The American Jewish Congress announced here the establishment of a new foundation that will sponsor educational programs in American schools and universities as well as exchanges between German and American students and educators to study the lessons of Nazi Germany and the model of resistance offered by the anti-Nazi White Rose Movement.
The White Rose Movement consisted of a small group of Christian students who in 1942 banded together in Munich and distributed leaflets opposing Hitler and his policies. Some 150 people were arrested for being part of the movement. Eighteen died through execution or in concentration camps and 36 survived prison terms until being liberated by the allies in 1945. Among those executed by guillotine on February 22, 1943, after a trial by a Nazi “people’s court” in Munich, were Hans Scholl, 25, and 22-year-old-Sophie Scholl. Also beheaded on that day was 24-year-old Christoph Probsp. Several months later three others who had joined in the same activities, Willie Graf, Kurt Huber and Alexander Schmorell, were also tried, convicted and executed. After their death, a Hamburg group of the White Rose emerged to continue the work of the Scholls and their co-workers. The leaders of the Hamburg group were also tried, convicted and executed by the Nazis.
WHITE ROSE SURVIVORS LAUDED
At a dinner here last Thursday at the Park Avenue Synagogue, tribute was paid to the White Rose Movement. A survivor of the movement, Franz Josef Muller, a surviving sister of Hans and Sophie Scholl, Inge Aicher Scholl, and a sister of another executed leader, Annalise Knoop-Graf, were guests of honor at the tribute. The three flew in for the occasion from Munich.
AJC executive director Henry Siegman said the need for the new foundation was highlighted by the controversy generated by President Reagan’s visit to the military cemetery in Bitburg where Reagan and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl honored German war dead. There are some 49 members of the Waffen SS buried there among the some 2,000 other war dead.
“The justifications that were offered for that visit indicate that the lessons of that tragic period of our recent history have already faded,” Siegman said. “The tragic relevance of these lessons was underscored once again in the hijacking of TWA’s Flight 847, in which Shiite terrorists sought to select and separate Jewish passengers from the rest. Forty years after World War ll there are still those who are in the throes of the anti-Semitism that so obsessed Nazi Germany.”
Just two days before Reagan’s visit to Bitburg, several hundred people participated in a memorial service sponsored by the AJC to Hans and Sophie Scholl. White roses were placed on the graves of the Scholls in Munich.
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