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Gr. 5-9. These 12 fictionalized accounts of teenage rescuers, resistance fighters, and survivors under Nazi occupation in Europe are based on true accounts of young people who fought back, not only Jews this time but also others whose stories are not often told, including descriptions of German Edelweiss Pirates who resisted Hitler, young Mormons in Hamburg, and a teenage girl in the Greek resistance. There are also several stories of disabled individuals: some escaped, many were murdered, and some, including a blind leader in the French Resistance, rescued others. Rogow supplies a brief bibliography of sources on which the stories are based, but the blurring of fact and fiction doesn't always work, especially when the author imagines inner experience ("Despair welled up inside her. . . . He could see the sorrow in her eyes"). The personal histories are the drama here. Rogow never denies the history of the millions who did not survive as she brings readers close to the astonishing individual stories of young people who made a difference. Many readers will want to go on from here to find out more. Hazel Rochman
Faces of Courage is an inspiring compilation of twelve stories of courageous teenagers from all across Europe who resisted the Nazis.
There is Kirsten, a Danish girl who helped save a group of Jewish children from the Nazis. Jacob, a young Pole, survived the Holocaust by concealing his Jewish identity and working in a German armament factory.
Jacques Lusseyran, a blind French boy, organized a student resistance group called the Volunteers of Liberty. The Edelweiss Pirates were a group of German teenagers who opposed The Hitler Youth and aided homeless runaways from reform schools and labor camps.
Review
"Faces of Courage is a major step forward in the evolution of Holocaust education. These stories about young people who lived through that time in history enable us to feel the terror of living under German occupation during World War II. Only when we identify with this reality can we learn from it and begin to take action." --Mark Nataupsky, Ph.D. - Founder, Holocaust Education Fondation, Newport News, Virginia
"Rogow never denies the history of the millions who did not survive as she brings readers close to the astonishing individual stories of young people who made a difference." --Hazel Rochman, ALA's Booklist
"Sally Rogow has written a book about courage and the indomitable spirit of humanity. The heroes of Dr. Rogow's book provide a shining light for all of us to follow. Like The Diary of Anne Frank, Faces of Courage should become required reading in every high school in this country." --Bernie Farber, Executive Director, Canadian Jewish Congress
"Sally Rogow has written a book about courage and the indomitable spirit of humanity. The heroes of Dr. Rogow's book provide a shining light for all of us to follow. Like The Diary of Anne Frank, Faces of Courage should become required reading in every high school in this country." --Bernie Farber, Executive Director, Canadian Jewish Congress
"Faces of Courage is a major step forward in the evolution of Holocaust education. These stories about young people who lived through that time in history enable us to feel the terror of living under German occupation during World War II. Only when we identify with this reality can we learn from it and begin to take action." --Mark Nataupsky, Ph.D. - Founder, Holocaust Education Fondation, Newport News, Virginia
http://umanitoba.ca/outreach/cm/vol10/no9/facesofcourage.html
excerpt:
The following Monday, Karl was arrested and put in a green paddy wagon with twenty other prisoners. Rudi and Gerhardt were arrested a few days later. They were in the same jail, but they were not allowed to see one another. Despite the rough treatment and the cruelty of the guards, not one of them betrayed the others.?
Helmuth stood up in the courtroom. “You have sentenced me to die, even though I have committed no crime. But I must tell you that your turn will come. Germany will lose the war.” Karl was amazed at his courage.
Everyone was silent as the four boys were led out of the courtroom. Karl, Rudi and Gerhardt were sent to slave labor camps in Poland and Russia. Helmuth Heubner was seventeen years old when he was executed by guillotine. He was the youngest resistance fighter to lose his life in Ploetzensee, the infamous Nazi center of death. (Pp.131-132).
But each shines the light on young individuals or groups whose humanity overcame their fear of tyranny and death. It’s almost unimaginable that people procured printing machines to produce anti Nazi leaflets and newspapers and then distributed them clandestinely, but brave souls knew that their countrymen needed a banner under which to rally. Individuals acted alone or combined secretly to help others by hiding them, feeding them, guiding them to safety. Disguising the truth and lying became polished skills to prevent information from leaking out when neighbours or family could not be trusted. People displayed bravery that they never would have shown in other times, their courage a testament to their fundamental convictions of brotherhood and opposition to racism and brutality.
“I’ve come to deliver your chickens,” he said to the man who opened the door.
The man nodded. “I’ve been expecting you,” he said and took the chickens. Yojo went back to the wagon, brushed the hay to one side and lifted the blankets. The pilots shivered as they climbed out of the wagon. Their clothes were wet. Fred turned to Yojo, grabbed his hand, shook it and made a victory sign.
Inside the house, a woman gave them towels and dry clothes. After a dinner of spicy stew and bread, the man in charge of the safe house spoke to the pilots in English. He took their pictures for fake French identity cards....Yojo and the pilots were also given thick woolen socks, sweaters and climbing boots with heavy spiked soles. (p.72)
Enough praise can never be awarded to those who resisted the Nazi terror, and that’s why this book will be part of the growing body of literature that reminds us about these brave people. Faces of Courage can be used as part of a classroom unit about the World War II and the Holocaust. The writing style is occasionally too earnest and the dialogue slightly artificial, but teens will ignore these faults because the content will touch their souls. Each story can be used as a starting point for historical research and discussion. The cover of the book shows three youths standing in a village square, defiantly facing Nazi soldiers. The pen and watercolour sketch is not appealing, considering the high level of illustration that is being produced these days. The rough quality of the drawing chosen seems inadequate to the material. A woman and girl who stand at the bottom of the sketch have a more modern appearance than one would expect.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmuth_H%C3%BCbener
Helmuth Hübener From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search Helmuth Hübener
Helmuth Hübener, flanked by Rudolf Wobbe (left) and Karl-Heinz Schnibbe (right)
Born January 8, 1925(1925-01-08)
Hamburg, Germany
Died October 27, 1942(1942-10-27) (aged 17)
Berlin, Germany
Conviction(s) Treason
Penalty Death by beheading (guillotine)
Status Deceased
Helmuth Günther Hübener, (8 January 1925 – 27 October 1942), was one of the youngest opponents of the Third Reich to be sentenced to death by the Volksgerichtshof and executed.[1]
Contents [hide]
1 Life
2 Friends
3 Arrest and execution
4 Church reaction
5 Legacy
5.1 Depiction in books, drama, and movies
6 Quotations
7 Notes
8 References
9 External links
[edit] LifeHübener came from an apolitical family in Hamburg, Germany. He belonged to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), as did his mother and grandparents. His adoptive father, Hugo, gave him the name Hübener.
The youthful Helmuth had, since early childhood, been a member of the Boy Scouts, an organization strongly supported by his church, but in 1935 the Nazis banned scouting from Germany. He then joined the Hitler Youth, as required by the government, but would later disapprove of Kristallnacht, when the Nazis, including the Hitler Youth, destroyed Jewish businesses and homes. When one of the leaders in his local congregation, a new convert of under two years, undertook to bar Jews from attending its religious services, Hübener found himself at odds with the new policy, but continued to attend services with like-minded friends as the Latter-day Saints locally debated the issue. (His friend and fellow resistance fighter Rudolf Wobbe would later report that of the two thousand Latter-day Saints in the Hamburg area, seven were pro-Nazi, but five of them happened to be in his and Helmuth's St.Georg Branch (congregation), thus stirring controversy with the majority who were non- or anti-Nazis.)
After Hübener finished middle school in 1941, he began an apprenticeship in administration at the Hamburg Social Authority (Sozialbehörde). He met other apprentices there, one of whom, Gerhard Düwer, he would later recruit into his resistance movement. At a bathhouse, he met new friends, one of whom had a communist family background and, as a result, he began listening to enemy radio broadcasts. Listening to enemy radiobroadcast was then strictly forbidden in Nazi Germany, being considered a form of treason. In the summer of that same year, Hübener discovered his brother Gerhard's shortwave radio in a hallway closet and began listening to the BBC on his own and used what he heard to compose various anti-fascist texts and anti-war leaflets, of which he also made many copies. The leaflets were designed to bring to people's attention how skewed the official reports about World War II from Berlin were, as well as to point out Adolf Hitler's, Joseph Goebbels's, and other leading Nazis' criminal behaviour. Other themes covered by Hübener's writings were the war's futility and Germany's looming defeat. He also mentioned the mistreatment sometimes meted out in the Hitler Youth.
In late 1941, he managed to involve three friends in his listening: Karl-Heinz Schnibbe and Rudi Wobbe, who were fellow Latter-day Saints, and later Gerhard Düwer. Hübener had them help him distribute about 60 different pamphlets, all containing typewritten material from the British broadcasts.[2] They distributed them throughout Hamburg, using such methods as surreptitiously pinning them on bulletin boards, inserting them into letterboxes, and stuffing them in coat pockets.[3]
[edit] FriendsRudi Wobbe and Karl Schnibbe were very close to Hübener. Hübener started getting the British information from a Rola short wave radio. Surprised by the differences he heard between BBC radio and the German radio, he decided he wanted everyone to know. He involves his two closest friends. They did almost everything he did. They were tried with Helmuth and were also sentenced. They were also interviewed for Susan Bartoletti's book "The Boy who Dared". They were key roles in her book.[citation needed]
[edit] Arrest and executionOn 5 February 1942, Helmuth Hübener was arrested by the Gestapo at his workplace The Hamburg Social Authority in the Bieberhaus in Hamburg. While trying to translate the pamphlets into French and have them distributed among prisoners of war, he had been noticed by Nazi Party member Heinrich Mohn at his place of work, who had denounced him.
On 11 August 1942, Hübener's case was tried at the Volksgerichtshof in Berlin, and on 27 October, at the age of 17, he was beheaded by guillotine at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin.[3] His two friends, Schnibbe and Wobbe, who had also been arrested, were given prison sentences of five and ten years respectively.
Volksgerichtshof's proclamation from 27 October 1942 announcing Hübener's executionAs stated in the proclamation (at right), Hübener was found guilty of conspiracy to commit high treason and treasonous furthering of the enemy's cause. He was sentenced not only to death, but also to permanent loss of his civil rights, which meant he could be (and was) mistreated in prison, with no bedding or blankets in his cold cell, for instance.
It was highly unusual for the Nazis to try an underaged defendant, much less sentence him to death, but the court stated that Hübener had shown more than average intelligence for a boy his age. This, along with his general and political knowledge, and his behaviour before the court, made Hübener, in the court's eyes, a boy with a far more developed mind than was usually to be found in someone of his age. For this reason, the court stated, Hübener was to be punished as an adult.
Hübener's lawyers and his mother, and the Berlin Gestapo appealed for clemency in his case, hoping to have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. In their eyes, the fact that Hübener had confessed fully and shown himself to be still morally uncorrupted were points in his favour. The Reich Youth Leadership (Reichsjugendführung) would have none of it, however, and stated that the danger posed by Hübener's activities to the German people's war effort made the death penalty necessary. On 27 October 1942, the Nazi Ministry of Justice upheld the Volksgerichtshof's verdict. Hübener was only told of the Ministry's decision at 1:05 p.m. on the scheduled day of execution and beheaded, in the execution room at 8:13 p.m.[4]
[edit] Church reaction
The execution chamber at Plötzensee PrisonIn 1937, LDS President Heber Grant had visited Germany and urged the members to remain, get along, and not cause trouble. Consequently, some LDS members saw Hübener as a troublemaker who made things difficult for other Mormons in Germany. This recommendation didn't change after Kristallnacht, which occurred the year following Grant's visit, after which he evacuated all non-German Mormon missionaries.
Local LDS leader Arthur Zander was a fervent member of the Nazi Party, even to the extent of affixing notices to the church door stating "Jews not welcome" beginning in 1938. Immediately after the arrest of Helmuth Hübener, Zander, acting for the LDS, excommunicated the young man demonstratively.[5]
Four years later and after the war, Hübener was posthumously reinstated in the LDS Church in 1946.
The day of his execution, Hübener wrote to a fellow branch member, "I know that God lives and He will be the Just Judge in this matter... I look forward to seeing you in a better world!" — from a letter written by Hübener, the only one believed to still exist[6]
[edit] LegacyA youth centre and a pathway in Hamburg are named for Helmuth Hübener. The latter runs between Greifswalder Straße and Kirchenweg in Sankt Georg. At the former Plötzensee Prison in Berlin, an exhibit about young Helmuth Hübener's resistance, trial, and execution is located in the former guillotine chamber, where floral tributes are often placed in memory of Hübener and others put to death by the Nazis there.
[edit] Depiction in books, drama, and moviesHübener's story has been the subject of various literary, dramatic, and cinematic works. In 1969, German author Günter Grass published the book Local Anaesthetic, about the Hübener group.[7]
In 1979 Brigham Young University professor Thomas Rogers wrote a play titled Huebener, which has had several runs in various venues. Schnibbe, one of Hübener's co-accused, attended some of the performances on the BYU campus. Rudolf Wobbe, another co-accused, attended one. Wobbe died of cancer in 1992; Schnibbe died in 2010.
Schnibbe wrote the first-hand account When Truth Was Treason. It was edited by Blair R. Holmes, a professional historian, and Alan F. Keele, a German-language specialist. This monograph was published in 1995 by University of Illinois Press, with new publishing rights, theatrical rights, and copyright transferred 2003 to Academic Research Foundation, a subsidiary of Stratford Books, Inc.
The book Hübener vs. Hitler; A Biography of Helmuth Hübener, Mormon Teenage Resistance Leader, by Richard Lloyd Dewey was published in 2003; upon selling out the first edition, a second, revised edition with new material and corrections was released in late 2004. It is a biography written in a popular-historical style. It includes interviews with all living friends and close relatives of Hübener before most of them died. It also utilizes primary documents from the Nazi regime that investigated his case.
Rudolf Wobbe (Hübener's other co-resistance fighter) wrote the book Before the Blood Tribunal. Published in 1989, the book provides a personal account of his own trial before the Volksgerichtshof, the infamous "people's court" of Nazi Germany. Rudi, as he was known, was charged with Conspiracy to Commit High Treason and Aiding and Abetting the Enemy. Chief Justice Fikeis sentenced him to 10 years for his participation in the resistance. The account also describes events leading up to the trials of the three German youths and Rudi's own experience as a prisoner.
The 2008 juvenile novel The Boy Who Dared by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, while fictional, is based on Hübener's life. Bartoletti's earlier Newbery Honor book, Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow (2005), also covers Hübener's story.[8]
Hübener's story was documented in the 2003 documentary Truth & Conviction, written and directed by Rick McFarland and Matt Whitaker.
Truth & Treason, a major motion picture based on the Hübener Group, is being produced by Russ Kendall, Micah Merrill and Matt Whitaker of Kaleidoscope Pictures based on a script by Ethan Vincent and Matt Whitaker.
[edit] Quotations"German boys! Do you know the country without freedom, the country of terror and tyranny? Yes, you know it well, but are afraid to talk about it. They have intimidated you to such an extent that you don't dare talk for fear of reprisals. Yes you are right; it is Germany — Hitler Germany! Through their unscrupulous terror tactics against young and old, men and women, they have succeeded in making you spineless puppets to do their bidding." — from one of Helmuth Hübener's many pamphlets, subsequently also published in When Truth Was Treason: German Youth against Hitler, Editors Blair R. Holmes and Alan F. Keele.
"I know that God lives and He will be the Just Judge in this matter. I look forward to seeing you in a better world!" — from a letter written by Hübener (believed to be the only one extant)[6]
[edit] Notes1.^ Barbara Beuys: Vergeßt und nicht - Menschen im Widerstand 1933-1945, Rowohlt Verlag, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-498-00511-1
2.^ Lexikon des Deutschen Widerstandes, Hrsg., Wolfgang Benz ; Walter H.Pehle, Frankfurt Germany, 1994, ISBN 3-10-005702.3, S. 236ff.
3.^ a b Matt Whitaker (2003). Truth & Conviction (DVD). Covenant Communications.
4.^ Holmes, Blair R., ed. (1995). When Truth Was Treason. Alan F. Keele. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. p. 241.
5.^ Barbara Beuys: Vergeßt und nicht - Menschen im Widerstand 1933-1945, Rowohlt Verlag, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-498-00511-1, Page 488
6.^ a b "Hübener at Dixie State College". 2005-03-14. http://abev.wordpress.com/2005/03/14/hubner-at-dixie-state-college/. Retrieved 2010-04-26.
7.^ Günter Grass (1970). Local Anaesthetic. New York: Harcourt Brace. LCCN 78100501.
8.^ Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow, Scholastic Nonfiction, 2005.
[edit] ReferencesProtecting the National Community From Juvenile Delinquency: Nazification of Juvenile Criminal Law in the Third Reich, by Wayne Geerling (Melbourne University)
Gedenkstätte Plötzensee (Brigitte Oleschinski, published by the Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, and also listed in the German article).
Lights in the Darkness: Resisters of the Nazi Regime — Youth Dissent
Review of Ulrich Sander's book Jugendwiderstand im Krieg. Die Helmuth-Hübener-Gruppe
Truth & Treason at the Internet Movie Database
The Price: The True Story of a Mormon Who Defied Hitler, by Karl-Heinz Schnibbe, with Alan F. Keele and Douglas F. Tobler. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1984. (This book was the first "rough" and considerably shorter version of the later expanded and revised title, When Truth Was Treason, noted above under "Books, Drama, and Movies.")
Truth & Treason Official Web Site
When Truth Was Treason: German Youth Against Hitler, by Karl-Heinz Schnibbe, with Alan F. Keele and Douglas F. Tobler. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, and Provo: Academic Research Foundation/Stratford Books, 1995/2003.
Hubener Vs. Hitler: A Biography of Helmuth Hubener, by Richard Lloyd Dewey. Provo: Academic Research Foundation/Stratford Books, 2004.
[edit] External linksTruth & Conviction, a documentary on Hübener from BYU Television
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