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Was braucht es, um Widerstand zu leisten?
80 Jahre nach dem gescheiterten Attentat auf Adolf Hitler am 20. Juli 1944 erzählen Nachfahren die Geschichten ihrer Familien.
Es sind die Geschichten mutiger Frauen.
Sei es, dass sie selbst aktiv den Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus unterstützen,
sei es, dass sie die Familien zusammenhielten und Hoffnung gaben.
Von diesen oft vergessenen Heldinnen erzählt die Reportage.
Sie waren Sekretärinnen, Sportlerinnen, Mütter und riskierten alles für ein Ende des Nazi-Terrors.
80 Jahre nach dem gescheiterten Attentat auf Adolf Hitler am 20. Juli 1944 erzählen Nachfahren die Geschichten ihrer Familien.
Es sind die Geschichten mutiger Frauen.
Sei es, dass sie selbst aktiv den Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus unterstützen,
sei es, dass sie die Familien zusammenhielten und Hoffnung gaben.
Von diesen oft vergessenen Heldinnen erzählt die Reportage.
Sie waren Sekretärinnen, Sportlerinnen, Mütter und riskierten alles für ein Ende des Nazi-Terrors.
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LernenTranskript
00:05When it comes to resistance against National Socialism, we often only think of the names of men.
00:11Names like Klaus von Stauffenberg, who was executed here at Bändlerblock in Berlin exactly 80 years ago.
00:17He is the one who carried out the bomb attack on Hitler on July 20, 1944, at the Wolf's Lair headquarters.
00:25But Adolf Hitler survives with minor injuries. The attempt to overthrow the Nazi regime fails. Once again.
00:33What we know little about: the families, the survivors, the accomplices. How did they support the resistance against Hitler?
00:40Women also opposed the Nazis and often paid for it with their lives.
00:45Others were ostracized as traitor widows and had to fight to provide for their children.
00:51We set out to find their stories, the silent heroines and their courage.
01:07What did this resistance look like? And how did the descendants experience their mothers and grandmothers?
01:15What I admire about my grandmother is the strength with which she managed to be such a positive and cheerful person.
01:25to stay and ensure that their children got a good start in life.
01:29The fact that she never complained, that she never accepted it as a difficult fate, which in my opinion she nevertheless
01:38also had.
01:39I admire her steadfastness. She could have said what I did: "Yes, I was wrong, Hitler is..."
01:49Yes, a large diamond, but she would never have done that in her life.
01:54Erika von Brockdorf is executed. Others are arrested but survive. Renate Sment is branded a traitor's widow.
02:05I meet her son, Axel Sment, at the Plötzensee Memorial in Berlin. His father was murdered here 80 years ago.
02:12been.
02:14Günter Sment is one of 89 resistance fighters of July 20th who were executed in the then prison.
02:26This is the report to the Führer's Reich Leader, Bormann, that the sentences have been carried out. Specifically, at 4:00 PM.
02:3645 a.m.
02:38That was the moment of death. And it happened right here in the next room.
02:53For me, it is of course the most horrible room I can possibly imagine.
03:00Of course I see him here before me, even in the last seconds of his life.
03:08Günter Sment was a lieutenant colonel in Hitler's General Staff at the time. He supported Stauffenberg's attempt to assassinate the dictator.
03:15His wife, for her own protection, knows nothing of his activity in the resistance.
03:22She must have suspected something when the Gestapo came to our home in Lüneburg, where we lived at the time.
03:30The front door was.
03:31And confiscated all of my father's belongings after he was arrested.
03:36And I told my mother, "You can leave your tie and belt right here."
03:40My mother must have known that my father was in some way imprisoned.
03:48The execution of her husband changes the lives of Renate Sment and her children forever.
03:54And now the big question for widows in general, not just for my mother, but for all other widows, was...
04:02just as.
04:03How do I tell my children this?
04:06How do I tell them now that their father has suddenly become a traitor?
04:11And that he was murdered and that he tried to kill Hitler.
04:17Neighbors were suddenly no longer neighbors, but avoided any contact with my mother.
04:24Which is understandable, because the neighbors would have been told, oh, you're hiding there with the Sment family.
04:31a blanket.
04:32It was still wartime.
04:34Renate Sment is raising three children on her own. She needs to find a job.
04:38She did not receive a widow's pension for many years after the war ended.
04:42Her son Axel senses from the teachers' behavior that he is perceived differently than other children.
04:47My mother regularly attended parent-teacher conferences because I was a bad student.
04:52And then the teacher, when they were talking about my father, said to my mother, oh, Mrs. Sment, then it is
04:59Yes, all right.
05:00It's no wonder her son Axel is doing so badly in school as the son of a traitor.
05:07It immediately took root in my subconscious. And it hasn't let go of me since.
05:16Axel Sment begins to learn about his father. His mother often talks about him.
05:21Axel Sment remains involved with the July 20 Foundation to this day. He regularly returns to Plötzensee.
05:29Also to be close to his father's story here.
05:35We are fortunate that our father left us a little book.
05:41My father carried this little book with him. He wrote his thoughts in it.
05:49I fought a good fight. I finished the race. I kept the faith.
05:59And then he writes again.
06:01I was arrested that day. Despite my many doubts, I knew how it would end. It had to be this way.
06:23Now, your mother was not actually part of the resistance, but she was still part of the history of that resistance.
06:31She was a traitor's widow. We were traitor's children, but my mother was above all a traitor's widow.
06:37My father even wrote to my mother from prison, or rather, wrote in the little book,
06:44She absolutely must revert to her birth name because the name Sment is tainted.
06:52Of course she didn't do that, but that was the prevailing mindset back then.
06:57Axel Sment visits schools as a contemporary witness. Remembering the resistance is important to him.
07:03For our lives today. For how we decide and act.
07:10Passing history on to the younger generation has become Annette von Schlabrendorf's profession.
07:16Her grandfather was one of the few conspirators of July 20th who were not executed by the Nazis.
07:23When is resistance necessary? The teacher discusses this with her class.
07:28July 20, 1944. Does that date mean anything to you?
07:34Advanced philosophy course at the Humboldt Gymnasium in Tegel.
07:37It's about the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler.
07:39The teacher's grandfather, Fabian von Schlabrendorf, supported the coup plans at that time.
07:45He is friends with some of the so-called conspirators.
07:48Annette von Schlabrendorf tells her class nothing about her own family history.
07:53This is about the big picture. When is resistance justified?
07:57We had said that violent resistance is justified when the free choice of society is restricted.
08:03Annette von Schlabrendorf grew up with stories of resistance.
08:07Her grandfather, a reserve officer, fought against Hitler even before the war began.
08:12Then, in 1943, he smuggled a bomb on board a plane in which the dictator was sitting.
08:18But it doesn't explode. The fact that the courage of the resistance fighters goes unnoticed for so long troubles Annette von Schlabrendorf.
08:26The criticism that July 20th came too late is often raised.
08:31The people who say this are unaware of the attempts that had already been made before.
08:36So we're talking about a very long period of time, easily 38, if not earlier, which begins with thoughts and
08:44Considerations.
08:46Her grandparents with three of their six children. The grandmother, Luit Garde, knew them herself.
08:52A woman who gives strength to her family.
08:55As a Bismarck native, she likely established contact with Winston Churchill in the 1930s.
09:01She travels to London with her husband to warn the British about the Nazis' war plans.
09:07Behind every strong personality, there must be at least one supporting personality.
09:15And in this case, it was mostly the women.
09:19Shortly after July 20, 1944, the Gestapo arrested Fabian von Schlabrendorf.
09:24He is tortured, sent to a concentration camp, but he survives.
09:29After the war, he founded the July 20 Relief Organization and became a judge of the Federal Constitutional Court.
09:35and dedicated his life to advocating for the rights of the families of resistance fighters.
09:40Resistance. A word whose meaning Annette von Schlabrendorf also discusses with her class.
09:46You are history, you are the world. Why might this also be directed at you?
09:52There are indeed things where it is important to clearly express one's convictions.
09:58And there are many protests about that.
10:00I think it is very important that people today invoke the word resistance,
10:07to clarify that resistance, as we define it, is actually only possible in a state not governed by the rule of law,
10:14to afford at all.
10:15That everything else is not resistance in that sense, because one has the possibility to
10:22to defend oneself against certain state structures or laws in another way.
10:32Only a small minority of Germans resisted the injustices of the National Socialists at that time.
10:37Also because the death penalty is a possibility.
10:39Here in Plötzensee, hundreds of men and women from the resistance are beheaded or hanged.
10:48Erika von Brockdorf died in this room in May 1943.
10:53The Gestapo had been searching for her and several groups of friends under the name Red Orchestra.
10:59The reason? They had documented war crimes committed by the Nazis.
11:03and attempts to establish radio contact with the Soviet military.
11:08Erika von Brockdorf was in her early 30s at the time and had a daughter.
11:12She was only five years old when her mother was executed.
11:18Today Saskia von Brockdorf lives in Zehlendorf.
11:21Even in her mid-80s, she is still active as a contemporary witness, remembering her mother.
11:36I know, for example, that she had a great sense of humor and that she was also a bit stubborn.
11:43Because if she believed something was right, she insisted on it.
11:50Erika von Brockdorf rejects fascism and the Nazi dictatorship and fights against them.
11:56Just like their circle of friends. A resistance network that the Nazis called the Red Orchestra.
12:01Even in the Brockdorfs' apartment, they try to establish contact with the Soviet secret service via radio.
12:07But basically, only one radio message reached Moscow, and it said something like, "Greetings to everyone."
12:17Friends.
12:18Nazi counterintelligence learns of the radio experiments.
12:22Erika von Brockdorf is to be imprisoned for ten years.
12:25But then Hitler personally demands that the verdict be overturned and increased.
12:29The ultimate consequence is the death penalty.
12:33Actually, if you want to put it that way, and this later made me very sad, she was essentially executed.
12:40for nothing.
12:43For the good intentions, which unfortunately didn't work out because the Russians didn't give them a really good radio.
12:52The daughter grows up in East Germany. Here, her mother is considered a socialist role model.
12:57Saskia von Brockdorf is constantly compared to her mother, the heroine.
13:06If I did something wrong, my mother was immediately summoned.
13:10You can't do that to the mother.
13:14Until I turned 18 and said, now I'm an adult, I want to live my own life and
13:21no longer wants to be Erika von Brockdorf's daughter.
13:25Saskia von Brockdorf struggles with her mother's story, feels unloved and abandoned.
13:31She was already over 60 when she discovered a letter in an archive, written by her mother a few days before her death.
13:37has written about the execution.
13:42My dear Saskia, I hope that these pointers will one day reach each other.
13:48Then I won't be around for a long time.
13:51But what I wanted to tell you with these lines is that in my cell I very often, indeed most of the time, only think about
13:58I thought of you.
13:59My dear, dear child, I wish you all the very best for your life.
14:04May you become an open, honest, and straightforward person.
14:08These words change how Saskia von Brockdorf sees her mother.
14:13Before I had the letter, I always thought that her political resistance activities were much more important to her than her daughter.
14:24And when I read the letter, I realized how much she loved you and all your love.
14:33The doubts were completely pointless and unnecessary.
14:43Saskia von Brockdorf takes us to Berlin-Friedenau.
14:48Is this already in front of the blue house?
14:51Yes.
14:52Ah yes, you can see them here.
14:54Here they are.
14:55Oh yes.
14:56I should have brought something to clean with.
14:59Here she had a Stolperstein (memorial plaque) laid for her mother.
15:04Because we lived in this house, and my mother was arrested here as well.
15:10The von Brockdorf family lives in a studio apartment with large windows under the roof.
15:16At home, Erika von Brockdorf not only hides a radio, but also, at times, a Soviet spy.
15:22In the autumn of 1942, the Gestapo rang her doorbell at Wilhelmshöher Straße 17.
15:28Arrest her. Erika von Brockdorf will never return.
15:37Today, Saskia von Brockdorf worries whether there will be sufficient remembrance of the injustices of the Nazi dictatorship in the future.
15:44becomes.
15:47Yesterday I sat in front of the television until about twelve o'clock because I wanted to watch something.
15:56Where people say, young and old alike, young even more so.
16:01This constant remembering and the famous final line have to come to an end sometime.
16:10That one should be drawn now. And I don't think much of that one, because it doesn't really exist.
16:17Because the past is never truly gone. It also extends into the present.
16:25Learning from the past for the present. That is a concept that Saskia von Brockdorf wants to pass on.
16:31To have their own moral compass. Just like the women of the resistance.
16:36Their stories also fascinate historian Trille Schünke.
16:40She collects them on her website, Antifascists out of Decency.
16:44It commemorates women in the resistance against the National Socialists.
16:48Because most of them are still missing from public commemoration.
16:51To change that, Trille Schünke organizes city tours.
16:55Currently following in the footsteps of courageous women in Rummelsburg.
16:59Tucholler Platz in Berlin. It is named after Käthe and Felix Tucholler.
17:04Both lived around the corner and were active in the resistance against the Nazis.
17:09Trille Schünke begins her city tour here.
17:12She especially remembers the women and men who use their sports club ASV Fichte as a resistance network.
17:19Käthe is playing hockey here.
17:21What was really interesting about Fichte, especially for all the women, was that there were also many other women,
17:28who have played sports
17:30so that they could find entire teams.
17:32In some cases, it really wasn't that easy to field a women's handball team, for example, in a traditional sports club.
17:37receive.
17:38In Berlin-Lichtenberg, there were many communist and socialist associations before 1933.
17:44The Nazis quickly banned them, but the workers' sports club Fichte preempted them and dissolved itself in order to...
17:51to be re-established later.
17:55ASV Fichte was the organization that best prepared for illegality.
18:01They burned their membership lists, they destroyed their sports equipment if necessary.
18:06They chopped them up, they really turned them into kindling and partly burned or gave them away.
18:11And this led to a situation where, for example, membership lists no longer existed and new ones could be founded.
18:16Otherwise, the Nazis would have simply gone through the new lists and said, "This matches the old ones."
18:22We're banning it again.
18:23The members also arrange to go hiking together. During these hikes, they discuss how to organize the resistance.
18:29Women are distributing leaflets; some are hiding those being persecuted.
18:33Many are members of the Communist Party, which was banned in 1933.
18:38As is Anna Rathmann. Her daughter Erika is also participating in the tour today.
18:43She remembers how her mother was arrested in 1942.
18:48We were standing in the corridor, my mother was braiding my pigtails (I had pigtails back then), when she rang the doorbell.
18:54And incredibly, I noticed that my mother was restless, around 7:30 in the morning, who wouldn't be?
18:59Two men from the secret state police stood at the door and asked her to come with them.
19:06And then I started to cry because I realized that my mother was very worried.
19:11And then one of them actually said, and my mother later confirmed this to me, but a German girl
19:17Don't cry.
19:18That's nonsense.
19:20Her mother, Anna Rathmann, pictured here with Erika as a baby, was released and survived the Nazi era.
19:27After the end of the dictatorship, none of the women made a big fuss about their involvement.
19:32This is also one reason why their resistance is almost forgotten today.
19:38Do you believe you yourself would have been capable of offering that resistance back then?
19:43I don't know. I honestly don't know.
19:46Because, as the old Goethe said, one must also remember that man grows with his tasks.
19:52I could never say that I would have given my life for it.
19:58Maybe, but with a very big question mark.
20:02The film "With love, your Hilde" tells the story of a woman who was executed for her resistance against the Nazis.
20:09It will be released in cinemas this autumn.
20:14Laila Stieler wrote the screenplay for the film based on the last years of the life of Hilde Koppi, a woman from Berlin.
20:21I am visiting an allotment garden colony in Borsigwalde with the author.
20:25Hilde Koppi lived here with her husband Hans.
20:28So, here is number 107, so it should be read here.
20:32And there is also a sign that says, hidden here by flowers, the names of Hans and Hilde Koppi.
20:41The film tells the story of how the two fall in love.
20:44In the midst of a circle of friends who reject the Nazis.
20:47The Gestapo would later hunt them down under the name Red Orchestra.
20:51because they are conducting radio communication tests with Moscow.
20:54Among other places, from the apartment of Erika von Brockdorf.
20:57Hans and Hilde Koppi were celebrated as anti-fascists in the GDR.
21:02Schools and streets are named after them.
21:04Laila Stieler grew up in the East with the image of this heroine.
21:12What exactly fascinated you about Hilde's story so much that you said, "I want to make a film out of this"?
21:17What initially fascinated me was that this luminous figure, so to speak, which I had always imagined,
21:24So this great heroine, well, maybe wasn't such a heroine after all, but just an ordinary person.
21:34I found that exciting, and then I started to do further research.
21:39And I knew Hilde gave birth to her son in prison.
21:44That was known, yes.
21:46But what did it mean to have a child in prison, how did you do that, how did you survive it?
21:54How does one retain that strength, not just for oneself, but how does she retain the strength for others?
22:01her child?
22:04When Hilde Koppi was arrested in the autumn of 1942, she was heavily pregnant.
22:09She gives birth to her son in a women's prison in Berlin.
22:13She calls him Hans, after her husband.
22:15This is heaven.
22:19Heaven.
22:24Beautiful, isn't it?
22:26Mother and child have a few months together.
22:28Then the death sentence to which Hilde Koppi has been sentenced will be carried out.
22:34They have a child.
22:36So why did you support your husband's illegal activities and not report them?
22:44Because I love my husband.
22:52The film is partly set in this ice cream parlor in Altegel.
22:55Here, in the 1940s, Hilde's mother-in-law Frieda is standing behind the counter.
22:59The resistance group meets in the local pub, disguised as a reading circle.
23:04I'll have the classic stracciatella, please.
23:10They met here from time to time, and messages were exchanged here.
23:14The resistance, the friendship, and the eating ice cream – I find that somehow part of what makes it so appealing, that all of that...
23:21so that they blend together.
23:22Hilde Koppi wrote letters from prison, and some of them have survived.
23:28Is there a letter that particularly touched you?
23:31"My dear mother," the letter begins.
23:34I am completely composed.
23:35I'm actually happy about it.
23:37I cherish every day I am fortunate enough to spend with my child.
23:42And he is so happy and laughs so much.
23:46Why would I cry?
23:49Keep him laughing.
23:50It would be nice if he became a cheerful person.
23:53I wish it were so.
23:56What does the letter tell you about Hilde Koppi?
23:59Hans is a cheerful person.
24:02Her wish has come true.
24:05And that's how it was, that comforted me so much.
24:07Yes, I tried to bring that gentle distress into the film.
24:12So if I write a film about Hilde, then I want to write it in such a way that I can connect with my viewers...
24:16Overwhelming feeling.
24:28Dissatisfaction, pessimism, fear of the future.
24:30In many countries, populists and enemies of democracy are gaining support.
24:35We have already seen in Germany where this can lead.
24:39With this moving appeal, the descendants of women and men in the resistance against the National Socialists have addressed the public.
24:46skilled.
24:47They say we should all feel responsible for defending democracy.
24:52Valerie Riedesel, historian and bestselling author, also signed the appeal.
24:58In a recent book, she deals with her grandfather, the pilot in the resistance.
25:05Caesar von Hofacker. Valerie Riedesel only knows her grandfather from photos in the family album.
25:15These private film recordings show the officer in Nazi-occupied Paris.
25:20There he is part of the German military occupation and organizes the coup on July 20th.
25:26His wife supports him. He successfully manages to arrest the SS and Gestapo. For now.
25:32My grandfather was arrested by the Gestapo in Paris on July 25th.
25:38And on that very same day, Gestapo officers came to the little house in Upper Bavaria, to my grandmother's house in Grottenmühl, and
25:47the children.
25:49They were then taken to prison, were not shot, spent three months in prison in Munich, and then ended up in various locations.
25:56Concentration camp stations with other family members.
26:04Here is the grandmother, Ilse Lotte von Hofacker, and her son Alfred, when the Americans freed them from collective punishment.
26:14An exhibition at the German Resistance Memorial Center now commemorates women who fought against the Nazis at that time.
26:20Wives from the circle of those involved in the July 20th plot also deserve a place here.
26:29My grandfather could never have acted the way he did if he hadn't been deeply convinced of it.
26:36that his wife supports and approves of this action.
26:42And she repeatedly expressed in her letters that she truly stood behind it one hundred percent.
26:50The word "team" didn't exist back then. Without this team behind him, he wouldn't have had the strength to do that.
26:58to risk everything.
27:00The so-called People's Court met in what is now the Berlin Court of Appeal in Schöneberg.
27:05Many members of the resistance movement of July 20th were sentenced to death here.
27:09Valerie Riedesel is at this place for the first time.
27:12Her grandfather is pictured here in 1944 facing the notorious criminal judge Roland Freisler.
27:19I can see Freisler sitting there in front, I can hear his voice in my ear.
27:24And they won't keep quiet about it here!
27:27The idea that the accused sat here between their guards, and that swastika flags hung here, and instead of the bust
27:38Hitler, the Frank,
27:40That's a bit overwhelming, really.
27:46It takes decades before the resistance fighters of July 20th receive official recognition from the state and society.
27:52A plaque in the Chamber Court commemorates her today.
27:58Today we need resistance against the indifference to taking our democracy for granted and the notion that one doesn't have to do anything to maintain it.
28:09to bring them to life and keep them alive.
28:12I think it's very important today to remind ourselves to come together in solidarity.
28:21That we should now do everything we can to ensure that history doesn't repeat itself even more than it perhaps already has.
28:27already does.
28:35To be honest, I didn't know any of the women in this film before. And I think I'm not alone in that.
28:41But it is only the stories of the women in the resistance who complete the picture and show that they were quite ordinary.
28:48People who had the courage to stand up to the Nazis.
28:52Secretaries, athletes, mothers.
28:54Even though all of this happened 80 years ago, I feel close to these women.
28:58Seeing that they were brave and strong gives me courage too.
29:03For a society with open, honest, straightforward people.
29:08Just as Erika von Brockdorf had wished for her daughter.
29:25Just as Erika von Brockdorf had wished for her daughter.
29:28Just as Erika von Brockdorf had wished for her daughter.
29:30Just as Erika von Brockdorf had wished for her daughter.
29:30Just as Erika von Brockdorf had wished for her daughter.
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