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As a member of the church from Germany, the country of the perpetrators, but also Helmuth Hübeners, I had written an article in German about him and his group.
Helmuth came from the simplest working conditions, was the unmarterial son of a member of the church. His stepfather adopted him later (his birth name was Guderat), and gave him the name Hübener.
His father, also a member of the Church, was what was later called a "Nazimite". When Hitler came to power, everyone, including the then 7-year-old Helmuth, was enthusiastic. He became a member of Hitler's youth, but with later years (from 1937 onwards) he had become more and more critical of Hitler's youth and national socialism. Especially two events shaped him. To the One, when the then branch president, a staunch Nazi, put a shield on the top of the entrance to the church, where access to Jews was undesirable; And, on the other hand, the history of the siblings Schwartz, Jewish members of the church, who had just betrayed by the branch president to the Gestapo. And then the so-called "Reichskristallnacht". A pogrom of the Nazis against Jews.

In a Hamburg bathing establishment, Helmuth met a group of communist youths around a castles apprentice. He went to their house, and everyone listened secretly BBC, which at that time was strictly prohibited.
Then they discussed it, and Helmuth quickly realized where that would lead. Beginning in 1941, he began secretly digging the news of the BBC with the help of the office equipment of the church, and put it in Hamburg letterboxes. Later he took two friends from the church, who formed the "Helmuth Hübener Group". No one in the church, either directly or indirectly, was on her side. The Mormons in Helmuth's Church, St. Georg, was mostly either Nazis or Nazimites..

At the beginning of February 1942, Helmuth Hübener was arrested at the workplace in the Hamburger Bieberhaus. In attempting to translate the flyers into French, and to spread them among prisoners of war, he had been noticed and denounced by his superior, Heinrich Mohn, a bearer of the Golden Party badge of the NSDAP, to the Gestapo.
Helmuth took everything to protect his friends.
Two days after his arrest, Helmuth was excommunicated by the branch president Z., who had not informed the church presidents but the mission president. A Mrs. Sommerfeldt, a good friend of the family, later said, by oath, that at a church meeting, a Mormon, Jacobi, stood up and said that if he had known Helmuth's activities, he would have shot him by himself. And after the war, a German soldier from St. Georg also said that these boys had done nothing better, and had been silent. He believed that the church had been put at risk by Helmuth's activities. What, as my investigations showed, was not true, since the Reichsicherheitshauptamt, which the Gestapo was subordinate to, had protected the church in at least two cases.
Conclusion: Helmuth was a hero. But, if you can say that from other members outside the Hübener group in Hamburg, I doubt.

Edited by Mormonheart
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@Mormonheart. Thank you for posting! Very interesting. Sometimes, members of our church have not behaved well. We have sad stories in Canada as well. We need to be strong despite our history.

i respect you for writing this article. I become very depressed when I think about the things that have happened where I live.

Edited by Sunday21
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Church members are people, and like all people, they sometimes make wrong decisions.
I'm writing movei scripts as a hobby. There is a storyline, a tension curve, which keeps the viewer at line. I would like to write a screenplay about Helmuth and his "Gang". For his life is very interesting, and shows us how it was then in Nazi Germany for the church. Did you know, for example, that the Scout program of the church was not closed until May 1934 (by force of the Government), the scout programs of other churches much earlier (from September 1933 to March 1934), and that missionaries trained the German basketball team for the Olympics 1936? Or, that a mission president in the "Volkischer Beobachter" (Nazi newspaper) wrote an article about the church, which was later given as a brochure by the missionaries? Or that the church helped the Nazis with their genealogy program? All this I found out as a supplementary information when I studied the life of Helmuth Hübener. By the way, the branch president, who excommunicated Helmuth, went to Utah after the war, where he taught football to young people.
During his lifetime, he was afraid that the Jewish secret service had kidnapped him (because of the Schwartz siblings). An unjustified fear.

Edited by Mormonheart
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9 hours ago, Sunday21 said:

@Mormonheart How very interesting! Good for you on the script writing. Hope you have success!

Not sure what is happening here. "During his lifetime, he was afraid that the Jewish secret service had kidnapped him (because of the Schwartz siblings). "

You have a lot of information for a good plot!

And best of all, it is evidenced by facts! I am not writing a screenplay about Helmuth Hübener because I read that a film exists, or is to be prepared (with H.J.Ormond as Helmuth Hübener). The script I'm working on is about three missionaries. A woman from Austria, Sandra, a man from Germany, Gerd, and an American from Utah, Brian (so called my former mission president in Vienna).
A script, like a book, lives from conflicts, internal as well as external conflicts. And all three missionaries have conflicts. With himself, with employees, with the mission president. And history shows how conflicts they have, and how these are solved. I only reveal so much: a person is excommunicated, a person leaves the church, and a person remains in the church.

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3 hours ago, Sunday21 said:

@Mormonheart. Sounds a great screenplay! 

I hope so!

In the script, I am mainly concerned with what is so beautifully described in the musical "The Book of Mormon," in the song "Turn it Off". The ability to hide things from themselves. So Brian gets to know a former member that gives him criticism about the Church, and he tries to ignore what he has heard, but can not. With the "turn it off" it works. Or Gerd, who learns that his mother will soon die of cancer (which she has concealed), leaving the mission without permission from the mission president because he did not make the "turn it off" and is disguised from the mission And his girlfriend separates from him.

BTW, it is not all fiction, some parts are based on own experiences.

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