The White Rose

I know that life is a doorway to eternity, and yet my heart so often gets lost in petty anxieties. It forgets the great way home that lies before it. Unprepared, given over to childish trivialities, it could be taken by surprise when the great hour comes and find that, for the sake of piffling pleasures, the one great joy has been missed. I am aware of this, but my heart is not. It seems unteachable; it continues its dreaming…always wavering between joy and depression. ~ Sophie Scholl

Have the courage to believe only in what is good. By that I do not mean you should believe in illusions. I mean you should do only what is true and good and take it for granted that others will do the same." ~ Sophie Scholl

Six decades ago, at the end of February 1943, three students from the White Rose, a resistance group in Munich, were arrested, sentenced to death and summarily beheaded. Their names were Hans Scholl, 24; his sister Sophie, 21; and Christoph Probst, 23. The executions were announced in a city paper, which opined that the condemned were "typical outsiders" whose criticism of the Volk made them despicable criminals. "They deserve a speedy and dishonorable death," it concluded.

In April, two more students and a professor, all three of them involved in the White Rose, were sentenced to death as well, and following the discovery of other participants, there were several more arrests, convictions, and executions.

Largely forgotten today, the White Rose deserves rediscovery. It was only a tiny group, and it flared haphazardly before being ruthlessly extinguished. But it still stands out as a rare and radiant page in the fading annals of the 20th century. Here was courage to swim against the stream of public opinion, even when doing so was equated with treason; here was the conviction that death is not too great a price for following the whisperings of the conscience.

Reprinted from www.bruderhof.com

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