Die Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand

Yesterday we visited the German Resistance Memorial Center (Die Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand) a permanent exhibition documenting a spectrum of German resistance to National Socialism. This exhibition exists in the historic rooms of the attempted coup of July 20, 1944, on a street that has since been named "Stauffenbergstrasse" after the colonel that tried to assassinate Hitler in 1944. The courtyard is in the center of the Bendlerblock, the former headquarters of the German Army High Command; the bronze figure of a young man with bound hands pays tribute to Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators of the Valkyrie plot, who were executed immediately after the blast that failed to kill Hitler.But thats not the only emphasis of the museum. More than 5,000 photographs and documents present examples of the motives, actions, and goals of individuals, groups, and organizations involved in resistance to National Socialism. The resistors in the Labor Movement, the Communist Party and from Christian organisations are also represented here, and this for me made the visit much more worthwhile. The tales of people like Liselotte Herrmann or Walter Uhlmann who, like Luxemburg and Liebknecht before them, stood up for the working class and against Nazism long before 1944 are here, and for me are the real heroes of the Nazi era, not a few Colonels who decided to turn on their leader when their imperialist war was clearly lost- like drowned rats at the 11th hour. This is a link to a few of the biographies of resisters from the labor movement before 1939. http://www.gdw-berlin.de/b04/b04-bio-e.php# Another really touching part of the exhibition was the documentation of the White Rose group, a group of a few students in their early twenties (including Sophie Scholl, her brother Hans, Alex Schmorell, Willi Graf and Christoph Probst, and a professer at their University called Kurt Huber) who prepared and distributed six different leaflets calling for the active opposition of the German people to Nazi oppression and tyranny between June 1942 and February 1943. They were caught during the distribution of the of the seventh leaflet and sentenced to death. Today they really typify the officially recognised opposition to the war, and the White Rose groups stylistically sophisticated leaflets and diary entries are still quoted in length by anti-war activists today who look to passive resistance.Here’s a particularly moving quotation from Sophie, written soon before her death in 1943:
“The real damage is done by those millions who want to ’survive.’ The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.”
The quote has some problems, but from a group of young people isolated from the tiny underground workers organisations fighting the Nazi's, very inspiring nonetheless.