Alfons Heck
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Alfons Heck (1927 - 11 April 2005) born in the Mosel River 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 equivelent of a 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 an informant to locate Nazis who were in hiding. 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 going to be executed by firing squad, but eventually that was stopped, and he was forced through hard labor 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 migrated 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
- 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
