Volksgerichtshof's Proclamation Announcing Helmuth Hubener’s Execution

Helmuth Hubener was arrested on February 5, 1942, by the Gestapo at his workplace He was working at The Hamburg Social Authority in the Bieberhaus in Hamburg. He was working on translating pamphlets into French which he wanted to distribute among prisoners of war.  A Nazi Party member named Heinrich Mohn discovered what he was doing and turned him in.  His case was tried at the Volksgerichtshof in Berlin on August 11, 1942.  He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit high treason and treasonous furthering of the enemy's cause.  He was sentenced to death.  He also sentenced to permanently lose his civil rights, which meant he could be (and was) mistreated in prison, with no bedding or blankets in his cold cell, for instance.  The Nazis didn’t usually try an underaged defendant, but the court found Helmuth highly intelligent for his age and punished him as an adult.  The Reich Youth Leadership (Reichsjugendführung) stated that the danger posed by his activities to the German people's war effort made the death penalty necessary.  Helmuth Hubener was executed by getting his head chopped off by the guillotine on August 11, 1942.

Volksgerichtshof's Proclamation Announcing Helmuth Hubener’s Execution

Translation:  Let it be known.  On August 11, 1942, the People’s Court sentenced 17-year-old Helmuth Hubener of Hamburg, to being stripped of his citizen’s rights, and in addition, to death, because of his treasonous support of the enemy.  His execution has been carried out today, the 27^th of October, by the order of the chief attorney general of the People’s Court.