NOTES from found photos - an occasional series

This fine young lady is Sophie Scholl [1921-1943], best known as one of the main members of Die Weiße Rose (The White Rose), a German anti-Nazi group consisting mainly of students from the University of Munich.  They wrote and distributed a series of leaflets condemning the Nazi regime, and excoriating the German public for their apathy towards the fate of German and Polish Jews.  

On the 18th of February, 1943, Sophie and her brother Hans were caught distributing leaflets at the university; and though Sophie was initially able to convince an experienced Gestapo interrogator of her innocence, she later confessed and assumed full responsibility in an attempt to protect the other members of the group.  During her interrogation, Sophie was recorded as saying, “Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don’t dare express themselves as we did.”

On the 22nd, she, her brother and their friend Christoph Probst were put on trial before a kangaroo court and sentenced to death.

All three were executed on the same day, hours after their trial and four days after their arrest.

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