Not long ago, a picture was posted at the Canteen that really caught my eye. It brought to mind a group of courageous people, White Rose resistance group, who fought (mostly through propaganda) against the Nazi regime. This photo has come to symbolize for me the ongoing struggle against the extermination of disabled people.
Excerpt from THE NAZI DOCTORS: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide by Robert J. Lifton:
Perhaps the most moving of all expressions of opposition in Nazi Germany involved three medical students and a few additional students from other faculties at the University of Munich, in the dramatic White Rose resistance group. Over several months during 1942 to 1943, the group issued bold leaflets denouncing the Nazi regime and its immoral behavior (“For Hitler and his followers there can be no punishment on this earth which will expiate their crimes”), and calling for the German people to overthrow the regime and restore their good name. The leaflets also declared: “We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will give you no rest.” The students were eventually discovered and condemned by a Nazi “people’s court”; most were beheaded. Significantly, one of the group’s leading figures, Hans Scholl, had been inspired by a sermon of Bishop Clemens von Galen of Münster, condemning the “euthanasia” program, and is said to have responded, “At last somebody has had the courage to speak out.”59
59. Richard Hanser, A Noble Treason: Students Against Hitler (New York: Putnam, 1970), pp. 187, 22, 117, respectively.
They were beheaded for doing just what we're doing. Did some fool say it doesn't do any good to tell people what's going on? (Courtesy ping.)
