July 2001 - Nr. 7
New Tolerance Campaign
TWIG - The White Rose Foundation in Munich is launching a new campaign to promote tolerance and human rights in eastern Germany, drawing inspiration from the example of Sophie Scholl, a leading member of the White Rose resistance movement in Nazi Germany. Arrested by the Gestapo while distributing anti-Nazi flyers at the University of Munich, Scholl was executed with her brother Hans on February 22, 1943. Just 22 at the time of her death, she would have celebrated her 80th birthday on Wednesday, May 9.
"We’re presenting Sophie Scholl as a historic role model against racism and for sympathy toward all those who are persecuted," says Franz-Josef Mueller, president of the White Rose Foundation. The campaign will be directed toward young people in at least 18 eastern cities that have seen attacks against foreigners in recent years.
Sophie Scholl is remembered for her fierce dedication to the ideals of freedom and tolerance that had been shattered by the Nazi regime, and for her unwavering courage in facing her trial and execution. The Scholls grew up in Ulm, where they were active in Nazi youth groups before Hitler’s war of European conquest, his systematic persecution and murder of Jews and his attempts to eradicate the physically and mentally disabled radically changed their views and made them staunch opponents of Nazism. As students in Munich, they helped form the White Rose, an underground organization that printed and distributed leaflets denouncing Hitler and calling on German citizens to stand up against the Nazi government. The White Rose published a total of six political broadsheets before the Scholls and their friend and collaborator Christoph Probst were arrested and killed. Several other members of the group were caught and executed later that year.
"We’ve taken everything, everything upon ourselves," Sophie Scholl told her mother shortly before her death. "This will make waves." In memory of the resistance movement she helped create, Mueller and other surviving members of the group established the White Rose Foundation in 1987.
( heritage, human rights )
