It never surprises me anymore what I learn through the process of writing diaries. Several years ago, I started to talk about my fascination with (and deep appreciation of) Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans, in their fight against Nazism during the Third Reich. Caught dropping leaflets in a university building, Sophie and Hans were quickly arrested, tried, convicted and executed. The group providing resistance was called The White Rose. Their story found international resonance in real time, and it was not long before the leaflets the White Rose spread were dropped thousands of times over by Allied aircraft, to undermine the Nazi regime and morale.
I wrote about them in 2011 and in 2016, and they are up again tonight.
More below.
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Among the things that I discovered while reading and writing about them was that not all close members of the White Rose were executed during the war. Some accounts suggest that the group had as many as 80 members, at one time, spread throughout Germany. But most think of it as a smaller group than that, focused in Munich. Of that intimate, smaller group, one member survives to this day. And, research revealed, she lives in the same US state that I do!
Her name is Traute Lafrenz. On the occasion of her 100th birthday, she was awarded the national order of merit by the German government, for her role in those dark times.
Amazingly, two recent interviews were conducted with her. The most recent came when she was honored for her 100th birthday on May 3. There was another, last year, in the German magazine, Der Spiegel. The author of that article contacted Lafrenz to obtain approval to travel to the United States to interview her. She declined, more than once, but the person refused to accept that, and flew to the US, where she was kind enough to speak with him. Her words in the interview are interesting. It is crystal clear that, for an individual of that age, she is ALL there! Remarkably alert and attentive. Informed!
However, there is a notice from Spiegel before the beginning of the interview in which they state that the person that conducted the interview (no longer employed by Spiegel) falsified elements of the interview. Complete details are unavailable, so it is impossible to know definitively what she really said and what she didn’t.
That said, much of it rings true to me. In retrospect she does not seem so impressed with what she and her fellow White Rose members did. She said they were remarkably naive and idealistic. Not the heroes they have become since the deaths of Hans, Sophie and their friends. (Lafrenz was herself convicted of involvement with the group, and sentenced to a year in prison, that could easily have been death, given the character of the ‘courts’ in those days.)
(I still think they are heroes, however, Traute herself, also, absolutely. I don’t think that fact is diminished by their youthful naïveté. In many ways, their statements are consistent with those we see today from the fine Parkland students, or Malala, or even Greta Thunberg. Great character and awareness.)
In the disputed Spiegel interview from the year before, she calls herself merely an eyewitness. But what a portion of history to have witnessed!
Austrian poet, Ilse Aichinger, told of learning about the White Rose for the first time, their names on a poster of people condemned to death.
I had never heard of any of them. But as I read those names an inexpressible hope leaped up in me … and I was not the only one who felt this way …
That quotation is from a book entitled Sophie Scholl and the White Rose, by Annette Dumbach and Jud Newborn.
After recounting Aichinger’s words, they closed the book with this paragraph. I think it provides as fine an answer as any to the question asked by Lillian Garrett-Groag, above.
The impact of the White Rose cannot be measured in tyrants destroyed, regimes overthrown, justice restored. A scale with another dimension is needed, and then their significance is deeper; it goes even beyond the Third Reich, beyond Germany: if people like those who formed the White Rose can exist, believe as they believed, act as they acted, maybe that means that this weary, corrupted and extremely endangered species we belong to has the right to survive, and to keep on trying.
For my money, there is no maybe to it. And that Traute is still among us makes me very glad, indeed.
On to tonight’s comments! Compiled by brillig!
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From Joffan:
On licenses for guns, lilnev finds a direct and pithy route to noting the constitutionality of a shooting/gun-ownership license. From Laura Clawson’s Cory Booker drops strong, ambitious gun law reform plan.
Highlighted by belinda ridgewood:
Is this comment by Onomastic about the insidious nature of ‘electability’ arguments, that always seem to favor WHITE MEN. Exceptionally well said!
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