Several years ago, I went to an art house cinema to see a film about Sophie Scholl and the White Rose Society. I didn’t know much about this group other than that they were students who stood up to the Nazis and lost their lives. I am always interested in learning true stories about people who demonstrated courage against overwhelming odds. The film was indeed moving and inspiring. It ends when Sophie and her brother are guillotined. The audience knew the ending, yet many sat in stunned silence as a gesture of respect for these brave young Germans. Some wept.
Thanks to Greg B., I learned that the last surviving member of the White Rose Society just died, at the age of 103. Her name was Traute Lafrenze. She was repeatedly imprisoned. After the war, she moved to the U.S. She married an American. She died in South Carolina. The German government awarded her its highest civilian honor on her 100th birthday.
Read about her in The Smithsonian.
Or the New York Times.
She and the White Rose Society, these courageous idealistic young Germans, should be remembered forever. That is their ultimate triumph over the monster who murdered them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A rather very sad episode in humanity’s shameful chapter.
There was also a Rose Luxemburg – I believe there is a web site with more information about this group.
Rosa Luxembourg was a hard-left Communist who was assassinated in 1919. She opposed the Weimar Republic, the doomed effort to build social democracy in Germany after WW1. She is not one of my heroes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Luxemburg
So what if she was a hard-left communist. You Yankx and your ‘communist’ paranoia. She was Jewish and so many Jews fought for socialism. I believe there is a web site about Rosa Luxemburg.
My first job out of college was working for a Menshevik publication called The New Leader, in NYC. The political orientation was democratic socialist. The Mensheviks despised people like Rosa Luxemberg who combined with the fascists to undermine any chance of an alternative to Hitler.
The Mensheviks I met were mostly Russian Jews who hated Bolshevists like Luxemburg. The older I get, the more I appreciate their wisdom. The far-left has a bad habit of undermining the center-left and facilitating the rise of fascists.
And even more Jews were democratic socialists who opposed Stalin. Ever hear of the “doctors’ plot”? Stalin was an anti-Semite. So is Putin. Anyone who despises LGBT as Putin does can also be counted on to hate other minorities.
Yes, Stalin was an anti Semite and so was Churchill and so were a few of US presidents. I don’t believe that Putin is anti Semite – this is ‘hitting below the belt’ cheap propaganda. And Putin isn’t anti LGBT either – he just doesn’t want LGBT groups trying to convert others. The US blinding hatred towards Putin is PATHETIC.
Oh please. No US President ever had a Jew executed for being Jewish. Putin has passed laws specifically criminalizing LGBT.
https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/12/12/no-support/russias-gay-propaganda-law-imperils-lgbt-youth
http://www.globalequality.org/component/content/article/1-in-the-news/186-the-facts-on-lgbt-rights-in-russia
pesyvera says:
“he just doesn’t want LGBT groups trying to convert others.”
When you justify genocide or violence or discrimination by accusing the group you are violently repressing of “trying to convert others”, then you are showing your fascism, pesyvera.
Which group is next for you and your idol Putin to “stop them from trying to convert others”? Jews? Muslims? People who oppose authoritarianism? People who support democracy?
Although it is interesting how much your justifications for anti-democratic behavior by authoritarians is exactly what the Republicans say. Not a coincidence since Putin is also a favorite of the right wing.
I have never heard of any LGBT effort to “convert” others, though I know there are groups that try to “convert” LGBT
Quit the BULLSHIT, will you? How would you feel if someone almost forced you to adopt X religion? Or forced you to turn gay or lesbian? Or forced you to anything you didn’t want? Or forced you to join a political movement? The US is the very last Western country that should come pointing accusing fingers. Always bragging about being something it AIN’T.
Vera,
I have lived in the US for more than eight decades. I am a Jew. No one has ever tried to convert me. I don’t think you know what you are talking about. You are ignorant about the U.S. I have loudly and publicly criticized presidents of both parties. No one has ever threatened me, jailed me, or censored me. Would that be true if I lived in Russia? I would be in a jail cell, like Navalny, solely for speaking against the billionaire tyrant. If you were truly a Communist, you would hate Putin.
Why should I hate Putin? He hasn’t done anything to me…The West hates Putin as ‘dictated’ by the US and the US hates Putin because he refuses to bend over and be screwed by Uncle Sam. I lived 30 years in the US and am still well familiar with the American mentality. If you are ‘white’ you get ahead, if not white…well, too bad. I have driven through the deep South and seen the poverty that exists – children with inflated bellies etc. America is a WASP nation and getting worse with so many non-whites arriving. Yeah…the promised land where the milk has gone sour and the honey stale. And the world is finally coming to this realization that it is being suckered and especially nations rich in natural resources who are targets if they refuse to dance to the Yankee tune. I think it was Kissinger who once stated…America doesn’t have friends, only interests. And as long as you indulge the US one is safe.
Vera,
The west hates Putin because he is a tyrannical murderer.
The west made every effort to integrate Russia into the global economy, and Putin threw it all away by his bloody, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Why do you think traditionally neutral Finland and Sweden asked to join NATO?
Not because of the U.S.
Because they fear the genocidal murderer in the Kremlin.
You don’t care how many Russians or Ukrainians Putin kills, solely for his egotistical demands.
Can’t admit he made a mistake.
In your eyes, Putin is a saint.
So be it.
I don’t care what you believe.
I do care that the killing stops, and the fastest way to stop it is for Putin to stop raining missiles on a sovereign nation.
Withdraw his troops.
Stop the killing.
Putin has already driven out Russia’s intelligentsia.
Maybe that was his goal.
Very costly. He demonstrated to the world that a small nation can stand fast against his military.
Is that you, Tucker?
peskyvera says “Quit the BULLSHIT, will you? How would you feel if someone almost forced you to adopt X religion? Or forced you to turn gay or lesbian?”
Is THAT what you and the other resident Putin/Trump-defender are now claiming? That all repression and violence toward LBGTQ people by Putin is something you strongly support because they are FORCING the poor Russians to turn gay or lesbian?
And peskyvera and the Russian people keep cheering Putin on to punish the LGBTQ for “forcing” others to “turn gay or lesbian”.
You are evil, peskyvera. Even the fact that you are paid for this does not make it okay. You and those like you who post lies should be marginalized. Go post lies where they are respected, like Fox News.
There was a time when no decent news organization or blog would let a neo-Nazi like David Duke spew lies. I don’t know when that became acceptable – became normal – but it has led to the near death of democracy.
If Joe Biden were to cross my path and I said “let’s go, Brandon,” he would smile at me and say, “God bless you!” If Putin were to cross my path and I said, “what’s up, Vlad?”, I’d have to fear for my life. No need to argue with this tool.
Last December, Putin expanded restrictions on LGBT:
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-signs-law-expanding-russias-rules-against-lgbt-propaganda-2022-12-05/
Vera, no more lies about what a swell guy the billionaire mass murderer is.
Thank you, Diane. Putin is a genocidal, sexist, homophobic, imperialist, reactionary, kleptocratic, authoritarian, Chekist criminal. Evil. Oppose him in Russia (and sometimes elsewhere), and you get thrown out of a window, poisoned, shot, or disappeared into his gulag.
Bob, I could not have said it better.
Timothy Snyder’s testimony before the UN Security Council on the use by Russia of the propaganda term “Russophobe” as part of its imperialist attack on Ukraine.
https://snyder.substack.com/p/playing-the-victim
Vera must be living in some alternate universe. Poor misunderstood Putin?!!?!! Putin locks up his political rivals and critics of his regime, the “lucky” ones. All the others are poisoned or mysteriously seem to drop out of tall buildings. Putin is the czar of Russia, the elections are a sham. Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime minister from 1999 to 2000 and from 2008 to 2012, and as president from 2000 to 2008 and since 2012. Putin is a heartless, conscienceless megalomaniac who wants to revive the old Russian empire and he’s willing to reduce Ukraine to rubble to realize his sick dreams and fantasies. How is he anything else other than a despot and dictator.
Why is Putin so terrified of Alexei Navalny?
From bbcdotcom: Anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny has long been the most prominent face of Russian opposition to President Vladimir Putin.
The 45-year-old blogger has survived poisoning with a nerve agent and is now behind bars. Even though he has been unable to challenge the president at the ballot box, his voice retains its power for many Russians and he remains a threat to the Kremlin.
He has millions of Russian followers on social media – many in their early 20s or younger – and his campaign group’s anti-corruption videos have reached millions.
Thank you, Jersey Joe. I understand Vera. She is pro-Communist, pro-Soviet, pro-Putin. In her eyes, Putin can do no wrong, even though he is a corrupt billionaire with mega-yachts and multiple luxurious homes and villas. Nothing “communist” about him. One of my side interests is the history of Communism. The best book on the subject is “The Black Book of Communidm,” by a group of French historians. They documented the millions of people put to death, massacred by Dtalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc. Nothing to admire.
One of my friends is a Romanian-American that grew up under the watchful eye of the Soviet Union. She told me people always had to watch what said and with whom they met for fear of being reported. One of her outspoken neighbors suddenly disappeared one day. We must not allow it to happen here.
The White Rose Society holds an analogous place in modern German history as the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. It represents the best of humanity fighting against the most insidious ideas and actions when all the odds are stacked against them. Here’s a review I wrote years ago about a German biography of Sophie Scholl that may interest some of you:
Sophie Scholl is Germany’s post-World War II secular St. Joan of Arc. Sophie didn’t lead armies or inspire a popular uprising, but she and Joan shared a devotion to religious ideals rooted in worldly struggles to achieve national redemption. Both died young—Joan was 19, Sophie was 23—as the result of pre-determined, corrupt show trials.
Sophie and her brother Hans became the most prominent faces associated with The White Rose, a resistance group in the Third Reich centered on a small group of university students in Munich. They printed leaflets and clandestinely distributed them throughout Germany. After being caught throwing them in the air during a class change in the central hallway of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, they were interrogated, faced a farcical tribunal led by the notorious Nazi judge Roland Freisler, and were executed by guillotine on February 22, 1943. Thanks in large part to the June 1943 BBC radio broadcast in which Thomas Mann first told of their exploits to a wider world, the Scholls are arguably the most well known of all the anti-Nazi resistance efforts.
Although this book is ostensibly a biography of Sophie Scholl, it is actually more of an examination of what it was like for a young person to live under Nazi totalitarianism. Robert Scholl, their father, was opposed to the Nazis from the beginning. But Hans and Sophie became enthralled supporters of Nazi youth groups after 1933 and it took some time before they agreed with him. They were devoted members of Bündisch youth groups, similar to the boy and girl scouts with an emphasis on naturalism, and worked on physical training, group activities like camping and parades, and were organized like military units. When these groups were outlawed and absorbed into the Hitler Youth, their eyes began to open about the realities of Nazi dictatorship. Hans’s devotion to bündische ideals later led to him being investigated by the Gestapo.
In a prelude to cue up the idea of Lebensraum, their school history lessons began to focus on the East: German minorities in Poland and Czechoslovakia as well as the free city of Danzig (Gdansk). They saw the rise of vicious anti-Jewish policies up close in their city, Ulm. And they felt the fear of their neighbors when an apprentice working in Robert’s accounting office denounced him for making anti-Hitler comments in private, leading to a trial and four month prison sentence. Sophie also learned about the different expectations the regime had for women and men. She spent a few years working as a nurse-maid before finally being allowed to study at the university in Munich.
For those well-versed in this story, there’s little new in this book, but it is nonetheless interesting. If I were rating it for high school students or young adults, I would have given it four stars. I can understand why this book is used in some German high schools and would recommend it to those studying German in advanced courses. One would hope that such courses would include the films Die Weisse Rose, directed by Michael Verhoven, and Sophie Scholl: Die Letzen Tage, in which Julia Jentsch’s portrayal of Sophie’s last days is among the most powerful and emotional performances I’ve ever seen.
Thanks, Greg! To other readers: Greg writes a lot of truly wonderful book reviews. Greg, please share more of these!
Thanks, Bob! It seemed appropriate here. Hope it spurs further reading and learning for some about them and others who resisted. Now more than ever.
A math professor who supported the White Rose was executed as well. Whenever I see a white rose, I think of them. The brutality in the Ukraine makes the memory even more poignant–the eternal battle of those who would crush the human spirit for their own aggrandizement with those who lift it to the heights of beauty.
One more that may interest some, about a book of collected letters written by Hans and Sophie Scholl:
Hans and Sophie Scholl were the most prominent members of the White Rose Nazi resistance group, made up largely of Munich university students and professors who wrote and secretly distributed anti-Nazi flyers. They were exposed after Hans and Sophie were observed throwing flyers in the air in the central hall of the university on February 18, 1943. After a brief show trial presided over by the notorious Nazi judge Roland Freisler, they, along with their friend, Christoph Probst, were executed on February 22, 1943. News of the White Rose activities went global when Thomas Mann read a flyer on BBC radio later that year. After the war, Hans and Sophie—I call her Germany’s secular Joan of Arc—became iconic symbols representing the idea that not all Germans were complicit in Nazism. Today the name “Geschwister Scholl” (brother and sister Scholl) can be found on streets, schools, and public buildings throughout Germany.
These letters and diary excerpts were collected by their sister, Inge, whose lifelong advocacy of their cause is largely responsible for their place in history. Their words reveal two incredibly mature, thoughtful, strong-willed young people trying to sort out and make sense of their lives. They share a love of family, people, books, and disdain for national chauvinism.
Hans was a medical student whose studies were interrupted to serve as a medic first in France and later on the Russian front. He makes a point of engaging with the people and cultures of France and Russia, where he writes about finding “the real Dostoyevsky.” He sees beauty everywhere, especially in the flatness and open skies of Poland and Russia. There is brave humor in one letter when he refers to how the Gestapo censors must have a hard time reading his handwriting but concludes, “that’s what they’re paid for, and duty is duty, isn’t it sirs?” Since we know the ending of his story, his letter to his friend Otl Aicher of January 19, 1943, just 29 days before his arrest, takes on a more ominous note when he writes, “I can’t leave Munich this weekend for reasons that I’d rather tell you than write.”
When Sophie, as a part of her required state service, is sent to a factory to work, she works in an assembly line with a Russian forced laborer, writing her friend that this makes her happy because this allows to try to “correct her views about Germans.” In her late teens and early twenties, her reading included many theological writings and works by Goethe, Sigrid Undset, and St. Augustine. When she writes about trying to read Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain) in a dormitory room with ten other girls, it is hard not to speculate what she might have experienced had she known that Mann’s BBC broadcast would tell rest of the world about their resistance activities.
This collection is not a place to start to learn about the Scholls and the White Rose. A good deal of knowledge about their story is needed to appreciate their words and thoughts. But for those who are interested to learn more, Hans and Sophie can be deeply appreciated as flesh and blood humans, not the iconic symbols they have become. These are the kind of people you would love to have as family and friends. Although they may not have been the authors, an excerpt from one of their White Rose flyers somehow seems to sum up their views and amplify the tragedy of their early deaths: “The name of Germany will forever be disgraced if German youth does not stand up and simultaneously avenge, destroy its tormentors, confess [its sins], and build a European spirit.”
(Sophie wrote many letters to her fiancé, Fritz Hartnagel, who served in army and was stationed in France, the Netherlands, Russia and north Africa. After the war he became a respected lawyer and judge who was active in the nuclear non-proliferation movement. Shortly after the war, he married their sister, Elisabeth. Their mutual childhood friend, Otl Aicher, to whom each wrote often, married their other sister, Inge. He became a respected graphic artist who designed the current Lufthansa logo in 1969. For the 1972 Munich Olympics, he designed the still-used sports pictograms and the official mascot, the dachshund Waldi. He also designed the informational pictograms that can be seen in airports throughout Europe and the world.)
Thank you, Greg, for this important summary of these two beautiful people.
Beware of the peskyveras of this world (Marjorie Taylor Greene would fit on that list too).
I think anyone that thinks like them would willingly volunteer to wear MAGA or Nazi style armbands and knock on doors at 3:00 AM to arrest entire families if one member was suspected of disagreeing with their dear leaders… Then they’d shoot them down or ship them to death camps.
RIP, Ms. Lafrenze!
There is a beautiful children’s book called “Rose Blanche” (French for White Rose). It’s a metaphor for the work done by the White Rose group. Illustrations are stunning and the story is quite moving, as you’d expect.
Thank you, Rich.
I will get it for my youngest grandson.
Wow! I still remember hearing about–and seeing pictures–when I was a boy–the terrible things that happened. It all seems like a horrible nightmare now. But there were some wonderful heroes.