Jesse Owens Overcame Much to Dispel Aryan Supremacy Myth

With the Olympics opening very soon, I thought I’d turn my attention to another person who stood up to Hitler.  J.C. or Jesse Owens, a renowned Olympic athlete, famously showed Hitler in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games that Africans are not inferior to Aryan or White peoples.

Hitler had prepared Germany well for the Olympic Games.  He had stoked National pride by erecting fantastic facilities for the games and preparing his German athletes to win in every event.  It was the first time the hosting Olympic city had built an Olympic village, which consisted of housing facilities for the foreign visiting athletes.  German athletes had trained long and hard to compete aggressively in all events, even ones that they historically had never won.  A newly constructed Autobahn system of highways impressed foreigners with its modernity.  Zeppelins, huge hydrogen-filled airships, added to the spectacle.

Hitler had garnered power by preaching a flawed doctrine called ‘Aryan Supremacy.’  It was that the Nordic derived white race was superior to all other world races, which he called ‘subhuman.’  Hitler claimed the role of custodian of human culture and planned to eliminate all other races.  He orchestrated the efforts of his police to systematically ‘remove’ more than 6 million Jews, gypsies, blacks, Slavs, communists, Catholics and other human ‘animals.’  The Nazi regime would do this by shooting, hanging, gassing and/or burning.  The Olympic Games of 1936 were a chance for the German people to validate Hitler’s belief in Aryan superiority.  

When Jesse Owens arrived in Germany for the games, he was a bit unnerved by the evident disdain for his race by the German people.  Growing up in Alabama as the youngest son of 10 children to a poor sharecropper, he was used to poor treatment by whites.  Daily he worked in the fields his dad cultivated, perhaps near where his grandfather had labored as a slave.  He picked cotton, and planted and harvested vegetables.  His poor diet created health problems as a child, including Bronchitis that often turned into Pneumonia.  He also suffered from boils that appeared on his chest and legs.  His mother would cut them out with a hot kitchen knife, since they had no money to see a doctor.  He once stepped in a steel hunting trap, another time he was run over by a wagon.  It was amazing that he survived his childhood, and even more astounding that he became an Olympic Athlete.

When Jesse was 9, the family moved to Cleveland Ohio to seek a better life.  Everyone took a job, even young Jesse, and the family pooled their resources to succeed where they couldn’t in the segregated South.  It was here that his new teacher heard ‘Jesse’ instead of ‘J.C.’ when he introduced himself in his thick southern drawl.  He went by Jesse after that.  In his spare time, Jesse loved to run.  He became a wonderful runner and athlete, with the help of his Junior High School coach.  Coach Riley saw potential in this young man and allowed him to practice before school so he could skip afternoon practice to work at his job at the shoe repair shop.  

Jesse thrived socially, making friends with his ‘winsome smile and gregarious personality.’  He was even elected student body president in his senior year!  In addition, he was voted captain of the track team.  He tried out for the 1932 Olympic Games, but failed to qualify.  Undeterred, he said that he had gained valuable experience by trying out.  

After high school, Jesse attended Ohio State University.  The school did not give him a scholarship, so Jesse had to work to pay his tuition as a freight elevator operator.  He worked hard in his schoolwork, his job and training for the track season and continued to improve under the guidance of quality coaches.  

Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games

Jesse worked hard and trained hard.  In 1933, when Jesse was 19 or 20, he was named a part of the American Athlete Union All-American Track Team.  That gave him the opportunity to compete in the ‘Big Ten Championship Meet.’  Somehow in his employment and training, Jesse wrenched his back.  He could hardly move, forget attempting to compete.  He had to have help moving from the car to the field and to remove his warm-up suit.  He didn’t dare warm up without risking reinjuring his back.  In spite of this back pain, Jesse broke 3 world records and tied another at the meet!  He did this in a span of 45 minutes—some say it is one of the most amazing athletic feats ever.

Jesse was well prepared to compete in the Berlin Games in 1936.  He was poised to win several events on the track.  The German team had never won a gold medal in track and field events, yet a German athlete won the first event—the shot-put.  The German crowd erupted in applause and support.  Some even shouted ‘Heil’ and the stadium roared.  Jesse and the American team had to do their absolute best to beat the well-trained Germans on their soil. 

   

As Jesse competed in his events, he won over the crowd with his down-to-earth humor and disarming smiles.  He became a crowd favorite, mingling with the spectators and signing autographs.  The German people loved him and began to cheer for him when he competed.  Jesse broke an Olympic record when he won the 100 meter dash—and his first gold medal.  The German crowd cheered him on.  He broke another Olympic record and won the 200 meter and Long Jump gold medals.  And he was a runner on the 4x100 relay team that took gold.  In total, Jesse won four Olympic gold medals at the Berlin Olympic games.  This made him the most successful athlete at the Olympic games. 

As the world watched, Jesse showed the German people that his race was not inferior.  Biographer Tony Gentry wrote, “The racial hatred that the Nazi Leader (Hitler) had been trying to inspire for almost a decade was negated in ten seconds by a black man who established a love relationship with the Olympic spectators.”  

The odds against Jesse Owens were steep but surmountable to a determined young man.  Surviving poor health and nutrition, disease and poverty, and racial oppression, Jesse nonetheless made himself into an Olympic Gold-winning athlete.  His positive attitude and good nature made him a fantastic role model to the world when he showed his athletic prowess during the Berlin Olympic games, remarkably set in Hitler’s Germany.  

We can do amazing things against steep odds if we work hard and keep trying.   

Read more at:

Harris, Gerald, Olympic Heroes—World Class Athletes Winning at Life, pgs. 91-100.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Owens

Photo is a reproduction from "Die Olympischen Spiel 1936" pg. 27, 1936.  U.S. Public Domain, Copyright Expired.

Helmuth Hubener Spread the Truth in Nazi Germany

In researching the Declaration of Independence and other Patriotic documents, we came across a remarkable story of courage.  A German teenage boy stood up to Hitler during World War 2!

Helmuth Hubener was a typical German youth, with the exception of his membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  He participated in Boy Scouts until Hitler disbanded it.  Then he participated in the Hitler Youth, a military-style training required of all German youth.  He excelled in his training, often answering detailed questions of policy and procedure to his friends.  He even wrote an essay in school extolling Hitler's ideas. 

However, when he saw how Hitler's regime began to treat the Jewish people in Germany, his conscience began to bother him.  One night called 'the night of broken glass' (Kristallnacht), the Hitler Youth and the Gestapo (German police) broke the windows of all Jewish-owned businesses and threw their goods into the street.  Synagogues were burned to the ground.  Kristallnacht was particularly upsetting to Helmuth.  However, the final straw may have been the sign he saw on the Mormon church house declaring that Jews were not welcome to worship there anymore.  This was typical of the times in other churches, but unusual for a LDS congregation.  Helmuth had a young friend who was Jewish that attended their church services.  Helmuth was deeply disturbed to hear him crying outside the door of the chapel when they began singing the opening hymn without him.

About this same time, Helmuths' brother came home triumphant after a military battle.  He brought with him an old broken radio.  Helmuth fixed it and began listening to newscasts.  There were only three stations to which the German people were allowed to listen.  Helmuth found a more interesting one, the BBC or British Broadcasting Corporation.  BBC Broadcasters shared the latest news from the battlefront with more detail and a decidedly different point of view.  Helmuth discovered that the newscasts were so different that one had to be right and the other wrong.  He decided that the German broadcasts were full of lies and propaganda meant to pacify the German people into support of the war.  The BBC must be telling the truth.

Helmuth was breaking the law by listening to the BBC, but he persisted and invited his two closest friends to join him.  Rudy Wobbe and Karl Heinz-Snibbe were terrified about breaking the law.  Daily they heard of people being arrested and tortured for doing just that.  But Helmuth had more dangerous plans.  He wanted others to learn the truth.  And he wanted Rudy and Karl to help him get the word out.  They all agreed that the first one caught would confess to everything and not implicate the others.  This helped ease Rudy's and Karl's minds.

Because Helmuth was asked by the Branch President to write letters to the young men in the church serving in the military, Helmuth had the church typewriter in his home.  Helmuth began to type up small postcard sized notes in several copies using carbon paper, alerting people to the lies Hitler's regime had been spreading.  Helmuth brought home from work an official stamp that the Nazi's used to verify that papers were government-issued.  Using that stamp, he made the postcards look official.  Rudy and Karl took the cards and discreetly taped them to bulletin boards, streetlamps and stuffed them into mail slots and people's pockets.  When this worked and no one was caught, they started making full-page diatribes about Hitler's lies.  One's headline shouted, "Hitler is the real murderer."  Over the course of several months, Helmuth made 60 different pamphlets and hundreds of copies that were spread around his neighborhood in the city of Hamburg, Germany.

The Nazis became aware of the tracts pretty quickly.  The Gestapo thought that a college professor had written them, and they looked long and hard for clues to find the perpetrator.  Hitler could not risk having people learn what he was really doing or the war would be undermined.  The source of this information needed to be stopped, and more—they needed to make an example of him or her.  The Nazis never suspected that the author was a 16-year-old boy!  That may have helped Helmuth and his friends continue undetected a bit longer.  A quote from one tract: 

"German boys! Do you know the country without freedom, the country of terror and tyranny? Yes, you know it well, but are afraid to talk about it. They have intimidated you to such an extent that you don't dare talk for fear of reprisals. Yes you are right; it is Germany — Hitler Germany! Through their unscrupulous terror tactics against young and old, men and women, they have succeeded in making you spineless puppets to do their bidding."

Helmuth was caught after asking another friend of his to translate his most recent tract into French.  This friend took the tract to an informer who called the Gestapo and Helmuth was arrested within the hour.  In his bedroom they found the official looking stamp, the radio and the typewriter with another half-way finished pamphlet still in it. 

Helmuth confessed to the charges boldly.  He was charged with High Treason and Conspiracy against the government.  He was beaten in prison and denied bed or blankets in his cold cell.  In addition, although he did give his friends' names to the authorities due to torture, he told them he was the only one who was guilty.  He tried to protect them by taking full responsibility for the pamphlets. 

Rudy and Karl were also beaten in prison.  A trial was held in which Rudy and Karl were given lengthy prison sentences for their 'minimal' involvement.  Helmuth was sentenced to death.  The court found that Helmut's writings showed an advanced maturity and therefore he was tried as an adult.  The family lost the clemency appeal.  Hitler himself refused the appeal and ordered the sentence to stand.  Helmuth was killed a few weeks later at age 17.  

The court allowed Helmuth to write three letters to his loved ones before his death.  He wrote one to his mother, one to his grandparents and one to a family, which he knew from church.  The last one survived the war, and part of it reads, "I know that God lives and He will be the Just Judge in this matter. I look forward to seeing you in a better world!"

Today these three boys are honored as heroes in Germany as Resistance Fighters.  Streets have been named in Helmuth's honor in the city of Hamburg.  Several books and a Play have been written and a documentary has been made about Helmuth and his friends. 

Helmuth knew what was right and wrong from his study of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Weekly he attended church where he committed to follow Jesus' example and keep the commandments.  When he learned of Hitler's true activities, his conscience led him to condemn Hitler and help others to see the truth.  Risking all, he shared the truth and urged Hamburg citizens to see what was happening and stop Hitler.  In addition, he showed amazing strength of character and courage when he was caught, tried and condemned to die. 

I like to think that Helmuth remembered the story of Abinadi as he sat in his cold prison sell alone.  Perhaps he drew strength from this Book of Mormon hero who testified boldly in King Noah's court.  Surely, God strengthened and supported Helmuth as he had Abinadi. 

We can show courage and strength of character in the face of our challenges. 

Anne Frank Writes in her Diary to the Whole World

Today is Anne Frank's birthday.  On this date 70 years ago, when she was celebrating her 13th birthday, Anne's father gave her a diary for her birthday.  I heard about her birthday on the news today.  What would Anne think about how her birthday is noted worldwide and her diary is discussed in schools worldwide?  Wouldn't that amaze Anne?  Such a thought is so crazy for a 13 year old, but one never knows!

Anne began writing in her new diary immediately.  She loved to write, so she would write about almost anything.  At first she wrote poems and stories about her life in Amsterdam.  But, when her family went into hiding a month later, she started writing about what was happening in the world.  She was an eyewitness to the war and recorded what she saw for all of us to read. 

They went into hiding because Anne's 16 year old sister Margot received a notice to report to a work camp.  Anne and her family were Jewish, and the Germans were rounding up all of the Jews.    The family hid in a secret annex in rooms above a shopping area where Anne's father knew his employees could help them.  Friends would bring the family supplies like food and update them on war news.  According to Anne's diary, the family went into hiding on July 6, 1942. 

Details of living in the attic are in Anne's diary.  She writes of how she had to remain stone silent all day long.  Most of the time, Anne spent this time reading and studying, and writing in her diary.  She wrote about daily life and the news of the war.  And she detailed about how the van Pels family came to join them in hiding.  Another friend, Fritz Pfeffer joined them later.  She wrote a lot about her ambitions and dreams in the silence, where she couldn't talk about them.  Later she wrote more about her belief in God and other more grown-up ideas.

On August 4, 1944 the family was caught.  An informant turned them in; the family never found out who betrayed them.  Her last entry was dated August 1st. 

September 3, 1944 was the date of the last transport from Westerberg to Auschwitz concentration camp.  The Frank family, the Van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer were all on that transport.   Only Anne's father Otto survived the internment.  He spent years looking for members of his family, but slowly learned that all of them were gone. 

Otto Frank located Anne's diary and published it first in the 'Het Parool' newspaper (in Amsterdam) in 1946.  Book publishers noticed it and published it as a book, The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.  Today her book is studied in schools worldwide and discussed for its historic and literary value. 

In one of her entries she wrote,

"I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that's why I'm so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that's inside me!  When I write I can shake off all my cares, my sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived!  But, and that's a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?" 

Let's hope that she does know the great impact her diary has had on the world.  Anne's little diary, full of her hopes and dreams, and her views of the world during her exile, has thrust her into history.  Something as simple as recording her boring daily life became precious to mankind on many different levels.  Broadly, those who reduced the Jewish populace to numbers and inhuman treatment can't deny the humanity shown in this young girls' diary.  On a more personal level, reading her account of coping with the difficulties of confinement in hiding during adolescence offers encouragement and strength to others. 

While I'm preaching this, let me quote from the author of a cool book on some of my posterity I found yesterday.  My distant cousin John E. Morris wrote this in 1893!  And I value what he wrote very much!   

"… a large portion of the delinquents (those who won't write their life stories down) justify their silence on the ground of having nothing of interest to communicate.  This is a mistaken idea; for though their history may be so meager that it may be compressed into two lines of printed matter, still even this is of interest to those for whom the work is complied, namely, their descendants."

I hope we all will renew our interest in writing in a journal or a diary.  Not because I fear we will die young; not at all!  I simply believe that insights as we have dealt with our challenges will be valued by our family and later by our posterity.  Write down miracles and disappointments, fears and faith.  Write down hopes and dreams for your bright future.  And write down what you are learning in your daily battles.   

Sources: 

Wikipedia, Anne Frank.  Found on June 12, 2012 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Frank

Clegg, Melanie.  "Anne Frank 12^th June 1942" found on June 12, 2012 at http://madameguillotine.org.uk/2012/06/12/anne-frank-12th-june-1942/

Morris, John E. The Felt Genealogy, A Record of the Descendants of George Felt of Casco Bay.  Hartford, Connecticut, 1893, p. 6.

Jack Tueller's most important Trumpet solo

I couldn't let Veterans' day go unheralded.  Today I want to write about an amazing Veteran who lives near you.  Jack Tueller of Bountiful Utah saved lives in World War 2 through his faith and his trumpet. 

Jack had a rough beginning, but it introduced him to music.  His Mom died when he was just a little boy; his Dad left the family within that week.  He and his little brother went to live with an aunt who gave Jack a trumpet.  Jack played with the trumpet, eventually learning how to play it masterfully.  Jack said, "I was an unruly child.  Music tamed me."

Famous trumpeter Louis Armstrong heard him play with a band for an event at Yellowstone Park in 1939, telling him, "You sound pretty good for white cats."  Taking the opportunity to learn from Louis, he asked him for advice.  This advice proved to be pivotal in Germany.  "Always play the melody, man. Look at them, see their age group, play their love songs, and you'll carry all the money to the bank."

After attending BYU, marrying another trumpet player and beginning a family, World War 2 broke out.  Jack enlisted and trained with a former crop duster to become a fighter pilot.  He packed up his trumpet and took it with him.  He would play for the men at night to entertain them, and after grueling experiences in battle, comfort them.  In his airplane, Jack provided air support when the Allied invaded Normandy on D-day.  

It was in Germany two weeks after D-day that something singular happened with Jack and his trumpet.  Jack and his group of P-47 fighter pilots were in the German countryside.  A sniper was taking shots at them all day, and into the night.  As evening approached, Jack, now a Captain, wanted to get out his trumpet and calm his men.  But his men asked him not to play.  They were worried that if he did, the sniper would be able to locate him better and he'd be shot.

Jack recalled, "I thought to myself-- that German sniper is as lonely and scared as I am. How can I stop him from firing? So I played that German's love song, 'Lilly Marlene,' made famous in the late '30s by Marlene Dietrich, the famous German actress. And I wailed that trumpet over those apple orchards of Normandy, and he didn't fire."

Not only did the sniper NOT fire, but he turned himself in the next morning.  He asked to see the 'man who played the trumpet.'  When he met him, Jack said, "There was a 19-year-old German, scared and lonesome. He was dressed like a French peasant to cloak his role as a sniper. And, crying, he said, 'I couldn't fire because I thought of my fiancé. I thought of my mother and father,' and he says, 'My role is finished.'  He stuck out his hand, and I shook the hand of the enemy, [But] he was no enemy, because music had soothed the savage beast."

Jack flew 140 missions during World War 2 and his plane was never hit by a single bullet.  Later he fought in the Korean War and the Vietnam War.  He helped on the ground during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War.  He retired as a Colonel with lots of awards for his valor and bravery.

I think Jack was a great pilot and a good man.  But I think he also was guided and blessed by the Holy Spirit. He was an inspired man.  He lives in Bountiful, Utah and went to BYU for his education.  I think he's a Mormon and he knows how to rely on Heavenly Father's inspiration, even in battles of war.

We can count on Heavenly Father's help in all of our battles.  We just need to live worthy of the gift of the Holy Ghost and ask for Heavenly Father's help in prayer.