On The Last Day

On The Last Day

Genre: Fiction based on real events.

A girl sits looking towards the rooms’ only window. The room is bare apart from this table and chair. Its walls are white washed, and the floor is made of rough stone. The girl’s hands are clasped together, and she is resting her elbows gently on the pot-marked surface of the table. Through the window, which is barred, she can see the clouds moving across a blue sky.

Her dark eyes are shining and bright. The narrow mouth moves slightly as she whispers. ‘Dear God please hear this last prayer from your most faith servant. My name is Sophie Magdalena Scholl; I ‘am twenty two years of age, and about to be executed by guillotine.’

These words hardly break the silence within the room, ‘on this day I feel love for all those who would do me harm lord. Please forgive them, just as I have forgiven my dearest brother whose blunder has lead us into the shadow of death. I pray for my beloved family and for my country. Please lord keeps them safe from harm, and in your love.’

Getting up from the table, the girl walks toward the high window still in prayer. ‘I have been in this prison for only two days lord but in that time I’ve been brutally interrogated and tried in the so-called People’s Court. There was no jury to sit in judgement on my actions, just one man. Our Nazis government saw fit to bring the President of the People’s Court to Munich. Judge Roland Friesler traveled from Berlin especially to sit in judgement on Hans, Christoph and myself. This ungodly regime wanted Friesler to pronounce the death sentence in person having found us all guilty of treason. You are the only one who can sit in judgement on us lord, and I know you will find us all blameless. Friesler ranted and spit hate at us like a mad man throughout the trail. My only regret is that my poor parents were in court to witness such shameful actions.’

The girl searches the sky for any sign of her god before continuing her prayer. ‘You gave me the strength and courage O Lord to stand on my broken leg in front of Friesler and boldly look into those evil eyes. With this courage, I was able to ask him, ‘‘you know as well as we do that the war is lost. Why are you so cowardly that you won’t admit it?’’

The girl smiles slightly at the memory of the effect those words had on the judge. For the penultimate time in her life, she cries and continues with her prayer.

‘Those words made him shriek at me like the demon we all knew him to be. He said, ‘’you are a traitor both to your country and to your führer and for that you will all be guillotined.’’ As the tears start to drip down from her face onto the stone floor, the girl finishes her last prayer.

‘Lord I ‘am not a traitor to my country, I love Germany will with all my heart. It is to this Nazis government that I have been treasonous. These Nazis have poisoned the good out of the people of Germany making them turn against one another. Please lord find an end to this terrible war before my country is destroyed. The evil men who run my country will drag us all to the gates of hell itself before they are finished.’

Looking up at the clouds passing the sun, the girl says, ‘Amen’. The window is high up in the wall of her prison cell but she wants to get a last look at her last day. Keys rattle in the lock and the cell door swings open.

***

In a cell, much the same as Sophie’s, her brother Hans Scholl stares out of his window watching a flock of birds which are flying in tight formation over to the east where the park is situated. They remind Hans of the bombers flying in tight formation, which he’d seen flying over the cities of Russia. As grey eyes searched the sky, he wished that he knew the names of the different birds better so that he could fix this last view of the world in his mind. Turning away from the high window, he retreats into the gloom of the cell.

Looking at Christoph sitting calmly at the table praying Hans is reminded of his beloved Sophie. The thought of his sister invades his mind, and Hans feel certain that like Christoph, Sophie will be praying too. The effort to keep calm is impossible unless you are very religious like Christoph or very spiritual and good like Sophie. As for himself, he cannot stop his mind returning to events now over forty-eight hours old.

For the thousandth time Hans told himself that, he had been a fool to allow Sophie to help with the distribution of the White Roses leaflets at the University. It had been bad enough that she had been with him working in that borrowed artist’s studio where the printing of the leaflets was carried out. Sophie in her quite brave way had volunteered to help him with the leaflets, when it had been reasoned that they were too heavy for one individual. By the time their arguments were over, he had had to except her help, and they both had had to rush over to the university. Hans admired had always how she fitted into the printing and posting group. Now he felt he had used her unselfish approach to either work or danger against her.

After running to the university, they had still arrived too late for their task. However, there was no choice now, as neither could leave the leaflets were they were. Sophie had taken one of the suitcases, heavy with the newly printed leaflets. Working against the ticking atrium clock, with the taste of fear in their mouths, each one had raced up flights of stairs and down empty corridors. A memory of Russia floated through Hans and for a second the fear he felt had almost overcome his body. Each sibling had chosen opposite sides of the atrium staircase, and had caught glimpses of the other as they worked their way up almost to the very top. Taking care not to been seen from the classrooms, each had completed their tasks just as the lunch bell was to sound.

Overcome with a mixture of fear and relief they had narrowly escaped colliding into each as they both had hurtled round that final corridor. Looking down each sibling could see the neat piles of leaflets ready to be read. It was then, just as they were so close, that disaster had hit. One of the suitcases was not quite empty, and they could not carry the case through the lunch period with leaflets still inside.

Sophie had whispered, ‘quickly up to the top floor!’

They had both charged up that final flight of stairs, and put the remaining leaflets on the top balcony overlooking the atrium just as the bell sounded unleashing both students and masters from their respective classrooms. Sophie had then pushed this final pile of leaflets with the very tips of her fingers, and launched them into the air. As the leaflets floated down on to the heads of those now below, each sibling had paused for a few fatal seconds.

This great gesture of deviance, had Hans late concluded, been what had alerted the caretaker. Always the ardent Nazis, this little man proved to be the undoing of the siblings. The movements of the floating paper caught up in the spiral rays of light, which shone through the glass roof of the atrium, had killed them. Hans stopped remembering that moment, as keys jangled in the lock and the cell door lurched open.

***

The three stand in a tight circle, a last silent embrace. It is against the prison rules but by a miracle, a kindly warder has allowed them this last brief moment together.

Sophie is lead away out to the courtyard. She looks up at the sky again admiring the deeper blue of late afternoon. Half the courtyard is now cast in shadow but she keeps herself in the brightness of the sun. Immersed this light she feel translucent. Reaching the end of her walk the world seems to have stopped. No sound reaches her ears except her own breathing. Passing through another door Sophie is presented with another white room, another a stone floor, but this room has a crucifix. A tall thin man dressed in black, and wearing a top hat. He is standing by the guillotine. Making the sign of the cross, she walks forward.

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