Article on the new film “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days”
Allen Lang, National Student and Youth Organizer
3.7.06
I woke up this morning and saw my own breath. Frigid. As many stick it out through the winter in New York, that cold and windy concrete block on the Hudson, theaters are packed with moviegoers. For ten bucks or a good friend waiting at the back door, you can take shelter from the cold for a couple of hours and if the movie hits you in the right place, you get drawn into a different world. “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days” hits you where it counts and should be a wake-up call for those still sitting out the fight for the future.
Sophie Scholl, a Munich University student, and her brother, Hans, were leaders of an underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany called the White Rose Society. They sought out students and intellectuals to bring down the Nazi Regime by mailing out leaflets calling for the end of Hitler’s rule and for Germany’s wars of aggression to stop. The film depicts the last five days of the Scholls’ life: from their arrest for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets to their military show trial, to their execution day at the guillotine.
Many people leaving the theater remarked that the executions were tragic. Yes they were, but the real tragedy was how long it took for people to begin organizing resistance to the Nazi Regime and the suffocating conditions they were forced to operate under that late in the game.
If at the start this cancerous growth in the nation was not particularly noticeable, it was only because there were still enough forces at work that operated for the good, so that it was kept under control. As it grew larger, however, and finally in an ultimate spurt of growth attained ruling power, the tumor broke open, as it were, and infected the whole body. The greater part of its former opponents went into hiding. The German intellectuals fled to their cellars, there, like plants struggling in the dark, away from light and sun, gradually to choke to death.
The film begins with Sophie and her brother being dragged away by Nazi police after a professor snitches on them for leaving anti-Hitler leaflets in the main University building. They are silently escorted out by the police as they are met with a crowd of cold stares from students gathered in the lobby. I couldn’t help but think of the 5 youth dragged out of Hunter College for dramatizing what happens to victims of torture in Guantanamo. No, the protesters at Hunter were not executed and the on-looking students could have opposed these arrests, but that’s not the point. The arrest scene from movie paints a vivid picture of where we are heading unless the people act to reverse the course of history.
The Scholls’ distribution of anti-Nazi literature lands them in a secret military court that tries and convicts them of high treason for aiding the enemy and lowering troop morale in a time of war.
Sound familiar?
In a way, Sophie Scholl did not have to put her life on the line to organize resistance to Hitler and the Nazi Regime. Her survival did not hinge on her ability to work day and night hand cranking a duplicating machine a thousand times to create leaflets and secretly mail them out under the watchful eye of the SS. She was a German Protestant, who was inspired by Hitler to join a Nazi youth group in High School. She was studying at Munich University and waiting for her fiance to return from the war.
So why resist?
Because of her conscience. Because when you live in a nation responsible for driving the world to the edge of destruction and is committing horrendous crimes against humanity, you have act on your conscience and do everything you can to mobilize massive resistance to stop the horrors.
Sophie and her brother were convinced that Hitler’s days were numbered and the Nazi Party would collapse after suffering from defeats on the war front. They weren’t alone. Many people shared the same sentiment, including some leaders in the Nazi Party.
So why not just wait it out?
Because when your government is carrying out unconscionable acts in your name and the world is looking to you, there is no middle ground. You either resist the horrors or you are complicit with them. Sophie Scholl knew that even if she survived Nazi rule, she would not be able to look herself in the mirror if she did not act on her conscience.
Could you?
Every morning the headlines scream with illegal and immoral acts committed by your government. Living under the Bush Regime is intolerable and to remain silent is unacceptable. A handful of Sophie Scholl’s dropping off bundles of flyers in empty University hallways is not the situation the World is calling out for right now. Massive resistance directed against the entire direction society is being taken under the Bush Regime is what the world needs right now and this resistance from below must take aim at nothing less than driving the Bush Regime from power.
Sophie Scholl: The Final Days is playing in New York and California with a nationwide release date set for late March. See it.The better part of the nation will fight on our side. Cast off the cloak of indifference you have wrapped around you. Make the decision before it is too late.
– The Last Leaflet- The Leaflet of Resistance
White Rose Society
Also check out:
Comparing Bush to Hitler: Lessons for Today by Sunsara Taylor
First they Came for the Jews by Pastor Niemoller