Sophie Scholl

A few weeks ago Dan and I watched a movie called Sophie Scholl: The Final Days. We first heard about it through BYU's International Cinema, and my sister who is a projectionist for IC recommended it. Sophie Scholl was a member of The White Rose, an anti-Nazi resistance group within Germany that published and distributed flyers opposing the Nazis. Almost immediately after the movie begins, Sophie and her brother Hans are caught distributing flyers and are arrested. The rest of the movie dramatizes Sophie's interrogation by the Gestapo.

In some sense, the movie has very little action. But I found the interaction between Sophie and her interrogator gripping. The film brought to mind The Passion of Joan of Arc, not only because both women are accused of treason at a time of war, but also because of its focus on the interrogation and in the way the film ends. Like Joan of Arc, Sophie Scholl presents most of the action in a few locations: the interrogator's office and Sophie's prison cell. Both movies also seem to follow the same plot structure, although unlike Joan of Arc, Sophie Scholl allows us to see the act for which she was accused of treason. Even though Sophie was arrested with her brother, the film focuses on Sophie's experience and we see very little of him, unless Sophie is there too. Also like Joan of Arc, Sophie's interrogation is occasionally interrupted by scenes in her prison cell and both movies end with sentencing and execution. While I'm sure many who see Sophie Scholl won't have seen The Passion of Joan of Arc, the similarities nicely imply that like Joan of Arc, Sophie should also be considered a saint for her defense of freedom.

The movie also reminded me of Anne Askew's interrogation as it appears in Foxe's Book of the Martyrs. It’s been awhile since I've read the account, so I might get my details wrong, but Anne Askew was a Protestant woman who was arrested during the reign of Henry the VIII for practicing her religion. She was also interrogated and the record of her interrogation was later incorporated into John Foxe's collection of stories about Protestant martyrs. The text is often included in college anthologies as an example of early writing by a woman. The irony in Anne's interrogation and in Sophie's is that both were intended to silence these women and prevent them from influencing others. And to some extent, their prosecutors succeeded by finding them guilty and sentencing them to death, but the record of their interrogation also provided a way for the individual messages of these women to survive the women themselves. In attempting to silence these women, their interrogators in fact gave them the opportunity to proclaim their ideals to those who opposed them the most and their message lives in the record of their interrogation, condemning their interrogators with its longevity.

Admittedly, the passion evoked by Sophie’s commitment to her cause is quickly stifled by the quickness and the violence of the Nazi’s reaction. It’s chilling to realize that this happened in my grandparents’ lifetime, and the movie reminded me of the fragility of freedom.