Library > The Price

Fear coursed through the veins of eighteen-year-old Karl-Heinz as he read the formal complaint: “Conspiracy to commit high treason,” and “treasonous aiding and abetting of the enemy.” He had already been in prison six months, each day being subjected to sadistic mental and physical abuse. Now he was to be tried before the Volksgerichtshof, the blood-court of Berlin. Little did he know then that the years to follow would be a living nightmare. But Karl-Heinz Schnibbe is a survivor. The Price is his true story.

Recalling his life in Germany as a young member of the Church, he describes his intense dislike of Nazism, his anti-Nazi activities, and his capture, trial, and sentence. He then recounts his years of hard labor, first as a political prisoner and later as a prisoner of war: working long hours in minus-forty-five-degree temperatures; eating rotten potatoes, thin soup, and slimy bread (and being grateful for it); being deathly sick with malaria, diarrhea, and other illnesses: and seeing his life preserved by miraculous occurrences. And finally he tells of his return home and his adjustments to the life of a free man.

Karl-Heinz Schnibbe’s story is one of incredible hardships, a story of survival when life, to many, was a cheap commodity. Yet despite all he has gone through, he says: “All my trying experiences... have been for my own good... I think I am better for having undergone them.”

For Karl-Heinz Schnibbe, freedom came at a high price.

While Helmuth Huebener's story is well-known in Germany, many English-speaking Latter-day Saints know little or nothing about his life and death. Since my story is so closely related to Helmuth's, I hope reading this book will bring them that information as well as the inspiration of his willingness to pay the price.

I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something.