“Fight against the party,” read the thousands of leaflets dropped into the University of Munich’s atrium by two of its students.
Those leaflets raged against “a shallow spineless herd of mindless followers”. But they raged mostly against the people’s apathy.
Every citizen, the leaflets accused, was “guilty, guilty, guilty” of the abuses their leaders were committing – because citizens were doing nothing to remove those leaders from power.
At last, students were waking up. Their unease was growing. At last, they decided to act to save their country from the malfeasance of a corrupt, immoral gang.
“We are your bad conscience, and we will not leave you in peace,” was their parting shot.
But the university caretaker saw one of the students throwing those leaflets from the auditorium’s balcony. He rushed up and caught her and her brother.
The police were called and arrived within minutes. The students were searched and escorted to a police station, where they were “questioned”.
Did they not understand that those leaflets were subversive? Did they not understand that distributing them was dangerous? Didn’t they know what happened to another student who hung a banner demanding justice?
Yes, they did understand, but they thought their actions were harmless.
Their country’s leaders didn’t think so. Those two siblings were put on trial on Monday morning. Their trial was over by 1pm.
Sophie was led to the guillotine. A few minutes later, her brother Hans followed. But before the guillotine blade hit his neck, he shouted, “Long live freedom”.
The Nazis weren’t satisfied with just executing Hans and Sophie Scholl. They interrogated their families and friends.
One of their fellow students, Traute Lafrenz, was also “escorted to a police station” by the Gestapo. She had helped Hans and Sophie get paper and envelopes. But buying paper was dangerous under the Nazis. She was sentenced to one year in prison.
When released, she was promptly rearrested and spent the rest of the war in various prisons. On 15 April 1945, she was liberated by American soldiers. In 1947 she left Germany for good and spent the rest of her life in America.
That small group of brave students called themselves the White Rose.
Traute Lafrenz passed away on 6 March at the age of 103. She was often asked about her bravery and that of her fellow students. People would call them heroes and “an organisation”.
Traute insisted there was no organisation. They were just a small group of friends. They had a discussion group where they read books.
They loved books, unlike their leaders, who mocked those who wrote them. Their leaders hated books. They hated writers. They even burnt books in the streets and harassed those who wrote them.
Traute loved books and their authors, especially Leo Tolstoy. So did her friends. They spent time discussing books, literature, philosophy and the arts. They also wrote, printed and distributed leaflets.
Hans even scribbled “Down with Hitler” graffiti all over Munich.
Traute was no hero, and she insisted, just a witness. She hated being called a hero. She hadn’t been guillotined.
Living her life in America, she always wondered why Hans, the man she’d fallen in love with as a young student in Munich, had started it all. After all, he’d been a Nazi too. He was part of the Hitler Youth. He’d even carried a banner at a Nazi rally in Nuremberg.
But then his unease grew. He started to think and realised what was going on. He wanted nothing to do with it. He felt responsible for it, having been part of the party, and he wanted to stop it. He felt he had to act to stop the damage being done to his beloved country. And he gave up his life for it.
The relentless pursuit of dissenters in Hitler’s Germany was brutal. That brutality was driven by the need to maintain control and power.
Nobody’s been guillotined in Robert Abela’s Malta. But the relentless pursuit of dissenters is ongoing. The police’s heavy-handedness with a young man who dared hang a banner calling for justice sends shivers down the spines of decent citizens.
A friend of construction site victim Jean Paul Sofia being apprehended by police for unfurling a banner calling for justice for Sofia. Photo: Facebook/Net News
That wasn’t the first time banners were torn down. Banners calling for justice for the barbaric murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia were swiftly removed on the orders of then-Planning Authority chief Johann Buttigieg.
Buttigieg offered Yorgen Fenech to “do business” in chats which also referred to “ix-xih”, a reference to Buttigieg’s friend Joseph Muscat.
A banner calling for justice for the barbaric murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia was swiftly removed on the orders of then-Planning Authority chief Johann Buttigieg.
Owen Bonnici ordered the systematic clearing of Daphne’s Caruana Galizia’s memorial. And wasn’t Caruana Galizia’s assassination another form of guillotining?
The lightning speed with which the usually slothful police concluded Mark Camilleri’s investigation should ring alarm bells. Robert Abela’s public denunciation and attacks on Camilleri are disturbing.
Abela’s harassment and intimidation of the judiciary have no place in a European democracy.
His public mocking of book authors harks back to 1930s Germany.
So does the haranguing of Robert Aquilina by Justice Minister Jonathan Attard at a press conference.
The cynical leak of damaging information about MUMN President Paul Pace is a tactic out of the tyrant’s playbook.
Gzira Mayor Conrad Borg Manche’ was submitted to intimidation, threats and abuse by people from his own party. The party’s president Ramona Attard fought the mayor’s efforts to preserve his town’s last green lung.
Gzira Mayor Conrad Borg Manche’
Labour Xaghra Mayor Christian Zammit resigned from all positions in the Labour Party. He felt he had to “get out of the way” after what he described as efforts to “eliminate” him for contradicting the party.
The Nazis’ efforts to silence the White Rose failed. One copy of their leaflet was smuggled out. Millions of copies were printed and dropped on the whole of Munich by RAF planes.
Excluding TVM, the Nazis are held in universal contempt. Most recognise their murderous machine’s evil brutality and their oppressive free speech stifling.
The White Rose members are revered as brave heroes who railed against their compatriots’ apathy in the face of despicable abuse.
They remain an inspiring example of how conscience and moral courage can speak truth to power.
People in Malta will never wake up. The amoral Familism has strong and deep roots here. The whole country is corrupt.
No sooner or later it collapses. Its not sustainable just a question of time.
To sustain anything, you need to have at least a draft plan and I don’t mean to sustain the present situation. I mean preparing to avoid Malta being thrown deeper into the gutter and have something to pull it out of its misery with.
Yes, it is all just a question of time. But also a question of the direction one takes when at the cross roads. One should think and consider it beforehand.
Well, you have woken up and your comment here proves just that.
Kevin, a very interesting and apt read in our circumstances. We too have our “White Roses”. Recently Borg Manche’ and Zammit. Aquilina is on the wrack. Daphne was murdered. Civil Society is ridiculed. Solitary protestors arrested and intimidated. Truth thwarted and justice denied. I salute all these altruistic people who are an
“inspiring example of how conscience and moral courage can speak truth to power.” Courage!
On the money Kevin again, I can never understand the mentality here, I’m not Maltese, it’s so obvious just what is going on and there are little murmurs of dissent now and again with the odd pot banging session to heighten the tension. These gangsters need the full on French version of dissent and be removed from office and held in protective custody until new judiciary are appointed who have the balls to fucking jail them for all the theft and criminality they have perpetrated during their time in office. This is not some “them and us row” this is about grand theft and heinous treatment of a population who for the most part don’t have a clue. It’s about shedding the gangsters of the Mafia that have taken over the country a dystopian Mafia state.
Well, I am also not Maltese and sometimes I rather find myself in disagreement with their mentality, but at least I have been reading their publications and trying to understand their mentality.
I don’t think that most part of the population ‘don’t have a clue’ about the grand theft and heinous treatment of the population. On the contrary, they know exactly what is going on and what they have to reckon with when they stand up to those who rule them. Some reading of Malta’s history is always a way to understand them and their mentality.
What you are suggesting is hard to get in Malta. It takes a long time and they have to swallow lots of things until they burst and say enough is enough, unlike the French who by their temper are up to the barricades in no time and protest in large crowds. Try to push them too far and when you reach the boiling point with them, it’s up to you, either run for the hills and take cover or stand your ground and deal with them.
Given that you live in Malta yourself, look around you and see what is going on with all the splinter groups who are on the streets, doing their daily work in protesting against the PL govt, on social media and comment facilities. There have been times of social unrest and protests with rioting in Malta, but they were so few, that they occurred in time priods of decades. The first in 1919, the second in 1958, the next one in 1986 and then ther was silence. The peaceful – rather small starting – revolution in Malta started in November 2019 when the Police arrested Yorgen Fenech. The Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 brought it to a halt.
It depends on how you look at it, the small revolution of 2019 might have died long ago, or it has been put into an interim stage where new strategies are to be worked out. But the last blow the civil society movement got was the results of the 2022 GE. Since then, the struggle continues, even without that much public presence. That is what I think, otherwise, they all might as well give up and let the PLers do as they please, as the PLers do anyway. Unless they don’t get themselves united and make themselves an alternative for voting in elections, things are set to stay the same. The next time of testing will be the EP elections next year.
With some peple it is like talking to a wall, you don’t get an answer and they couldn’t care less. Sometimes I really think that they are standing in the way of themselves and the progress that might lead to success. In the end of the day, it’s their country and their fate. One can support them, but one cannot force them to do what they do not like to do. That’s how I see and experienced it. But I am not a person who forces anything on anybody, I am wasting my time with trying to convince them by arguments and suggestions. Take it or leave it, but if you take it, you are in for a lot of frustration and less joy, even from a distance.
Unless the Maltese in a majority become convinced by themselves that things can’t go on like this anymore, change won’t happen. As a foreigner, one always has the option to simply leave and shut the door behind, they won’t mind.
I remarked in 2017 already soon after I returned to Malta after having spent 40 years abroad. There is just one l letter different between Castille en Bastille but there is a whole ocean between the mentality of the Maltese and the French. I have my doubts as to whether the Maltese will ever rise against their oppressors – in any case not before the pain really hurts. Civil insubordination is more likely.
The White Rose Movement – https://youtu.be/bG8U8UydZNE
Mr Cassar your articles are so always on the mark. Unfortunately we have a very weak, distorted and illogically connected opposition party unlike the 1980’s..
This is exactly what the government wants us to think about the opposition. Think of all the fraud, injustice sleaze and corruption that we now know of. It definitely was not thanks to the government. Even the growing dissent within the PL is in my opinion, partly influenced by the opposition. I am not taken by distortions and propaganda.
Maybe some of the PLers are waking up to reality and other long standing committed ones like some mayors have had enough of the way the PL is running Malta into ruin.
It looks by now that there are a few who stand up, no idea how many are inclined to follow. I suppose that they are all on the beat and get the brunt of people’s frustration while those at the top are totally indifferent to all that is going on.
Unfortunately many are repeating and spreading the government’s propaganda;
its forte! The sleaze, fraud, corruption, injustice and impunity that has been uncovered is definitely not thanks to the government. Within the PL, I feel, there is unease and dissent as opposing views and opinions are having an affect. The circumstances of 40 years ago are gone. We have to respond to today. But don’t expect wonders. It takes hard work to persuade. We have fallen inside the government’s trap; let’s get out of it!
I agree with you, it does take hard work to persuade It is also necessary to respond to today by not taking the patters from the past century. .
The gravest malady which afflicts Malta is the apathy of the general public, and especially those who prefer to remain sitting on the fence during an election and abort their right to vote for egoistic reasons.
Or it could be, the disgusting attitude of, ‘I’m all right f…you Jack’
Or, it’s a 100 euro cheque…
Or a Board chairmanship…
And Gahan still cannot figure out that it’s been costing him far more than 100 euro in the last 10 years of in-the-face corruption.
And still cannot figure out that the mounting National debt is for him, his children and his grand grand children who must by necessity, pay back the mountain of debt plus interest.
If we haven’t yet reached a point of no return, we are darned close to it!