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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 his trouble he was arrested on February 5, 1942 (less than a month after turning 17), brutally interrogated and later tortured in Gestapo prisons in Hamburg and Berlin, and then finally beheaded by guillotine in the Gestapo’s Berlin Plötzensee prison on October 27, 1942 as the youngest person (at age 17) to be sentenced by Hitler’s special “People’s Court” and executed for conspiracy to commit treason against the Nazi regime.
http://bycommonconsent.com/2014/10/27/helmuth-hubener-on-the-day-of-his-execution/ And excommunicated by his Nazi branch president, who had pinned a “No Jews admitted” sign on the chapel door…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmuth_H%C3%BCbener Quote: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 “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 Helmuth’s St.Georg Branch (congregation), thus stirring controversy with the majority who were non- or anti-Nazis.)
Yes. I would consider him a hero. Took a lot of guts to simply do what is right and let the consequences follow. Yes, it takes a lot of courage and/or conviction to stand up to friends and colleagues, no matter the consequences. In his case, I agree that it was heroic.
There is definitely a need in life to pick your battles, but I think that groups would go off the rails much less if more people were like Helmuth. I just watched part of the Nightline story about the FLDS. It seems to me over time that they have been led very astray and I think a few (more) people putting their foot down and not tolerating abuse of power would have stopped them.
As a parent I can see someone not taking on the Nazi’s so as to be able to be around to be a parent. It is unusual for such a young person to have such a moral backbone.
LookingHard wrote:…
I just watched part of the Nightline story about the FLDS. It seems to me over time that they have been led very astray and I think a few (more) people putting their foot down and not tolerating abuse of power would have stopped them.
Indeed.
Btw. Has the church ever talked about this in like GC talk or something?
I know it was talked about at BYU and some play was put on campus about it, including his excommunication but it was controversial and wasn’t allowed to be on long and went away. The interesting thing is that the branch president who got Huebener excommunicated had been a convert of two years, whereas Huebener had been a member all his short life. I really wonder if the branch president was some kind of Nazi infiltrator, since the Gestapo certainly did that to a lot of organizations, and many of the LDS where he was, were apparently Social Democrats (i.e. left of center). Sunday was the first I’d heard of him. But good on him – he had the guts to do what many Germans did not. A lot of what I’ve heard about the LDS in the Nazi regime consists of them handing over genealogical data (urgh!).
At least one of his friends in the resistance cell (which consisted of three LDS teenagers) did survive until a few years ago. Good on him too.
It’s a pity we can’t celebrate him as much as other Mormon martyrs from the 19th century. I’m sure Helmuth Hübener will be in the Celestial Kingdom, unlike some other people we worship as heroes!
SamBee wrote:The interesting thing is that the branch president who got Huebener excommunicated had been a convert of two years, whereas Huebener had been a member all his short life. I really wonder if the branch president was some kind of Nazi infiltrator, since the Gestapo certainly did that to a lot of organizations, and many of the LDS where he was, were apparently Social Democrats (i.e. left of center).!
He might have been. But also in some of the reading I have done on this there was a lot of the church capitulating in order to be allowed to continue. Some other churches resisted the Nazi’s and they were shut down. The LDS church actually was generally on good terms with the Nazi government. There was that distasteful issue with the LDS church helping with Jew / non-Jew ancestry.Also some of the early resistance to the play going on at BYU dealt with the fact that at the time the cold war was still going on and the church had congregations inside the soviet union. They didn’t want to send the signal that the LDS church supporting giving the middle finger to a government. They were afraid this could cause issues for the church and the members behind the iron curtain.
SamBee wrote:It’s a pity we can’t celebrate him as much as other Mormon martyrs from the 19th century. I’m sure Helmuth Hübener will be in the Celestial Kingdom, unlike some other people we worship as heroes!
I agree. There is even another German member that on the night when the Nazi’s came down on the Jews that he took 2 Jewish friends (at much peril) and smuggled them out of the country. The church didn’t want to say anything about him probably because he had a real issue keeping his pants on, so even though he had a noble streak – he also was human. Aren’t we all?There is a good book out now called “Moroni and the Swastika: Mormons in Nazi Germany”. Quite an interesting book.
He is on one of my hero’s. Years ago BYU TV ran a full documentary on him. They interviewed his few surviving friends and recounted the events. It was chilling. I bought the small book connected to it. You can buy it on amazon. Three Against Hitlerhttp://www.amazon.com/Three-Against-Hitler-Rudi-Wobbe/dp/1591560268 ” class=”bbcode_url”> http://www.amazon.com/Three-Against-Hitler-Rudi-Wobbe/dp/1591560268 On the church and Nazism, we have a massive book of the Sunday Sections of the Deseret News – that spans forever. One page shows the first presidency attending Sacrament Meeting in Eastern Europe during the occupation. The swastika flags are hanging from the ceiling, a picture of Hitler on the wall. It really throws you. Not what you’d imagine, knowing what we do now about The Third Reich’s efforts.
Remember, that flag was omnipresent at the time – a government mandate. I also have seen that image, and it is jarring, but it would have been there no matter what. I am prone to cut the members and leaders there HUGE slack, even as I applaud and am amazed by Hubener’s courage and conviction. When the choice appears to be cooperate or have your congregation shut down and possibly be killed, I am hesitant to cast blame of any kind.
Old-Timer wrote:Remember, that flag was omnipresent at the time – a government mandate. I also have seen that image, and it is jarring, but it would have been there no matter what.
I am prone to cut the members and leaders there HUGE slack, even as I applaud and am amazed by Hubener’s courage and conviction. When the choice appears to be cooperate or have your congregation shut down and possibly be killed, I am hesitant to cast blame of any kind.
I didn’t say it quite so clearly, but I was hinting at the same sentiment. Also when the Nazi’s started taking power the average person could not have seen where it was going to go. So at first it wasn’t a big deal. Be nice to the new government even if you are not 100% on board (they probably were less vocal than the uber-conservatives in the US saying that Obama was going to run the US into the ground). As time went along it was probably either continue to walk the line of compromising or come out in opposition to the government and face SEVERE consequences – both individually and the church.Old-Timer wrote:When the choice appears to be cooperate or have your congregation shut down and possibly be killed, I am hesitant to cast blame of any kind.
If we believe that our leaders are inspired, why didn’t God tell our leaders that Hitler was an evil man, and no amount of appeasement to keep our congregations open could compensate for the evils this man would commit in the coming years? Our church , and the Catholic church, come out smelling less that rosy in this mess.
Lookinghard wrote:Also when the Nazi’s started taking power the average person could not have seen where it was going to go
This only works if you think our Prophet is an “average person”. The church teaches us he is NOT average. How much slack to we cut the prophet for not foreseeing one of the worlds greatest genocides?
hindsight is a wonderful luxury, especially when expectations don’t match history. Seriously, our scriptures describe prophets who led or supported wars that committed true genocide. Questioning the orthodox view of prophets is one thing (which we do regularly here), but rejecting ours while upholding Old Testament prophets is illogical, to say the least.
If this hasn’t already been revealed. the church reversed the excommunication of Hubener after the fall of the Nazi regime. The local church may have excommunicated him to protect the saints that were in Germany, as groups that did not support the Nazi government (like Jehovah’s Witnesses) were persecuted. Just to highlight how sick the Nazi regime was, after Helmut was excommunicated, his family received a bill for his maintenance in prison.
This is one case where I hope history never repeats itself, where totalitatarian leaders like the Nazis get hold of our North American society and impose such heartless laws on us all.
Sheldon wrote:This only works if you think our Prophet is an “average person”. The church teaches us he is NOT average. How much slack to we cut the prophet for not foreseeing one of the worlds greatest genocides?
One of the things that I’ve had to change is my view on prophets. In reading RSR it became apparant to me that JS did not know what was going to happen. I currently do not believe that JS or any of our LDS prophets have been able to accurately predict the future. Looking back I am not sure that any prophet ever has. I believe that TSM is our legally apointed administrative head. I do not believe that he knows things through supernatural means.It is perhaps a different issue that the church through both formal and informal channels seems to teach that he does (know things through supernatural means).
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