Alfons Heck

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Alfons Heck (1928 - 12 April 2005) born in the region of the Rhineland and raised in Wittlich. Heck was a former Hitler Youth member turned human rights activist and author of books related to Nazi Germany. He also did presentations about his time in the Hitler Youth with Helen Waterford, a Holocaust survivor.

[edit] Life

Heck was raised in nascent Nazi Germany. In 1933 he went to a Hitler-sponsored school as a child and joined the Hitler Youth when he was 10. He moved up in the Hitler Youth ranks until he was appointed Bannführer, the equivalent of a high ranking U.S. general at the time when the Nazi army was failing. He joined the Luftwaffe, which had been his dream, but since the armed forces were doing so poorly, his plane was in terrible shape and achieving his dream did not seem so glorious. After the war, the Allied troops, unaware of his background recruited him as a translator. He revealed that he was a member of the Luftwaffe and was sent to an American prisoner of war camp. He was transferred to the French and was threatened with execution by firing squad, but he was eventually spared and forced through hard labour and watching videos of concentration camps, which he did not believe existed until he went to the Nuremberg Trials, before he was released.

After the war Heck immigrated to Canada and then to the United States where he repented of his past activities after meeting and forming a friendship with Helen Waterford, a Holocaust survivor. They began a speaking tour on university campuses to talk about the evil they had both witnessed.

Heck provided testimony on the parallels between Nazism and Islamism and was featured in the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West.

[edit] Bibliography

  • A Child of Hitler Germany in the Days When God Wore a Swastika
  • The Burden of Hitler's Legacy
  • Biography - Heck, Alfons (1928-2005):
  • Parallel Journeys
 BBC Documentary: (1989) The Fatal Attraction of Adolf Hitler
 HBO Heil Hitler Confessions Of A Hitler Youth (1991) 
 Won an ACE for best documentary
 International CINDY
 GEORGE FOSTER PEABODY AWARD
 In 1992, Heck was awarded the a NATIONAL EMMY for"outstanding
 historical programming"Template:Germany-writer-Historian stub
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