The Boy Who Dared

by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

  After the war, Karl befriended Gerhard Düwer. “He told me he was ashamed about the way he denounced Helmuth,” said Karl. “He apologized and I forgave — just as Helmuth had done. There’s no reason to hold a grudge or to hate. If you forgive, you’re forgiven.”

  Karl explained his capacity for forgiveness. “Who’s perfect?” said Karl. “Not you or I. People cannot judge. They have no idea how it really was, how the Gestapo will get information out of you.”

  Fellow church member Heinrich Worbs died shortly after his release from the concentration camp.

  It is unknown what became of Helmuth’s fellow apprentice Werner Kranz, whom Helmuth had approached to translate the leaflets into French.

  On May 12, 1950, Heinrich Mohns, the political overseer who reported Helmuth to the Gestapo, was tried and convicted as a war criminal. He received a two-year prison sentence for “crimes against humanity,” but his sentence was later nullified.

  Helmuth’s Oberbau teacher, August Meins, described Helmuth as a modest, diligent, likeable student. But it was obvious to Meins that Helmuth did not agree with the principles of National Socialism. “I could always observe his reaction, his eyes, when different things were discussed by the class. Many times, I could tell he thought like me,” said Meins. “But we never spoke about his thoughts or our thoughts. It was too dangerous.”

  Still, when Meins learned about Helmuth’s anti-Nazi activities and his subsequent arrest, he was plagued by one question. “How did he come to the resistance? Wasn’t it stupidity? He had to know that resistance was pointless.”

  The teacher’s question is one that Helmuth’s own brother Gerhard Kunkel has asked himself. “I was angry at the Nazis. They could have handled Helmuth a little different. He was no adult — he was still a teenager,” Gerhard told me. “But I was also angry at Helmuth. He should have known better than that, being as smart as he was. He knew the laws of the land. A sixteen-year-old boy cannot change the government.”

  Gerhard and his brother Hans emigrated to the United States in 1952.

  * * *

  There are many reasons for a person to lie, but to have a reason to tell the truth, you must have a deep belief. And great courage. Helmuth possessed these things — and held on to them even when the Nazis called him a traitor and sentenced him to death.

  Helmuth Hübener is a boy who dared to speak out for the truth.

  Helmuth and his family. (Left to right) Oma (Wilhelmina Sudrow), Helmuth (about 2), Opa (Johannes Sudrow), Gerhard (about 6), Hans (about 7), and Mutti (Emma). (Photograph circa 1927. Courtesy Gerhard Kunkel)

  Helmut Guddat Hübener, shortly before his arrest, age 16. (Courtesy Karl-Heinz Schnibbe)

  Gerhard Gustav Kunkel, age 18. (Courtesy Gerhard Kunkel)

  Rudi Wobbe, Helmuth Guddat Hübener, and Karl-Heinz Schnibbe. (Photograph circa 1941. Courtesy Karl-Heinz Schnibbe)

  Helmuth Guddat Hübener. (Photo circa 1940. Courtesy Karl-Heinz Schnibbe)

  Gestapo photographs of Helmuth Guddat Hübener, taken February 1942. (Courtesy Karl-Heinz Schnibbe)

  Red poster announcing Helmuth’s execution. (Courtesy Karl-Heinz Schnibbe)

  TRANSLATION:

  Let It Be Known.

  On 11 August, 1942, the People’s Court sentenced 17-year-old Helmuth Hubener of Hamburg, to being stripped of his citizen’s rights, and in addition, to death, because of his treasonous support of the enemy. His execution has been carried out today, the 27th of October, by the order of the chief attorney gereral of the People’s Court.

  Karl-Heinz Schnibbe (left); Helmuth (center); Rudi Wobbe. Photo taken at memorial service in Helmuth’s honor in Hamburg, Germany in 1985.

  (Photo courtesy Karl-Heinz Schnibbe)

  Gerhard Kunkel, August 2005. (Photo taken by the author)

  Memorial wreath for Helmuth in his execution chamber, Plötzensee prison, Berlin, Germany, 2004.

  (Photo taken by the author)

  This map illustrates the borders of Europe in 1936, as established by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the first World War. That year, Adolf Hitler violated the treaty when he remilitarized the Rhineland.

  In 1938, he annexed Austria and Sudetenland, and in early 1939, Czechoslovakia. Each time he violated the treaty, he continued to promise world leaders and the German people that he wanted peace, not war. In September 1939, he invaded Poland.

  1918

  • The Great War, later known as the First World War, ends (November).

  1919

  • The Treaty of Versailles is signed (June).

  • The German Reich, known today as the Weimar Republic, is established as the official government in Germany (August). Today, most historians agree that the harsh Treaty of Versailles helped create the conditions responsible for Hitler’s rise to power.

  1923

  • Adolf Hitler and his Storm Troopers are arrested, for attempting to overthrow the Reich (November).

  1924

  • Hitler is found guilty of treason. From his jail cell, he pens a propagandistic and political autobiography, Mein Kampf. Hitler released from jail (December).

  1925

  • Adolf Hitler begins to rebuild the Nazi Party (March).

  1926

  • Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) officially formed.

  1933

  • Hitler appointed chancellor (January).

  • Reichstag building burns and Marinus van der Lubbe arrested for arson (February). Today, it is hard to determine who set the fire — the Communists or the Nazis — but it is agreed that Hitler used the event as a pretext to eliminate political opposition and to frighten the German people into casting their votes for the Nazi Party.

  • Enabling Acts grant Hitler dictatorial powers (March).

  • Nazis boycott Jewish stores and businesses (April).

  • Nazis burn un-German books (May).

  • The People’s Radio is unveiled at the Tenth Radio Exhibition (August).

  1934

  • Van der Lubbe is executed for setting fire to the Reichstag (February).

  • President Hindenburg dies and Hitler becomes Führer (August).

  1935

  • Hitler initiates mandatory Reich Labor Service for young people and begins to rearm Germany.

  • Nazis pass the Nuremberg Race Laws against the Jews, stripping them of all political and civil rights. The Race Laws identified a Jew as anyone who had three or four Jewish grandparents (September).

  1936

  • The Gestapo are placed above the law (February).

  • German troops reoccupy the Rhineland (March).

  • Summer Olympic Games are held in Berlin (August).

  • The Hitler Youth law makes membership compulsory for all eligible youth, ages 10–18 (December).

  1938

  • Germany annexes Austria (March) and the Sudetenland (November).

  • Nazi-orchestrated riots against Jews (Kristallnacht) take place all over Germany, killing 236 Jews; burning 1,300 synagogues; vandalizing and destroying more than 7,000 Jewish shops, businesses, schools, and private homes; and arresting more than 30,000 Jews, many never to be seen again. Two days later, the Nazis ordered the Jews to pay one billion Reichsmarks (about $400 million) as punishment for a Nazi official’s death (November).

  1939

  • Hitler threatens Jews during speech to Reichstag.

  • Germany annexes Czechoslovakia (March). Hitler toughens Hitler Youth law, conscripting remaining eligible youth (March). Hitler Youth membership now totals more than seven million boys and girls.

  • Hitler and Stalin create the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (August).

  • On August 31, the SS dress in Polish uniforms and launch a fake attack on a German radio station in southwest Poland. The next day, Adolf Hitler lies, claiming that Polish soldiers fired upon German soldiers, and he orders the invasion of Poland. England and France declare war on Germany (September).

  • Poland falls (September).

>   • The Extraordinary Radio Law is passed, making the intentional listening to enemy propaganda an offense punishable by death (September).

  • The first deportation of Jews to concentration camps in Poland (October).

  1940

  • British bombing raids begin over Hamburg.

  • Nazis begin Battle of Britain bombing campaign (July).

  • Germany conquers Denmark, Norway, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.

  1941

  • Rudolf Hess, the third highest-ranking Nazi, deserts and flies secretly to England to negotiate a peace agreement (May).

  • Greece and Yugoslavia fall to Germans.

  • Yugoslavia, Greece, Bulgaria, Italy, and Romania join Nazis.

  • Germany invades Soviet Russia (June).

  • German Jews must wear Jewish star (September).

  • Mass murder of 33,000 Jews at Babi-Yar in Soviet Russia (September).

  • Germany declares war on the U.S. (December).

  1942

  • Nazis hold Wannsee Conference to formalize plans for the “final solution of the Jewish problem” (January).

  • German army lays siege to Moscow and heads toward Leningrad (October).

  1943

  • Germany suffers a major defeat at Stalingrad (January).

  • Allies carpet bomb Hamburg, killing at least 43,000 (July).

  1944

  • Allied troops launch D-Day invasion (June).

  1945

  • Germany collapses as Allies invade (February–April).

  • Hitler commits suicide in his bunker, but the Nazis lie, telling the German people that Hitler was killed at the head of his troops while defending Berlin (April).

  • Germany surrenders unconditionally (May).

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  For your reference, the page numbers that appear in the print version of this book are listed below. They do not match the page numbers in your ebook.

  This book has been greatly informed by Karl-Heinz Schnibbe and Gerhard Kunkel, whom I was privileged to interview in their homes, through e-mail, and over the telephone. In the midst of writing this book, I learned that Gerhard passed away. He was eighty-five years old.

  For those wishing to read a factual account of Helmuth’s life and the lives of Rudi Wobbe and Karl-Heinz Schnibbe, I recommend Rudi Wobbe’s memoir, Before the Blood Tribunal; Karl-Heinz Schnibbe’s memoir, The Price; and Blair R. Holmes and Alan F. Keele’s wonderfully sourced and documented When Truth Was Treason: German Youth Against Hitler. For those who read German, Ulrich Sander’s Jugendwiderstand im Krieg: Die Helmuth-Hübener Gruppe 1941/1942 provides an outstanding collection of primary source material and documents. Quotations on pages 125, 136–137, 144, 146, 158–159, 161, 162, 170–171, and 173–174 have been translated from Sander’s book, and are used with permission from Pahl-Rügenstein Verlag (Bonn, Germany). I thank Brigitte Weinsteiger and Erika Weinsteiger for their translation.

  Young readers interested in another fictional treatment of Helmuth’s story will enjoy Michael Tunnel’s Brothers in Valor (Holiday House, 2001).

  For background research on life in Germany during the Third Reich, I am grateful to the following select sources: William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Berlin Diaries; H. W. Koch, The Hitler Youth: Origins and Development; David Crew (editor), Nazism and German Society; C. L. Sulzberger, New History of World War II (revised and edited by Stephen Ambrose); John Toland, World War II; Fritz Brennecke, Nazi Primer: Official Handbook for Schooling the Hitler Youth (translated by Harwood I. Childs).

  For Hitler’s words and the BBC broadcasts found on pages 21, 98, 109, and 114, I drew from Hitler’s Speeches and Proclamations 1932–1945: The Chronicle of a Dictatorship; and contemporaneous articles published in The New York Times and the Völkischer Beobachter.

  The official records of Helmuth Hübener’s arrest and trial are archived in the Bundesarchiv (Berlin, Germany). I thank Herr Grunwald for his long-distance assistance in obtaining document groups NJ 1125, R 3017/8, J 127/42g, and RY 1/2/3, 147. Quotations on pages 140–141, 161, 162, and 169–170 are translated from these documents.

  The worst experience can bring out a person’s deepest strength. When some people are hit by adversity, they show an amazing capacity for survival, heroism, and faith. To better understand this strength, I read books such as Al Siebert’s The Survivor Personality and Laurence Gonzales’s Deep Survival. I also turned to the life and writings of the deeply spiritual theologian and Nazi-resister Dietrich Bonhoffer, who was executed by the Nazis in 1945. These writings included Ethics, A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoffer, and most especially, Letters and Papers from Prison.

  It surprises some people to learn that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) has been in Germany since 1840. The church had about one thousand members living in Hamburg during the war.

  I am grateful to the LDS church for honoring and preserving Helmuth’s memory in the invaluable archives found in the Historical Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah. I thank LDS church members Nadine Hubbard (Moscow, Pennsylvania) and Tim Wadham (Phoenix, Arizona) for reading this manuscript and for answering my many questions. The LDS Web site (www.LDS.org) and Drew Williams’s A Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Mormonism furthered my understanding of the Mormon faith.

  I am also grateful for the work of Johannes Brahms, who was born in Hamburg. His masterpiece Ein deutches Requiem, or German Requiem, offers a sacred “mass for humanity” that emphasizes comfort for the living, and that inspired and sustained me during the writing of this book.

  Special thanks to Hermann Teifer, archivist at the Leo Baeck Institute, for his expert fact-checking of the manuscript. Thanks also to National Holocaust Museum docent William Werner Hess and to LDS Church members Tim Wadham and Nadine Hubbard for their invaluable consultations. And to Carole Hess of Nürnberg, Germany, for translating the notice in the Author’s Note.

  SUSAN CAMPBELL BARTOLETTI encountered Helmuth Hübener’s amazing story while writing Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow. She was so moved by his heroic actions that she wanted to flesh out his story into a fictional form. She also wanted to provide a dramatic meditation on the meaning of his short life that raises questions about moral courage, nationalism, and the responsibility of the individual. Ms. Bartoletti is the author of many award-winning books for young people. She lives in Moscow, PA, with her husband. They have two children.

  Text copyright © 2008 by Susan Campbell Bartoletti.

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bartoletti, Susan Campbell

  The boy who dared / by Susan Campbell Bartoletti. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In October 1942, seventeen-year-old Helmuth Hübener, imprisoned for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets, recalls his past life and how he came to dedicate himself to bring the truth about Hitler and the war to the German people.

  1. Hübener, Helmuth, 1925–1942 — Juvenile fiction. [1. Hübener, Helmuth, 1925–1942 — Fiction. 2. Courage — Fiction. 3. Anti-Nazi movement — Fiction. 4. Germany — History — 1933–1945 — Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.B2844Boy 2008

  [Fic] — dc22      2007014166

  First edition, February 2008

  Book and cover design by Phil Falco

  e-ISBN 978-1-338-21431-4

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