The guards sit across from the four boys, take out a deck of playing cards. Helmuth looks at Rudi and Karl. Hot tears flood his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispers to them. “I tried to hold out.”
His guard shoots a warning look. “Not one word about your case!” he says firmly.
Helmuth falls quiet. Karl cups his hand over Helmuth’s, squeezes. So does Rudi. The three friends sit there for the longest while, one hand atop the other.
It is Karl who breaks the silence first. “Remember when I brought the false teeth to church?” he says. Helmuth remembers, and he laughs. For the rest of the trip, the boys swap stories.
* * *
Moabit Prison, Berlin. Helmuth meets his court-appointed lawyer, Herr Doctor Knie. He’s a nervous man wearing a crooked red bow tie and a Nazi party pin on his lapel. He spends the short time rifling through papers, asking simple questions, but not taking any notes. Helmuth’s heart sinks. His lawyer does not work for him. He works for the Nazi government.
* * *
Nighttime. Another sleepless night. Helmuth goes over the terrible interrogations again and again, turning each over in his head. Wants to be able to recall each detail so that he’s consistent in his answers.
* * *
August 11, 1942. The People’s Court. The four boys are hustled into the courtroom. Helmuth wears the same clothes he wore the day of his arrest, seven months ago. His trousers hang loosely, his white collared shirt flutters about, so thin he has grown. It is the same with his friends. But they have been permitted to shower with real soap, and so they look scrubbed.
The courtroom has dark oak floors. Dark wood-paneled walls. Three bloodred-swastika black banners hang from ceiling to floor. A large portrait of Adolf Hitler. And it’s packed with spectators, mostly reporters. Murmurs ripple over the room as the boys enter.
A guard uncuffs Karl, Rudi, and Gerhard, but Helmuth is left cuffed, his hands chained behind his back. That tells Helmuth something. That the justices have already decided he is the most important criminal, that he has committed a most serious offense. He feels nauseous. The more serious the justices consider the offense, the less likely that Helmuth will be tried as a juvenile.
Helmuth looks around the crowded room, spots Herr Doctor Knie. Gestapo agent Müssner. Heinrich Mohns, his boss from the Bieberhaus, wearing his Nazi Party uniform. Werner Kranz, the apprentice. Werner looks pained, as if dragged there by the scruff of his neck. Herr Schnibbe, Karl’s father. No Mutti. No Oma or Opa. Helmuth is relieved. He couldn’t bear to see their anguished faces.
At ten o’clock the tall wooden doors swing open, and the courtroom falls quiet. At once, everyone rises as seven justices enter. Three wear bloodred caps and flowing red robes with a large golden eagle emblazoned on the front. The others wear stiffly pressed SS and military uniforms. There is no jury. The justices are the jury.
The trial opens with a slam of the gavel that rings throughout the courtroom. One of the red-robed justices — Justice Engert — asks the boys simple questions — name, birth date, residence, occupation — and then reviews the charges against each boy. Deliberate listening to foreign radio stations … Willfully distributing newscasts of foreign radio stations … Conspiracy to commit high treason.
Chief Justice Fikeis takes over, barking out question after question, testing each boy’s knowledge about Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. “Wobbe, what is our Führer’s birthday?” “Schnibbe, what are the words to the ‘Horst Wessel’?” “Düwer, how many points in the Nazi Program?” Helmuth gets the hardest questions. “Hübener, what are the political aims for the Nazi Party?” He answers each question sharply.
Witnesses are called. Werner Kranz and Heinrich Mohns recount the events of January 20, when Herr Mohns caught Helmuth trying to press a leaflet into Werner’s hand.
Gestapo agent Müssner details each interrogation, word by word from his notes, saying things like, “after lengthy remonstrations” and “after emphatic admonishments Hübener was moved to make a confession about the extent of his destructive activity.”
Helmuth grunts at the words. That’s what the Gestapo call beatings and torture. Remonstrations and admonishments.
The justices don’t miss a detail from the boys’ lives: their Party record books, their school records, their Hitler Youth records, even Rudi’s Lord Lister Detective card becomes evidence against them.
Soon the questioning turns to the boys’ crime. Justice Fikeis rehashes the same questions the boys had answered under interrogation, but there’s a different edge to his questions now. Helmuth concentrates, tries to put his finger on the shift.
Slowly it dawns on Helmuth: Fikeis is questioning them as adults. They are all being tried as adults, not juveniles.
Hot fear spreads through Helmuth. An adult conviction means much worse. A longer prison sentence or possibly the death sentence. He can’t let that happen.
Helmuth focuses, clears his mind. He knows what he must do: He must keep the attention of the justices, he must convince them that he was the ringleader, that Karl and Rudi and Düwer were simply followers, no matter what.
It’s Helmuth’s turn. Chief Justice Fikeis takes out the pamphlets and fliers and clears the courtroom to protect the spectators from the enemy propaganda. The sight of the pamphlets and fliers enrages the judge. “Why did you write these?” he barks at Helmuth.
“To let the people know the truth,” answers Helmuth in a loud, clear voice. The other justices fall deathly silent. He can feel Karl, Rudi, and Düwer stiffen next to him. But Helmuth knows what he’s doing. There’s no other way.
“Do you really believe that the British are telling the truth?” says Fikeis.
“Absolutely. Don’t you?”
Fikeis’s face grows purple with rage. “Do you doubt Germany’s ultimate victory?”
“Do you actually believe that Germany can win the war?”
Justice Fikeis is screaming now: “Are you suggesting that your leaders are lying?”
Helmuth takes a deep breath, and in the most contemptible manner he can muster, says, “Jawohl, ihr lügt.” Yes, you are all liars!
Pandemonium breaks out among the justices. Helmuth’s attorney snaps back, scowls at Helmuth as if to say, Are you crazy?
Helmuth’s insolence launches Justice Fikeis to his feet. He leans over the bench, purple with rage. “You snot-nosed kid, what do you know about war? You are scum! A traitor!” He snaps the file shut, addresses Helmuth’s attorney: “Is there anything else you’d like to say?”
Herr Doctor Knie argues that Helmuth succumbed to the enemy propaganda because he was too immature to resist the temptation. “I ask the court to be lenient, in consideration of his age,” says the attorney.
“That’s enough!” Fikeis glares at Helmuth. “Hübener is no average boy.” He brings another paper out of a folder. Helmuth recognizes the paper: It’s his graduation essay, “The War of the Plutocrats.”
Fikeis rattles the essay at Helmuth’s attorney. “This is the work of a person far above eighteen years. This is no immature youth! The people must be protected from traitors like him! The Fatherland is at stake!”
He replaces the essay, claps the folder shut, slams his fist down on top. “This defendant acted with the thought and cunning of an adult! Consequently he is to be sentenced as an adult. Without exception this precocious young man has long since outgrown his youth.”
Justice Fikeis beckons to the two other justices. They hover behind the bench before drawing back to their chairs. “We are ready for sentencing,” says Fikeis.
The courtroom doors swing open, and the spectators fill their seats. Helmuth’s heart pounds against his rib cage as Justice Fikeis begins. “The court orders the following to be sentenced,” he says in a smug, satisfied voice. “Hübener, for listening to a foreign radio station and distributing the news heard in connection with conspiracy to commit high treason and treasonable support of the enemy: to death and the loss of his civil rights during his lifeti
me.”
All around Helmuth, the courtroom, the justices, the swastika banners explode. Red white yellow blue streak his eyes. His knees buckle. The guard yanks him to his feet. He hears Fikeis pronounce, “Wobbe … conspiracy to commit high treason … ten years imprisonment. Schnibbe … five years imprisonment. Düwer … four years imprisonment…. The defendants are to bear the costs of the proceedings.”
“Have you anything to say?” said Fikeis. “Düwer?”
“No.”
“Schnibbe?”
“No.”
“Wobbe?”
“No.”
“Hübener?”
Helmuth struggles to regain his thoughts, to bring the pieces together. He points a finger at the justices. “All I did was tell the truth, and you have sentenced me to die, just for telling the truth. My time is now but your time will come!”
The courtroom erupts in a roar.
“Shut up!” screams Justice Fikeis. “Push him down! Shut him up!” His gavel slams again and again.
The guards leap upon Helmuth, force him to his seat. His heart slams against his rib cage. He gulps for air. He did the right thing. He knows he did. Otherwise, the justices would execute them all.
* * *
The trial is over. The boys are shackled and led to a small holding cell in the basement. A guard removes the handcuffs from Karl, Rudi, and Düwer, but leaves Helmuth shackled.
“Helmuth!” cries Rudi. “Why did you do that?”
“Because it’s the truth,” says Helmuth. He feels his eyes well with tears and he blinks them away. “I did the right thing. I have no regrets.”
“They will reduce or cancel the verdict,” says Karl. “You’re too young.”
“No,” says Helmuth. “They will make an example out of me.”
A guard returns, says, “Wobbe, Schnibbe, Düwer, get ready to go. You’re going back to Hamburg.”
The boys surround Helmuth, embrace him tightly. “We’ll meet again,” says Karl.
“Good-bye, my friends,” says Helmuth. “We will meet again.”
Helmuth huffs the ink dry on the last letter. It is 8:05 He reads it again, wonders what his family will think, wonders who will tell Mutti. He feels sad for Mutti. He knows his death will be hard on her. For Oma and Opa, too. And Hans and Gerhard. He hopes his letters comfort them. Bring them solace.
The brusque pound of feet. The jangle of keys. The scrape of metal against metal. Helmuth stands, ready. He has made up his mind to go quietly, with dignity and courage.
The door swings open. Two guards enter. “Prisoner Hübener, come with us,” says one. “It is time.” The other shackles Helmuth’s hands behind his back.
Helmuth walks without stumbling, down the long corridor, outside into the courtyard. He draws in the crisp night air. It feels good. It smells like Mutti’s sheets on wash day.
Above the tall redbrick execution shed, between the leafless tree branches, the moon is full, opalescent, and he remembers a night long ago:
Mutti tucking them in,
three brothers,
three dark heads nestled against white pillows,
white moonlight shimmering the walls,
and Helmuth is floating.
Twenty-foot wall surrounding Plötzensee prison in Berlin, Germany. (Photo taken by the author)
March 17, 2004. It’s morning. Soft gray light slips over the tall redbrick wall that surrounds Plötzensee. It stretches across the exercise yard and reaches through the arched windows of the execution chamber. Inside, the light slants across the concrete floor. A vase of flowers and a single evergreen wreath sit where the guillotine once stood.
I am standing where Helmuth stood during the last eighteen seconds of his life. I am standing where nearly 2,200 other men and women stood before they faced the executioner at Plötzensee between the years 1940 and 1945. Many of these victims were sentenced to death as “enemies of the state” because they — like Helmuth Hübener — fought for human rights, political freedom, and truth.
This story is a work of historical fiction: Helmuth Hübener was a real person and his character is based on extensive research — all filtered through my imagination in order to create a dramatic meditation on what Helmuth, his family, and friends lived through.
In a work of fiction in which characters and events are based on real people and their experiences, it is natural for readers to wonder: What really happened?
We don’t know exactly how Helmuth spent his last day on earth. To create scenes, I extracted factual details from his prison records and other primary sources. For other details, I relied on the experiences and writings of people who lived through similar experiences.
We also don’t know exactly what Helmuth wrote in his last letters. No copies remain. But Helmuth’s half brother, Gerhard Kunkel, remembers his own letter from Helmuth.
“I was in Russia when I got Helmuth’s letter,” Gerhard told me. “I burned it, worried that it could get me into trouble. But I memorized the words. It said, ‘I am very grateful to my Father in Heaven that this agonizing life will shortly come to end this evening. I could not stand it any longer. My Father in Heaven knows that I have done nothing wrong. I know that God lives and that He will be the judge in this matter. Until our happy reunion in a better world, I remain your brother in the Gospel. Helmuth.’”
Helmuth’s arrest shocked Gerhard, who received the news at officer training school in Warsaw, Poland. “It was like a ton of bricks hit me,” said Gerhard. “Here I was in the German army, and he’s doing things like that against the government. It hit me hard.”
Gerhard was court-martialed. “For three days I was squeezed [interrogated],” said Gerhard. “I never knew at any moment if they were going to take me out and shoot me as a traitor.”
The Nazis punished Gerhard for delivering the radio, condemning him as “Statspolitisch nicht zuferlässig,” or politically unreliable. “They took my rank away,” said Gerhard. “I was a Lieutenant, and they demoted me to Corporal.”
Gerhard was sent to the Russian front as a forward artillery observer. He fought in Russia, and later in Italy. Wounded three times, he received the Iron Cross, the Medal of Valor, and the Russian Battle Medal. For his actions, he earned back his rank and was released from the rehabilitation unit.
The day after Helmuth was executed, his mother, Emma Guddat Kunkel Hübener, read about her son’s death in the newspaper. She later received an invoice of expenses for Helmuth’s execution: 1.50 Reichsmarks for each day Helmuth was imprisoned, 300 Reichsmarks for the cost of his execution, and 12 Pfennig for the cost of mailing the invoice. In late July 1943, Emma and her parents died in massive bombing attacks on Hamburg that killed an estimated 43,000 people.
Shocked by Helmuth’s harsh sentence, many people wrote letters on his behalf, including his stepfather, Hugo Hübener. After the war, Hugo visited Gerhard several times. “I was surprised by how much he had changed,” said Gerhard. “He brought us some wood so that we could have some fire in the stove and make some food. And he even came to church with us. He sat through all the sessions and listened to all the singing and the music. He was a different Hugo. It tells me that people can change, if they want to change.”
Another letter was written by one of the interrogating Gestapo agents — either Müssner or Wangemann. The signature is illegible, but the letter writer describes Helmuth as “mentally uncorrupted” and “intelligent but not mature enough to recognize the consequences of his actions.” The agent argues that Helmuth’s graduation paper proves that he had “a positive attitude toward the state and the Führer.”
The Senior District Director of the Hamburg Hitler Youth also wrote on Helmuth’s behalf, saying that Helmuth “served to the fullest satisfaction of his superiors.”
Another Hitler Youth official from the Berlin headquarters, however, claimed that Helmuth’s Hitler Youth record didn’t matter. In a letter, this official argued for the execution, due to “the severity of Hübener’s crime
” and the dangerous effect it could have on German morale during the war.
Karl-Heinz Schnibbe was sentenced to five years in a concentration camp, whereas Rudi Wobbe received a harsher sentence. For the lighter sentence, Karl credits Helmuth’s warning to him in the Hall of Mirrors. “He gave me a kind of wink and grin,” said Karl. “I caught it out of the corner of my eye as I went in. At that moment, I knew that he had kept his promise.”
On their way to the trial in Berlin, Helmuth apologized to Karl and Rudi for giving up their names to the Gestapo. “I’m sorry,” Helmuth told them. “I couldn’t stand it [the torture] any longer.” Helmuth also forgave Gerhard Düwer for denouncing him, saying, “I’m not mad at you. I know you could not help it.”
At the trial, Karl noted that the judges focused on Helmuth and the leaflets, firing question after question at him. It was clear that the People’s Court intended to make an example out of him. “Helmuth realized he was doomed,” said Karl.
To Karl, that explains why Helmuth purposely angered the justices with his responses: to save the lives of his friends. “To this day, I’m amazed at how cool, how clear, and how smart Helmuth was,” said Karl. “I believe he had made up his mind to conduct himself with courage and dignity.”
Toward the end of the war, as Germany needed more manpower, the Nazis offered Karl the opportunity to restore his honor by fighting for Germany. In return, he would be released from prison. Karl accepted, and he was sent to Czechoslovakia, where he was captured by the Russians and shipped to a prisoner-of-war camp in Siberia. The Russians released Karl in 1949, four years after the war ended.
Karl emigrated to the United States in 1952.
Helmuth couldn’t warn Rudi Wobbe, who implicated himself more during his interrogation and to a prison cellmate who betrayed him to the Gestapo. Rudi was given a ten-year sentence, but he was released after Germany surrendered in 1945. He emigrated to the United States in 1953.
Gerhard Düwer received a four-year sentence in return for his cooperation with authorities. Unlike Karl-Heinz Schnibbe, Düwer could not be inducted into the German army because he had trouble with his feet and limped badly. At the end of the war, Düwer was released from prison.