So,
most people reading this who know me will know I’m obsessed with Sophie
Scholl.
She’s tied in first place for my
favorite person in all of history, right along with Anne Boleyn. For those of you who haven’t heard of her,
Sophie Scholl was a part of an underground resistance movement in Munich known
as The White Rose. It was a group of students
who resisted the Nazis by distributing anti-Nazi leaflets in Munich and across
Germany. None of them were Jewish. All of them were of middle-class origin and
could’ve turned a blind eye to what Adolf Hitler was doing to their
country. But staying silent was not an
option for them.
Sophie
Scholl and her brother Hans were caught distributing leaflets at the University
of Munich in February 1943. They were
given a farce of a trial and then executed, along with Christoph Probst,
another White Rose member. In all, 6 of
the members were executed.
Several
years ago, I wrote the poem below as part of my assignments for the Eastern
Virginia Writing Project. Since then, I’ve
also written a children’s book about her that I hope to get published. Last summer, my fiancĂ©e and I went to Munich
simply to walk where she walked and visit her grave. All the pictures on this post are pictures I
took while there.
Freiheit
You, the curtains of your hair
hiding
your face like a game of
hide-and-go seek.
But they’ve already found you and
hidden
you away, awaiting your confession.
You, who threw the leaflets from the steps.
Determined, defiant, deliberate.
So many find their futures there,
while you found your demise.
You, fear and conviction seeping through
the pores of your young, you’re oh so young, face.
childhood games and clothes but
a lifetime away from the smiling girl you’d been.
Facsimiles of the leaflets at the University of Munich. |
You’re young, you’re so young, they say and you
can’t mean it.
Just
take it back.
You say it again and take a broken
arm in the process
took it away from you. Hands shaky
as you
etch your creed onto your
condemnation.
but he’s barely a man and he’ll
never get a gray hair.
Christoph in another cell, his
children shall grow
and surpass the greatest age their
father ever was.
You, marched to the guillotine as
you try not to cry.
The final meeting with your parents
in your mind.
They can muster questions of “why” but
they can’t muster
disappointment because they gave
you this fight.
You, you’re so young, will stay
this way.
For the rest of us.