History
This story about Helmuth Hubener chronicles his years in school and his first job after graduation. Helmuth took an apprenticeship in the Bieberhaus, which is at the Social Welfare Department at City Hall. Although originally proud of the Fatherland and an enthusiastic participant in the Jungvolk, the Hitler Youth group, Helmuth became disillusioned as Nazi power and policies spread in Germany. Helmuth and a group of friends including Karl-Heinz Schnibbe, Rudolf Wobbe, and Gerhard Duwer, monitored banned radio broadcasts, in which the Allied Powers gave an accurate portrayal of the war in Europe rather than the version told thru Axis propaganda. The friends printed pamphlets that were critical of Nazi Germany and distributed them to the public. Their activities were discovered by a co-worker of Helmuth's at the Bieberhaus and they were turned into the Gestapo, where Helmuth was interrogated, beaten, and arrested for what was considered treason. Helmuth's friends received lighter sentences for their crimes. A brief trial for "show" was held at the People's Court or Volksgerichtshof, and at age seventeen, Helmuth Hubener was executed at Plotzensee Prison in Berlin, becoming the youngest person in history executed for opposing the Third Reich.
Read more about this topic: The Boy Who Dared
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more, it is the history of earth and of heaven.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)