A woman who was sentenced to death on a day when the sun was shining, turned to the head of a Nazi judge and cried: “Someday you will stand in this place where we stand”.
Sophie Magdalena Scholl was born on May 9, 1921 in Forchtenberg, Germany. In 1940, Sophie was studying to become a kindergarten teacher but meets the other side of the struggle: The Nazis.
Sophies parents become unhappy with her attitude and opinions; they tell her about the Nazi cruelty, especially towards the Jewish people. What she is told starts to tamper with Sophie’s mind and so, she understands that something is wrong.
SOPHIE MEETS STRUGGLE
Sophie establishes the White Rose, a resistance group against the Nazis.
Having begun studying biology and philosophy in Munich in 1942, Sophie was soon in the ranks of the struggle against the oppression of the Nazis. The group began publishing brochures against Nazis; the preparation and distribution of the brochures being a major crime at that time. According to the State, she would be committing treason.
The first four brochures prepared in difficulty are sent to the authors, professors and bookstores in 100 copies. The young people draw attention to what the Nazis did, in these brochures and spread the message “Resist wherever you are!” The brochures are later distributed at many points in the city centre from phone booths.
During this period when Sophie fought against the Nazis, her fiancé Fritz fought in Stalingrad as a soldier in the Nazi Army against the Soviets.
Sophie, her older brother Hans and his friend Alexander Schmorell, who were studying at the Faculty of Medicine, founded White Rose, a resistance group against the Nazis. On February 18, 1943, Sophie and Hans go to the university to deliver papers. When they are ready to leave the school after leaving the papers in certain, visible places, Sophie pushes down a stack of papers down the staircase.
A school employee sees what Sophie did and reports the two, resulting in Sophie and Hans’ arrest. The siblings, who were questioned for three days, finally expressed that they were anti-Nazi and that they distributed the declarations. But they take all the blame to protect their other friends.
Four days after their arrest, the hearing is held in front of the People’s Court. In the three-hour hearing, Sophie, her brother Hans, and his comrades in detention, Christoph Probst, were sentenced to death by Nazi judge Roland Freisler.
When the decision is announced three comrades do not compromise the values they defend. Sophie turns to the judge and says: “Someday you will stand in this place where we stand”. It is tragic that we are still crying out in courts, that there are still prisoners of dictatorship in many parts of the world.
Sophie met her family before the execution, she told them not to worry, and she whispered: “The sun still shines”. On February 22, 1943, Sophie, Hans and Christoph were killed by guillotine.
In a 2012 interview, Franz J. Müller, a member of the White Rose, said: Sophie Scholl was the bravest of all of us!
