Fight against the party

“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.

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.

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.

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.