Excerpts to think about
Every once in a while, researching White Rose resistance, we run across quotes that are just too good to keep to ourselves.
One of the extras we will provide to our paid subscribers: Periodic excerpts from our research, quotes that made us think, say aha, or wonder about something we had thought to be true. This one is available to everyone. Comments welcome!
SPIEGEL: Mrs. Hartnagel, your siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl are honored as few Germans of the twentieth century have been honored. But you have distanced yourself from the cult around your family. Why?
Hartnagel: I always found it a little exaggerated and also a little unfair. It’s not right to give such prominence only to Hans and Sophie. After all, Professor Huber, Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf, Christoph Probst, and other students participated too.
SPIEGEL: But weren’t Hans and Sophie the spokesmen?
Hartnagel: I was not a member of the White Rose, but I did see the circle of friends in action on more than one occasion. They were all equals. No one had the final word.
— From Klaus Wiegrefe, Zeitgeschichte: ‘Immer einen Schritt weiter’. Spiegel, 07/2003. Interview with Elisabeth Hartnagel nee Scholl.
Report of a student (“Eduard H.”) regarding his last visit with Professor Kurt Huber, likely July 1942:
I can still recall a conversation I had one night in Gräfelfing with my revered teacher, Professor Kurt Huber. I had stopped [in Munich] on my way back to the front and had visited him again. He told me about the attempts to sterilize Polish Jews and female Polish students. Terrible things.
But I told him of things even more awful. The shooting of Jews in the Crimea, which I had personally experienced. When he heard this, he shouted so loudly (and it was 3 o'clock in the morning) that his wife came out of their bedroom and - alarmed - asked him to be quiet because of the neighbors.
I had wanted to leave at midnight. But he made me stay till 3:45 a.m., the latest I could possibly leave [and still catch my train].
"I envy you, that you are going to the front. At least there you can place yourself in the line of fire and die."
"But isn't that suicide?" I asked.
"No, when the strain [Spannungen] is unbearable, that is the only way. Because that death makes sense."
To which I said, "I don't know. Suicide is never good."
And he: "There are situations in which that which is legal - including that which is morally legal - is transcended."
And those were the last words I ever heard him say.
My reports are dedicated primarily to those who did not live through the following [National Socialist] era. They should not only remember the crimes - which should indeed shock them deeply. But they should also have an idea how this dictatorship began, how it developed, what life was like back then. They should regard our democracy, which we did not fight for, which was simply placed in our laps, as a precious possession, as something that is always in danger of abuse and neglect, as something that must be protected and preserved.
— Susanne Hirzel, in introduction to memoirs, Vom Ja Zum Nein: Eine schwäbische Jugend 1933 - 1945. Tübingen: Kloepfer & Meyer, 1998.
In an attempt to gain clemency for his own resistance activities, Heinz Kucharsky betrayed the circle in Hamburg. He accused Traute Lafrenz of the following seven "crimes" when she was rearrested in Munich in March 1944, which the Gestapo used to re-indict her.
1) The leaflets she had distributed.
2) The approximately twenty times she and Kucharsky had listened to foreign radio broadcasts together (Moscow, England Beromünster, Red-Spain).
3) In January 1937, her distribution of Thomas Mann's Responsa to the Dekanat in Bonn when his honorary doctorate was rescinded.
4) Banned books that she had owned, borrowed, or read.
5) Help and friendship she had proffered to a Jewish family known to both her and Kucharsky.
6) Her particularly radical attitude, particular prominence in political discussions, particular aptitude for bringing literary evenings (Leseabende) around to political topics.
7) Her particularly independent lifestyle, especially refusal to recognize family ties.
Traute Lafrenz escaped death only because the Americans liberated Bayreuth (and its prison) two days before she was to be sentenced to death.
We talk a great deal about what became of the friends and family members of those arrested and executed for their "White Rose" resistance. But rarely do we have access to the thoughts of people who agreed with our favorite students, copied and distributed the leaflets, yet did not know them personally or well.
One such report did survive, that of Lisa Grote who also lived in Munich-Schwabing. She and her friends received the White Rose leaflets and disbursed several dozen of each. They also sent packages of food to the Warsaw Ghetto, never realizing it was being intercepted.
She described their reactions to the arrests on February 18, 1943:
Now for the things that torment me the most! From the moment they were arrested, we lost all our courage. We were paralyzed by fear. After everything went up in smoke, we met a few more times. Foreign [Dutch and French] faces were among our circle. Clear, perceptive eyes, but now these eyes were full of fear. And my eyes reflected the greatest fear of all.
Everybody expressed a great deal of interest, but with one single question: Is it effective? Will a revolution come out of it?
When everyone understood the No, they went their own ways into the night. We therefore met for the last time on March 16, [1943,] agreed (as far as I was concerned) in this matter. I will never forget how people left [that meeting] all stooped over.
That night, I felt our words to the marrow of my bones. The anesthesia of fear wore off a little, and I 'understood'.
... Why did no one run through the streets screaming in those days? And I ask, why did not we do so?