I love The Repair Shop, it is one of those feel-good shows. The people working there are so talented and skillful. Not only do they repair items that are valuable to the people who bring them in, but they also repair them in a way that seem the item was never broken.
Many of the people who come to the shop have sad stories, and they are often heartbroken.
This made me wonder, what if there was a Repair Shop for broken hearts?
In shadows deep, where sorrow reigns, A heart once full is now torn by pains. In whispered sighs and silent tears, Echoes of love’s shattered fears.
Each beat now heavy with regret, Memories linger, bitter yet. Like petals fallen from a rose, Love’s bloom fades, its beauty goes.
The ache within, a ceaseless tide, In the caverns where emotions hide. Where once there bloomed a vibrant flame, Now embers fade, consumed by shame.
Grief’s cloak draped upon shoulders frail, In the darkness, an endless wail. Lost in the labyrinth of despair, Seeking solace, finding none to spare.
Yet in the depths, a glimmer gleams, A fragile hope amidst shattered dreams. For from the ashes, strength shall rise, And broken hearts may learn to prize.
Though scars may linger, tender and sore, Time’s gentle touch can heal once more. For in the crucible of pain and strife, We learn the art of reclaiming life.
Hopefully, this poem will bring some comfort and perhaps repair a broken heart, even if it’s only a fraction.
Public Broadcasting is so important in a world where it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate between facts and fiction.
What is Public Broadcasting? According to a Cambridge dictionary definition, it is, “television and radio programs that are broadcast to provide information, advice, or entertainment to the public without trying to make a profit.” UNESCO defines it as a meeting place where all citizens are welcome and considered equals. It is an information and education tool, accessible to all and meant for all, whatever their social or economic status. Its mandate is not restricted to information and cultural development-public broadcasting must also appeal to the imagination, and entertain. But it does so with a concern for quality that distinguishes it from commercial broadcasting. The seven core pillars of Public Broadcasting or Public Service Media are Accountability, Accessibility, Impartiality, Independence, Pluralism, Reliability and Universalism. A good Public Broadcasting system is good for democracy.
However, what happens if the Public Broadcasters, and especially the National Public Broadcasters can’t be trusted?
In several European countries, there have been a number of scandals, each of them undermining the credibility of the organisation.
Germany
On Monday, 15 August 2022, Patricia Schlesinger, manager of the Berlin regional public channel RBB since 2016, was immediately dismissed from her position after an almost unanimous vote of the board of directors.
She had resigned a few days earlier from her position as director of ARD, the association of the country’s nine regional stations – one of the three pillars, along with ZDF and Deutschlandfunk radio, of the German public broadcasting system – after being involved in several scandals revealed at the end of June. Ms. Schlesinger was accused of abusing the privileges of her position, without any supervisory authorities intervening. The press revealed that, in addition to her salary of more than 300,000 euros per year, the former investigative journalist had benefited from lavish “bonuses based on objectives” granted under conditions that were not very transparent.
The German case seems comparable to the current scandal with RTE in Ireland.
Ireland
Irish broadcaster RTÉ admitted on June 22, that Ryan Tubridy, the former host of The Late Late Show, received a series of payments totalling €345,000 above his published salary between 2017 and 2022. The RTÉ Board said that in late March of this year during a routine audit of RTÉ’s 2022 accounts, an issue was identified in relation to the transparency of certain payments.
Tubridy’s earnings for the years 2017, 2018, and 2019 were understated by €120,000, while earnings for the years 2020-2022 were understated due to the payments which went through a Barter Account, “a common practice in advertising and marketing businesses where goods and services are traded through an intermediary company which charges a fee for its services.”
The Board said that €150,000 was paid to Tubridy’s agent (on his behalf) from the barter account in 2022. This is related to the guaranteed income for 2021 and 2022. It resulted in an overall cost to RTÉ, from this account, of €230,760 (inclusive of fees incurred through the barter account process).
In light of the ‘actual earnings,’ Tubridy’s earnings were €545,000 in 2019 and €515,000 in 2021, representing an overall reduction of 5.5% in 2021 earnings compared to his 2019 earnings. This came at a time when other staff had their salaries reduced by 15%. In context, the top salary of a researcher is €55,600.
The Netherlands
In the much-watched and award-winning talk show De Wereld Draait Door,(The World goes on) there had been structural transgressive behaviour behind the scenes. As a result, dozens of employees fell ill between 2005 and 2020. De Vara (later BNNVara) had been warned several times about the unhealthy working atmosphere in its success program, but never fundamentally intervened. This has emerged from research by ‘de Volkskrant’, on 18 November 2022, for which more than seventy former employees were interviewed. The newspaper also has medical files, communication with lawyers, confidential emails, conversations from app groups and settlement agreements that substantiate their stories.
More than fifty of the former employees qualify the behaviour of presenter Matthijs van Nieuwkerk and several editors as “crossing the line.” It involved extreme outbursts of anger and public humiliation, which ensured that a culture of fear was maintained. “The feeling was: the scythe can always fall unexpectedly,” says an editor. “Without knowing why. Working at DWDD for a long time was the ultimate recipe for burnout.’
The current management of BNNVara, who recently also spoke to employees, admits that there has been inappropriate behaviour. “The final editors and presenters should have been held accountable for their behaviour and culture at the editorial office. The fact that this did not happen at the time is painful for the (former) colleagues who are affected by this.’
United Kingdom
The BBC was hit with a major scandal concerning Jimmy Saville. In October 2012, almost a year after his death, an ITV documentary examined claims of sexual abuse by Savile. This led to extensive media coverage and a substantial and rapidly growing body of witness statements and sexual abuse claims, including accusations against public bodies for covering up or failure of duty. Scotland Yard launched a criminal investigation into allegations of child sex abuse by Savile spanning six decades, describing him as a “predatory sex offender”, and later stated that they were pursuing more than 400 lines of inquiry based on the testimony of 300 potential victims via 14 police forces across the UK. By late October 2012, the scandal had resulted in inquiries or reviews at the BBC, within the National Health Service, the Crown Prosecution Service, and the Department of Health. In June 2014, investigations into Savile’s activities at 28 NHS hospitals, including Leeds General Infirmary and Broadmoor psychiatric hospital, concluded that he had sexually assaulted staff and patients aged between 5 and 75 over several decades.[As a result of the scandal, some of the honours that Savile was awarded during his career were posthumously revoked, and episodes of Top of the Pops presented by Savile were no longer repeated.
One would think that lessons were learned from this, but apparently not. On Friday 19 May, the family of a young complained to the BBC about one of its presenter’s behaviour. The presenter allegedly paid the young man, for sexually explicit photos.
On the basis of the report by the Sun, the unnamed “household name” eventually began asking the young people for pictures when they were 17 years old back in 2020 and has made many payments throughout the years. The publication stated that the presenter has been suspended following a complaint from the family on 19 May
As news of the scandal emerged, a number of big names at the BBC – including Jeremy Vine, Nicky Campbell and Rylan – took to social media to state that they are not the presenter in question after malicious posts linking them to the allegations.
On Monday BBC Radio 5 Live’s Campbell took listeners to his show that the false allegations had left him “distressed”. He added: “Today I’m having further communication with the police in terms of malicious communication and with lawyers in terms of defamation.”
Vine added on his Radio 2 show: “It goes without saying that, for legal reasons, we won’t name the person. During the day it may change – you may find there are developments, but let’s see.”
“By virtue of talking into this microphone, I can’t believe I’m even having to say this, it can’t be me.”
The unnamed presenter has now been suspended. The BBC is meeting the police on Monday to discuss the matter.
It is clear that in all of these cases, there had been an evident lack of corporate governance.
We have all heard of the expression “a no news day,” one of those days where not much happened news-wise. I usually enjoy those days because some news outlets will often report more quirky stories.
But what happens when there really is no news?
In 1930, the BBC was only about a decade old and had very specific goals. On April 18, 1930, the BBC announced that “there is no news” in their evening report.
The BBC’s news announcer had nothing to communicate. “There is no news,” was the script of the 20:45 news bulletin, before piano music was played for the rest of the 15-minute segment.
The wireless service then returned to broadcasting from the Queen’s Hall in Langham Place, London, where the Wagner opera Parsifal was being performed.
It was not like there wasn’t anything to report, but the BBC decided what was worth reporting on, and according to them, there was nothing newsworthy.
Ethan Zuckerman, the director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, indicates that other historical news sources tell us that at least two important things were going on. For one, the British government was apparently trying to respond to some allegations that had been printed in a newspaper the day before—and since the papers were taking the Good Friday holiday off, they might have tried to go on the radio. “It’s possible that Day of No News was a form of asserting press independence,” Zuckerman writes: “[They may have been saying] ‘We won’t be the mouthpiece for the government, and so no news for anyone.’”
For another, Surya Sen, a Bengali independence fighter, had successfully led a raid against a colonial police outpost in Chittagong. This time, technology foiled the story: Even if they had decided to report on this, “they couldn’t have gotten the news, as Sen’s forces cut the rail and telegraph lines,” Zuckerman points out.
In 1930, the BBC had only a rudimentary news service and did not yet have a separate News Department. Concerned that broadcast news would undermine their circulations, the British press worked hard to limit the news production capabilities of the new medium.
I think that it wouldn’t be bad to have “no news days” every now and again.
In the last few years, the British Broadcasting Corp (BBC) has lost some of its credibility, but during World War II, it was a vital source of information for resistance groups in the Netherlands and other occupied countries.
The caption of the picture above said “January 4, 1944. Jammers and betrayal make listening to the B.B.C. not easy. We listen at night, 11:45 p.m., B.B.C.”
An employee of an illegal newspaper listening to the BBC.
The founders of the first illegal newspapers came to their initiative out of indignation about the German invasion and annoyance about what the equalized newspapers wrote. There was also a need to warn the population against National Socialism and to call for united opposition to the German measures. In 1940 there were about 62 underground magazines and within a year this number rose to 120. Some magazines had succeeded in finding printers and were, therefore, able to abandon the time-consuming stencilling. By the end of 1942, the number of papers had dropped to 96 because many editors of smaller papers considered their activities superfluous when bigger and better editions appeared. In 1943, new illegal newspapers sprang up like mushrooms. These were mainly concerned with translating and distributing the war news received via hidden radios. In total, about 1300 different magazines existed during the occupation years, which together had a circulation of millions of copies.
Due to a lack of radio sets and power, the BBC news had to be brought to the people via the underground. This is where the messages came in.
From the beginning of her exile, Queen Wilhelmina took up her task with great willpower. Uncompromising and with unshakable confidence in the Allied victory, she was able to convey this conviction to others. She constantly advocated the interests of the Netherlands to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt. Her attitude and effort commanded the respect of the Allied leaders.
The message of thanks to BBC radio for the so-called ‘Round the World birthday celebration programme’ broadcast in honour of Wilhelmina during the BBC’s European Empire Programs on 30 August 1941. Her inaction against the treatment of the Dutch Jews before, during and after the war has tainted her legacy somewhat.
The original caption reads: ‘Recording of the B.B.C. news, via a DC receiver as Goes was also without power, for the purpose of the illegal press. Goes.’ Two employees of the illegal magazine ‘Vrije Stemmen’ in Goes are working on the BBC’s news reports.
Radio Orange; Mrs A. A. Koch – de Waard.
The original caption of this photo reads: “BBC European Service: Dutch Section. The Dutch Section’s principal woman announcer.”
One of the ways, in which Queen Wilhelmina and the Dutch government maintained ties with the population in the occupied territory was Radio Oranje. The broadcasts were invariably opened with ‘Hier Radio Oranje, the Voice of the Struggling Netherlands’. In addition to news commentary and entertainment, Radio Oranje broadcasts were also used to pass on code messages to the resistance in occupied territory.
Anyone caught listening to the BBC or other anti-Nazi radio stations could face execution.
Hermann Göring, picture of Adolf Hitler, Charles A. Lindbergh, and Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Just to make it clear this post is not meant as an accusation or finger-pointing. I am forever grateful for what the US, and especially the US Army, did for my country. The outcome of World War II would have been more than likely—completely different—without the intervention of the US.
However, this doesn’t mean I shouldn’t highlight the mistakes made by the US when it comes to the Holocaust. There is this myth that the US didn’t know how bad the Nazis were. The US was told long before the war started, and even a few months before, they were drawn into it.
Otto Frank had requested a visa for the United States in 1938, which was denied. On 30 April 1941, Otto Frank sent a letter to his American friend Nathan Straus Jr. (whose friends called him “Charley”), the son of the founder of Macy’s department stores. The two men had met more than 30 years earlier, while Frank was in college in Heidelberg, and had become close friends.
April 30, 1941
Dear Charley, …I am forced to look out for emigration and as far as I can see the U.S.A. is the only country we could go to. Perhaps you remember that we have two girls. It is for the sake of the children mainly that we have to care for. Our fate is of less importance. Two brothers of Edith emigrated last year and they work as ordinary workmen around Boston. Both of them earn money, but not enough to have us come.
They would be able to give an affidavit for their mother, living with us here, and they saved enough as, far as I can make out, to pay the passage for my mother-in-law…
In 1938 I filed an application in Rotterdam to emigrate to the U.S.A. but all the papers have been destroyed there…The dates of application are of no importance any longer, as everyone who has an effective affidavit from a member of his family and who can pay for his passage may leave. One says that no special difficulties shall be made from the part of the German Authorities. But in the case that an affidavit from family members is not available or not sufficient the consul asks for a bank deposit. How much he would ask in my case I don’t know. I am not allowed to go to Rotterdam and without an introduction, the consul would not even accept me. As far as I hear from other people it might be about $5,000. – for us four. You are the only person I know that I can ask Would it be possible for you to give a deposit in my favor?”
The title of the post is taken from the Ken Burns documentary, a 3 part series. which explores the US response to the Nazi persecution of Jews, but, at six hours long, has enough room to extend its remit to other countries’ attitudes towards immigration and refugees (the UK is not spared). The first episode, The Golden Door, is bookended by both the Statue of Liberty and Anne Frank’s family. In 1934, the Franks fled Germany and moved to Amsterdam, along with hundreds of other Jewish families. Their intention was to reach the US. Coyote recounts solemnly that they found that “most Americans did not want to let them in”.
The miniseries begins in 1933, covering the national culture of the U.S. before World War II and the Holocaust, including topics such as antisemitism, racism, the eugenics movement and how Nazi Germany used Jim Crow laws in the American South as models for its own racial policy, including the Nuremberg Laws and other pieces of antisemitic legislation. Through interviews with Holocaust survivors, historians and witnesses, as well as through historical footage, the series examines the U.S. response to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust.
The documentary will be televised on BBC 4 on Monday, January 23.
At 5.16pm on the 23rd November 1963 the BBC premiered “An Unearthly Child” and UK television viewers were introduced to the incredible world of Doctor Who for the first time.
William Hartnell was the Doctor, a strange old man who could travel through time and space in his police box. Little did anyone know that this was just the first incarnation of a character who would go on to be so iconic for well over half a century, 59 years and counting.
Doctor Who first appeared on the BBC Television Service at 17:16:20 GMT on Saturday, 23 November 1963; this was eighty seconds later than the scheduled program time, because of announcements concerning the previous day’s assassination of John F. Kennedy.It was to be a regular weekly programme, each episode 25 minutes of transmission length. Discussions and plans for the programme had been in progress for a year. The head of drama Sydney Newman was mainly responsible for developing the programme, with the first format document for the series being written by Newman along with the head of the script department (later head of serials) Donald Wilson and staff writer C. E. Webber; in a 1971 interview Wilson claimed to have named the series, and when this claim was put to Newman he did not dispute it. Writer Anthony Coburn, story editor David Whitaker and initial producer Verity Lambert also heavily contributed to the development of the series.
The show was originally designed to be an educational adventure of sorts for families, learning about history and science depending on where they travelled.
I am probably the most a-technical person on the planet. Fixing things is just something I am not equipped to do—it is why I admire people who can repair things. I love a show on the BBC called The Repair Shop. It is a British television show that aired on BBC Two for Series 1–3 and on BBC One for Series 4 onwards, where family heirlooms are restored (for their owners) by numerous experts with a broad range of specialisms.
Last night, they had Gary Fisher as a guest who brought in the prayer book he inherited from his grandparents, Emanuel and Gisela Fisher.
They were unable to leave Austria after its annexation into Germany in 1938. They eventually were rounded up and sent to Theresienstadt Concentration Camp. They put their son and Gary’s father, Harry, on the Kindertransport to England. Though many of Gary’s family did not survive the camps by the war’s end, Emanuel and Gisela did survive. They were liberated, along with the book, signed by many of the camp’s other residents. It’s an important record of the era and a treasured family possession.
The book was in disrepair when they brought it to Jay Blades and his team at The Repair Shop, with the pages falling apart, faded, and torn in some places. The Repair Shop bookbinder, Chris Shaw, was tasked with fixing the item—brought in by Gary Fisher.
“My grandparents, they were in a concentration camp and they never knew when their time was going to be up, but they had their religion, they had their faith and that must have been a real comfort to them to never give up,” said Gary.
In 1942, Emanuel and Gisela Fisher with other family members, were transported to Theresienstadt Concentration Camp in Czechoslovakia. Gary Fisher explained that Theresienstadt was a show camp, often shown to foreigners as proof of the fair treatment of Jewish people. Because of this, his grandparents were allowed to keep the prayer book with them rather than have it confiscated, as would have happened in other concentration camps.
“But, it was only a mile and a half up the road where people were murdered in a gas chamber like there were in many other Nazi death camps.” Mr. Fischer was clearly very emotional, and his eyes filled as he described how his great-grandparents, his great-aunt, and a 10-year-old nephew were all murdered in the gas chamber. “My grandparents were very lucky,” he added.
Mr. Fisher wanted to restore the book, to share it in a proper place for others to see. While at the camp, Mr. Fischer’s grandfather wrote a poem and drew a picture of the Jewish star hidden behind a drawing of the camp. He read the poem to the experts at The Repair Shop, stopping halfway as emotion got to him.
Below is an extract of the poem read by Mr Fischer that his grandfather wrote in his treasured prayer book, translated into English:
“Do you know we were also there,
We stood together through summer and winter,
Bind our arms and legs together and ease the pain of sleepless hours,
And soon a new day will come when we will part from one another,
But you will be prepared for when we see each other again,
And on that day we will all be free from tyranny.”
Bookbinder Shaw got to work repairing the book. He was clearly nervous because it was an important book, and Shaw said it was the most important book he ever worked on. When the day came to reveal the final product—there wasn’t one dry eye in the house. Ahead of the unveiling, Mr Fischer said, “I feel like my grandparents are here with me.” When they revealed the book’s beautiful, renewed cover—Mr. Fischer broke down in tears. “Welcome back,” he whispered, adding, “It’s amazing—it’s just a complete work of art.”
Uniquely, the other liberated survivors signed the prayer book with more than fifty signatures immortalised in the book’s pages. It also includes a German phrase from one prisoner, “So…it’s finally over.”
It is stories like this that indicate that the Holocaust is still near to so many people and will be for years to come. It is still a living history for many.
The key to good comedy is timing, someone once said. If that is the case John Cleese and Connie Booth must have the best sense of timing ever.
As the title suggests I am talking about ‘Fawlty Towers’ although it may seem there were hundreds of episodes, there were in fact only 12, spread over 2 seasons.
The first episode of Fawlty Towers aired on 19 September 1975. Audiences were keen to see what John Cleese would do after Monty Python, but at first the situation comedy received some less than enthusiastic reviews. However the strength of the writing and casting – with Cleese as hotelier Basil Fawlty – ensured the series was a great success.
The series is set in Fawlty Towers, a fictional hotel in the seaside town of Torquay on the English Riviera. The plots centre on the tense, rude and put-upon owner Basil Fawlty (Cleese), his bossy wife Sybil (Prunella Scales), the sensible chambermaid Polly (Booth) who often is the peacemaker and voice of reason, and the hapless and English-challenged Spanish waiter Manuel (Andrew Sachs). They show their attempts to run the hotel amidst farcical situations and an array of demanding and eccentric guests and tradespeople.
The idea of the show came from Cleese after he stayed at the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay, Devon in 1970 (along with the rest of the Monty Python troupe), where he encountered the eccentric hotel owner Donald Sinclair.
Stuffy and snobbish, Sinclair treated guests as though they were a hindrance to his running of the hotel (a waitress who worked for him stated “it was as if he didn’t want the guests to be there”). Sinclair was the inspiration for Cleese’s character Basil Fawlty.
Fawlty Towers was written by Cleese with his wife Connie Booth. The shows were intricately plotted farces, and no dialogue was written until the plot had been finalised. The ensemble cast included Prunella Scales as Basil’s wife Sybil, and Andrew Sachs as the well-meaning but incompetent waiter Manuel. Booth provided an important element of sanity and calm as Polly the chambermaid.
Only 12 half hour episodes were ever made. The decision to stop making Fawlty Towers when it was at its creative height, leaving a distinct legacy, inspired later comedians such as Ricky Gervais. In 2000 Fawlty Towers was voted the best British television programme of all time in a BFI poll, above Cathy Come Home and Doctor Who.
There are so mamy hilarious moments I could pick, but this is my favourite. Who has never heard the expression “Don’t mention the war”
The best known music show is without a doubt Top of the Pops, and even though the show was cancelled in 2006, there are still weekly reruns on BBC 4.Most people were surprised that the BBC cancelled the show because i was and still is very popular, there have been speculations though that it may return again.
However this blog is about another iconic and legendary BBC music show,’ The Old Grey whistle test’ It was commissioned by none other then David Attenborough and aired on BBC2 from 1971 to 1988. Unlike Top of the Pops, the whistle test had some more edgier music and catered more for rock fans and focused more on albums then hit singles.
The show hosted many seminal acts of the era, including the first British TV performance of Bob Marley and the Wailers as well as then little-known acts of whom any early footage is now considered precious, such as Billy Joel, Judas Priest (with a long haired Rob Halford), Wishbone Ash, Judee Sill, Heart, and Lynyrd Skynyrd.
The series was cancelled in the spring of 1987 by Janet Street-Porter, who had been appointed head of Youth Programmes at the BBC.[7] The series ended with a live New Year’s Eve special broadcast through to the early hours of New Year’s Day 1988; material included “Hotel California” by The Eagles, live from 1977, and “Bat Out of Hell” by Meat Loaf.
Many viewers think that the performances were always live but that was always the case, although for the vast majority they were.
On 23 February 2018, the BBC broadcast a special show, hosted by Bob Harris, to mark the 30 years since the legendary series was last broadcast. This live studio show featured music, special guests and rare archive footage. It featured performances from Peter Frampton, Richard Thompson, Albert Lee and others. Bob Harris chatted to Whistle Test alumni, including Dave Stewart, Joan Armatrading, Ian Anderson, Chris Difford and Kiki Dee, as well as fan Danny Baker.
BBC 4 regularly plays old episodes from the show and I am always amazed about the new things I learn. For example I never knew that Elkie Brooks and Robert Palmer were in a band together. The band was called ‘Vinegar Joe’
Whistle Test was also the British television debut of the American glam punk band New York Dolls. Their performance influenced the following punk rock scene such as the Sex Pistols and The Clash as well as alternative bands like R.E.M. and The Smiths and the glam metal scene of the 1980s.
David Johansen was the front man of this line up of the New York Dolls, David had some solo success later on under the name of Buster Pointdexter.
Brinsley Schwarz were a 1970s English pub rock band, named after their guitarist Brinsley Schwarz. They made an appearance on the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1973.
In case you are wondering who the singer and bass player is, it is Nick Lowe from such hits as “I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass” and “Cruel to be Kind”
By 1988 it was considered well past it’s sell by date however it was an influence on many music shows that came after such as Later With Jools Holland.
As mentioned earlier Bob Marley had his first appearance on the BBC on the Old Grey Whistle test. This was another thing I hadn’t realized, Peter Tosh was also a member of the Wailers.
It would be great to see a show like the Old Grey whistle Test again on TV, but I don’t think that the same caliber of performers are available nowadays
Helmuth Hübner, was a young member of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), he lived in the St. Georg Branch in Hamburg.
His short life was shaped by the rise of fascism in Germany. The Nazis changed nearly every aspect of everyday life for Germans, and Helmut was no exception. He had been a devoted Boy Scout, but he was forced to become part of the Hitler Youth, when the Nazis banned the Boy scouts organization in 1935. Helmut did not feel comfortable with this and quit the Hitler youth in 1938,aged 13.
He was disturbed by participation of the Hitler Youth in Kristallnacht.After Hübener finished secondary school in 1941, he began an apprentice training course at the Hamburg Social Welfare Authority He met other apprentices there, one of whom, Gerhard Düwer, (whom he would later recruit into his resistance movement). In 1941 at a sauna in Altona , he met new friends, some were members of an illegal Young Communist Group.
At that time Helmut started listening to foreign radio stations and mainly the BBC. It was forbidden to listen to any non-government radio transmissions, like the BBC’s multi-language broadcasts, and being caught could result into severe punishments ,including he death penalty.
Helmut found a shortwave radio, which belonged to his older half-brother Gerhard’s in a hallway closet. It had been given to Gerhard early that year by a soldier returning from service in France.
Helmut decided to spread the information he had heard on the radio from the BBC. He also persuaded other like-minded young people to join him in opposition. He started to o compose various anti-national socialist texts and anti-war leaflets.
The leaflets were designed to draw the Germans attention to how distorted the official Nazi 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:
“German boys! Do you know the country without freedom, the country of terror and tyranny? Yes, you know it well, but are afraid to talk about it. They have intimidated you to such an extent that you don’t dare talk for fear of reprisals. Yes you are right; it is Germany – Hitler Germany! Through their unscrupulous terror tactics against young and old, men and women, they have succeeded in making you spineless puppets to do their bidding”.
For several months, Helmut spread the word about lost battles and Nazi lies. But on February 5 1942, a coworker and Nazi Party member Heinrich Mohn, denounced him. He had seen Helmut trying to translate the pamphlets into French and have them distributed among prisoners of war, he Helmut was arrested and tried before the Volksgerichtshof, or People’s Court, a Nazi-controlled tribunal that dealt with matters of treason.
On 11 August 1942, at age 17, Helmut was tried as an adult by the Special People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof) in Berlin, Helmut was sentenced to death.
After the sentence was announced , Helmut turned to 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 this would focus the judge’s wrath solely on him and spare the life of his companions. It worked, his friends received long prison sentences, but survived the war. His two friends, Schnibbe and Wobbe, who had also been arrested, were given prison sentences of five and ten years respectively
On October 27, 1942, guards told Helmut that Adolf Hitler had personally refused to commute his death sentence. Hours later, he was beheaded—the youngest person in German resistance to Nazism ever executed by the Third Reich. It was highly unusual for the Nazis to try an underaged defendant, much less sentence him to death, but the court stated that Helmut had shown more than average intelligence for a boy his age.
Nowadays we also have very vocal youngsters, but mostly they are very privileged, especially in the wealthier western countries. I wonder though would they be willing to face harsh punishment and sacrifices for their causes. I doubt that very much, mainly because they are only paying lip service to often very trivial causes in comparison.
On the other hand there were very fanatical youngsters in Nazi Germany, actively and violently defending the Nazi regime. Children like Alfred Zech, a German child soldier who received the Iron Cross, 2nd Class at the age of 12 years.
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History of Sorts 
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