Sophie Scholl: The Christian as witness in a time of evil
Friday, February 17, 2006
For many years there has been a stream of books and documentary films, mostly ignored, about the student movement called The White Rose and, in particular, Sophie Scholl. This young German’s extraordinary witness of resistance against the Nazis impressed even her persecutors. Sophie was guillotined by the Reich after several harrowing days of interrogation. The newest film about Sophie, The Last Days , has been nominated for an Oscar. Perhaps now this story will become as well known as it should be.
What is especially important is that Sophie was a devout Christian, a fact that the undependable Wikipedia fails to mention. On another website I found at least this sentence:
“In Munich Sophie met artists, writers and philosophers, particularly Carl Muth and Theodor Haecker, who were important contacts for her concern with the Christian faith. Of foremost importance was the question of how the individual must act under dictatorship.”
American Christians are not in a dictatorship nor in danger of losing our lives (unless we are in the armed forces). However, as more and more information accumulates by the day about abuse and torture under American auspices, it is our responsibility to ask ourselves some of the questions Sophie and her friends asked their theological teachers.
I have not yet had an opportunity to see the movie but I hope to view it soon. Here is a link to an informative review:
http://movies2.nytimes.com/2006/02/17/movies/17soph.html?8dpc
