end up as the nazi police state tightened its
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grip there was a struggling underground movement but relatively few organized resistance
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groups in 1942 the white rose group led by college students hans and sophie scholl
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disseminated anti-nazi leaflets in 1944 klaus von stauffenberg and other
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military leaders made an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate hitler in an ill-fated bombing but before these
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movements had emerged there was another resistance group forming in the port city of hamburg in 1941 a young man named helmut hubiner
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led a resistance movement comprised of himself and two childhood friends from his church congregation
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helmut hubenar was sixteen rudolf vobe was fifteen and carl heinz schnibby was seventeen
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carl heinz is the last surviving member of the group
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most people they have they have no idea how it was in nazi germany
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how dangerous it was in nazi germany to tell the truth was a deadly luxury
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my friend helmut thought that was his christian obligation to warn the people and tell him what
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happens helmut was really smart not smart alecky
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you know but bright he was a thinker he was uh the kind of person who was
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interested in even as a young man in the big questions in life
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i just didn't enjoy when when he uh talked to the elders in our in our church
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he quick asked question he knew they don't know how to answer you know they he liked to embarrass them a little bit
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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
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it i said hey don't do that the humor was intelligent but to over emphasize his intelligence
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is i think a mistake i mean he was intelligent but he was not some kind of
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remarkable genius on the level of wolfgang amadeus mozart who may never come along
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again in the history of the earth he was a reasonably intelligent open
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interesting and interested person but also to be politically sagacious at this age and at the same time
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to be as well read in the scriptures to know theology as well
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as he did there's an interesting wrinkle in the story it involves helmut having written a a
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very strongly pro-hitler essay in school and reportedly having been quite happy
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contented hitler youth and he was very well liked in the hitler use he did exactly what he had to do
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apparently he enjoyed it and hamwood politically he he knew a lot you know he knew a lot and that
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when we asked questions he hear the answers he had answers for us you know and i like that the light
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sort of went on for him in in seeing how
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the national socialist the gestapo treated jews and this experience
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to my way of thinking is a central defining one for the young helmut my life actually
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changed in november 1938.
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we had the very infamous ice crystalnacht the night of broken glass
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all over germany the jewish stores were destroyed the synagogues were burning and the
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merchandise laid in the gutter when i came home my mother was upset she
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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
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and then i started crying and my mom said what happened so i told her i said why what what
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what is wrong and my mom said to me this is from now on most likely our life so you
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better forget it i could not forget it [Music] just before kristallnacht a new
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religious leader a branch president was called in the congregation where hebner schniber
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were members since joining the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints 12 years earlier arthur zonder had been a committed
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member of this mormon branch he was also a strong supporter of the nazi party
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not only was he the branch president but he was also so to speak the father of the ranch
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he also wanted to do as much good as he could for the party
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when i talked to my students about this case um at byu and the honors program and i tell them the story of the
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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
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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
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mean this was nazi germany there were nazis in nazi germany you know big surprise he wanted to show
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that that latter-day saints were good germans and there was a tremendous
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amount of pressure that was put on by the government and the party to quickly
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separate those who are who are good germans and those who aren't he wanted to lock the doors so nobody
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can get out and all the members had to listen to viewers speech and then he had in mind once to start
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the meeting with hitler and there was another leader in our church otto bernd you know he was
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his counselor he said no way this is not a political organization this is a church
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it was then out to a sunday bit on granted when it came to my father
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because my father was not at all for this salute and hit the speeches and
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lock in the doors and so forth my friend helmut he was the honorary secretary from our
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branch president he got very upset he got very upset
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final straw for helmut may have been his view that nazi ideas
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and nazi behavior was coming over into the latter day saints we went to
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church to our church house and there was a sign on the door which read yoon is that such
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jews not allowed to enter and we had one jewish member in our branch solomon schwartz
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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
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was crying but they didn't let him in the other branch houses generally did not have this apparently
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this was unique in germany at the time among lds branches that someone had put a sign up
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like that i believe sandra and put that up there partly as an expression
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of his support for the regime and partly to communicate that latter-day saints
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were good citizens in the third reich
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and partly perhaps to protect his own
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flock september 1st 1939 the same day that hitler invaded poland he enacted a law
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that restricted listening to any radio broadcasts other than the approved party stations
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propaganda minister joseph goebbels increased his efforts to control what information the german
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people received those caught listening to foreign broadcasts could be sentenced to death
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any group of politicians or government leaders who place enormous emphasis on propaganda by
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their own government are inevitably afraid of the propaganda of other governments and this is partly helps to explain why
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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
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what we call the foxenfinger the people's radio and you could only hear three stations visit hammock munich and berlin
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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
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to round up but often soldiers would bring radios back with them on leave
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after the french army was defeated hamul's brother
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came home on furley and he bought home a little shortwave radio marquerola there was a
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little bit wrong with it and hamwood had it fixed you know and then his brother left back to his unit
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helmut one night ten o'clock a few minutes before turned it on
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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
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first three bars from beethoven three times you know victory three times and then a
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a voice and flew in german said this is bbc london
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this is bbc london now we give news in the german language when he got this shortwave radio he
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realized that he had a chance now to hear information that wasn't from the
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government and as he listens to bbc
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he is immediately convinced that they're telling the truth and the thing that he says convinced him
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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
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detail the bbc built up a reputation for timeliness accuracy credibility and therefore the news
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would have a greater degree of credibility over the german news system so helmet began to be
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converted and i think it happened very fast to the idea that there was really something here that he had to share with
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his fellow germans and my friend helmut told me that sunday when i saw him in church again
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you have to come and listen to this this is very fascinating i said what is it he said i cannot tell you
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exactly details come and see me so i said okay i'll be there
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helmut had moved into his grandparents apartment his mother was working nights
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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
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old people they go to bed early so i'm assuming it was a logical thing to ask carl had come over
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and that was the first time i've heard it i was flabbergasted i said what
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how do they know you know i didn't believe it and then he said look germany i don't
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know how many how many hundreds of armies they have you know and then he proved to me on hand from statistics how much
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gasoline one army needs a day tanks airplanes and
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trucks and other stuff and he said it had no oil fields he needs he cannot make it you know and that's
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how it started but i never lost the fear i was always scared every day in the newspaper
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schwarzer and they call it you know that people were arrested by the gestapo
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for a listen bbc london and that was very dangerous very dangerous
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because people don't keep their mouth shut they said to them formula you know what i've heard i tell
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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
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did helmut ever think about getting caught and what would that mean towards the neighbors and and towards
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the other members of the church i don't know the church family
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was truly a family as far as the nazis were concerned and they had something which they called
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zippenhoft and it meant that if if you have some member of your family
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who is going against the law that that they can arrest your whole family
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in this oppressive climate religions throughout germany struggled to find the balance in supporting the nazi
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government while upholding their christian values again and again they were faced with the question
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can we be loyal to hitler and at the same time loyal to god though the answer to this question
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varied within the different denominations everyone knew the ominous consequences of religious objection to
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the regime so the complexity that is found
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in every mormon branch is largely a reflection of this delicate
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balancing act of being good citizens while at the same time
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doing all we can personally to bring about the god-given human rights that belong
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to all people and so forth for helmut the issue was am i not raised to tell the truth and to
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to pass on the truth and so i think this became a a very
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important issue for him to to tell people what was really happening what he knew and the final link in the chain would
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have been the fact that he was a kind of unofficial secretary to the branch president arthur sander
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who would ask him to write letters to the soldiers from the branch and so he assigned young helmut who was
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who knew how to type and was very verbal to write these letters and helmut agreed
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to he first took home a portable typewriter and later took home a big desk typewriter so it was clearly the
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church typewriter got taken to helmut's apartment and helmwood used that typewriter in his
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home to try to learn for leaflets sometimes with eight carbon count you know hammer really through the paper he got
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from from his office government paper and then would have a little stem from his office you know the swastika was the
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eagle and he used that on leaflets stamped it as official nazi party paper
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and put it on the blackboard
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but with the typewriter and access to paper as well and the radio broadcasts and the silence
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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
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he really had all the ingredients now for helmut to do this thing and the next thing was for him to
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recruit a couple of his friends one time in church helmut said
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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
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there i don't like your surprises they are dangerous he said no come down and so i went down
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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
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and i said rudy what are you doing here and he laughed he said carter what are you doing here and then
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helmut told me he is the third in our group i said what do you mean the third who is
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the second now you i said helmut i don't know i was
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scared i was actually scared because we read in the newspaper every day how severely these people get punished
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the nazis they don't want you to know the truth you know the truth was deadly and in germany
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foreign it's ironic that hubiner's vision for this as i see it
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corresponded with the nazi's fear that his vision might in fact work that that this mass grassroots uprising
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might occur their fears were consonant with his hopes helmut said well we have to be careful
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then everything is well you know and then he said let's make a promise he who get caught first takes the blame
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don't incriminate anybody and that sounds good to me because i thought i'm cool i was the oldest you
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know i said they don't catch me so i said all right so rudy went that night home with
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about 15 flyers you know there were postcard sites and
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helmut typed on it hitler the murderer hitler is the guildivan if you are a friend of the
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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
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he's emerged from some kind of a process as a full-blown anti-nazi
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writing things that are you know very personally uh demeaning to hitler hitler is a murderer
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hitler is the fairfield or the folks fairfield he puts the prefix ver on the front of
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the word furor which means that hitler is now not the leader of the people but the seducer of the people and his
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thinking was gee if it's a matter of lack of information then if i spread this information to
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others it'll click in them and there'll be this title wave of
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information flow and things will click and there'll be a chain reaction
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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
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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
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but i got rid of him i put him in telephone booths i put him in mail boxes
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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
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you better go to bed right now so i did but the next morning it the world looked
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okay again i didn't get caught and everything went okay at that age you
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probably don't don't realize all the consequences of your actions you just want to do it you know you have
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that drive you you want to tell the the the neighbors the the people around
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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
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something he saw me coming and he waved at me and i waved back and he yelled to the church
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they haven't arrested you yet half day and i said will you shut up i was
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you know so that was hamwood joking you know there's a kind of an adventure and there's a sense of
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of rightness about what they're doing that i think keeps them a little bit
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from thinking say are we going to get ourselves into some serious trouble
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and maybe some other people along with us in the meantime hamwood had full size leaflets
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no flyers anymore the big leaflets and he used the british broadcast and his own knowledge
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and made these leaflets and they were we had about 29 different titles and and pretty soon
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he's giving us more and more information uh combined with the slander and the
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slurs against hitler's person there is now evidence and reasoning behind it and he's saying this is why
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hitler's a murderer because he's done this and and this is why these guys are lying to you because
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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
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on their knees no helm would want to make the people think
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my favorite is the one where the the long doggerel palm it's a very witty thing he ends it with
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a schiller quotation from a famous play wilhelm tell but he also quotes a very
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brief quote from hamlet from shakespeare's hamlet so he's throwing out some erudition here in these later pamphlets
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having some fun with them and another one the voice of conscience that was a religious leaflet
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where helmut proved and according to the bible and what happens that i meant like hitler cannot
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win the war it's impossible there's some evidence that they were created by a teenager very enthusiastic
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and bombastic things but but they impressed the germans at the time they impressed the gestapo
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these are not the writings of a typical teenager but could have been the writings of a 30 year old university
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professor
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one time i was almost home there's still two policemen and they said hey come over here so i
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went over there he said where have you been this late i said i visit my friend where does he live
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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
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he left that truth so that would no problem he said well you better go home tonight they might come it's a clear
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night he meant the british you know air it i said yeah i will and was
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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
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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
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i burned them so there was nothing in our house from all the leaflets we distribute
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about eight or nine got turned into the police no more you know so but the gustavo knew
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there is some group does have work in there you know and in
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this section where him would live but they don't know exactly where to start you know they was
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just hoping for a lucky day and they got their lucky day one time my friend helen wood told me
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how would you feel if we print some leaflets into french
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because we have some french we have we have a lot of this french prisoner of war in hamburg and they
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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
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alone don't don't try it and helmut said no we have a young man in our
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office staff his name is verna khans he speaks fluently french i will ask him
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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
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i think it's more likely he was simply using this as an excuse to talk to crons about it he approached vernacans
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and says werner he said will you do me a favor sure what can i do and he said i
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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
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and that young man read it and the more he read the matter he get he gave it back to him like there's
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nowhere he said are you nuts you know what that is this is stevetismus no he said i want
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nothing to do with it you know okay so this little conversation was watched in the corner there was a glass booth
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where the party observer from the office staff had his little office in there he had to
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watch out for patriotism among the office workers because it was a government office
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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
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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
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he said now i don't worry about it and then he said i order you to tell me he could i mean he
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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
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happened and and i'm i don't want nothing to do with it and heinrich moans was his name he said oh
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i'm interested this is interesting i never saw anything like that tell him you do
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it and let me read one too you know and he said okay so verna crunch went back to helmut and said i
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changed my mind i will do it i don't know if him would had a little warning and he said well
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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
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and then he bought him one this young man didn't even read it he bought it right away to mr moans
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you know and mr moans got it and while he was reading this he kept the telephone and dialed the gestapo
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you know i think he stopped was there 10 minutes later it was 5 p.m on february 5th when the
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gestapo arrested hubiner at his work they took him immediately to his grandparents apartment where he was
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living at the time there they found the illegal radio several flyers and the typewriter with an unfinished
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flyer still in it
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he was then taken to the gestapo headquarters in hamburg here the interrogations began as the
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gestapo tried to ascertain who else was involved in the conspiracy
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you know one sunday i went to church helmut wasn't there so i thought maybe he's sick or something you
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know and then our branch president said brothers and sisters please stay on
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after our meeting i have a sad announcement to make and when we wait for him he came and then he
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said i got a phone call from the gestapo and our young brother and
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friend helmut hubena was arrested he said i had i don't have details but i
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know it is politically you know and the same moment my mom turned to me and said
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what happens i said i don't know that was the first time i had to lie to my mother and i
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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
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times a week you must know i said i really don't then she looked at me like can i believe
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you i said honestly she said well then it's probably not so bad and he probably comes home and and it's
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it's okay but i know better you know i thought oh my gosh you know i hope i hope that hamwood kept his
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promise as one reads the the accounts of the interrogation which thanks to
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typical german efficiency have been preserved for us to read one gets goosebumps because one realizes
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that much of the language one is reading is euphemistic it will say in one of these documents
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helmut hubener was today brought forward and interrogated by our commissioner bengamon and after
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assiduous persuasion he admitted having distributed the
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documents now a term like assiduous persuasion can only mean after we beat the heck out
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of him after we tortured him after we worked him over pretty good when i came home i was prepared usually
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the gestapo comes four and five o'clock in the morning because they know
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everybody is home so when i came home from church i thought that as that black mercedes and picks me up
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there was no mercedes you know so next morning i woke up i
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have no gestapo pretty clear to me that that he was treated badly uh and and
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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
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had invited two friends carl and rudy over february 10th i went to work again there
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was a knock on the door boom boom and i said to my fellow worker i said really
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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
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i opened the door and there's the two guys about six four six three tall with that
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long dark leather coat and he lifted up his lapel from the court and there was the badge stats police
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stopper he said are you carl schnibby kalhan schnibby i said yes i am
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he said you know why we are here [Music] i said yes i do i had said who me
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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
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like a toilet seat i mean they they use it they know how to use it we heard story enough how brutal and and
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me [ __ ] stopper was i said yes i know he said come visit us i said can i change clothes i had my
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white son he said you come as you are i said okay so i yelled to billy i said really i
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i have to leave for a minute he said okay okay leave for a minute seven years
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and then they drove me downtown to start house where they could stop a headquarters and
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there the interrogation started he the first question he asked did you
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listen to bbc london i said yes i did he said hum how often i said oh maybe three four
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times you're a lion your friend told us many many more i said that's not true
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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
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sit here they would have killed me the same day you know and then they said they asked that you
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see some leaflets i said yes i i knew about the leaflets then he asked me do you know rudolf vobby
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then i knew they have woody too you know then the question came give us names who are the adults behind
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you i said there are no adults and that triggered it and i got hit
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you know they could not believe that three young men did this
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organization this resistant group without any help of adults they could not believe it
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they thought we are just little fishes they want the big they thought they have a big spiraling now wonderful there were no
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adults the gestapo was absolutely certain that all that these pamphlets
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that were written had to have been done and orchestrated by an adult and they
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were sure that otto barant was the person behind it he was their guest they called it
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for three days and three nights and he told us and he told us this after the
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war was over when they fired questions at me i mean
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he said they came like a machine gun salva okay they came quick fast meant to make sure to
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irritate him and to say the wrong thing what he said just a minute before and he said something took over for me
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and they i repeated the same thing again and again and again
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and they finally after three days they realized that he knew nothing of what had happened
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with these three young men they said mr byrne you are free to go and he said
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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
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smallest doubt you wouldn't leave this building alive and then they said now remember he said
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we have to win the war then we have to serve we have to solve the jewish problem he
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said and then your moments are next he said there is no more room in the new germany
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for this american church apparently he said the right things and
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the nazis never did pursue the church connection behind humanoid they were unable to find
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that source uh bert said the right things uh saunder was clearly on their side and
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the trail ended with hubiner word of the arrest spread quickly
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through the mormon community in hamburg the reactions were varied some were troubled by what had happened and
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worried for the boy's safety others felt they had broken the law betrayed their country and deserved whatever punishment they
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received but a feeling common to all was quiet concern what would happen to the rest of the
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mormon community now not only in hamburg but in all of germany ten days after
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humoner's arrest arthur zander along with another local church leader anton hook
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excommunicated humoner from the mormon church i believe that both sander and anton
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hoop believed this implicitly that it was very necessary for them to distance
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themselves from this young man and to say with with this act as
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as serious as it is how the church felt about what he had done ironically
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this might have been helpful in terms of pure survival for the branch because when people came
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uh plainclothesmen and other kinds of spies came to the branch to find out if there was a connection between what
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hubiner had done and and what was being taught in this mormon branch apparently they found nothing of this
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of the kind they found a very loyal party supporter in the in sunder the ranch president they found people
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condemning hubenar for what he'd done saying that it was out of line and for all practical purposes nothing
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happened to the branch or the or the members of the branch or the church in hamburg or and in germany generally
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immediately after the war was over and this case was reviewed
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it became clear that he had not in fact been properly excommunicated and
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everything connected with his membership was restored and so that tells us about how the
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official church felt on this matter
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for several weeks following their arrest huebner schniber and volba were interrogated at the gestapo headquarters
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each night they were held at the gestapo prison outside of hamburg where the torture and beatings continued
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when they stopped at the gestapo prison festival and we got out i had no idea that you have to face the
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wall about two inches with your nose from the wall i didn't know that
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but i learned fast then came in as s men by your stomper man and he i don't know
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he probably had a bad day so he pushed my head against the wall you know and that bust my nose
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so the whole wall was bloody they punished me for messing up the wall
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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
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idea and needless to say i couldn't sleep the whole night you know that was so noisy
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there i've heard men cry and scream women cry and scream and you could hear when they when they
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got hit it was terrible it was terrible try to imagine
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what it would have been like for young children who'd never been away from home who'd been
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raised in lds families in protected circumstances really to
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suddenly have been arrested by the gestapo put in prison cells and taken
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daily to the interrogation center run by the gestapo where they were held
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in this famous hall of mirrors with a bright white paint and then taken off to side rooms to be interrogated
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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
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was high glass brilliantly white we enameled searchlights all over and
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you came in there you go like you know it blinds you a little bit and they tell you over there on the wall
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you could not go cross you have to go all around and then face the wall and stand there
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if you were lucky they could stop for culture and after an hour half an hour two hours
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if not you stand there the whole day one time the gestapo made a mistake
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when they let me in in the hall of mirror and said over there i had to go around to there there's
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helmut and that should never happened they called it for dongling
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i should never see him before trial you know somebody made a mistake so when i walked
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by ham would saw me coming from the corner of his eyes and when i walked by him i slowed down a
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little bit not much so that wasn't suspicious i saw he had a little grin on his face
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and then i knew helmut kept his word
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once the gestapo were satisfied that in fact there were no adults behind the hubena group the boys were transferred to an
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investigative prison in the center of hamburg to await their trial
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it was so quiet i said i'm on vacation i thought that was the first night i slept
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i had no idea that for the next five months this is my home nobody to talk to nothing to read i
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couldn't lay during the day on the bunker to sit on that little wobbly chair you start talking to
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yourself that's okay but when you answer then then you've had it you know
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it was terrible for five months one time they sell open and they served
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papers to us and was stamped all over secret top secret so when i've read that
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i didn't give five cents for none of our lives i said this is the endicolous
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we will be tried for high treason and aiding and debating the enemy
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in august of 1942 the hubena group was transported to berlin by train
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here they would stand trial before the highest court in germany where the judges had been selected personally by
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hitler officially it was called the people's court though the people often referred
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to it as the blood tribunal the first one who got called to the high bench was my friend helmut
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and they told him his crime and then they asked him with young men do you honestly believe that germany
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will lose the war and hamwood said don't you the judges said leave him a lot and
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leave him or not then they ask do you want to tell me that the german broadcast is
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wrong and the english is correct and he said exactly his attorney he looked at him and said
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are you nuts but i think helmut knew that he is his life is gone after short
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deliberations the judges returned their verdict rudolph voba 10 years in a labor camp
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carl heinz schnibbett five years in a labor camp and for helmut hubner the sentence was
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death [Music] and then they asked us if we want to
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have what to say rudy declined i declined you know and hamwood said yes i do and then
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the judge said okay so then said i have to die now for no crime at all
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he said but your turn is next 17 years old
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so after sentencing they let us down to the basement there was another big room like a prison
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with iron bars then we got our supper and our friend helmholt they kept his cuff
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on his back so rory and ivy fed hermods we broke the bed and fed them you know
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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
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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
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it hurts me he said look at the wall back then i turned around there was a big wall and i was all
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scribbled so i walked over there where all the linkmans who got killed
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that red farewell my love goodbye mom and i mean every little bit it was it
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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
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then we've had him you know and then all of a sudden the gate opened the big iron gate and
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god came in and said bobby schnebby pack your things you're going back to hamburg so we had to leave you
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know now i have to say goodbye to our friend helmut helmut had big blue eyes i mean really
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big dark blue eyes and i never saw him with emotionally you know he never showed his
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emotion even when something happened and when i put my arms around him i told
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him what i see pretty soon his eyes filled with tears [Music]
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and he said to me i hope you have a better life in a
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better germany and then he cried
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[Applause] [Music]
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in that cell they locked me in that wasn't very far from the prison church that night somebody played
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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
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won't this ever end and that was just the beginning that was just the beginning
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the following day schniber and volvo were sent to a hard labor prison camp outside of hamburg called glossmore
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hubiner was held at plitzen's a prison in berlin while his family appealed his death sentence huebner waited
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at 12 noon on october 27th the prison warden and others came to huberner's cell
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and informed him that his appeal for clemency had been denied by hitler himself and that he would be executed after
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eight o'clock that night he was granted permission to write three letters one to his mother
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one to his grandparents and one to his close friends from church the sommerfeld family the letters to his
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mother and grandparents were destroyed during a bombing raid in 1943 the letter to the sommerfeld survived
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when we first read it i mean we opened it and we saw you know at the end you could see
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the ink it was a little blotted out because he must have shed some tears because he knew that was
45:15
the end of his life on this earth dear sister summerfield and family
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when you receive this letter i will be dead but before my execution i have been
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granted one wish to write three letters to my loved ones
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i want to thank you for the letter you sent to me dear sister summerfield
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which they withheld from me i also want to thank you for the many happy hours
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i was able to spend in the circle of your family please remember me kindly
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i'm very thankful to my heavenly father that this agonizing life is coming to an
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end this evening i could not stand it any longer anyway
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my father in heaven knows that i have done nothing wrong i know that god lives and he will be the
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proper judge of this matter until a happy union and that better
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world i remain your friend and brother in the gospel helmut
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this last letter doesn't say i'm sorry i broke the law i'm sorry i impugned the reputation of
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our fearless leader adolf hitler none of that it's very pure very straightforward very moving and
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simple but the theological argument is very strong because he realizes he was
46:54
within a few hours of meeting his maker but it's amazing how calm he is
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and how quiet in his conscience he appears to be
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detailed records were kept of hubiner's last day that have provided a precise account of the proceedings just after 8 pm
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huberner was taken from his cell his hands bound with rope he was led from his cell block to the
47:19
prison tool shed which had been converted into an execution chamber
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at 8 13 he entered the chamber the room was divided in half by a black
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curtain the director of executions read the death sentence
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and the curtain was opened revealing the guillotine
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the time from when humoner was brought into the room until his death 18 seconds
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the following day october 28th notices of huberner's death were posted in hamburg
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this is when helmut's mother emma heubner learned her son was dead it was her birthday
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after the fall of the third reich war-torn germany struggled to rebuild but with their efforts to look to the
48:22
future most of the german people were anxious to bury the past the activities of helmut carl heinz and
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rudy were quickly fading from memory except to those closest to them but those closest to hubiner his mother
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and grandparents were killed in the 1943 bombings of hamburg many members of the mormon branch began
48:41
immigrating to the united states after the war had ended rudy voba returned home from prison in june of nineteen forty five
48:48
carl heinz though still a political prisoner was forced to march with the german army just weeks before the war
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ended and was captured by the russian forces he was a prisoner of war in russia for four more years both carl
49:02
and rudy immigrated to the united states in the early 50s by the late 50s the humane group was
49:08
virtually forgotten in germany in 1960 a young college student named
49:14
ulrich zander was given the assignment to write on the resistance movement in hamburg in his research he discovered the
49:21
account of three teenage boys about his age who spoke out against the hitler regime nearly 20 years after posting its last
49:28
flyer the huberner group had been rediscovered alisander was about the same age as as
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hubert and his colleagues had been so it was an exciting thing for a teenager to discover that other hamburg teenagers
49:41
had been operating of a successful resistance movement against hitler
49:56
in mind [Music]
50:17
one of the articles that zonder wrote was read by celebrated german author gunter grass the huberner group's
50:23
peaceful resistance became a focal point of gross's forthcoming novel local anesthetic published in 1969
51:23
[Music]
51:48
[Music]
51:53
after gunther grass's novel was published awareness of the humaner group increased helmut hubenar and his friends were
52:00
officially recognized as resistance fighters against the third right today there are memorials throughout
52:06
hamburg and berlin that commemorate the resistance efforts of the hubenar group
52:13
when hitler was gone it was all gone you don't find any streets named after
52:20
hitler you don't find anything named after any of his henchmen
52:26
and instead of a thousand year reich you had a crime that will take a
52:32
thousand years to erase the deutsche fascism
52:40
[Music] from the hellmuth
52:47
[Music] these people provided then
52:52
the moral soil for the rebirth of germany
53:00
even though the germans did not succeed in overthrowing hitler
53:05
there were enough germans who really tried to do something about it and paid
53:11
for it with their own lives you often ask yourself how would i have reacted knowing the
53:18
punishments involved and i think that each individual should be judged on his or her own merits in terms of the amount of
53:25
resistance they conducted and i think they all have one thing in common they were all extraordinary courageous people
53:39
because
53:46
my students who are very close to the age of helmut huberner uh and who often i think despair of
53:54
making a contribution in this world because it's a very big world with very complicated problems i believe
54:01
take courage when they encounter helmand hewner naturally
54:08
[Music]
54:23
and his and people like him are key figures to the development of this new peaceful
54:28
post-war german society i i see it as a very very important link
54:33
in the transition from a nazi society to what i see today as one of the most peaceful societies the world has ever
54:40
seen i came home in 49 one saturday my mom
54:47
said tomorrow we go in the organ concert and there they played cesar frank
54:52
love it mendelssohn beautiful i mean all the jewish composers they were
54:58
forbidden in hitler germany and then it happened right during the concert i broke down i started crying
55:05
and i cried and i cried after that the healing started very fast you know
55:11
it was a long long hard road but i made it
55:16
[Music] i don't think young people today can really understand
55:21
what it was like in nazi germany people were forced to make difficult decisions
55:27
based on what information they had for many of us it was the time when patriotism and
55:34
faith were odds it was a time when truth was treason
55:40
helmut spoke for freedom in the best way he knew how i don't regret what we did but i don't
55:47
blame those who didn't agree with our actions i guess i feel what helmholtz said is
55:54
true god will be the proper judge of this
56:00
matter
56:09
in 1985 carl heinz schnibber and rudolph voba were invited by the german government
56:14
to a ceremony where they were honored for their achievements as resistance fighters in 1992 rudy died of cancer at the age
56:22
of 65. carl heinz lives in salt lake city utah and continues to speak to students
56:29
and other organizations about his
56:38
[Music] experiences
56:49
[Music]
56:56
[Music]
57:06
[Music]
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you