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i was born shortly after the 2nd world war and my brother was already there and we led a sheltered childhood in the 1950 s. . then at some point i realised our family was different from the others my parents had a lot of friends and i often heard words like resistance and red orchestra. at school some people started or spring when my father's name was mentioned and i caught things like espionage and treason. where my parents spies traitors. later i realized that i was not alone in having such thought. through it from i felt from the very beginning that i was somehow an outsider but i could not figure out why the other children was so hostile towards me there were several times when children jumped on me and wanted to beat me up. or didn't do

that and then finally my teacher said to my mother it's this now it's clear to me what accent is so bad at school as the son of a traitor i cannot expect anything else. or didn't bitties a deep in this coma and my mother came home after that or did i never actually seen her cry before but i remember that i saw something terrible and realized that she had tears in her eyes weren't. about those things you never forget when you're a child or 2 or the city or dignity month it's couldn't the shooter against. germany at the end of the 19th thirty's the polish facade of a dictatorship the nazis were pumping

a lot of money into rearmament the economy was booming and the number of unemployed had fallen below the 1000000 mark. the people were excited about germany's new power but old hitler was about to lead germany into a war that would cost tens of millions of people their lives and destroy half of europe. a few people resisted. but a group of officers saw that hitler's policies were pushing germany into the abyss . caesar from hope aka a cousin of close shrinkwrap french dolphin bag the army officer who tried to assassinate hitler joined in the plans for a coup he had moved his wife and 5 children to upper beriah his son unafraid remembers him the biota and by and uncut as soon as he arrived in bavaria the 1st thing he would do was take off his uniform and pull on his leather shorts up and i

have very happy memories of my father he was laughing for that 100 there was of course because it was the holiday season he was at home and could devote himself to our family and was able to laugh heartily that's an image that has stayed in my memory one for which i am very grateful to have been set up by. lieutenant colonel going to smith was only 30 when he was appointed to the german army's general staff which dolphin back managed to recruit him to the ranks of the plotters x.o. spent was born in may 1904 no 2 is pushed and he is of course although they were married for 6 years from 1988 to 944 my mother once told me that they had only seen each other for a total of $44.00 days you. see although he wrote more than 2000 letters from the front was not was the way things were back then dom it's . my father gunter visor born and my mother joy married in berlin

in 1941. he held the reception that evening in his studio. my father was a successful playwright and he had a lot of friends in the berlin art scene. and his best friend karl schultz a voice and turned up in uniform. a large circle of happy fascist friends had formed around him and his wife labor talks. to stop assuming that circle the red orchestra. it was like dancing on a volcano some of the wedding guests would be executed a year later labor toss and haro to. ante nazi resistance had begun earlier how osho the boys and worked in the air ministries intelligence section he knew about hitler's secret plans for war against the soviet union in 1941 before hitler came to power shoots of boys and was a staunch opponent of the nazis in 1933 he was severely mistreated by the s.s.

and they beat a jewish friend of his to death in front of his eyes. avi tanaka and his american wife mildred were friends of schultz a boys on uk worked as a senior civil servant in the ministry of economy the 2 made contact with the american and soviet embassies and passed on news about hitler's war preparations. soviet embassy gave hanukah radio transmitter and said his friend hums copy was to use it to send messages to moscow. copy came from the communist youth movement he was just 17 when the nazis put him behind bars for almost 2 years in 1901 he married his fiance hilda. the nazis vons as anti nazis they were not just willing to discuss resistance or make jokes about the nazis but also to help people or hand out leaflets with

a look at that whether. they were ready to run these risks because they thought them i know who will do it if we don't have an east via. the members of the so-called red orchestra came from all walks of life aristocrats communists christians artists and workers all circles were not everyone knew each other personally a lot of women were involved office worker erica from block door was brought in by her husband kai a sculptor her daughter saskia was born in 1937 or to be teton homes even they were not easily intimidated by authority and were never taken in by the nazis hollow rhetoric. of goodness and. what everyone in the group shared was the desire to get rid of the hitler regime to end the war and to stop the persecution of the jews they didn't look the other way

like the majority of germans did they helped the persecuted hid them and got them out of the country. dentist dr hellmuth hippel treated jews in their hiding places and his girlfriend helped them with food packages a young pianist tell him or drop off sometimes played music with the couple went on had him. one day hempel took my father aside and asked him if he wanted to work with him. my father didn't understand what he meant because he was a pianist and hempel was a dentist and he didn't know at that point why or how they should collaborate. but then hempel said what i say now puts my life in your hands. but then it immediately became clear what he meant when my father applied then we can work together that was a huge relief. all of a sudden in this in this extremely narrow and fascist world he had found some like

minded people because. most members of the group came from the youth movement. sailing camping hiking and making music into the countryside and into the blue. they loved life. their celebrations were legendary the love the romance and the freedom it was all part of their lives the lives they risked every day and their resistance to hitler and the war any of their clandestine activities were punishable by death. the red orchestra wanted to use information to counter the nazis propaganda. in february 9427 months after the invasion of the soviet union they wrote victory by nazi germany is no longer possible we will lose this war. the 2nd pamphlet in

1902 reported the mass murder of jews and soviet civilians in the east. shoots a boysen was working in the cultural film center which was collecting secret information and picture material about german war crimes on the eastern front the mass murder of the jews pushed many officers into the resistance. with divine feuds and my father was transferred to the general staff in 1043. and then he saw probably for the 1st time all the terrible things that were happening because then he started to take part in the briefings and then of course he also saw how much injustice there was in germany of course you. can dismantle his adjutant to army chief of staff of courtside. frenched often back ask him to win over title or for

the coup. or decent for what he tried but failed to cite let's hope my father as far as i'm concerned this conversation never took place and nish bush. on july 20th 1944 a bomb went off in hitler's eastern headquarters. the would be assassin colonel cowles french and often bag had launched a coup his cousin say is often ho foka who was one of more than $200.00 officers and civilians involved in the coup was in paris where detained the local gestapo and s.s. leaders. for a fun hope aka remembers that radiant summer day all too well. and every night i think it was around 7 o'clock we used to listen to the damage and

is on the way that night there was a special announcement and these were the words they used a criminal group of german officers has tried to murder hitler looked at it lol. you know we all froze the next thing i remember my mother silently rose from the dinner table which was quite unusual i looked out the window because i wanted to know what she was doing and i saw her hurriedly lighting a fire in the garden of a few guns has taken for your garden and sympathy for no fuckers mother was burning letters from his father sees a friend who fucker was arrested 5 days after the failed assassination when i'm out of food and my mother found out about my father's 1st interrogation when i get stopped the officer asked him to stop whatever were you thinking of half and hope i don't mind if you have a wife and 5 children on for a month out of madonna behind to talk on photos which my father responded with a quote from highness slightly modified what do i care for my wife and child this is about my country if i had to make a great effort to understand that and i'm sure my mother had problems with it too

he knew that the prospects of success were minimal he told my mother the chances were 90 $8.00 to $2.00 so they all knew they were going to do something and not survive and he mom at those vendors maturity. the family was separated the mother and older siblings were sent to a concentration camp guarded by 2 the officers was put on a train to bad success in the arts mountains where the nazis interned the children of the conspirators given that we arrived totally exhausted of course and i still remember what the warden told us if anyone asks you for who you are then you only answer with your 1st name for the nazis wanted to wipe out the families of opponents of the regime and put their children up for adoption yvonne and i we were housed in a large dormitory and had already turned out the light and the kindergarten teacher had gone to bed when calf's 15 said i will now say our last name so we can get to

know each other i heard. and then my name. i then astolfo a cousin mentioned a great aunt of mine and i said hey you that's my great aunt. it was quite strange within a few minutes we found we belong together but we still didn't know why we were there even on his recent phone get out for some advice. from her father was subjected to particularly harsh interrogation because because stopper wanted to squeeze the names of the coconspirators out of him. he was able to smuggle packages out of prison through a guard and. there was even a package with a tattered blood stained shirt where we wondered what my father wanted to achieve with that not that the shirt was mended and watched but he wanted to give a visible sawing to the outside world record. in the spring of 1902 the discovery of red orchestra agents in belgium had led to the arrest and

interrogation of members of the group in germany. my father always kept a diary but the entries stop abruptly in september 1042. to stop all came to the studio at 5 am on the 26th my parents were arrested they'd already arrested their friends haroche boysen and arvid hardock the gestapo had tracked them down by decipher a radio message from moscow to brussels giving their names and addresses they had been watched. gradually the gestapo found out how large the group was over 120 people were arrested in germany alone the oldest was 86 the youngest 17 when the gestapo found a suitcase with a broken radio at the home of the pianist helmont all of he and his friends were interrogated there's visibly the crucial point was that these friends had covered

bed with and he knew it would do this or and then you about him in return as they warn you about each other to such an extent that they could rely on each other. promote all of pretended to be an innocent musician that saved his life but because it's a boy's and some of the others were military officers they faced a court martial. the nazis wanted to keep the extent of the group from the public and ambitious investigating judge month later go to was put in charge of the prosecution he was to ensure that all the defendants received the death sentence in the dim word out of the void my mother really had a small private fight with the rig he was so autocratically deluded but she didn't let him humiliate her and then also loft that he couldn't take that from.

my head military chief justice and this woman loft wouldn't last either for all. hitler personally insisted that the prison sentence handed down to erica from blocked off was converted into a death sentence for a 5 year old's uska it was a huge shock when her mother suddenly disappeared from her life. killed a copy was pregnant when she was arrested and her son hunts was born in the women's prison. his father was executed less than a month later. because i was in my the mood of often with my mother was always a particular reference point for the pain i suffered. with why and what was the it was an unconscious thing because i couldn't really remember that but it left me with a feeling that never diminished with of me up and in fact it's recently become even

stronger. and i can't bottle it up. and this would come on the shelf lift. 50000. killed a copy was allowed to breastfeed her son for 8 months then on august 5th 1983 like the other women in the red orchestra she was beheaded by the guillotine inputs and as a prisoner she was 34 years old special preparations were made for the executions at that since a prison even before the death sentences were handed down hitler had ordered the installation of an iron rail with 8 hooks to hang several prisoners at the same time it was a particularly cruel method of execution that reflected the nazis hatred of a group of conspirators at the very heart of german society after july

20th 1904 the plotters were hanged on the same hooks that were used for the red orchestra. the nazis had wanted to keep the trials of the red orchestra members secret but the trial of the july 20th plotters was to be used for propaganda purposes. make sure the vehement officers put them before a so-called people's court and filmed the whole farcical process as court president all done for us and condemned the defendants to death. but foresters' humiliation of the defendants was so shocking that the nazis never even released the film. on top of. that the only way. i put it which is to police officers what

a rally that must have been of all of them sitting here at the same tone. and you. know. i. you can hardly imagine how that behaved. i think you're going to see if i can actually think in terms of right or wrong here to. of course i can really only see my father and so i'm also very anxious in this room. he's going to of course i know what moved him if he knew he wouldn't get out of the situation and his last thoughts were certainly with his family was so if it's good the bones usually he was there for me.

for superman and for i'd try to imagine my father let think he was certain he had no way out so i could put all his passion into his own plea because he had nothing to lose. and his statement mr president it is about my life today but tomorrow it will be about yours shows that it must have hit hard with enticement of perfection from. it was really hard and it. was. pretty faithful yeah he did a pretty good but i'm doing. it from now on if you look. like an awful. lot about it i bet. one of wonder when i stand here now i really admire the defendants who stood here

and you had the self-control and courage to express things with clarity in their rhetoric and in particular with clarity in their minds in our class in the. we are not in christ. you know minister we should look at oh yeah right. you're leaving. yeah yeah i did we did or did. you know what we were going to pay to write. almost $3000.00 death sentences were carried out in protest and say under the nazi regime. before her execution erica from blocked off wrote a farewell letter to her little daughter but the letter never reached as i ask you who was later found in the east german archives no one had thought it necessary to actually give it to her it was a fun day existence as i knew nothing of the existence of the letter so not like if i deceived it at the right time let's say as a teenager not as

a child maybe it would have been too much for a child but if i'd got it when i was still young my life we would have been different. yeah for years i was angry and i also felt forsaken. at the meal for nothing good. about. a little bit about the way it went i didn't get the letter until 62 years later. listening volume let me close and say was and still is and can a spacious place for me. and it's also a place of silence and individual encounters. i haven't had any good experience of this one i've shared with others. and i don't

feel very good about it. i can't actually get my pain across to people. in the death cell a person say qantas meant was slipped a little book the thoughts of schiller and hurling and sayings from the bible. you have to fear me if i go he wrote in it just for me this should be axels baptismal of us. another day he wrote. i can hardly speak now because the lump in my throat is too big. then in another place he wrote of only i could see our children again. i was soon could. that's what he wrote on 8th of september the day of his execution on talk to him

which the. countess meant was 31 years old. by the end of the war more than 150 people who were taken part in the july bomb plot had been killed. it's our interest this week it's really the most horrible place i know. but it's the place where i always see my father on the gallows. and i can't get that picture out of my head and into a speech only shows. every year on july 20th the family members meet for prayers. that is and the i'm going to lincoln we family members are basically alone in a protected area and every time is always a renewed experience for me. because i not only see the hook above me this neato condition of the heart of course i also see my father hanging there in the 2000 photos of.

her. marriage. to be a fire in front of our liberation was quite sudden someone knocked on the cellar

door and the door opened and in front of us was a negro black as night on. fox you know. we've never seen a negro with a helmet and a machine gun and a big smile as he looked at us children and i thought he reached into his pants pocket and gave us some chewing gum and that quickly dispelled our fear. well done for going on. and then it must have been a week or 2 later when we were all summoned and then this mayor a social democrat who had been released from the concentration camp turned out. he stood on the table and we children were all lined up in front of the table. and he said you can be proud of your father's they were heroes and we all looked at each other quite moved and then he left and we went back to business as usual. but it didn't really affect us on going and what it really happened was not actually discussed much work on midst of a disc with us versus the thank you for sue for pursuing. the period of did not

support cation and reconstruction began at 1st nobody cared about the resistance fighters. my father survived the prosecutor had asked for the death penalty but he avoided execution through luck and the help of friends my father got 3 years in prison for failing to report a crime after the liberation he plunged back into cultural life he collected information about the resistance in 1907 he gave a speech on the anniversary of the burning of the books. this pyar this fiery farce of stupidity was ignited by misguided use this small a fire on the open plots marked the start of a global conflict ration which blew back on us and destroyed these houses around it shit like. that even. my father wanted to bring munford writer to court and he denounced him to the americans in nuremberg who did appear at the

nuremberg trials but as a witness not a defendant he had been working for the american secret service under the code name othello he gave the americans the gestapo version of the red orchestra a supposedly europe wide network of paid communist agents who were just waiting to become active again under moscow's leadership. in the cold war that was now beginning rohde became a valuable ally of the west the public prosecutor in the book investigated the 40 death sentences he had passed. come in. there you can read among other things by a prosecutor who was in actual fact running the investigation into roaders activities . he said he had acted relatively humanely given the importance of the case. and in fact a lot more death penalty should have been handed down for the month of. in

the end the investigation against month radio to was shelved he ran a farm near luna borg and campaigned for radical right wing parties. then because he was so close to the east german border and feared he could be kidnapped he moved to the tonus region the citizens of glasgow to elected him deputy mayor for the c.d.u. . none of the 3rd ike's hanging judges was ever held to account in west germany a generous pension allowed to order to live comfortably until his death in 1971 the families of the resistance fighters had a different tale to tell often they had to fight for years to get their pensions oxus man's mother was one of them rooted event and the pensions offices were a bureaucratic jungle. and you can tell from an awful letter to my mother. this was the door you could tell from the german that the clerk was disgusted at

having to write to my mother to leave. it was certainly a terribly unpleasant time for side of this fewer of them were to. virtually no one was removed from the staff of the administration in judiciary in the new federal republic of germany all eyes were on the future. for we didn't have a complete replacement of the population in germany mention the same people live there often may 8th 1905 as the for instance confocal and that meant that the resistance fighters were not on it but on the contrary for many years with vilified as traitors as about you and their families as their wives or children have traces of. if the 950 s. were not a good time for the families that there is a distance vices that kind of should set. public recognition for the victims of july 20th 1904 came slowly the 1st major memorial service with president to go to or essential answer conrad i don't know or only took place in 1954.

meanwhile the german democratic republic saw itself as the 1st anti fascist state on german soil it promised to do everything better. than nearly as i was a pioneering pioneer if you like and of course i later joined the free germany's organization and was also a candidate for party membership because my father simply refused to talk about my mother it was always a kind of hard core inside me but he does find it very hard to count. the nazis and sentenced as ask his father to 4 years in prison and he survived the war in a penal battalion in the g.d.r. he tried to adapt to the new regime. and scott be grew up with his grandmother at the beginning of the 1950 s. street schools and even nurseries were named after his communist parents he became

the child of heroes it's our own marks and as an adolescent as an 111213 year old i just couldn't live with that. those were the times where i lay in bed at night and said man why did you do that. get us good mom. that's me to a time for what really made me angry was kind of like when i was 14 i asked my father about the red orchestra and he said to me we've promised the soviet comrades that in the sort of voice i'm using now very official we have promised the soviet homewards not to talk about it the struggle is not over there comes as not was it formed with. the communists saw the red orchestra is to bush why into ideologically diverse paying too little attention to the moscow line in east germany if you had time for the july plotters either just

a bunch of aristocrats and officers who were worried about their farms but suddenly in the mid 1960 s. the red orchestra was honored after all but in the soviet union the east german leadership hurriedly changed its tune. again because the poppy cuts you were in for if it was because of the publication of the history of the labor movement in which the schultz a voice and group became the schultz of boys in the hard knock organization. that's why they're with you and then they discovered it also had contacts with moscow. and sent important more information from berlin to moscow with the radio my father had sat at. my father is this the. secret police paucity of his milkha had a feature film made. keylock a 2 p.t. x. one of the most expensive east german productions ever telling the tale of agents to

do the party line. copy jr did some of the research in moscow. that is what the government was in bed for and yes i wanted to find out which radio messages he sent they surely must have arrived here and so on. but i was told no we don't have any radio messages why are they somewhere else you know i was told there's only one radio message from the 23rd or 24th of june 1041. in other words right after the invasion of the soviet union began it was called a 1000 greetings to all french. but the film shows a lot of radio traffic oath music as modern meters men did it against that with a judgment before. they knew there had never been any radio traffic but that didn't stop them spreading all sorts of fantastic nonsense about it just had to be heroic

enough and these mutual stereotypes in east and west meant that the stereotypical image of the spies of the red orchestra had remained so powerful for so long and so many minds almost until the present day this enjoyed taking time if you could. actually done all this august. or does it just up then we also took up it as i would toss this myth was so good that one could hand it seamlessly down from the interrogation protocols at the go to the interrogation records of the nazi courts martial to speak to a news magazine in 1968. in a 10 part series that year dia should be legal repeated to stop those lies about a europe wide intelligence group under soviet leadership and $500.00 radio messages .

from brock go felt hemmed in in the g.d.r. she wanted to travel in 1902 she married a peruvian and moved with him to south america. she later moved to west berlin but she still couldn't shake off the past. but mute the truth but it was only when everything came to a head that i said to myself i understand it cannot be good for your life to run around with this bitterness inside you someone recommended a psychologist he was a few ition whose parents also tried to oppose the nazis but how i told her how i felt and she said listen it's completely normal for you to be angry and feel abandoned as a child you couldn't feel any differently if you knew nothing about it unless i'm focused and that was the. the loss of our food when her father's father also left deep in his family of problems but what i was the one who had a problem with my mother and i couldn't deal with her. i was always

a very angry child and when i was even angrier after the war my mother often stood in front of me and said what would your father have said now if he were with us. that was a club that managed to silence me at once of course for them because my mother would then shut herself away and then come out again with tears stained doll's house. and then in the mid 1970 s. entrepreneur who for an hour father and self made a surprising discovery. in tick. by found the proverbial trunk in the attic of our house front i opened it and found loads of material about my father. and 3 and suddenly i had a completely different picture of him with that look at me and i had to recognize my father was a resistance fighter. but how does that work he was originally a fervent nazi too he was. and these 2 extremes merged and that was

really difficult. and i think that what for me was ultimately decisive that these contradictions in my father's biography 1st ordinations socialist and supporter of the system then passionate resistance fighter. this iraq in the same biography strange as it may sound only brought me closer to my father. now he stands before me as a person i can worship as a son whom i can love and feel emotionally connected to con even con him or to nominate me for one. farewell from home the holidays are over i have to go back to boarding school my father found his way in cultural life he tirelessly fought for the recognition of the resistance but he never achieved his life's goal to rehabilitate his friends in the red orchestra. he

got caught between the millstones of the east west conflict and lies on both sides . he never had a chance. my father died in february 1969 at the age of 66. hunts company is devoted decades to the history of the red orchestra and written numerous books back up because i've moved as of course it has followed me. and i've really got no reason to distance myself from my parents. didn't i think they would be fine with what i'm doing in this field. and the story hasn't let me go because my parents didn't let me go cannot bid them farewell when in fact she didn't. in 1908 the convictions of the conspirators of july 20th were not but it took longer for the women and men of the

red orchestra the german parliament did not know their convictions until 2967 years after the fact. as i did meet most the since then i've known that there should be a memorial stone here that was some time in the forward in the next spring i said to myself you have to do something and because berlin has no money anyway i've taken it on myself i don't cook 63 years after her mother's death as a scare received her farewell letter at last. but leaves us clear if you ever does my dear saskia i hope that these lines will reach she one day by then i will have been long gone but i wanted to tell you that i have very often indeed almost always thought only of you in my cell my dear dear child i wish you all the best for your life may you be an open honest upright person except for your father whom i loved

above all else you were everything to me even if you are still very small now you will still remember me that will comfort me on my last journey do you remember when i said nobody loves me and you jumped up and put your little arms around my neck and said but mommy i love you so much in these 4 months i have relived the day in the hospital when i held you in my arms for the 1st time so you can blame me for many things but not for being a bad mother. i firmly believe that there will come a time when you have 2nd thoughts about me and many others i would have liked to experience that but now i am also not that it's different there is a wonderful calm and priorities within minutes and a 1000 greetings and kisses from your mother goose comes from the number.

walk. out. freedom of movement in a united open europe. that's a reality that affects a number of private citizens and businesses. what opportunities does europe wide freedom of movement offers. benefits what is the potential for abuse. 90 minutes on d w. her

1st day of school in the jungle. first listen live band doris green the moment arrives the. joint direct attack on her journey back to freedom. in our interactive documentary . returns home on d w dot com. our consumerism is causing a radical depletion of slate $425.00 of. us are. forests and. the tragic reality behind the explosion. starts july 24th.

place . this is the union's life from our lead trump slams democratic minority congresswoman at a campaign rally the us president stepping up his attack saying that they should go back to their countries if they did not like america. that. those rally calls inspire dread in undocumented migrants who have made their homes in the united states we have a special report on one mother forced to make a difficult choice.