Acts of courage: Sophie Scholl

We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. - Leaflet 4, the White Rose

~~~

On February 18, 1943, University of Munich undergraduate Sophie Scholl was arrested in the atrium of the school for distributing anti-war flyers urging Germans to resist the Nazis nonviolently. Horrified by the stories her soldier fiancé and medical student brother had told her about Nazi atrocities, she had joined a small resistance group called the White Rose, started by her brother and several of his friends. The group put out five inflammatory leaflets exhorting Germans to reject fascism and militarism in favor of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, democracy, and the rule of law. Sophie and her brother Hans were caught placing stacks of the sixth leaflet in the empty hallways, where students would find them when they came out of their classes.

After four days of interrogation during which she refused ample opportunity to betray her co-conspirators, Sophie was convicted of treason in a show trial that lasted less than an hour. She was  sentenced to death and executed before nightfall. She was all of 21.

In Germany, Sophie and Hans Scholl are considered among the greatest of heroes; in 2003, a national poll placed the Scholl siblings among the top five most important Germans of all time. Here in the US, they’re not nearly as well-known. I had never heard of them until this weekend, when I watched the extraordinary German-language film Sophie Scholl: The Final Days. Although it’s not a documentary, most of the dialogue is drawn directly from transcripts of Sophie’s interrogations and trial and interviews with surviving people who knew her. It made me shudder with admiration for this ordinary girl and the extraordinary end of her life.

The members of the White Rose were students — barely more than kids, all in their early 20s — and one professor. And in a time and place when people were arrested and harshly punished not just for their own words, but for their friends’ and families’, too, they dared to speak out, knowing they might die for it.

Could you be that brave? Could I?

Filed under Uncategorized | Comments (5)