Willi Graf of the White Rose
Resistance
My friend Jim Forest has written about the White Rose Community, a non-violent, resistance group in Nazi Germany during the time of Hitler, consisting of students from the University of Munich. One of them, Alex Schmorell was an Orthodox Christian and is soon to be canonized as a Saint in the Orthodox faith.
The other students were mostly Catholics, like me, and one of the first to be arrested, condemned to death and beheaded was Willi Graf. I would hope that since we share the same last name we are related, but even if we are not, having a 25 young man named Graf give his life for resistance to the Nazi government is inspiring. The crime of the White Rose resistance was to break the silence about the name of nature of the government in Germany and its crimes.
Today when we resist the crimes of our government in war making or resist our Catholic University teaching how to kill humans without conscience we are ignored, or at worst, arrested for some small crime, like disorderly conduct. Christians, like in the 30’s or 40’s might not like what the government or those who control the government are doing to our country, but like most of the Christians in Germany fear sacrificing or risking anything in the resistance.
Also our government, unlike that of Nazi Germany, is wise enough to know that it is better to ignore resistance than to attack it or call attention to it.
This is Not to say our government is like that of Nazi Germany but it is to say that when we see things like Killer Drones killing innocent people or the lack of opportunity for rising class of poor we might protest mildly, ignore the issue, keep silent or support the government in the name of patriotism. Many Germans hated Nazism but kept their silence for love of the ‘fatherland’. We keep divided Republican or Democrat, poor or rich, gay or straight, liberal or conservative, man or woman, black or white and fight each other and are kept distracted from the real issues of our society.
God blessed Willi Graf and the rest of the White Rose community to have the courage to resist, even to the point of death. May God bless us and give us the courage to Break the Silence.
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