BITS ‘N’ PIECES

Narrated Abu Huraira (R.A):

The Prophet (S.A.W) said, “Whoever fasted the month of Ramazan out of sincere faith (i.e. belief) and hoping for a reward from Allah, then all his past sins will be forgiven, and whoever stood for the prayers in the night of Qadr out of sincere faith and hoping for a reward from Allah, then all his previous sins will be forgiven.”

Sahih Bukhari, Volume 3, Book 32, Number 231

DID YOU KNOW?

The founding members of the White Rose resistance group were executed in 1943 for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets at the University of Munich.

The White Rose was a non-violent intellectual resistance group in Nazi Germany led by students at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and one professor. Its core members were Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl, Alexander Schmorell, Christoph Probst, Willi Graf and Professor Kurt Huber. Beginning on 27 June 1942, they produced and distributed anonymous leaflets in Munich calling for active resistance to the Nazi regime. Their campaign ended with their arrest by the Gestapo on 18 February 1943.

The group wrote six leaflets in total, printing around 15,000 copies. These pamphlets condemned dictatorship, the suppression of freedom and the mass murder of Jews. The second leaflet referred explicitly to the persecution and extermination of Jewish people. The writers urged Germans to oppose tyranny and accept moral responsibility for the crimes committed in their name. Their final leaflet was later dropped over Germany by Allied aircraft under the title The manifesto of the students of Munich.

At first, the leaflets circulated in Munich, left in telephone boxes and posted anonymously to students and professors. Couriers later carried them by train to other cities in southern Germany and Austria. Female students often transported the material, as they were less likely to be searched. The group also painted slogans such as ‘Freedom’ and ‘Down with Hitler’ on walls across Munich in February 1943.

The leading members had not always opposed National Socialism. Hans and Sophie Scholl had joined the Hitler Youth in their teens, though their father was critical of the regime. Gradually, disillusionment set in, especially after witnessing the treatment of Jewish friends and the brutality of war. Schmorell’s family, by contrast, had always opposed the Nazis. While serving as medical orderlies on the Eastern Front, several members saw the realities of war and became convinced that Germany could only be saved by the regime’s defeat.

On 18 February 1943, Hans and Sophie distributed leaflets at the university. When Sophie dropped a stack into the atrium, a janitor reported them. They were arrested, and a draft leaflet in Hans’s possession led to Probst’s capture. On 22 February 1943, after a brief show trial before the People’s Court, the three were sentenced to death and executed by guillotine the same day.

Later trials led to the executions of Schmorell, Graf and Huber in 1943 and 1944. Many others were imprisoned. Traute Lafrenz Page, the last surviving member of the White Rose resistance group, died on 6 March 2023 at the age of 103 on Yonges Island, South Carolina, in the United States. After World War II, she emigrated to the United States in 1947. There she completed her medical studies and trained as a doctor, married American ophthalmologist Vernon Page, and raised a family.

Although their movement was crushed, the White Rose became a lasting symbol of moral courage and student resistance in Germany and beyond.