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# 2025-01-31 - We Will Not Be Silent by Russell Freedman | |
I first learned about the White Roses in 1997 when | |
Information Society included a scavenger hunt at the end of their | |
album Don't Be Afraid. The reward for completing this cyberspace | |
scavenger hunt was a bonus track titled White Roses. | |
White Roses (song) | |
White Rose (student resistance movement) | |
Since then i have taken an interest in the White Rose. My local | |
library has an award winning book on this subject in the Young Adult | |
section: We Will Not Be Silent: The White Rose Student Resistance | |
Movement That Defied Adolf Hitler by Russell Freedman. The book | |
includes clear writing, thorough research, and historic photos. | |
This book was published in 2016, two years before the author died. | |
What follows are excerpts. | |
# Chapter 2 | |
When membership in the Hitler Youth became mandatory in 1936, the | |
Nazis outlawed all other German youth groups. | |
# Chapter 3 | |
In the autumn of 1937, the Gestapo began a sweeping crackdown on | |
members of the banned youth group d.j.1.11 and its sympathizers. All | |
over Germany, young people were arrested and taken to Gestapo | |
headquarters in Stuttgart, among them Hans's brother, Werner, fifteen | |
at the time, and his sisters Sophie and Inge. "My parents were | |
shocked," Inge recalled. "They could not imagine that there were | |
serious charges against us... Each of us was put in a cell and no one | |
knew what was going to happen." | |
# Chapter 4 | |
They asked themselves: How should a responsible citizen act under a | |
dictatorship? How could they resist the Nazi regime? But it was | |
dangerous to speak openly in public. "You had to keep everything | |
secret," recalled George Wittenstein, a fellow medical student who | |
often joined the group. "You could not even trust your friends... It | |
would be weeks or months before you knew someone well enough that you | |
could talk to them." | |
They heard rumors of death camps in Poland, of the mass murder of | |
Jews in the Soviet Union. Their Jewish friends and neighbors were | |
disappearing. It was difficult to know exactly what was going on, | |
because the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda censored newspapers and the | |
radio. It was a crime to listen to foreign radio broadcasts. | |
# Chapter 6 | |
... Sophie was working at a munitions factory in Ulm. Along with her | |
university studies, she was required to devote two months each summer | |
to war service work. | |
All of her fellow workers were women, and most of them were forced | |
laborers conscripted in Russia... | |
Sophie made friends with a "delightful" Russian woman working at the | |
machine next to her. They communicated by sign language and smiles. | |
> Thoughts are free, | |
> Who can guess them? | |
> They fly by | |
> Like nocturnal shadows. | |
> No man can know them, | |
> No hunter can shoot them | |
> With powder and lead. | |
> Thoughts are free! | |
gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Die_Gedanken_sind_frei | |
# Chapter 7 | |
Speaking at a mass assembly marking the 470th anniversary of [Munich] | |
university's founding, [Paul] Giesler had launched a tirade against | |
students who kept their noses in books while a war was going on. | |
"Falsely clever minds," he said, where not an expression of "real | |
life." Then he added: "Real life is transmitted to us only by Adolf | |
Hitler, with his light, joyful, life-affirming teachings!" | |
Many of the mail students, Giesler charged, were shirkers using their | |
studies as an excuse for draft dodging. And he singled out female | |
students for his most biting criticism. "As for the girls," he | |
suggested, "the natural place for a woman is not at the university, | |
but with her family, at the side of her husband." Instead of | |
studying, women should be using their "healthy bodies" to produce | |
babies for the Fatherland. "And for those women students not pretty | |
enough to catch a man," he said with a leer, "I'd be happy to lend | |
them one of my assistants." | |
Giesler's remarks were met with a rising chorus of hisses, boos, | |
whistles, and shouts. As outraged members of the audience got up to | |
leave, scuffles and fistfights broke out with the storm troopers who | |
tried to hold them back. Dozens of students were arrested on the | |
spot. Hundreds more poured into the streets. Linking arms, men and | |
women students together marched down the boulevard and shouting in an | |
open display of political protest that had never been seen before in | |
Nazi Germany. A state of emergency was declared in Munich. | |
Telephone service was suspended. Radio broadcasts were silenced. | |
# Chapter 8 | |
At 5:00 p.m., Sophie was led to the execution chamber. ... Five | |
seconds after she entered the chamber, the blade was released. It | |
dropped with a dull thud. Sophie Scholl was dead at the age of | |
twenty-one. | |
Hans followed her into the chamber. He was twenty-four. | |
Finally, Christoph, twenty-three and the father of three, was | |
beheaded. | |
Sophie and Christoph went silently to their deaths. But Hans could | |
not resist a final act of defiance. Just before they positioned his | |
head on the block, he called out, "Long live freedom!" | |
# Chapter 9 | |
Within days of their execution, a new slogan appeared on the walls of | |
Munich University: | |
> SCHOLL LIVES! YOU CAN BREAK THE BODY BUT NEVER THE SPIRIT! | |
Under the Nazi policy of Sippenhaft, or clan arrest, the parents, | |
spouses, siblings, and children of "political criminals" were held | |
jointly responsible for acts of resistance. | |
More arrests, more trials, and more executions took place in the | |
months that followed. ... But even as the Gestapo tried to crush every | |
sign of dissent, a new version of the White Rose leaflets was | |
circulating in Germany and beyond. | |
We are told that the Christian martyr Saint Denis, after being | |
beheaded around A.D. 250, picked up his head and walked several miles | |
while preaching a sermon the entire way, a feat that has always been | |
regarded as a miracle. | |
The story of the White Rose movement and its decapitated martyrs | |
tells us that miracles still occur. We hear their voices even today, | |
speaking truth to power. They will not be silent. | |
author: Freedman, Russel | |
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Russell_Freedman | |
LOC: DD256.3 .F74 | |
tags: book,history,non-fiction | |
title: We Will Not Be Silent | |
# Tags | |
book | |
history | |
non-fiction |