Sophie Scholl

An optimistic, life-loving student with a boyfriend and a rich future ahead of her, she is the kind of decent, principled person we would all like to be. Stephen Holden

The film, “Sophie Scholl—The Final Days,” begins in February 1943 at the University of Munich. Sophie and her brother, Hans, both students there (Sophie in biology and philosophy, Hans in medicine) enter the main building while classes are meeting, walk rapidly up the stairs, and hurriedly begin leaving stacks of leaflets outside the classroom doors. As they are about to leave, Sophie notices a few are left in her suitcase and lets them fly over the balustrade.

The leaflets protest Hitler’s regime, its acts of oppression, denial of free expression, and the prolongation of the war (The German army had just been defeated at Stalingrad). From one of the leaflets:

“…why do you allow these men who are in power to rob you step by step, openly and in secret, of one domain of your rights after another, until one day nothing, nothing at all will be left but a mechanized state system presided over by criminals and drunks? Is your spirit already so crushed by abuse that you forget it is your right—or rather, your moral duty—to eliminate this system?”

Distributing leaflets like this was an extremely risky step to take. Before then, they had been sent by mail throughout Germany. Sophie and Hans were members of the White Rose resistance group in Nazi Germany, a relatively small group of intellectuals, largely students, who actively opposed Hitler’s regime.

Their act was observed by a university janitor who informed the Gestapo and within moments both Sophie, Hans and their collaborator Christoph (father of three young children) were arrested and thrown into prison. We know at the outset they are guilty of breaking the law then in force in Germany. The rest of the film depicts Sophie’s interrogation and trial, if you can call it that, and the last six days of her life.

The questioning by Robert Mohr, a Nazi investigator, is grueling, goes on for three consecutive days. Mohr is relentless in his interrogation, is a patient listener, and in my mind shows more sympathy for Sophie than he will ever acknowledge. He owes everything to the Nazi party where he became a high ranking investigator, rather than the country policeman he used to be.

Sophie is articulate, smart, forceful in response to Mohr’s questions. She is clever in devising elaborate excuses in defense of her actions. She knows what she did and sticks to the truth as much as possible. She retains her composure knowing things that she will never reveal.

The dialogue between the two is based upon the actual transcript of the trial that was discovered in East Germany after the country was unified. I wish I had a copy of those records for the eloquence of Sophie’s statements in defense of her resistance is memorable.

At one point Mohr offers to release her if she will acknowledge her role in distributing the leaflets. She refuses. It is only after Mohr informs her that Hans has confessed, that she finally admits her complicity. She believes Mohr is not trying to trick her into confessing and wants to believe that he is not entirely unmoved by her arguments.

It isn’t easy denying the truth when all the evidence about you confirms it. You can pretend otherwise and hope to find a sympathetic ear. I sense that might have been the case by observing Mohr’s expression after an especially powerful statement by Sophie during her subsequent show trial.

She and Hans, along with their friend Cristoph were convicted and sentenced to death. They were executed two days later. Sophie’s last words were … “your heads will fall as well.”

During her interrogation Sophie said: “I knew what I took upon myself and I was prepared to lose my life by doing so.”

The Courage to Care I

In those times there was a darkness everywhere…all the gates of compassion seemed to have been closed. The killer killed and the Jews died and the outside world adopted an attitude of either complicity or of indifference. Only a few had the courage to care.
Elie Wiesel

Imagine for a moment you are living in Nazi occupied Paris. One night an old friend comes knocking at your door. She is nervous, pale and rather emaciated. She is wearing a yellow star on her coat. Your husband is asleep, as are your three young children.

The person whispers in a pleading voice: “Can you hide me and my two boys for a few days? The Nazis are about to roundup of all the Jews in Paris.”

What do you do? Do you really have any idea? Can you imagine the risks involved, to you, and everyone in your family, that if you are caught, each of you will probably be shot or taken away to be tortured and then, if you survive the beatings, shipped off to Auschwitz in a cattle car, where your fate will be unspeakable?

The Courage to Care, edited by Carol Rittner & Sondra Meyers, recounts the experience of individuals throughout Europe who, in spite of these risks, did rescue and protect Jewish individuals in Europe during World War II. They did this by hiding, feeding, and helping them to move to a safer place that in many instances meant another country.

Each of the rescuers describes, in their own words their experience in aiding these Jewish men, women and children. All told, it is currently estimated that over 23,000 individuals can be identified as rescuers. They came from countries throughout Europe, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, France, Bulgaria, Poland, and even Germany.

It is impossible to estimate the number of Jews who were saved during the Holocaust; we know how many were not. The Courage to Care documents the story of 20 of these individuals. Portions of the book are included in the award winning film, A Courage to Care that I often showed in my social psychology class when we were discussing bystander intervention in crisis situations.

Odette Myers and her mother were saved by the Catholic concierge of the apartment building in Paris where they lived. She awoke them in the early morning of July 1942 when she heard the Nazis were beginning to round up over 13,000 stateless Jews. She hid them in a broom closet in her apartment and convinced the Gestapo agents the family had gone to their country home. After the Germans left, her husband, a member of the resistance, walked with them to the Metro where another member of the resistance took them to a hiding place in the country.

The experience of John Weidner of France was one of the most detailed of the accounts and, in several respects, representative of the majority of the others. While he wanted to help Jewish individuals in the Netherlands where he was originally from, he admitted that initially he had no idea what to do.

However, he lived close to the French-Swiss border and was familiar with several routes between the two countries. Eventually with the help of others, including his family and friends, he established a network, known as the Dutch-Paris network, that brought Jews from the Netherlands to Belgium then through France, and on to Geneva.

He described how difficult this was—it was extremely perilous to help Jews, he had to find safe places along the route, and ways to feed them, arrange for false papers and find money to pay for their papers and food. Above all he had to trust the people who were part of his group, as well as the Jews, who if caught and tortured, might reveal the names and addresses that would put all of them in danger.

One of his agents was eventually arrested and wasn’t able to hold up under the torture, resulting in the capture of nearly 300 members of his group who were deported to Nazi concentration camps. Forty, including his sister, never came back.

He concludes that the most important thing he learned was “…that you can have all kinds of theories but if you do not have love in action, those theories and creeds do not mean anything at all.”