Sophia Magdalena Scholl was a German student and anti-Nazi political activist, active within the White Rose resistance group in Nazi Germany. She was convicted of high treason after being caught distributing anti-war leaflets at the University of Munich with her brother Hans. As a result, they were both executed by guillotine. She was 21.
Her last words were: "How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause? Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?"
Following her death, a copy of the sixth leaflet was smuggled out of Germany through Scandinavia to the UK by German jurist Helmuth James Graf von Moltke. In the summer of 1943 the Allies dropped millions of copies over Germany, now retitled The Manifesto of the Students of Munich.
Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans were the only non-communist German resistance members who were officially honored by the DDR and the USSR.
