[The following is in regards to the beheading of a twenty-year-old Jewish man named Helmut Hirsch, who was executed by the Nazi government in 1937 for his alleged involvement in a plot to bomb government buildings of the Nazi regime.]
The morning of the execution, Shirer had gone to the American embassy [Hirsch’s father was an American citizen] to talk to William Dodd, who had tried up to the last minute to get Hirsch’s sentence reduced. Dodd told Shirer he’d written Hitler an emotional appeal and had tried to schedule an appointment to speak to him face to face but had been rebuffed. Hirsch was going to the guillotine, and there was nothing Dodd or anyone else could do to stop it.
From Hirsch’s attorney, Shirer obtained a copy of a letter Hirsch had written prior to his execution to his sister, Kaete. “I have never read in all my life braver words,” Shirer wrote in his diary. “He had just been informed that his final appeal had been rejected and that there was no more hope. ‘I am to die then,’ he says. ‘Please do not be afraid. I do not feel afraid. I feel released, after the agony of not quite knowing.’” Shirer found the letter so emotional it brought him to tears. “He was a braver and more decent man than his killers.”
Source:
Wick, Steve. “Get Out of the Country.” The Long Night: William L. Shirer and the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 102. Print.
Further Reading:
William Edward Dodd: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Dodd_(ambassador)
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