"How splendidly the flowers are blooming on this railroad embankment! As if all had assembled so that no color should be missing, they bloom here with gentle insistence — everywhere: alongside ruined buildings, gutted freight cars, distraught human faces. Flowers are blooming and children innocently playing among the ruins. O God of love, help me to overcome my doubts. I see the Creation, your handiwork, which is good. But I also see man's handiwork, our handiwork, which is cruel, and called destruction and despair, and which always afflicts the innocent. Spare your children! How much longer must they suffer? Why is suffering so unfairly meted out? When will a tempest finally sweep away all these godless people who besmirch your likeness, who sacrifice the blood of countless innocents to a demon? The whole world is bright again, for as far as the eye can see, after this rain."~ Hans Scholl
from the Russian Front, July 31, 1942
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Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie belonged to a group of young friends at the University in Munich in Germany during World War II who are known to us today as “the White Rose.” Their questions about the transcendent meaning of life in the face of the suffocating totalitarian pretensions of Nazi ideology, along with their meetings to discuss philosophical and literary works and the great grace of their close camaraderie led them to a profound encounter with Jesus Christ, and led some of them to commit themselves to nonviolent resistance against Hitler’s regime. The Scholl siblings, along with three other students and a professor, would crown their resistance with the sacrifice of their lives.
Currently I have been researching one of these deeply human and inspired young people for my “Conversion Stories” column: Christoph Probst, who was baptized into Christ and His Catholic Church in the moments preceding his execution on February 22, 1943. There remains a great deal of material about the White Rose, and I intend to continue intensive research into the lives of these heroic men and women into the future. Stay tuned…
