Like most German children in the 1930s, Sophie Scholl and her five siblings joined Nazi youth groups. But Sophie and her brother Hans grew outraged that educated Germans went along with racist Nazi policies. In 1942, the two siblings, along with their friend Christoph Probst, started a secret society which was known as the “White Rose Resistance.” The trio painted anti-Nazi slogans on the campus of the University of Munich and distributed pamphlets detailing the genocide of Jewish people.
“Since the conquest of Poland, 300,000 Jews have been murdered, a crime against humanity,” read a White Rose Resistance pamphlet.
They implored readers not to be complicit,
Who among us has any conception… of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children…when one day the veil has fallen from…our eyes and the most horrible crimes …reach light of day?
Scholl’s father, an avowed anti-Nazi who was arrested for criticizing Hitler to a colleague, had raised his children to stand up for what they believed in their hearts. “What I want for you is to live in uprightness and freedom of spirit, no matter how difficult that proves to be.”
His words were prophetic. In February, 1943, Sophie and Hans Scholl, along with Christoph Probst, were sentenced to death by guillotine.
Before she was beheaded at the age of twenty-one, Sophie Scholl said, “Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go….But what does my death matter…if through us thousands of people… are awakened and stirred to action?”
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