Alfons heck hbo documentary

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She contacted Heck and suggested they jointly give a series of lectures on the dangers of Nazism. Years later, he said the event was a “jubilant Teutonic Renaissance” that would “bind me to Adolf Hitler until the bitter end and for some time beyond.”

From 1939 to 1945, Heck made a rapid rise in Hitler Youth, becoming the youngest boy to attain the top ranking as a glider pilot in the organization’s air wing.

He also told of his postwar repudiation of Hitler and his eventual coming to terms with the Holocaust. He began elementary school two months after Hitler became the German chancellor and was subject to what he describes as a massive campaign to indoctrinate Germany’s young people.

As Heck describes how he and his classmates were taught “racial science,” learning about racial purity and the concept of the German master race, Holch presents authentic excerpts from Nazi indoctrination films, including one that uses the image of a stream of scurrying rats to underscore a pronouncement that Jews are the dregs of human society.

The scene shifts from Heck — looking professorial in wire-rim glasses and cardigan sweater — describing a giant Hitler Youth rally in Nuremberg, to footage of that rally and Hitler’s address to rank upon rank of saluting children.

At war's end, Heck was captured by American troops, put on trial by the French occupying forces and sentenced to a month hard labor and restricted to his hometown for two years. I felt that hanging was too good for the perpetrators." He uttered those words as he sat in Nuremberg, an especially meaningful place to Heck. And, he says, he assumed that guilt himself.

Heck concludes that the creation of the Hitler Youth was a massive case of child abuse.

A 1991 HBO documentary based on his books, “Heil Hitler! When he was captured and forced to view documentation of death camps, he and his colleagues were certain that the allies had piled up bodies to stage the pictures. Confessions of a Hitler Youth,” used archival footage and Heck’s narration to explain how several million children were swept into the ranks of the youth group that often is referred to as having the most fanatical of Hitler’s followers.

Heck grew up in Wittlich, Germany, a small town near the border with Luxembourg.

Confessions of a Hitler Youth," used news footage and Heck's narration to explain how millions of youngsters were swept into what many regard as the most fanatic of Hitler's followers. That year, Hitler gave Heck the Iron Cross for excellence of service. “A Child of Hitler” was published in 1985 to good reviews and brisk sales.

Heck also contributed freelance pieces to San Diego area newspapers, one of which was read by Helen Waterford, a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

He also collaborated with Helen Waterford, an Auschwitz survivor, in public lectures on the dangers of Nazism.