Students Gather for Lenten Screening and Discussion of "Sophie Scholl"

On Wednesday, March 4^th at 7:00, students and faculty gathered in Admin 308 for a showing of the film “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days”. The film showing was part of Dr. Fran Leap’s “Images of Jesus in Film” course and was sponsored by the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education (NCCHE) along with the Mission Effectiveness Committee, Campus Ministry, and the Humanities division as a special Lenten program.

Scholl’s brother Hans was a soldier in the German army. After coming back from the eastern front, Hans and his fellow soldiers Willie Graf, George Wittenstein, Christopher Probst and Alex Schmorell realize the truth of what Hitler and the Nazis were doing.  They saw Hitler would never be able to win after the defeat on the eastern front. He could only prolong war.

 These men began a movement called the White Rose, a resistance dedicated to nonviolence. During the summer of 1942, Scholl and his friends wrote 5 leaflets which referred to the mass extermination of Jews and other Nazi horrors, and called for resistance.

Sophie Scholl began helping her brother and his friends distribute the leaflets. The 6^th leaflet was distributed at the University of Munich on February 18^th, 1943.

“The campus will ignite today,” said Hans to Sophie in the film.

“These were people who had had freedom of speech, but it had been taken away,” said sophomore Jennifer Makowski.

Sophie and Hans school were caught and arrested that same day, Probst soon after.   All three demonstrated an unwavering resistance, knowing very well that they would probably face death.

When asked, after hours of interrogation by Robert Mohr, if she had helped her brother distribute the leaflets, Sophie, without a tear or trace of fear, stared stoically at him and said, “Yes, I’m, proud of it.”

Students saw parallels between the life of Christ and Sophie, which were discussed by the class afterward. In one memorable scene, interrogator Robert Mohr washes his hands after drawing a confession out of Scholl.

“At the end, he washes his hands like Pontius Pilate,” said junior A.J. Loporto. Another one noticed by students was Sophie’s cry in her holding cell before being lead out to the guillotine, which reminded the class of Jesus’ humanity in the garden of Gethsemane.

One of the big themes used on the film was light. Artificial light was used during interrogation, and natural light was shown to Sophie every time she looked to God or nature.

Junior Christine Rauch said, “The artificial light represented the false beliefs put on people by the Nazis, and the natural light stood for the higher truth.” The morning after Sophie confessed, Mohr pulls back the curtains in his office and reveals a vibrant sunny day. Through that light, God showed Scholl she had done the right thing.

On February 22, 1943, the Scholls and Probst were found guilty of treason and condemned to death. They died by guillotine. The 6^th leaflet was smuggled out of the country by Helmuth von Moltke, a member of the Kresisau Circle resistance. The leaflet was retitled The Manifesto of the Students of Munich and dropped over Germany in mid-1943.