A Child of Hitler

A Child of Hitler - Germany in the days when God wore a Swastika

- Alfons Heck

Book Two - Twelve book about WW2

This is a fascinating book and I think it needs to be a widely read book. If it is it not on high school and uni reading lists it should be.

Alfons Heck, the author of this book, was a teenager and member of the Hitler Youth in Germany during World War 2. War changes people and forces to them grow up fast and this is accurate for Alfons. Today, modern teenagers may spend their free time in packs of like minded school friends loitering in shopping centers or being car pooled to sporting events. In 1945, sixteen year old Heck had risen rapidly in the Hitler Youth to the rank of Gefolgschaftsfuhrer - an equal rank to an U.S Army or British Army Captain- and was in in command of nearly 2,800 boys and 80 girls in defensive duty on the Siegfried Line. This was unusual, not however for the reason that springs to mind. It was unusual because sixteen year old Gefolgschaftsfuhrers - which were not uncommon- usually were in command of only a measly unit of  800 boys. This mind boggling rank and command system was present because of two main reasons. Firstly, due to the horrendous loss of life suffered  by the German army. The army was running out of men and determined not to surrender they dipped into the youth of Germany recruiting boys as young as twelve years old. The second reason is that the members of the Hitler Youth had been schooled and indoctrinated in the ideologies of Nazism from the age of five and six. This resulted in the Hitler Youth being one of the most fanatic groups in Nazi Germany and they were desperate to fight in the war, even as defeat grew near. Many choose suicide over the thought of living in a world were their leader and hero, Hitler was not in command.

Whether or not these child soldiers should be held accountable for their actions is one of the key themes of this book. Currently the age of criminal responsibility ranges in age between 10 to 12  in different western countries. The idea is that a child under 10 does not have the mature capability to commit a serious crime and they cannot be charged with one. The members of the Hitler Youth were older than 10 but was the weight of their tainted education and the national intoxication of Hitler too much for them realise the true consequences of their actions? Did they even know the whole picture? Heck writes about his horror and shock when at the end of the war he was finally convinced that concentration camps had actually existed. In this book Heck writes that he and the boys relished their power and supremacy and they had believed in the master race. However, as he learnt the truth of what had happened during the war he felt deep anger and resentment to his elders who he felt deceived and delivered their children into a lie.

If you want to read a book that will make you feel as if you were with the Hitler Youth on their rallies, during training and when they faced active war, this is the book for you. Heck paints a very vivid picture of his experiences and since they are his own experiences the truth of what really happened to thousands of German children and teenagers thuds home.

"Tragically, now, we are the other part of the Holocaust, the generation burdened with the enormity of Auschwitz. That is our life sentence, for we became the enthusiastic victims of our Fuhrer."

Alfons Heck became an American citizen and toured the for nine years with Helen Waterford, a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz. Together they gave talks to thousands of  people on their different perspectives and experiences of the Nazi era.

The Seventy-Four Rabbits

Rose under fire

– Elizabeth Wein

World War 2 was absolutely a ‘world’ war because of how it affected such a vast number of countries and people. I find that growing up in the British Commonwealth; I have understandably known much more about the British viewpoint and how it affected the British and Australian forces. World War Two caused many different reactions and consequences in other countries though and so to broaden my perspective, for the next twelve weeks I am going to read twelve books that focus on some different parts and attitudes of the war. I am going to be focusing on the war in Europe rather than in Africa, the east or at sea because it would already take me a life time to read through everything that has been written about the European side of the war!

               

Book One - Twelve books about WW2

Rose Justice is an 18 year old American who has lived through most of World War Two in perfect comfort and peace. In 1944 she decides to use her experience as a pilot to go to England and join the Air Transport Auxiliary which consists of female civilians who transport aeroplanes from factories and between aerodromes. While the work has many risks; flying in bad weather, landing on cracked runways and flying broken down aeroplanes to be fixed, Rose feels that her skills are wasted. Her father taught her to fly when she was 12 years old and Rose already has more flying experience then most of the male combat pilots. Rose eventually convinces her uncle who is high ranking in the air force to allow her to transport him to his station in newly allied occupied France. Everything is going well till on her flight back to England when Rose stumbles on a flying bomb - Vergeltungswaffe 1. These were fairly new bombs that travelled long distances before exploding, like our modern day missile. Rose has heard rumours that these bombs can be rammed or even diffused by just disturbing the air space around them. Without stopping to think she turns her aeroplane and makes attempt after attempt to stop the bomb without blowing herself up. She is finally successful but her happiness turns to fear as she realises that she has gone far off her route and is now lost over countryside that is quite likely still in German control.

In no time at all Rose is discovered by German aircraft and is transported deep into Germany. The Germans are very surprised that she is a female pilot and they are unsure what to do with her as she is an American civilian and not a combat pilot. Finally, more because they are unsure what to do with her, Rose is transported to the concentration camp Ravensbrck.

Concentration Camps were some of the worst places on earth, where people were systematically dehumanised and then starved and worked to death. Jews were the people who made up most of the inhabitants in concentration camps but they were not alone. Sometimes forgotten are the Poles, Russians, Czechs, Serbs, Ukrainians, Greeks, French, soldiers and civilians, religious minorities, social outcasts and members of resistance movements, to name just a few were also placed in these camps. Ravensbrck was a female camp with mainly French, Polish, Russian prisoners.  Rose was aware of concentration camps before she arrived at Ravensbruk but she had also viewed them sceptically and the horrible stories that emerged from them were very often considered simply anti- German propaganda. Rose didn’t believe it. That is until she arrived and met the Rabbits of Ravensbrck. These rabbits were seventy four Polish girls and women who were taken to Ravensbrck to be used as experiments. Their legs were cut open and deliberately damaged and then inside their wounds would be placed gangrene or bacteria and then everything would be bandaged in dirty linen. Their torturous wounds were made to replicate those being received by the German troops so that the doctors could experiment and observe the effects.

What is powerful about this book is that it that the story does not stop when the survivors escape or are released from Ravensbrck. It shows the near impossibility it was for the survivors to pick up the pieces of their lives and carry on. Inside the camp the women had banded together and fought to help each other survive so that there would be a time when someone could tell the world what had happened. However once released, fear, guilt of being alive and emotional scarring made speaking out difficult for many of them.

This novel covers very dark and serious topics and while Rose is a fictional character, the seventy four Rabbits were real women. The story, however is not completely black, instead it shows what happened when the women of Ravensbrck refused to give up being human beings and worked together, regardless of their different nationalities, to survive.

Because of the sacrifices of the women of Ravensbrck, sixty three rabbits survived the war to tell their stories.

“Izabela, Aniela, Alicia, Eugenia,

Stefania, Rozalia, Pelagia, Irena,

Alfreda, Apolonia, Janina, Leonarda,

Czeslava, Stanislava, Vladyslava, Barbara,

Veronika, Vaclava, Bogumila, Anna,

Genovefa, Helena, Jadviga, Joanna,

Kazimiera, Ursula, Vojcziechz, Maria,

Wanda, Leokadia, Krystyna, Zofia”

 (A mnemonic counting-out rhyme that includes all the given names of the seventy four Polish women experimented on in Ravensbrck. Some of the women had similar first names or shared a name, in the poem each name is only listed once.)