Karl-Heinz Schnibbe was one of three Mormon teenagers who
risked their lives in Hitler's Germany to stand up to the Nazis, whom
the boys
called the "Battalion of the Damned."
Schnibbe could have been sentenced to death when he stood in
front of the Volksgerichtshof, the Nazis' blood tribunal. Or he could
have died
in the camps, where he endured abhorrent conditions and emerged, in
1949, with
his 95 pounds stretched thin across his 6 feet and 2 inches.
Schnibbe died Sunday in a Salt Lake-area care facility, the
last of the trio who fought Hitler's propaganda with leaflets filled
with
truth. Schnibbe finally succumbed to the effects of Parkinson's. He was
86.
"Karl always said, 'I'm not a hero,'" his wife,
Joan Schnibbe, said Monday. "But he knew how dangerous it was. I always
thought it was really pretty daring and brave."
As an 18-year-old in Hamburg, Schnibbe distributed the
pamphlets written by Helmuth Hubener, a teenage friend who
secretly
listened to BBC wartime broadcasts on his radio and used the information
to
battle Nazi propaganda.
Schnibbe and friend Rudi Wobbe slipped the leaflets into
phone booths and coat pockets in hopes of spreading truth throughout the
city.
The Hubener Group was arrested, tried and convicted
in 1942.
Schnibbe, 18, was sentenced to five years in a labor camp.
Wobbe, 16, was sentenced to 10 years.
Hubener, the mastermind, was sentenced to death and
beheaded.
Schnibbe and Wobbe spent three years together in a German
labor camp, where they suffered beatings and starvation. They spent the
freezing winter months wading in water up to their thighs as they dug in
peat
bogs, which Schnibbe would later blame for the severe arthritis in his
knees.
"Life was so rough; you had to fight every day just to
stay alive," Schnibbe told reporters in 1992, the 50th anniversary of
Hubener's execution.
Conditions in the camp were dire, squalid.
"We didn't have lice; they had us," he said.
In the final days of the Third Reich, political prisoners
were drafted to fight, and Schnibbe was sent to Czechoslovakia.
"The Americans came while I was waiting in uniform,"
he said. "Was I liberated? Think again! The Americans only wanted
fighter
pilots and rocket specialists."
Soviet soldiers took Schnibbe. He spent four years as a
prisoner of war.
As a free man, Schnibbe was restless and acted out.
He pointed to one moment in his life when, at a concert, the
music overtook him and he broke down in tears. He cried for two hours as
his
mother held him.
"She knew how important it was to wash out his soul,"
Joan Schnibbe said. "He was able to forgive, but maybe not forget."
Schnibbe came to the United States in 1952 and made Salt
Lake City his home.
He worked as a painter and craftsman, doing much of the gold
leafing in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' Salt Lake
Temple.
He spent the last 18 years of his life as a volunteer there.
Schnibbe never minded speaking his mind. "That's a
German thing," his wife said. He loved to laugh and often slipped away
to
Costco for a slice of pizza.
In his final months, Schnibbe's knees became worse, bending
into each other until his legs looked like X's.
He was placed in a care facility after a knee replacement,
and there, it was discovered he had Parkinson's, his wife said.
Funeral services will be held at the Valley View LDS 3rd
Ward, 4101 S. 1925 East, Friday at noon.
e-mail: <>afalk@desnews.com