Sophie scholl (1921 - 1943) was a German student and activist against Nazism who was part of the peaceful resistance movement Rosa Blanca. The Nazi regime executed her after finding her handing out anti-war pamphlets.
She was a member of a Protestant Lutheran family that instilled in her strong religious values. Scholl was surrounded by people who disagreed with the way Adolf Hitler and his followers acted, including her father and brother..
The White Rose movement emerged in 1942 as an anti-Nazi proposal that used peace and religion as its tools. The following year, Sophie Scholl and her brother, Hans, were arrested by the Gestapo while distributing anti-Nazi propaganda.
The activist was sentenced to the guillotine for being found guilty of high treason. Since then, Scholl has come to be recognized as a leading member of the resistance against Hitler's regime..
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Sophia Magdalena Scholl was born on May 9, 1921 in Forchtenberg, Germany. His parents were the politician Robert Scholl and his wife Magdalena Müller, who had six children of which Sophie was the fourth.
The names of Scholl's siblings were Inge, Hans, Elisabeth, Werner, and Thilde (who died in infancy). At the time Sophie was born, her father served as mayor of Forchtenberg and held that position until 1930..
His parents were Lutheran Christians and they raised their children in their faith. Sophie Scholl had a quiet childhood; started school at age seven and achieved good academic results.
The Scholl family moved to Ludwigsburg in 1930 and two years later they moved to the city of Ulm. In 1932 Sophie began attending a girls' high school; at that time Nazism began to gain strength in Germany.
Robert Scholl was not a supporter of the ideas promoted by Adolf Hitler and members of the National Socialist Party, but like most young people, his children joined the groups formed around it..
Sophie entered the German Girls' League at age twelve and managed to be the leader of her group. However, he disagreed when the segregation of Jews began to be implemented in 1935..
Another of his conflicts with the pro-Nazi organization was that he was reproached for having read the Jewish author Heinrich Heine. Those differences led to Sophie Scholl eventually breaking away from the League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel, BDM).
His dislike for the Nazi regime was consolidated after his brothers were arrested for participating in the Germanic Youth Movement, which at the time counterbalanced the Hitler Youth..
Scholl graduated from high school in 1940 and began working as a kindergarten teacher in Ulm. A year later she was drafted to serve six months of auxiliary service in World War II..
His work there was also that of a preschool teacher, but under the figure of the National Labor Service, something mandatory to enter the university. Scholl had planned to study biology and philosophy, but around this time he became interested in his spirituality..
Sophie Scholl was accepted into the University of Munich from early 1941, but began studying after completing her National Labor Service in May 1942.
Months later Hans Scholl was sent to the eastern front and that consolidated the young man's stance against the Nazi regime.
That same year Sophie's father, Robert Scholl, was arrested for four months for saying in public that Hitler was the scourge of God and that the war was already lost..
The Scholl family was convinced that Nazism should be fought and Hans surrounded himself with friends who thought like him, including Christoph Probst, Jungen Witternstein and Alexander Schmorell, as well as a professor named Kurt Huber..
This group of young people considered that the way to fight against the violence that Hitler was encouraging was with a peaceful model. They began to write some pamphlets in which they embodied their ideals in 1942.
In May of that year Sophie Scholl managed to get hold of a printing press where she could reproduce the pamphlets of the White Rose movement. Some of those who received this propaganda against the war and Nazism in their mail handed it over to the authorities.
Between mid-1942 and early the following year, the White Rose movement had distributed six pamphlets in different cities, including Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, and Munich. In these it was stated that Hitler would lead Germany to its destruction.
Also the boys who made up the Rosa Blanca movement clamored for freedom of expression, freedom of worship and protection for citizens from the criminal action of totalitarian states.
On February 18, 1943, Sophie and Hans Scholl brought a suitcase full of reproductions of those pamphlets to the University of Munich and scattered them around the corridors of the campus before the students left class..
A university staff member named Jakob Schmid saw the boys drop the last few copies and called the Gestapo. Both brothers were arrested from that day, then captured other members of the group as was the case with Christoph Probst.
All were charged with treason and were not allowed to contact a lawyer to defend them in their trials..
Sophie Scholl decided to confess after learning that the Gestapo had found proof of her activities, but did not reveal information about any other members..
The parents of Sophie and Hans Scholl tried to enter the trial of their children, but did not succeed and, on the contrary, they were expelled from court. Brothers Scholl and Christoph Probst were found guilty by Judge Roland Freisler.
Sophie Scholl was executed by guillotine on February 22, 1943 in the Stadelheim prison in Munich, Germany. Her brother Hans Scholl and his friend Christoph Probst had the same sentence and died the same day as her.
Before dying, his parents Robert and Magdalena Scholl managed to see their children for the last time, who were brave before the sentence they had to serve.
One of the guards who was present at the time of the execution later admitted that they allowed, without their superiors knowing, the three young men to meet for a moment before being executed to share a cigarette and talk for a few minutes..
Sophie Scholl's contributions to the fight against the totalitarian Nazi regime are incalculable, since they are not limited to facts. His example of life and struggle served as an inspiration against the violence that was rampant in Germany during World War II..
Before being executed, she said that she did not mind dying if, thanks to that, thousands could get to hear about the struggle that she and those of the Rosa Blanca movement had started: to get the opportunity to live freely and in peace..
To this day Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans, as well as the rest of the members of Rosa Blanca, continue to be an example for many of the value of doing the right thing regardless of the cost that this may entail..
In 2003 a bust in honor of Scholl was placed inside the Walhalla temple in Bavaria, that same year the Scholl brothers were selected in fourth place in a popular election list to choose the most important Germans of all time..
The University of Munich Ludwig Maximilian created the Geschwister-Scholl-Institute (Scholl Brothers Institute) and around the world there are several schools and streets named after Sophie Scholl.
- "The only remedy for a sterile heart is prayer, however poor and inadequate it may be".
- "How can we expect justice to prevail when hardly anyone will indivisibly give themselves up to a just cause?".
- “I am still so far from God that I don't even feel his presence when I pray. Sometimes when I say the name of God I feel as if I am sinking into a void (…). But prayer is the only remedy ".
- “After all, someone had to start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don't dare to express themselves like we did. ".
- “I know that life is a door to eternity and yet my heart is often lost in small anxieties. Forget the great road home that lies before him ".
- "I will hold on to the rope that God has thrown at me in Jesus Christ, even if my numb hands can no longer feel it".
- "The fact that so many things are in conflict does not mean that we ourselves should be divided".
- "The end of terror is preferable to endless terror".
- "I am never free from the uncertainty we live in these days, which precludes any carefree plan for tomorrow and casts a shadow over all the days to come".
- "I pity people who cannot find laughter or at least a little fun in the little things of the day".
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