The White Rose - "We will not be silent"

The White Rose (German: die Weiße Rose) was a non-violent/intellectual resistance group in Nazi Germany, consisting of students from the University of Munich and their philosophy professor. The group became known for an anonymous leaflet campaign, lasting from June 1942 until February 1943, that called for active opposition to dictator Adolf Hitler's regime.

The six core members of the group were arrested by the Gestapo and they were executed by decapitation in 1943. The text of their sixth leaflet was smuggled by Helmuth James Graf von Moltke out of Germany through Scandinavia to Britain, and in July 1943 copies of it were dropped over Germany by Allied planes, retitled "The Manifesto of the Students of Munich."[1]

Today, the members of the White Rose are honoured in Germany as amongst its greatest heroes, since they opposed the Third Reich in the face of almost certain death.

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Origin

In 1941 Hans Scholl read a copy of a sermon by an outspoken critic of the Nazi regime, Bishop August von Galen, decrying the euthanasia policies (extended that same year to the concentration camps[2]) which the Nazis maintained would protect the European gene pool.[3] Horrified by the Nazi policies, Sophie obtained permission to reprint the sermon and distribute it at the University of Munich as the group's first leaflet prior to their formal organization.[3]

Under Gestapo interrogation, Hans Scholl gave several explanations for the origin of the name "The White Rose," and suggested he may have chosen it while he was under the emotional influence of an obscure 19th century poem with the same name by German poet Clemens Brentano. Most scholars, as well as the German public, have taken this answer at face value. Earlier, before these Gestapo transcripts surfaced, Annette Dumbach and Jud Newborn speculated briefly that the origin might have come from a German novel Die Weiße Rose- The White Rose, published in Berlin in 1929 and written by B. Traven, the German author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Dumbach and Newborn said there was a chance that Hans Scholl and Alex Schmorell had read this. They also wrote that the symbol of the white rose was intended to represent purity and innocence in the face of evil.[4]

In February 2006, however, Dr. Jud Newborn authored an essay entitled, "Solving Mysteries: The Secret of 'The White Rose'," originally intended as an Afterword to his co-authored book,[5] In this essay he argues that Hans Scholl's response to the Gestapo was intentionally misleading in order to protect Josef Soenghen, the anti-Nazi bookseller who had provided the White Rose members with a safe meeting place for the exchange of information and to receive occasional financial contributions. Soenghen kept a stash of banned books hidden in his store. Dr. Newborn also looked into the content of B. Traven's The White Rose, arguing that the novel, banned by the Nazis in 1933, provided evidence of origin of the group's name.

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WE WILL NOT BE SILENT

ARREST CHENEY FIRST $12.00

BE PART OF THE CAMPAIGN AND EMBODY THE MESSAGE.

FRONT: ARREST CHENEY FIRST

BACK: U.N. CONVENTION AGAINST TORTURE

War Crime Charge(s):

Crime against peace – planning and carrying out a war of aggression.

Complicity in the commission of a war crime – wanton destruction of cities and villages, devastation not justified by military necessity, ill-treatment of civilian population of or in occupied territory.

Complicity in the commission of a war crime – torture, ill-treatment of detainees.

(*These are just a few of the crimes against humanity committed by the Bush Administration.)

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Photos by Yulia Pinkusevich