by Kip Wilson
the drawing on the wall
in the room he shares with Werner—
Adolf Hitler,
the new leader of the German Reich.
Every day
Vati takes it down,
rolls it up,
and places it
in a drawer.
Vati doesn’t hide
his low opinion of the Führer,
calling him and his men wolves,
deceivers,
liars.
But Hans
wants to make his opinion heard.
Open the drawer,
pull it out,
hang it up.
LEAGUE OF GERMAN GIRLS
After months and months
of watching
my siblings go
off on merry adventures
with friends
flags
sports
I’m finally allowed
to join the Bund Deutscher Mädel
even though Vati
doesn’t approve.
I excel
in the fresh air, leading
my own group
in my own way, making
sure we all share
our snacks equally,
though there are some girls
who grumble.
Others protest
when I turn in those who refuse
to attend required meetings.
But
rules
are
rules.
HANS AND VATI
Hans’s daily arguments with Vati
have grown worse.
Hans defends our Führer proudly,
pointing at his promises
to end unemployment,
to build the Autobahn,
to put this great nation
to work.
Vati counters that these aims
will come at a price,
and that price
will be war.
I don’t know
who will win.
CONFIRMATION
Mutti wants
to see me confirmed,
and I go to the church
wearing
my brown uniform
of the Bund Deutscher Mädel
instead of a scratchy black dress.
Filled with pride
in my uniform before
God, I raise
my eyes to the church’s ceiling,
the heavens,
the greatness beyond.
MY JEWISH FRIENDS
I don’t understand
why my friend Luise can’t
join the BDM
when she has blond hair, blue eyes—
so decidedly Aryan—and I have
brown hair, brown eyes
(just like Herr Hitler).
I stand up
for the rights of my
Jewish classmates
to do as they wish,
though it seems they’d rather
I didn’t.
THE END
FEBRUARY 22, 1943
Goodbye
They tell me I have
visitors—my parents—and I can’t
get down the hall to
them quickly enough.
On my way to the door, Hans is led
out, his eyes glittering
like shiny stones.
Will I ever see him again?
I enter the visiting room, Vati pulls
me into his arms, tells
me what I want to hear.
You will go down in history.
This has to make waves,
I say, animated
by the weight of what we’ve done.
Mutti offers
me cookies, a reminder
of home, telling
me Hans didn’t want any.
We haven’t eaten.
Equal shares of courage and
matter-of-factness fill
my voice as I accept the sweets.
Because I am
courageous and
matter-of-fact
about what I hope
will happen now:
That the world will see
and the world will know
and the world
will
make
them
stop.
A PRAYER
I give
my parents
one last embrace, breathing
in the comfort they’ve given
me over all my years.
Mutti releases me,
tears in her eyes as she says,
Remember, Sophie: Jesus,
and I know she wishes
me salvation.
But I also know
my suffering will be
quick while hers
will be
long, so I hold
back my own
tears and tell her,
You too.
HOME
Out in the corridor,
the tears I’ve been holding
back stream
down my cheeks as I picture
my family’s dining table at
home in Ulm with
two chairs that will remain
empty
forever.
Herr Mohr passes by, pales
at my tears, but so he doesn’t think
I’m crying over
my own fate, I wipe
my cheeks, raise
my chin, tell him,
My parents.
LAST LETTER
Back in my cell,
a guard nods, thrusts
paper and pen at me, says,
Your last chance to say
goodbye to anyone else
is now.
I begin
Lieber Fritz
but can’t find the words I seek
other than to tell
him how
proud
I am of what we’ve done
how
insistent
I am that I wouldn’t
change
a thing.
A GIFT
A happy surprise
when the door creaks
open once more: the
guard again, this time ushering
in the best possible gift:
Hans
and
Christoph.
The three of us rush
to embrace,
gasp, cling
to one another,
to our beliefs,
well
worth
this
sacrifice.
You’ve only got
a few minutes.
The guard lights
us a cigarette, closes
the door.
We breathe
the heavy air, drawing
the last life
deep into our lungs.
TOGETHER
Hazy plumes of smoke from
the already extinguished cigarette drift
up to the corners of the cell, hanging
there like forgotten cobwebs.
Footsteps, and the
guard announces
my name
from the hallway.
Sophie Scholl.
It’s then I realize
I need only survive
these
last
moments.
EXECUTION
The door opens
one last time, revealing
the executioner, dressed
like an undertaker
in a top hat and tails.
Hans and Christoph and I take
one another in one last time,
proud
strong
brave,
and I know
dying will be so easy.
I leave them behind, follow wordlessly
across the courtya
rd
to
the
blade.
Outside, I force
myself to forget, marveling
instead at the promise of
hope in the fresh February air and
a bird singing in a tree
beyond the wall, defying
winter’s last chill and
the ugliness before me.
The execution room door yawns open then,
a dark, hungry mouth closing
in on me, surrounding
me with wood and metal and
the stench of death.
On the plank, I count
each breath in my mind—
eins, zwei, drei—
until the last one floats
out of my lungs, dispersing
through the room,
and I’m flying.
EPILOGUE
1932
My Brother
We’re out
of school for
the summer and
Hans bursts down the hall,
fishing rod and tackle in hand, calling
Freedom!
SOARING SKYWARD
Another lazy day lounging
beside the Iller with Werner,
swimming
drawing
reading
but something makes
me look skyward
and a lonely falcon soars
high
higher
highest
tipping its wings, reaching
for the heavens.
Majestic bird!
I can only hope
to one day become
such an inspiration.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This story doesn’t have a happy ending. Possibly the most tragic aspect of the White Rose group is that the executions of its members didn’t “make waves” as Sophie had expected and so badly hoped. After the trial and execution of Sophie, Hans, and Christoph on February 22, 1943, the university community—like the rest of Germany—continued to cower under Hitler’s regime. There was no revolt.
Instead, other friends were arrested for activities or association with the group. A second trial was held on April 19, 1943, resulting in prison sentences for Gisela Schertling, Traute Lafrenz, Hans Hirzel, and others, as well as death sentences for Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf, and Kurt Huber. Alexander and Professor Huber were executed on July 13, 1943, and Willi on October 12, 1943.
The defeat of the German army at Stalingrad was the turning point of the war, but more than two long years of fighting and countless deaths still remained. Resistance within Germany might have brought about a swifter end to the war, but most people were simply too afraid for their own lives to act, especially after trials and executions like those of the White Rose members. The stakes were clear: resist, and you will be imprisoned or killed.
MY FIRST GLIMPSE
When I first heard about the White Rose in high school German class, I knew I wanted to learn more about its members. Sophie was the youngest and the only girl, and her courage made her a personal heroine and role model for me throughout the rest of my teen years. The more I studied the group, the more her tragically short life compelled me to tell her story. Seeing Sophie’s letters and artwork in the Scholl archive at the Institute for Contemporary History on a trip to Munich and Ulm in 2005 brought her from my history books to life. She was truly a gifted artist. But I wanted to feel more than I could from books or archives. Trying to get inside Sophie’s head that fateful day, I retraced her steps from the flat she shared with Hans on Franz-Josef-Strasse to the university, where I passed through the atrium, imagining Sophie and Hans placing stacks of leaflets outside the lecture hall doors, and headed up to the third-floor balustrade, where she stood and gave the leaflets a push. Finally, I visited Sophie’s grave in the Perlacher Forest next to Stadelheim Prison, where she, Hans, and the others were laid to rest.
I began to work in earnest on the project just after this trip, focusing on the story as nonfiction, but set the project aside, unable to find the right format. Only ten years later, when I finally began the story in verse, did everything click into place.
FACT AND FICTION
In telling Sophie’s story, I tried to stay as true to the known facts as possible, using details from my research in poetic interpretations of the material. Among the sources I studied were collections of letters to and from Hans, Sophie, and Fritz, the leaflets themselves, interrogation and trial paperwork, biographies of Sophie, books about the group, and published interviews with surviving family members and friends. These sources revealed not only facts about the group’s resistance activities but also the personality, emotions, and convictions that helped me give Sophie her voice.
Most of the liberties I took with the story sprang from conflicting information across sources, a lack of details in any source, or a need to omit information Sophie wouldn’t have known. These include details about Hans’s sexuality, drug use by group members, Sophie’s specific thoughts about the Holocaust, her initial involvement in the leaflet operation, and the final moments of the group before execution.
As always with historical research about deceased individuals, we don’t know what the subject might have thought or said in private, particularly in a case like this, in which she had to make every effort to keep details of her work and her life a secret. Even close family and friends reported that they didn’t know about Sophie’s resistance activities. Combining the documented actions with the thoughts and feelings she did share, I tried to paint a full picture of her role in the resistance efforts, together with her character as a very real person.
LEGACY
Though Germans failed to stand up and revolt following the executions, one pair of students did continue the work of the White Rose. Hans Leipelt and his girlfriend, Marie-Luise Jahn, received a copy of the sixth leaflet, and after the executions on February 22, they added the line und ihr Geist lebt trotzdem weiter, “and their spirit lives on,” to the top of the leaflet. They made copies and distributed them in Munich and Hamburg, resulting in their arrests in October 1943. At their trial a year later, Hans was sentenced to death and Marie-Luise to twelve years in prison. Hans was executed on January 29, 1945.
Smuggled leaflets also made it to the Allies, and more than five million copies were reprinted and dropped by aircraft over German cities. After the war, Inge’s book Die Weiße Rose brought recognition to the group’s actions, and countless other books and two successful films followed. Today there is a monument at the University of Munich honoring their resistance, and many streets and schools in Germany are named after White Rose members.
As Nobel Prize–winning author Thomas Mann said of Sophie and the rest of the group in a radio broadcast on June 27, 1943, “Good, splendid young people! You shall not have died in vain; you shall not be forgotten.”
I truly hope I have given Sophie and the White Rose justice.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The publication journey of a debut author is often a long and bumpy road, littered with shelved manuscripts, crumpled dreams, and broken bits of heart. To make it, we authors cling to what heart remains, soldier on, and firmly grip the hands of those who accompany us. So many people have helped me, both on my long writerly journey and on this particular book, and I hope beyond hope that I don’t forget anyone here, because I couldn’t have done it without all the support.
Immense thanks to Kwame Alexander and Margaret Raymo—as Kwame says, “You only need one yes,” and I’m so very grateful that my yes came from the two of you, especially because Margaret’s whip-smart vision was just what this book needed. Being part of the fantastic Versify lineup is a dream come true. Thank you also to the entire HMH and Versify team who helped turn this story into a real book, including Erika Turner, Margaret Wimberger, Mary Magrisso, and David Curtis and Sharismar Rodriguez for illustrating and designing the beautiful cover. An extra-sparkly special thanks to my magical agent,
Roseanne Wells, for helping take my work to the next level, for supporting me every step of the way, and for believing in me even when I took a radical turn away from all the prose I’d written and began writing in verse, where I found my true calling.
I’ll forever be indebted to the PEN/New England committee for choosing White Rose as a Discovery Award winner in 2017, as well as the Pitch Wars community for welcoming me into the fold, first as a mentee in 2014 and then as a mentor in 2016 and 2017. Thanks to Brenda Drake for all you do, Sarah Guillory for being my favorite dementor, and the 2014 Pitch Wars class for being the absolute best. Thank you to my writing instructors over the years, including Padma Venkatraman, Alma Fullerton, Kathy Erskine, Holly Thompson, Carolyn Yoder, and Melanie Crowder; and danke to my high school German teacher, Frau Kellogg, and my Doktorvater, Professor Strelka, for all you taught me. Vielen Dank to the staff at the DenkStätte Weiße Rose and the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, and to all the authors whose books about the White Rose included in-depth research and interviews, many of those with surviving friends and family members. Special thanks to Barbara Leisner and Sönke Zankel for answering some specific questions.
To my critique partners and beta readers: thank you, thank you, thank you. To my original critique group, Joan Paquette, Julie Phillipps, and Natalie Lorenzi, and my longtime beta readers, Michelle Mason, Beth Smith, Shari Green, and JRo Brown—love you guys! To my White Rose readers, Kathy Quimby, Joy McCullough, Alexandra Alessandri, Marley Teter, Kerri Maher, Kristin Reynolds, Amanda Rawson Hill, Mara Rutherford, Sam Taylor, Carrie Callaghan, and Ann Braden—huge bucketloads of appreciation. To my sensitivity readers, Stephanie Cohen-Perez and a second reader who chose to remain anonymous—your insight was ridiculously helpful. Thank you. A huge shout-out to #5amwritersclub, where I do all my best work, to Rachel Simon for running the Boston crêpes group, and to the #novel19s for sharing this incredible year. And of course, to Monica Ropal, who reads everything I send, talks me off ledges, and pushes me to do better—don’t ever leave me!
