# data[].attributes.body
A teen arrested and executed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Helmuth Günther Guddat Hübener (8 January 1925 - 27 October 1942), was the youngest opponent of the Third Reich to be sentenced to death by the Special People's Court ( Volksgerichtshof) and executed.

Hübener came from an apolitical, religious 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, a Nazi sympathizer, gave him the name Hübener.[citation needed ]

Since early childhood, Hübener had been a member of the Boy Scouts, an organization strongly supported by the LDS Church, but in 1935 the National Socialists 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 ban 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 "Rudi" 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 Hübener's St. Georg Branch (congregation), thus stirring controversy with the majority who were non- or anti-Nazis.[citation needed ]

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 these was then strictly forbidden in Nazi Germany, being considered a form of treason. In the summer of that same year, Hübener discovered his older half-brother Gerhard's shortwave radio in a hallway closet. It had been given to Gerhard early that year by a soldier returning from service in France. Helmuth began listening to the BBC on his own, and he used what he heard to compose various anti-national socialist 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 one of his pamphlets, for example, he wrote:

In late 1941, his listening involved three friends: 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. 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.

On 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 co-worker and Nazi Party member Heinrich Mohn, who denounced him.

On 11 August 1942, at age 17, Hübener was tried as an adult by the Special People's Court ( Volksgerichtshof) in Berlin, which was in charge of matters of treason. Hübener was sentenced to death. After the sentence was read, Hübener faced the judges and said, "Now I must die, even though I have committed no crime. So now it's my turn, but your turn will come." He hoped his confrontational tactics would focus the judge's wrath on him and spare his companions.

As stated in the proclamation, 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 the prison guards were allowed to torture and abuse him, and he was not allowed bedding or blankets in his cold cell.

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, 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) disagreed, 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 Special People's Court verdict. Hübener was only told of the Ministry's decision at 1:05 p.m. on the scheduled day of execution.

On 27 October, at the age of 17, he was beheaded by guillotine in the execution room at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin at 8:13 p.m. His two friends, Schnibbe and Wobbe, who had also been arrested, were given prison sentences of five and ten years respectively.

In 1937, the president of the LDS Church, Heber J. Grant, had visited Germany and urged the members to remain, get along, and not cause trouble.[citation needed ] Consequently, some church members saw Hübener as a troublemaker who made things difficult for other Latter-day Saints in Germany. This recommendation did not change after Kristallnacht, which occurred the year following Grant's visit, after which he evacuated all non-German Latter-day Saint missionaries.

Local Latter-day Saint branch president, Arthur Zander, was a supporter of the Nazi Party, and had affixed a notice to the meetinghouse entrance stating "Jews not welcome". Ten days after the arrest of Hübener, on 15 February 1942, Zander excommunicated the young man demonstratively, without consulting his church superiors or holding the church court normally prerequisite for excommunication or other discipline.

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!" (Excerpt from a letter written by Hübener, the only one believed to still exist.)

In 1946, four years later and after the war, Hübener was posthumously reinstated into the LDS Church by new mission president, Max Zimmer, saying the excommunication was not carried through with the proper procedures. He was also posthumously rebaptized, ordained an elder, and endowed in 1948.

A youth centre, school and a pathway in Hamburg are named after Helmuth Hübener. The last 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 was located in the former guillotine chamber that has since been changed to highlight other victims. Floral tributes are often placed in memory of Hübener and others put to death by the Nazis there.

Depiction in books, drama and film

Hübener's story has been the subject of various literary, dramatic, and cinematic works. In 1970, German author Günter Grass published the book Local Anaesthetic, about the Hübener group.

In 1979 Thomas F. Rogers, a university teacher at Brigham Young University, wrote a play titled Huebener, which has had several runs in various venues. Hübener's two co-accused friends, Karl-Heinz Schnibbe and Rudi Wobbe, attended some of the performances, albeit in different circumstances. Wobbe died of cancer in 1992; Schnibbe died in 2010. In February 2014, Huebener made its high school premiere in St. George, Utah.

In 1995, the first-hand account When Truth Was Treason was published, narrated by Karl-Heinz Schnibbe and written by Blair R. Holmes, a professional historian, and Alan F. Keele, a German-language specialist. A newer edition was published in 2003 (see Holmes & Keele 2003).

The book Hübener Vs. Hitler by Richard Lloyd Dewey (2004), is, in this revised and expanded edition, a biography written in a popular-historical style. It includes interviews with all then-living friends and close relatives of Hübener. It also utilizes primary investigative documents from the Nazi era.

Rudolf Gustav 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 Special People's court of Nazi Germany where he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his participation in anti-Nazi resistance. Rudi, as he was known, also describes events leading up to the trials of the three German youths and his own experience as a prisoner. This book was later republished as Three Against Hitler.

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, also covers Hübener's story.

Hübener's story was documented in the 2003 documentary Truth & Conviction, written and directed by Rick McFarland and Matt Whitaker.

The story was also depicted in Resistance Movement, an independent 2012 film.

Beuys, Barbara (1987). Vergeßt uns nicht - Menschen im Widerstand 1933-1945 (in German). Berlin: Rowohlt Verlag. ISBN 3498005111.

Gedenkstätte Plötzensee (Brigitte Oleschinski, published by the Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, and also listed in the German article).

Review of Ulrich Sander's book Jugendwiderstand im Krieg. Die Helmuth-Hübener-Gruppe.

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).

Holmes, Blair R.; Keele, Alan F. (2003). When Truth Was Treason: German Youth Against Hitler. Narrator: Karl-Heinz Schnibbe. Foreword: Klaus J. Hansen. Academic Research Foundation. ISBN 9780929753140.

Dewey, Richard Lloyd (2004). Hübener Vs. Hitler: A Biography of Helmuth Hübener. Academic Research Foundation. ISBN 978-0929753133.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Helmuth Günther Guddat Hübener (8 January 1925 - 27 October 1942), was the youngest opponent of the Third Reich to be sentenced to death by the Special People's Court ( Volksgerichtshof) and executed. Hübener came from an apolitical, religious family in Hamburg, Germany.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Helmuth Hübener war erst 17 Jahre alt, als er in Berlin-Plötzensee enthauptet wurde. Die Hinrichtung des jüngsten vom Volksgerichtshof zum Tode verurteilten Widerstandskämpfers gegen den Nationalsozialismus jährt sich am Samstag, den 27. Oktober 2012, zum 70. Mal. Ein Anlass für Gemeinden und Gläubige der Kirche Jesu Christi der Heiligen der Letzten Tage, eines Glaubensbruders zu gedenken.

Am Jahrestag legen Vertreter der Kirche im Rahmen eines stillen Gedenkens am Ort der Hinrichtung einen Kranz nieder. Nähere Details erhalten Medienvertreter bei der Pressestelle der Kirche vorab per E-Mail.

Eingeladen ist die Öffentlichkeit zu einer Gedenkveranstaltung mit musikalischer Umrahmung am Samstag, den 27. Oktober, um 19 Uhr im Pfahlhaus der Kirche Jesu Christi Jesu Christi der Heiligen der Letzten Tage in Hübeners Geburtsstadt Hamburg, Wartenau 20. Ihre Teilnahme zugesagt haben Staatssekretär a.D. Frerich Görts und Professor Alan Keele. Görts ist Sprecher der Kirche Jesu Christi in Deutschland. Keele ist emeritierter Professor der Brigham Young University und befasst sich seit über 30 Jahren mit dem deutschen Widerstand gegen Hitler.

Keele spricht auch am Sonntag, den 28. Oktober, um 19 Uhr auf Einladung der Stadtteilinitiative Hamburg-Hamm im Stadtteilarchiv Hamm in der Carl-Petersen-Straße 76 über das Schicksal des jugendlichen Widerstandskämpfers.

Des weiteren hält er Vorträge in den Gemeindezentren der Kirche Jesu Christi der Heiligen der Letzten Tage in Leipzig, Düsseldorf und Heidelberg:
Montag, den 29. Oktober, um 20 Uhr in der Oeserstraße 39 in 04229 Leipzig. Dienstag, den 30. Oktober, um 19 Uhr im Mörsenbroicher Weg 184 in 40480 Düsseldorf. Donnerstag, den 1. November, um 19 Uhr im Wieblinger Weg 11-15 in 69213 Heidelberg.
Der Eintritt zu allen Veranstaltungen ist frei.

Helmuth Hübener gehörte der landläufig als "Mormonen" bekannten Kirche Jesu Christi der Heiligen der Letzten Tage an. Er nutzte die Schreibmaschine seiner Hamburger Kirchengemeinde, die er als ehrenamtlicher Sekretär zwecks Verfassens von Protokollen und Briefen an die Soldaten an der Front in die Wohnung seiner Großeltern nehmen durfte, um Flugschriften gegen Hitlers Unrechtsregime herzustellen. Seine aktivsten Mitstreiter kannte Helmuth aus seiner Kirchengemeinde.

Dennoch war Helmuths politische Widerstandsarbeit nicht typisch für die etwa 15.000 deutschen Mormonen zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus. Die Gläubigen versuchten damals mehrheitlich, die aktive politische Beteiligung zu umgehen. Helmuths Hamburger Gemeindeleiter hingegen war ein engagierter Nationalsozialist und ließ am Eingang der Versammlungsräume ein Schild mit der Aufschrift "Juden ist der Zutritt verboten" anbringen, was für die Kirche Jesu Christi der Heiligen der Letzten Tage keine übliche Praxis war. Helmuth war entsetzt und lernte, zwischen seinem eigenen tief empfundenen Glauben und dem Handeln anderer Gemeindemitglieder zu unterscheiden. In seinem letzten erhaltenen Brief, verfasst am Tag seiner Hinrichtung an die befreundete Familie Sommerfeld, schrieb er: "Mein Vater im Himmel weiß, dass ich nichts Unrechtes getan habe [...] Ich weiß, dass Gott lebt, und Er wird der gerechte Richter über diese Sache sein."

Günter Grass nahm die Geschichte der Helmuth-Hübener-Gruppe als Basis für seinen 1969 erschienenen Roman "Örtlich betäubt". Derzeit werden die Ereignisse um die Gruppe verfilmt. In Hamburg sind ein Jugendhaus, ein Weg und eine Stadtteilschule nach Hübener benannt.

Interviewanfragen für Professor Keele sind per E-Mail zu richten an die Pressestelle der Kirche in Frankfurt am Main.

Literaturhinweise:
Karl-Heinz Schnibbe, Jugendliche gegen Hitler. Die Helmuth-Hübener-Gruppe in Hamburg 1941/42, Berg am See 1991.
Ulrich Sander, Jugendwiderstand im Krieg. Die Helmuth-Hübener-Gruppe 1942/1942, Bonn 2002.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Helmuth Hübener war erst 17 Jahre alt, als er in Berlin-Plötzensee enthauptet wurde. Die Hinrichtung des jüngsten vom Volksgerichtshof zum Tode verurteilten Widerstandskämpfers gegen den Nationalsozialismus jährt sich am Samstag, den 27. Oktober 2012, zum 70. Mal. Ein Anlass für Gemeinden und Gläubige der Kirche Jesu Christi der Heiligen der Letzten Tage, eines Glaubensbruders zu gedenken.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Helmuth Hübener on the Day of His Execution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Helmuth Hübener, a 16-year-old Mormon youth living in Hitler’s Germany, exhibited unprecedented moral courage in opposing the propaganda machine of the Nazi regime in the summer of 1941. For …