Mormon who defied Nazis dead at 86

SALT LAKE CITY, May 11 (UPI) -- A Mormon who spent years in Nazi concentration camps as a young man has died in Salt Lake City. He was 86.

A feature film based on Karl Schnibbe's story is scheduled for release next year, The Salt Lake Tribune reported. "Truth and Treason" stars Haley Joel Osment as Helmuth Huebner, Schnibbe's friend, who was executed by guillotine in 1942 at the age of 17, and Max Von Sydow as a judge.

Schnibbe, Huebner and another friend, Rudolph Wobbe, were all members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Germany and opponents of the Nazi regime. The teens distributed anti-Nazi pamphlets until someone betrayed them, Alan Keele, a Brigham Young University historian, said.

While Schnibbe received only a five-year sentence, he spent seven years in forced labor. The Nazi regime sent him for military training in 1945, and he was captured by the Soviet Army and sent to another work camp while Wobbe, with a longer sentence, was freed.

Both men moved to Utah after the war. Wobbe has since died. Schnibbe retold his story many times, his second wife, Joan, said.

"Usually his message to young people was that they should be really proud to be Americans, and they should be really grateful for their freedoms and then also that it's important to forgive," she said.