“Out of personal experience can I tell of something, that can be seen maybe not necessarily a human action, but at least a human stance. It refers to my mother, who unfortunately became only 45 years old. You probably heard of the unsuccessful assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler, that, if it had succeeded, could have saved the life of probably millions of people. it is known, that from the 20th of July 1944 until the 8th of May 1945 more humans lost their lives than in all the years of war before. The course of human world history often depends on the most banal coincidence, that is showing again and again.
My maternal grandparents and their relatives lived in the Erzgebirge between Annaberg-Buchholz and Geyer. Even though the distance from my birthplace Eppendorf was only around 40 kilometres away on the road, we had to take two light railways and one normal railway train to get there. For me as a child, it was exciting every single time and I was looking forward to it a lot. After the attempted assassination of Hitler, a Carl Friedrich Goerdeler was wanted. He has once been city major of Leipzig and was designated of as a provisional state leader in case of a successful assassination. A million reichsmark were promised as a reward for hints, that help to his arrest.
This million would have been tempting for me as a twelve-year-old, but my mother told me when we started our travel to the Erzgebirge, that, should he sit in our waggon, she would never betray him. She did not tell me a reason for this, because it was in that time very dangerous for parents, to tell their children about political topics and opinions. They easily told things to teachers or Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth) leaders or were tricked by suggestive questions to tell things about adults.”
Despite the fact that the mentioned Goerdeler was eventually caught and executed, it is still a good thing to know, that there were people who would have protected someone like him.