Members of the White Rose

Image shown above: February 22, 1943, 9am... Three students from the University of Munich are brought to trial for treason. The trial lasts until 1 pm and by 5 o’clock all are dead.
Photo credit: United States Holocaust Museum  
The White Rose Society
The "White Rose Society” was a resistance group of almost 300 students. It wasn't an organized and well-planned uprising like the attempts of the resistance movement in Berlin. It was a spontaneous revolt of idealistic young people, students and professors who had had enough of the evil of the nazi regime.
The leaders of the group were students of Munich University Hans Scholl, Christof Probst and Alex Schmorell- medicine students, and Sophie Scholl, Hans' sister a student of philosophy and biology. Kurt Huber, their older mentor was a professor of philosophy, psychology. Later they were joined by George Wittenstein another medical student who was the only one of them who survived the war against the nazi regime. The rest of the society came from not only Munich but also many other German universities.

They started in their first political activity. In the summer of 1942 when they wrote four leaflets. The leaflets were dropped in public telephone boxes and posted to students and professors all over Germany. In this way, the anti-nazi ideals of the society were spread throughout universities all over the country. Some leaflets found their way to the Gestapo, and the secret police started to wonder about their source.

The Gestapo was able to listen to any phone call or open any letter, and their agents were searching passenger trains, so even carrying the leaflets in trains was a risk. The students carrying the leaflets to different places by train just "hoped for the best". The leaflets then began to be transported by female students, who were less likely to be checked by the Gestapo.
The origin of the name is not clear, but the historian Zeller wrote that the colour white represented pureness.
The leaflets written by the group were described as the "leaves of the white rose". They attacked the nazi regime denouncing its crimes, from the mass extermination of Jews and the murder of the Polish nobility and intellectual elite, to the dictatorship and the elimination of the personal freedom of the German people. The leaflets contained quotes from great philosophers and writers like Goethe, Nobalis, Aristotle and Law Tso, and they were clearly aimed at intellectuals

On the 18th February 1943, Hans and Sophie entered the university with a bag of leaflets. After they spread them in the halls and lecture rooms, they climbed to the roof and threw the rest onto the university gardens. The Gestapo arrested them.
Hitler's reaction was swift and the Gestapo tortured them. The "people's court" was opened in Munich and the defendants were Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl, and Christof Probst. They were sentenced to death and that same day; Hans, Sophie and Christof went to the guillotine. In the few seconds before the execution Christof shouted: "We will meet each other in a few minutes!” and Hans responded: "Long live the freedom!” Their death was the death of the "White Rose".

Alex Schmorell tried to escape to Switzerland, but returned because of deep snow. He was betrayed by a former girlfriend and was arrested during an air raid in Munich. He was sentenced to death along with Wily Graf and Professor Huber. Hundreds of people connected with the "white rose" were arrested and sentenced to different punishments. The only man that stayed alive after the war was George Wittenstein, he was tried again after he tried to help a Jewish woman to escape from Germany, but he was found not guilty and set free. He was sent to the Russian front, got wounded and went back to Germany.

Taken from:
"Points of view- memories of the white rose by
Dr. George Wittenstein".