THE VOICE OF PROTEST

In 1943 on this day, Hans and Sophie Scholl were beheaded in Munich by the Nazis. These two siblings were members of the White Rose, an underground group - mostly Christians, mostly young people - who wrote and clandestinely distributed leaflets against the Nazi regime. At the end of one of them they wrote:

We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace!

In that same leaflet they wrote:

Man is free, to be sure, but without the true God he is defenseless against the principle of evil. he is like a rudderless ship, at the mercy of the storm, an infant without his mother, a cloud dissolving into thin air.

Their courage has inspired me since I first heard of their witness, until death. Last year I saw the recently released film Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, a story not only of their courage but also of the power of conscience in the face of evil.

As I think on them I have to recall the young people I have met who have been great sources of inspiration to me as they have given years of their lives to the service of the poor and to the promotion of justice. May their numbers increase.

Two books about the White Rose are:
Hermann Vinke, The Short Life of Sophie Scholl. New York: Harper & Row, 1984.
Inge Scholl, The White Rose:Munich 1942-1943. Wesleyan University Press, 1983.

A website on the White Rose is at http://www.jlrweb.com/whiterose/.