My novel, The Still Voice, was targeted for this year. It was not to be. That’s all right. The book will still be here for the seventieth anniversary and for the seventy-fifth. And I will still be here, too.
When people learn that my main character Sophia joins up with the Edelweiss Pirates youth resistance group, they often think the group is fictitious. It amazes me that so many are unfamiliar with the groups within Germany that fought so valiantly against Nazi rule.
The Edelweiss Pirates was a loosely-knit group of thousands of working class teenagers that existed in Köln and nearby cities during WWII. An alternative movement to the Hitler Youth, the Pirates risked arrest, torture, and their lives to carry out acts of sabotage against the Nazi regime. The Pirates provided shelter to German army deserters and escaped prisoners from concentration camps. They raided military depots and deliberately sabotaged war production. In 1944 they killed the head of the Köln Gestapo. Orders to root them out came from Heinrich Himmler himself.*
Both boys and girls were members of the Köln resistance.**In 1988 the Edelweiss Pirates were recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. The criminal status given the group by the Gestapo was dropped in 2005, and they were officially recognized as “resistance fighters” and heroes.
There were other groups, too. Among them The White Rose is known for its bravery. Several members of this group were beheaded for authoring, printing, and disseminating leaflets critical of Hitler and National Socialism. Their last leaflet reads, in part: Freedom and honor! For ten long years Hitler and his comrades have crushed, squeezed, and twisted these two glorious German words . . . The name of Germany is dishonored for all time if German youth does not finally rise, avenge and atone, smash its tormentors, and erect a new Europe of the spirit.***
The Swing Kids were, initially, an apolitical group of middle class members interested primarily in British and American jazz music. Their counter-culture mode of dress, grooming, and make-up eventually brought them into conflict with the Gestapo. And swing clubs were open to Jewish friends.
The Swing Kids had to listen to overseas radio stations to hear their music. This would have brought them into contact with allied propaganda. It’s thought that some were instrumental in spreading this. “Swing clubs were tolerated until 1940, when a gathering in Hamburg drew alarm when it was attended by 500 youths. After this, jazz appreciation went largely underground. On January 2, 1942, Heinrich Himmler wrote to Reinhard Heydrich calling on him to clamp down on the ringleaders of the Swing movement, recommending a few years in a concentration camp with beatings and forced labor.”****
The Helmuth Hubener Group, led by Helmuth Hubener, distributed illegal transcriptions of BBC broadcasts and antigovernment leaflets. “The Gestapo eventually arrested them. Hubener was executed by guillotine on October 27, 1942, while the other members received long prison sentences.”****
Die Meuten (packs) were found in working class strongholds such as Leipzig. The Leipzig Meuten shared many characteristics with the Edelweiss Pirates, “except they tended to come from more organized socialist or communist traditions. Because of this background, they received more official attention. Between 1937 and 1939 the Gestapo estimated their numbers in Leipzig at 1500. There were complaints that many areas were ‘no-go’ areas for Nazis, due to the abuse and violence meted out by the Meuten.”****
There were many German resistance groups that fought valiantly against the Nazis in WWII. Many paid a dear price for their freedom fighting. I wish the world could know more about them.
*Edelweiss Pirates: dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1441,1391096,00.html, The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, metafilter.com.
**Photo: http://www.organizedrage.com/2009/08/edelweiss-pirates-fascinating-account.html
***The White Rose: http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/default.htm
****Swing Kids, Helmuth Hubener Group, Leipzig Meuten http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A3059255
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