The conspiracy to assassinate Hitler was wider and deeper than many people realize. One of its members was Ulrich von Haskell, an aristocrat and diplomat for the German government. He was arrested by the Gestapo in July, 1944 and tried and executed on the same day (July 29).
The Gestapo then arrested his daughter AND two little sons, one four and one two, at their home in Northern Italy. There was no reason for their arrest and following detention than that they were related to von Hasell.
The sons were taken away from their mother and everyone they knew and kept in a Nazi-operated orphanage in Austria. Their fate was a common one for relatives of dissidents and resistance members.
The story is told in a most interesting way in the book Fey’s War which has been published under two other titles by different publishers (The Lost Boys, and A Castle in Wartime). The author is Catherine Bailey. Fey herself wrote of her and the boys’ mistreatment by the German government in A Mother’s War.
Von Hassell’s daughter, Fey, was driven around Europe for weeks, not knowing anything about her sons’ fates. She was not allowed to know where they were. Their names were changed in the orphanage. They were not allowed to know anything about their mother.
Eventually, after the end of the war, the daughter was freed and the boys were found and reunited with their mother. But it was “touch-and-go.” It could have turned out differently. It probably did in the cases of other dissidents’ and resistance members’ families.
What is the point of this story, here and now?
One signal of fascistic-like government is punishment of innocent families of dissidents and others who commit crimes. After the end of WW2 the Soviet Union captured and imprisoned some of Hitler’s innocent relatives most of whom lived in Austria and had no part in Hitler’s crimes. Some were killed.
Enlightened people do not hold families of criminals responsible in any way unless they somehow participated in their relatives’ crimes. We do not punish them, detain them, deport them. A sign of cultural fascism is cruelty toward people who are perceived as outsiders to the party (or tribe or camp or whatever).
One reason fascist-like governments do these things is to frighten dissidents into silence and would-be criminals into law-abidingness. “Look what we do to families of people who do bad things.” That is a sure sign of something terribly wrong in the mentality of leaders. Enlightened people do not do that. Good people do not do that.
I watched and listened to an American government official, member of the president’s cabinet, sneeringly disparage the family of a terrorist and say that how they are being treated is meant to warn others who might be on a path of doing the same.
In what kind of country am I now living? Where are the powerful voices that will rise up loudly and condemn such treatment of families, including children?
To the best of anyone’s knowledge they are now being held in a “detention center” in Texas awaiting deportation. Why? ONLY because they are closely related to a terrorist who did something truly awful.
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