The Boy Who Dared

by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

  Karl and Rudi look at Helmuth uneasily. “What do you mean?” says Karl.

  Helmuth goes into his bedroom. He returns with his carefully written notes and a short stack of handwritten leaflets. He hands one to Karl, who reads out loud, “‘It’s All Hitler’s Fault!’”

  Karl looks at Helmuth in disbelief, continues reading. “‘During the unrestricted air raids, several hundred thousand defenseless civilians were killed. The British Royal Air Force is not to blame for these killings. Their flights are retaliation for those killed by the German Luftwaffe in Warsaw and Rotterdam. The Luftwaffe murdered defenseless women and children, cripples and old men.’”

  “Are you crazy?” says Rudi.

  “I’ve got more,” says Helmuth. He pages through the leaflets, reads off others that he’s written: “Hitler the Murderer,” “They’re Not Telling You Everything!” “Where Is Rudolf Hess?” and “Hitler Youth.”

  Rudi grabs the Hitler Youth flier. “‘German boys,’” he reads. “‘Do you know what the Hitler Youth is and what goals it pursues?’” Rudi grunts in agreement. “‘It’s a compulsory organization of the highest order for the cultivation of obedient Nazis.’”

  “You sure got that right,” says Karl. “These fliers are really something, the way you attack the Nazis.”

  Helmuth looks earnestly at his friends. “We must attack. We’re being lied to. We must let people know the truth. Read the last line, Karl.”

  “‘This is a chain letter, so please pass it on!’” reads Karl.

  “This is a war against lies,” says Helmuth. “If we want to win, we can’t attack in straight lines. We’ll leave leaflets everywhere — in telephone booths, mailboxes, apartment houses — for people to read and to pass on, like a chain letter!”

  “They’ll pass them on, all right. Right to the Gestapo,” says Karl.

  “Helmuth,” says Rudi. “Remember our Lord Lister ID cards? How quickly they were passed to the Gestapo? And this is worse — it’s no game.”

  “Of course it’s no game! Every day the newspaper tells us about people who are sentenced to death or prison for breaking the Radio Law when all they want is the truth. This is serious.”

  “Do you really think we can fight the Nazi government?” says Karl. “They’re too big, too powerful.”

  “We must fight — with words and actions. Not everyone agrees with Hitler and the Nazi Party,” says Helmuth. “If we tell the real story about the war, show people that they’re not alone, they will start to talk. Then they will grow in strength and numbers.”

  “What if the Gestapo catches us?” asks Karl. “It’s serious to break the law like this.”

  “This kind of law must be broken. And besides, the Gestapo will never catch us,” says Helmuth. “We’ll make sure they don’t. They might find the leaflets, but they won’t know who did it. And they’ll never suspect kids.”

  “But what if they do?” says Rudi.

  Helmuth considers the possibility. “Then that person should take all the blame,” he says decidedly.

  Rudi’s eyes widen. He looks at Karl.

  “We’re all under eighteen,” says Helmuth. “Even if we are caught, we won’t be tried as adults.” He stares at the pamphlets. “I don’t want to remember a time I could have done something but didn’t.”

  The boys are silent for a long moment. “You’re right,” says Karl, sticking out his hand. “Count me in. No names.”

  “No names,” says Rudi.

  “No names,” says Helmuth.

  The boys pump each other’s hands vigorously. Helmuth takes half the pamphlets, divides the rest between Karl and Rudi.

  Outside the flat, on the street, Helmuth watches as Karl and Rudi head down the street. The sky looks like gray wool, and that’s a good thing. The cloud cover will keep British bombers away. Helmuth heads in the opposite direction, down Luisenweg, leaflets tucked beneath his shirt.

  * * *

  October comes. The German army continues its advance on Leningrad. Gerhard graduates from training in the signal corps and is sent to officer training school in Warsaw.

  That news makes Hugo as proud of Gerhard as if he were his own son. “See, Emma?” says Hugo. “I told you he’d come around.”

  It irritates Helmuth. He knows Gerhard is no Nazi — even if he is a soldier.

  Hugo adopts Helmuth. His relationship with Hugo has not improved, but Helmuth knows having Hugo’s last name, Hübener, will have its benefits. No one would ever suspect that the son of a Rottenführer would resist the Nazis. At work, at home, Helmuth is a good Nazi — smooth and unruffled on the surface but paddling furiously beneath.

  As the leaves change color and drop, it gets so the boys can hardly wait from one weekend to the next — for the Friday and Saturday nights when they turn off the kitchen light and sit in the dark, listening to the BBC.

  From his church Helmuth helps himself to carbon paper and typing paper — bright red paper, rarely used, so it won’t be missed. He knows it’s wrong to steal from the church, but he tells himself it’s for the greater good, it’s a war for truth that he’s waging.

  Late into the night in his grandparents’ flat, Helmuth pecks away at the old Remington typewriter keys. Oma grows accustomed to the incessant tapping, the constant ring of the carriage return. She never asks what he’s doing, or if he’s getting enough sleep. Instead, she says, “My, what a hard worker you are. Your boss must be pleased.”

  At first Helmuth prepares new leaflets every two weeks and then every week, and then twice a week. At night, the boys leave them in telephone booths, mailboxes, even tacked to bulletin boards in tenement hallways, right next to official Nazi government notices announcing meetings such as “Tomorrow: Home Evening with Party Comrade to Discuss Air Raid Wardens.”

  As time goes on, the boys feel new confidence at how easily their plan is working.

  From work, Helmuth borrows an official swastika stamper that makes each flier look like an official government notice, and his grandmother gets used to the constant thump-thump she hears each night at the kitchen table.

  The stamper is a brazen touch, but it’s Karl who astounds Helmuth and Rudi with the risks he takes.

  Once Karl tucked fliers into coat pockets in a cloakroom. The coats — he could tell from their medals and insignia — belonged to high Nazi officials.

  But Karl has a close call one night when he meets two policemen near his flat. He manages to greet the two men with a forceful “Heil Hitler.” The policemen question him, demand to know why he is out past curfew. But Karl explains he was visiting a friend in Reismühle. The officers let him go with a warning.

  Karl goes straight home, rushes to the toilet, his hands shaking so badly he can barely unzip his trousers.

  “Those blasted leaflets gave me the trots,” he tells the boys the next night, and hearing that, Helmuth and Rudi clutch their stomachs and laugh until the tears roll down their cheeks.

  It would have been easy to leave their leaflet campaign at that, at mailboxes and telephone booths and tenement hallways — but the war takes a dark, unexpected turn in early December when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor.

  America declares war on Japan, and Germany declares war on America. This makes Hugo crabby and sour. “Roosevelt has his war now,” he says. “Thanks to his Jewish advisors. It’s all the Jews’ fault, you know. All part of their plan to destroy the German Reich.”

  But just as quickly, Hugo catches himself and his gloom disappears. “We’ve got the best army in the world. Someday, after we’ve beaten them, we’ll visit America, my boy. We’ll see that Wild West you like so much!”

  And then something else happens that agitates Helmuth, that makes him all the more determined to wake up the people of Germany.

  Brother Worbs returns.

  * * *

  It’s late December, and the morning light is gray as Helmuth heads to the Bieberhaus, intent on returning a “borrowed” book to the City Hall storeroom before his boss,
Heinrich Mohns, arrives.

  He passes an old Jewish woman pushing a broom in the street. She wears a yellow star pinned to her frayed brown coat. Like a bright yellow flame. All the Jews wear stars now, so Germans can keep an eye on them.

  Helmuth nearly passes by a small, stooped figure shuffling down the sidewalk. Were it not for his profile, his familiar sharp nose, Helmuth would not have recognized the old man. It’s Brother Worbs.

  Helmuth puts his hand on the man’s arm. How thin the bony arm feels beneath the coat sleeve. Brother Worbs tugs his arm away in fright, gazes through watery eyes at Helmuth. His face is gray.

  “Brother Worbs! It’s me! Helmuth!”

  Brother Worbs wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, tries to pull his arm away. “Let me go. It’s better for you if you don’t know me. Better for all of us.”

  That’s when Helmuth sees that Brother Worbs has no teeth. His lips wreathe about swollen gums.

  “My God, what did they do to you?”

  Brother Worbs sways unsteadily. “Don’t ask. I cannot tell you.”

  Helmuth decides to return the book later, at lunch, perhaps, or when he’s sent on another errand to file papers. He grasps the man’s elbow, guides him home, helps him off with his coat, hangs it on the hook behind the door. Brother Worbs’s flat is a mess: dirty dishes, clothes lying around, drawers pulled open.

  Helmuth helps Brother Worbs to a chair, puts the kettle on, clears a spot at the kitchen table, sets out a chipped teacup, finds peppermint leaves, pinches them into the teapot.

  The kettle boils. Helmuth pours the water over the leaves, lets the peppermint steep. Brother Worbs’s hands tremble as he reaches for the cup. His hands are gnarled, his fingers thick and crooked. “Your hands!” says Helmuth. “What happened?”

  Brother Worbs looks fearful. “The SS made me sign a paper. I can only tell you that I was treated well.”

  “You must tell me,” urges Helmuth.

  Brother Worbs lowers his voice to a whisper. Tells Helmuth about the concentration camp, about the starvation rations, the guards, the punishments, how he was stripped naked, forced to stand outside, knee deep in snow, how the guards poured water on his hands, let them freeze, and then hit his hands with a club. “To warm them up,” he says. “Broke all my fingers.”

  Helmuth touches the rough skin, the twisted fingers. Never has he witnessed such inhumanity. Fury burns inside him as he imagines the old man’s pain. “The Nazis are monsters. How can they get away with torture?”

  “The Gestapo are above the law,” says Brother Worbs. “Whatever the Führer wants is legal, no matter how inhumane. Hitler himself says so. When the Gestapo question you, you’ll admit to anything just to get the pain to stop.”

  “They’re monstrous bullies!” says Helmuth. “The way they terrorize the weak! Surely there’s something we can do!”

  “We must pray for those who hate and persecute us,” says Brother Worbs.

  “Pray for them! That’s impossible! I hate them!”

  “You cannot repay evil with evil,” says Brother Worbs. “God loves us all. He does not love us more than He loves our enemies.”

  He takes in the old man’s stooped shoulders, the pain behind his eyes. Gone is Brother Worbs’s spirit, gone is the old man that Helmuth loved, shouts and all, and in his place, a broken man.

  Helmuth wishes he could stay longer but knows his boss will ask questions. He stands, slips his arm around the man’s thin shoulders. “God bless, Brother Worbs. I’ll visit you again soon.”

  “It’s best if you don’t visit me.”

  Helmuth plunges his arms through his coat sleeves, jams his hat on his head. He flings his arms as his feet pound the sidewalk. With each step, he sees images of Brother Worbs’s hands.

  By the time Helmuth reaches the Bieberhaus and returns the borrowed book, the words to another pamphlet have formed in his head. He carries the words with him all day, letting them sort themselves into phrases, coming together, drifting apart, tumbling over onto themselves, settling into sentences, and paragraphs.

  That night as soon as the supper dishes are cleared, and Oma and Opa are safely in bed, Helmuth sets out the typewriter. He inserts carbon paper into the carriage and rolls it into place. Brother Worbs, his toothless gums and his gnarled fingers; soldiers dying in Russia; his grandparents and neighbors hunkered in air-raid shelters as bombs fall; burned-out Jewish businesses and synagogues; the lies, deception — he can’t shake the images, his anger. He must be willing to give up safety and comfort for freedom. That’s what Heinrich Mann said.

  Helmuth’s fingers fly over the keys, and by midnight he has a stack of new leaflets. He expects to feel satisfied but doesn’t.

  The Nazis can’t get away with these things. The world has gone mad! It’s time to think bigger, to escalate the pamphlet campaign, to enlarge his circle so that more Germans learn the truth. There’s no time to lose. What will the Nazis do next if no one stops them now?

  * * *

  Another Christmas comes and goes and the holiday feels gloomier than ever. Karl’s away, visiting an aunt who lives on a farm in Ludelsen in order to bring home food for his family. In the city, food rations have grown more meager. Coupons are needed for everything, from flour to shoes, and yet the Nazis continue to press for war donations — more woolen clothing for the soldiers and German marks to buy cannons, tanks, and airplanes.

  Helmuth attends a church dance on New Year’s Eve but doesn’t enjoy himself. All he can think about is the war and his pamphlets. Dances feel like a waste of time. He can’t afford to lose time.

  Still he must practice caution. At work, he grows friendly with another apprentice, Gerhard Düwer, who rolls his eyes at the reports on the RRG when the Nazis announce that over seventy million woolen articles have been collected for soldiers on the eastern front.

  “And yet our soldiers are still freezing,” says Düwer disgustedly.

  Helmuth is delighted at this sign, and he invites Düwer home to listen to the BBC. Düwer is enthusiastic about Helmuth’s shortwave radio, and he asks to listen again.

  After several more visits, Helmuth grows more sure of Düwer. He shows him his latest pamphlet, titled, “I’ve Figured Out Everything.”

  Düwer reads the pamphlet aloud. “‘It’s been one month since the German radio and newspapers boasted the results of the clothing drive. Over seventy million articles of clothing! But where is this clothing? The soldiers on the eastern front and the soldiers in the far north haven’t received them. They do not write home about it, only that they are freezing, freezing, and freezing, and they are waiting in vain for warm winter clothes.’”

  Düwer grins at the last sentence. “‘Only time will tell if the Nazis have swindled the German people out of their woolen and furs.’” He looks at Helmuth. “This is amazing. Whoever wrote this has the guts to say what everyone is thinking.”

  “I wrote it,” says Helmuth proudly. “It’s a chain letter.”

  Düwer whistles softly, looks at Helmuth with keen admiration. “Listen,” he says in a low voice. “I know two printing apprentices in Kiel. They can be trusted to print pamphlets — hundreds of pamphlets — after hours.”

  Helmuth can scarcely believe his good fortune. A printing press! His mind dances with the thought of hundreds — maybe thousands — of leaflets scattered throughout Germany.

  * * *

  A few days later in January, another good sign comes during a class for Bieberhaus apprentices. Helmuth spots Werner Kranz jotting down French vocabulary words and grows curious. He wonders why Werner is so interested in the French. Perhaps Werner feels sympathy for the two million French prisoners of war that the Nazis have forced into labor in Germany. It’s no secret that the French hate Hitler, for what he has done to their country.

  An idea takes root. If Werner will translate the leaflets into French, perhaps Helmuth could smuggle them to the French prisoners. From there, the leaflets may get into the hands of the French resista
nce. This way the French and perhaps the whole world will learn that many Germans don’t support Hitler and the war. It’s a bold move, Helmuth knows. But he has heard about a group of Communists working underground who have connections.

  Helmuth approaches Werner Kranz quietly. “Would you translate something into French for me?”

  “It depends on what it is.”

  “First you must promise not to say anything.”

  Werner narrows his eyes. “First you must show me.”

  Helmuth won’t show him, not without a promise. He sticks his hands into his pockets, walks away, whistling. He can feel Werner’s curiosity. That’s good. Let his curiosity simmer.

  * * *

  A few days later, Helmuth tries again. This time he brings Düwer along as he shows Werner a brochure.

  Werner grows white around his mouth as he reads over the pamphlet. “No way,” he says, shoving the pamphlet back at Helmuth. “I’m too busy for this.”

  Helmuth eyes Werner closely. Werner looks angry. Has Helmuth made a terrible mistake? His hands shake as he folds the leaflet, slips it into his pocket. At that moment, their boss, Heinrich Mohns, passes the doorway, pokes his head in. “What’s going on here?”

  Düwer elbows Werner, a warning to keep quiet.

  Helmuth pretends to be unruffled. “I hoped Werner could help me with a little homework, with something I didn’t understand,” he tells his boss.

  Herr Mohns stares at Helmuth and then Werner. “Get to work,” he says at last. “We don’t pay you for socializing.”

  Helmuth and Düwer return to their desks. Helmuth feels Mohns’s eyes on him, wishes he would stop staring. Helmuth buries himself in his work but he can’t concentrate, not with Herr Mohns’s eyes boring into his back.

  * * *

  February 5. Two-thirty. The office grows suddenly quiet as two Gestapo agents stride purposefully through the office door.

  “Helmuth Hübener?” says the taller agent to Helmuth.

  Helmuth’s mouth turns dry. He licks his lips, nods, and says, “Yes.”

  “You know why we are here,” says the agent.

  It isn’t a question. It’s a statement.