Sophie Scholl

"Everything is so beautiful . . . in spite of all the terrible things that are going on."

~ Sophie Scholl

"Of course, the terrible things I heard from the Nuremberg Trials, about the six million Jews and the people from other races who were killed, were facts that shocked me deeply. But I wasn't able to see the connection with my own past. I was satisfied that I wasn't personally to blame and that I hadn't known about those things. I wasn't aware of the extent. But one day I went past the memorial plaque which had been put up for Sophie Scholl in Franz Josef Strasse, and I saw that she was born the same year as me, and she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler. And at that moment I actually sensed that it was no excuse to be young, and that it would have been possible to find things out."

~ Traudl Junge, Hitler's personal secretary, in Im toten Winkel - Hitlers Sekretärin (2002) [Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary]

Sophia Magdalena Scholl</a> <i> (9 May 1921 – 22 February 1943) was a German student and revolutionary, active within the White Rose non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany.

She was convicted of high treason after having been found distributing anti-war leaflets at the University of Munich with her brother Hans. As a result, they were both executed by guillotine.

Since the 1970s, Scholl has been celebrated as one of the great German heroes who actively opposed the Third Reich during the Second World War.