“The Boy Who Dared”
by Susan Bartoletti
Written by Riley de Leon
202 pages read
January 29, 2010
We all know that the holocaust was one of history’s darkest moments. Hitler was in control, and nothing seemed right. Especially in the eyes of a Jew, but also in the eyes of some Germans. Of course freedom of speech was verboten, therefore Hitler’s way was always, “the right way.” Unless you were Helmuth Guddat Hubener, the boy who dared.
Helmuth Hubener was a German schoolboy who was never afraid to express his patriotism. He’s the step-son of Hugo Hubener (rottenfuhrer) which impacted the way that he was looked upon in public. The Gestapo controlled the streets, and that was always very risky for Helmuth and his friends. Helmuth’s education as part of the Hitler Youth and training to become a future Nazi is very successful, but nothing that Helmuth is proud of. I noticed that the book doesn’t focus as much on Helmuths education as it does his rebellious attitude and German lifestyle.
Just after Hitler passes a new law that states, “the listening of foreign radio stations such as the BBC is verboten due to the current state of our war,” Helmuth had finally had it with the diminishing freedoms of the German people. He tuned into the BBC every night. Soon, he became a regular activist writing pamphlets about the “truth,” that he thought Germany should know about Hitler and the Nazis that he learned from listening to the BBC. He finally enlisted his friends Rudi Wobbe, and Karl Schnibbe, to secretly post these pamphlets all across Hamburg.
As 2 years went by, Helmuth finally got caught and was charged with “Wilfully distributing information of foreign radio stations… Deliberately listening to foreign radio stations….Conspiracy to commit high treason… Sentenced to death, and the loss of his civil right during his lifetime.” (pg. 162) Something else I liked about this book was that to build up the plot and resolution, the author went back and forth from Helmuth’s childhood, to his time in the concentration camp, up until the day he dies.
Something I dislike throughout the story is how Hitler continuously attempts to dominate Germany’s surrounding countries, but especially how heavy the author laid it on the reader. There are some parts in the book that are un-realistic from history. Helmuth and his friends didn’t get caught for nearly two years while sending out enemy propaganda, with how intensely the author and history described restrictions and the strict attitude of the Gestapo Nazi’s. Otherwise, they story was proven historically accurate.
This book is fiction based on a true story, and Helmuth Hubener’s life story is real, as was he. It was based off of Germany’s form of National Socialism at the time, and puts the feelings of others into perspective. In the author’s note, Susan Bartoletti said that, “To create scenes that I could not back up with factual information, I extracted details from his prison records and other primary sources, and based my own fictional scenarios from this.” (pg. 168) This was a great book that not only reflected the depression of Jewish people, but the anger of some Germans.
“Spirit……Spirit and Action…That’s All I Want…”
— Helmuth Hubener 1940