Gaping gaps
When researching White Rose or other resistance: Have the courage to ask hard questions! If (when) you see gaps, logical disconnects, keep digging. Use your brain.
If you have subscribed to this newsletter, or its predecessors, for very long, you likely recognize that I write “paid” posts in a more formal manner. Tone would be what one would expect from a grant application or peer-reviewed article. By contrast, “free posts” tend to be conversational, as if you were sitting across the kitchen table from me, drinking coffee and discussing perplexing but fascinating aspects of White Rose and other resistance during the Shoah.
That’s a conscious decision. The conversational tone of “free posts” tracks with the conversational tone of our White Rose histories. If you’re unfamiliar with those, check out the stated purpose behind those volumes.
This post is a free post, but it is far harder to write, far more serious than most. Its topic is too critical to limit to paid subscribers.
One benefit of a database instead of 3x5 note cards, or other pre-technology means of analyzing historical data: Gaps are readily identifiable. If a scholar’s work consists of little more than compiling information found in primary sources and creating a narrative around the compilation, gaps are easily missed. This holds true especially when that scholar limits primary sources consulted to a single person or a single document type from a person.
I will write another post dedicated to the methodology behind our database. The 2002 explanation can be found here.
As I printed out the “data dump” from the Access database, these gaps caught my attention. When possible, I would write to the person in question to determine whether they could fill in the gap. I also consulted extensively with Dr. Armin Ziegler. Most of the time, he had the same questions. Where one of us had documents or interview notes the other did not, we shared and cited, giving credit to the other for sourcing. When you read our White Rose histories, you will see his fingerprints all over the footnotes.
When gaps could not be filled in, I noted them in the histories.
As one would expect, many gaps are relatively insignificant. We’re human. Even the most dedicated journal-ists miss a day here and there. Those missed days generally do not impact the larger story, at least not dramatically.
Specific example: We do not have Willi Graf’s day-by-day diary entries or letters from the 1936 trip to the Balkans. On October 11, 2023, Dr. Peter Goergen and Sabine Grittner spoke about Willi Graf’s involvement with Grauer Orden (Gray Order). Elisabeth Glück, daughter of Ernst Müller, a Grauer Orden friend of Willi Graf, had allowed them to view and photograph the photo album her father had put together back in 1936.
The photographs fleshed out Willi Graf’s personality and gave us a sense of who he was as a person, long before he faced the horrors of war and joined White Rose resistance. Especially since the new information complemented and did not contradict what we already knew, it’s a good example of filling a gap, yet not dramatically impacting the larger story of Willi Graf’s life.
Two particular gaps, however, remain inescapable. As archives begin to open, new data could potentially upend existing White Rose narratives, especially the carefully honed national mythology that has been invented around Inge Aicher-Scholl’s historical fiction.
Starting with the second date first: May 1939. Scholl family moved from a reasonably comfortable apartment on Olgastraβe, by then renamed Adolf-Hitler-Straβe. It had been their second home in Ulm. The Olgastraβe apartment granted the children green space and a balcony. The building only had a few apartments. Neighbors were therefore unavoidable.
The new residence, Münsterplatz 33, apparently had belonged to a Jewish family prior to Kristallnacht. There is clear evidence of same, but I am still chasing down the whole story. Among the missing details: Which family; whether Scholls “bought” the furniture in the apartment for Pfennige on the Reichsmark; whether they broke their Olgastraβe lease (to get out of a building associated with Jewish families); lease or purchase agreement.
In the Jens edition of Scholl letters and diaries, Sophie Scholl’s entries jump from September 24, 1938 to July 28, 1939, completely omitting the move. In the Hartnagel edition, her letters skip from May 10, 1939 to July 16, 1939, again with no mention of the move. None of Fritz Hartnagel’s published letters mention it either. In the Jens edition of letters, Hans Scholl’s entries go from May 6, 1939 to July 23, 1939.
When the Institut für Zeitgeschichte finally grants everyone free and unfettered access to Scholl Archives, will Inge’s careful philosemitic narrative be obliterated (as I suspect it may be)? Did she or her heirs destroy documents regarding the move from Olgastraβe to Münsterplatz? I am also curious as to the reasons that both Inge Scholl and Otl Aicher seemed to pretend that Scholls lived in the great apartment on Münsterplatz from 1932 on, instead of “admitting” that they first lived in a modest residence high up the Michelsberg, then moved to Olgastraβe, and only in May 1939 moved to Münsterplatz. It’s an odd deception, one that many “scholars” have used without questioning.
But that first date, the larger question, has implications beyond Scholl mythology. That first date is of course the night of November 9 into the morning of November 10, what is commonly called Kristallnacht, better referred to as the November pogrom.
Scholls were the only non-Jewish family in that Olgastraβe residence.
And yet, there is utter and raw silence from any of the Scholls about the fates of their neighbors, people whom they saw every day for four years.
From other sources, we know the following:
In Ulm, Rabbi Cohn was dragged from his bed into the dry creek in front of the shul. First Storm Troopers attacked him, then bystanders joined in the fracas. (Zeugnisse zur Geschichte der Juden in Ulm)
One of the Hirzel children told the family that he had heard at school that the fire department had been called out before the synagogue was set on fire. They stood guard over Müller & Feuchter, the paint store next to the shul. (Vom Ja zum Nein, Susanne Hirzel)
“In Ulm, all Jewish men were driven together in the middle of the night and sent to Dachau where they had to remain for one month. One of my grandfather’s cousins contracted asthma, which plagued him for the rest of his life, because he was wearing only his pajamas and they would not even give him the time to change clothes. He had to stand outside in that cold November night. My grandfather was luckily spared that hell. The Nazis who were in charge of the arrests of the Jews apparently did not have his new address on file, so they could not find him.” (Zeugnisse, Andrew Einstein. Jakob Guggenheimer was the owner of the Olgastraβe building. His daughter Irene married into the Einstein family. Andrew Einstein was grandson of Irene Einstein.)
Note: Jakob Guggenheimer had died five months earlier, so he was spared the indignity of the November pogrom. This destroys Inge Scholl’s philosemitic myth that post-Kristallnacht, Robert Scholl visited Jakob Guggenheimer.
Dr. August Nathan, erudite friend to both Scholl and Hirzel families, was on vacation at a health resort during the night of breaking glass. Nazis arrested him there and shipped him to Dachau. (Vom Ja zum Nein)
The Dannhausers, neighbors of the Hirzels, simply disappeared from one day to the next, leaving a good-bye note in the Hirzels’ mailbox advising them they had gone to Palestine. (Vom Ja zum Nein)
The Barth family, who lived in that Olgastraβe building, had a daughter named Lotte who was one year older than Sophie Scholl. Her father Heinrich was among those dragged from his bed on November 9, along with her uncle Julius Barth. Julius was beaten to death in Dachau in November or December 1938. Lotte Barth emigrated to the USA, alone, as an 18-year-old girl. Her mother saw her off at the train station in Ulm. Lotte would never see her family again. (Zeugnisse, Lotte Greenwood nee Barth)
After Lotte left for America, Heinrich Barth was released from Dachau to Ulm. However, Heinrich, along with his wife – Lotte’s mother, her younger sister Suse, and a cousin were all shot in the woods near Riga a few years later. These were people the Scholls saw every single day for four years. (Zeugnisse, Lotte Greenwood nee Barth)
Is the great silence, the overwhelming silence, making more sense? This is a gap that may not be hand-waved, that may not be ignored. This silence is the historical equivalent of the infamous 18-1/2 minutes missing from Richard Nixon’s tapes, a gap that led to his resignation as President of the United States. No one believed Rose Mary Woods’ assertion that the erasure was accidental. Nor do I believe that Scholl silence regarding Jewish neighbors and Kristallnacht is accidental.
The silence is not limited to the Scholl family. I was stunned when Dr. Hans-Christian Herrmann, Archive Director for the city archives in Saarbrücken, mentioned that 30% of the businesses in the neighborhood where Willi Graf’s father’s Johannishof (restaurant and conference center) was located were Jewish-owned. Thirty percent! Nearly one out of every three stores and restaurants were Jewish-owned.
That drove me back to the publications of Willi Graf’s diaries and letters. In the Jens edition, diary entries do not start until June 1942. Correspondence begins in 1940. In Vielhaber’s lesser-known publication, entries go from 1933, 1934, to 1939. I show nothing at all, not even footnoted comments, that would elucidate Willi Graf’s thoughts or actions in November 1938.
Christiane Moll’s massive edition of Schmorell/Probst correspondence similarly excludes letters from either Alexander Schmorell or Christoph Probst dated November 1938 or mentioning Kristallnacht. Christoph Probst’s letters jump from May 3, 1938 to November 13, 1938 (no mention of the pogroms from five days earlier). Alexander Schmorell’s missing letters are even more extraordinary: Following his July 21, 1938 letter, the next one published is dated “Summer 1939.”
This gap, this silence regarding Kristallnacht and the thoughts and actions of our young protagonists, is unacceptable.
In the coming months, we will be ordering complete set of documents from the various archives that hold the families’ private collections. If this gap is covered by unpublished documents in those archives, we will report back. If not, we will report back.
We’ll also continue looking for indirect primary sources that connect these dots – correspondence by and between friends of these individuals, newspaper reports, and other non-family archival material. And yes, we will report back.
I challenge any of you who is involved with researching White Rose or other resistance: Have the courage to ask hard questions! If (when) you see gaps, logical disconnects, keep digging. Use your brain.
Dr. Inge Jens was involved with launching the Puls 22 publication that described the intense Hitler Youth activities of Hans and Sophie Scholl. In a March 22, 2000 interview with the St. Galler Tagblatt, Dr. Jens stated, “[Sophie and Hans] were not born to be resistance fighters, but rather they were normal young people of their day. The National Socialist past of the Scholl siblings in no way minimizes their accomplishment. On the contrary, it magnifies it.”
This message needs to be understood. The silences do not elevate Hans or Sophie Scholl, or Alexander Schmorell, or Willi Graf, or Christoph Probst, or any others. The silences instead hinder us from understanding their evolution, how they cast aside the dreck of National Socialism and embraced freedom, honor, justice.
I want to fully know these young people – including how they dealt with Kristallnacht and the peer pressure that came with growing up in a corrupt society.
We owe them the truth.
© 2023 Denise Elaine Heap. Parts of this post are excerpted from White Rose History Volume I, © 2002, 2003, 2007. Please contact us for permission to quote.
Next week: Behind the Scenes: White Rose Histories. And tackling the issue of plagiarism directly, no punches pulled. The second one will be for paid subscribers only.