The White Rose

It’s late afternoon, and a small group of us, maybe 20 or so, are walking down a street in Munich.  I have noticed that the lady leading us has some flowers wrapped in brown paper but I can’t see what they are.  It’s the final act, of a extraordinarily moving and special day.  

White Roses - At memorials to victims of Nazi oppression in Munich 

We’d woken, on Wednesday morning, to falling snow. Bundled up in all our layers we made our way to the Jewish Centre, picking up coffee and cinnamon rolls along the way.  Completed in 2006 this was the new main synagogue in Munich. Our visit began with the Walk of Remembrance. It’s a space 32 metres long by 3 metres wide (105 by 10 feet) and along one side are the names of 4,500 Munich Jews who were murdered by the Nazis. The names are on three glass panels which are fused together. The effect is to make some names seem a little more distant than others but it symbolises all the names being lifted out of anonymity. Remembering was to be the theme of the day.

And so to the white rose.  We’re on a guided tour learning about resistance and national socialism in Munich - where it all began with Hitler.  Our guide takes us into the university and leads us to a memorial on a wall. I confess I had never heard of the White Rose movement. Brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl along with five friends and a professor conducted an anonymous leaflet campaign. They typed, copied and distributed six pamplets in total, calling for active opposition to the Nazis. Their activities started in June 1942 and ended with the arrest of Sophie and Hans Scholl by the Gestapo on the 18th February 1943. They had been leaving the leaflets around the university when as our guide related it, Sophie knocked and no one knows whether it was intention or not, the case containing the leaflets and from the balcony the papers fluttered down into the hall were we are standing. The action was spotted, the university doors were locked and they were arrested and executed four days later. In front of the memorial are white roses.  

The snow stops and the sun comes out.  We move to the second part of the day.  Gathered in a Munich art gallery are a number of people  who have come together to remember a woman called Anna (Aniela) Caspari.  We’ve received an invite out of the blue to be here because Anna Caspari was my husband’s grandmother. 

Since 2018 in the city of Munich more than 250 memorials have been erected. We are the last one for this year but 25 ‘Erinnerungszeichen zum Gedenken’ - remembering ceremonies have taken place in 2024. Their website says:

Memorial Signs commemorate people who were persecuted and murdered by the Nazis in the years between 1933 and 1945. More than 10,000 women, men, and children lost their lives in Munich during the Nazi dictatorship because of racist, political, and religious persecution, because of their sexual orientation, their real or alleged illnesses or their non-conformist behaviour. With the Memorial Signs, we are giving the victims of Nazi persecution, most of whom are forgotten today, at least a symbolic place back in our urban society, at their former residences or former places of work, from which they were once brutally removed.

There are speeches from Munich dignitaries, from the man who suggested her name, from the family.  And then the small group heads out onto the street for the short walk to the art gallery that Anna at first ran with her husband Georg and then after his death in 1929, ran by herself.   Wednesday’s date, November 20, is significant. It is 83 years to the day since Anna and a thousand others, were taken away in the first deportation from Munich. Five days later, all of them would be shot.

The memorials are beautiful, where possible they feature a picture of the person and importantly they are mounted at eye-level, where passers by, can stop and read their names (lifting them out of anonymity) and if they (and you) wish to search and find out more, about Anna, it is here on the extensive website.

The small memorial sign, a cube on a post, is made of brushed steel and gold plated. The lady unwraps the flowers and reveals…two white roses. We place them beside Anna’s name.

One day perhaps I will make a podcast episode about White Roses - they are rich in symbolising purity, loyalty, remembrance, innocence. . . I can have a go at explaining more but nothing can top the beauty and power of these memorials to those who must never be forgotten.