Hitler Youth and Danish Resistance
At the age of 12, Schafer was pressured into joining the Hitler Youth. In 1943 he was stationed in Denmark with the occupation forces. In Denmark, he risked his life to work with the Danish resistance under the leadership of Damgaard Hansen. He was betrayed, captured by the Gestapo, found guilty of espionage, and sentenced to death. He was jailed for six months while awaiting execution. Twice, he was placed in front of firing squads in an effort to coerce him into betraying members of the resistance. He refused to name names and, at 17, started a hunger strike.
On March 16, 1945, Heinrich Himmler commuted his death sentence to 15 years in prison. Shafer's father had been writing to the prison, begging for his son's release, though it is unclear what effect this had. When the Allied Forces liberated Berlin, Schafer had worked 18 months hard labor in Grabow, Mecklenburg, Germany.
Read more about this topic: Georg Schafer
Famous quotes containing the words hitler, youth and/or resistance:
“As soon as by one’s own propaganda even a glimpse of right on the other side is admitted, the cause for doubting one’s own right is laid.”
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“Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.”
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