Hans and Sophie Scholl, brother and sister and members of the White Rose Movement, an anti-Nazi movement active between 1942 and 1943 in Munich Germany. While passing out pamphlets in Munich on February 18, 1943, a janitor saw them and reported the pair to the Gestapo. The pair were arrested. They were tried with fellow White Rose Member and friend Christoph Probst and found guilty of treason. Within a few hours of that February 22, 1943 guilty verdict all three were executed by beheading.
Later reflecting on Sophie Scholl's execution, prison officials, in later describing the scene, emphasized the courage with which she walked to her execution. Her last words were: "How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to offer themselves up individually for a righteous cause? Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go."
One pamphlet from one of the other White Rose Members was able to get out of Germany and into Allied hands. The Allied Forces made hundreds of copies of this pamphlet containing anti-war sentiments, tools for passive resistance and hope for life beyond Nazi occupation. Those hundreds of copies were then dropped from an Allied plane over Munich and other cities in Germany thereby completing Hans and Sophie's task for the White Rose Movement.
More here: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/white_rose_movement.htm on the White Rose Movement. More here on Sophie Scholl: http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2013/02/on-anniversary-of-death-of-sophie.html?m=1 and on Hans Scholl here: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERschollH.htm
Later reflecting on Sophie Scholl's execution, prison officials, in later describing the scene, emphasized the courage with which she walked to her execution. Her last words were: "How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to offer themselves up individually for a righteous cause? Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go."
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| "Many people think of our times as being the last before the end of the world. The evidence of horror all around us makes this seem possible. But isn't that an idea of only minor importance? Doesn't every human being, no matter which era he lives in, always have to reckon with being accountable to God at any moment? Can I know whether I'll be alive tomorrow morning? A bomb could destroy all of us tonight. And then my guilt would not be one bit less than if I perished together with the earth and the stars.” Sophie Scholl |
More here: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/white_rose_movement.htm on the White Rose Movement. More here on Sophie Scholl: http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2013/02/on-anniversary-of-death-of-sophie.html?m=1 and on Hans Scholl here: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERschollH.htm
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