MovieChat Forums > Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage (2005) Discussion > Not to bash Anne Frank but....

Not to bash Anne Frank but....

posted 14 years ago by Labelleloba
22 replies | jump to latest

Yes she hide from the Nazis Yes she wrote in her journal and when it was published after her death millions of people read it.
But in my opinion she never activley *did* anything.
Yet Sophie and the rest of the White Rose members are vitually forgotten. You wouldn't ever know who these people were and what they did,unless you were taught about it in school(which I highly doubt)or reseached it youself(and unless you're interested in history or have to do a project on it, but who does that nowadays?)
The same goes for Corrie Ten Boom.

"I only wish I could make you cry like I do."

[–] sophtwareslump 14 years ago

Yeah, it is a shame that the chance of one's learning about Sophie Scholl and the White Rose resistance group in school is almost nil, unless you went to school in Germany. Sophie Scholl is a true hero..

[–] Labelleloba 14 years ago

She was

"I only wish I could make you cry like I do."

[–] Charlieee23 14 years ago

I agree.
I am a huge fan of Anne Frank and have read a lot about her life, but after finding out about The White Rose from watching this film Sophie Scholl has become another great hero of mine.
Its a pity there is hardly any information on her life (and that of Hans, Christoph. Willi, Alexander and Dr Huber - also in the White Rose) that has been published. There seems to be no official website where the majority of information about them is held, including photographs of the group and the same basic information has been repeated on most of the websites I've seen.
As far as I know, there are only a few people left alive who knew the members of the White Rose personally. Surely something needs to be done to gather all this information about them and make the public aware of it before it is all forgotten.

[–] rosa121 13 years ago

Surely something needs to be done to gather all this information about them and make the public aware of it before it is all forgotten.

Well, I think this film does just that (or is at least a good start) :)

[–] filmbuff-36 14 years ago

I agree as well. Anne Frank was certainly sympathetic, but she wasn't a hero. However, it's unlikely that a teenage Jewish kid could have done much in her situation. She was just a person whose diary put a human face on the typical Holocaust victim.

The White Rose actually took action and tried to educate people. That's heroism.

[–] nimmy1 14 years ago

She was 14/15 FFS, there's a great deal of difference between 15 and 22.

Only those with no valid argument pick holes in people's spelling and grammar.

[–] redlightdistricts 12 years ago

Semi-off-topic, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmuth_Hubener. Age wasn't an issue to this also-forgotten child, decapitated for his resistance.

[–] colonel52 8 years ago

I read that m it was interesting , and I did not know about this boy
and his efforts and death.

I will say that the reason anne frank gets more exposure, is that
Jews tend to make films on that period about Jews and their suffering,
and pretty much ignore any heroics or suffering by non jews.

Spielberg did do shindlers list, but it was also about jewish suffering,
but it did point out the one good german who saved them.
He should do some films on these german kids who stood up and died for it.
But he wont.
http://tvtalk-your-show.forumotion.com/

[–] coolaree 13 years ago

Anne Frank was a Jewish teenager in an occupied country, I'm not sure what you or anyone else expected her to do 'actively'. She is admired not for her rambo qualities, but for her personality as exemplified in her diary, her extremely tragic story and circumstances and the loss of innocence blah blah

I dont see why it has to be a popularity contest. The very fact that they made a film about Scholl is a good start to attaining pop culture recognition so she too can show up in Family Guy one day. We can only dream.

Quite frankly getting (younger) people to care or be interested on any level about WWII (which ended 65 years ago) is good, and I dont care if Anne Frank does it or Scholl.
The ones that really are interested will learn more and more about the period etc.

[–] catherineursula 13 years ago

As I watched this fine film, those EXACT thoughts came to mind. Why has a herion like Sophie never received the attention that Anne Frank did? Not to sound anti-semetic, but I am tired of all the anti-German propoganda and negative sentiment. The story of the White Rose members shows the world that there were indeed good Germans, brave Germans, admirable Germans who gave their lives to try to rid the country of that madman, Hitler. I am of German heritage, yet first generation Canadian, and I am tired of hanging my head in shame due to the ever pervasive hatred towards what the Nazis did and hence Germans to this day.

Bravo to the film's producers, director, actors and everyone involved in the production of this project but most of all, thank you Sophie Scholl and all the members of the White Rose.

[–] NafNafDunkelBlau 13 years ago

I agree with OP. Sophie Scholl and Corrie Ten Boom were also the exact two people I had in mind.

[–] SubHomeSickBlues 13 years ago

I think films like "Schindler's List", "The Pianist" and "Valkyrie" show quite clearly that there were good Germans, both civilians and in the military, who risked their lives to help others or actively bring down Hitler.

[–] alfa-16 12 years ago

Sophie wrote political doctrine, in so far as she wrote anything, and became a heroine because there was so little active resistance to ths Nazis. Totally deserving of her renown and memorials.

Why on earth does it have to be at the expense of Ann Frank who produced a remarakable piece of work which will last forever on its merits as a literary masterpiece, still amongst the finest things written about WW2.

Read it before you even think of making pejorative remarks about what she contributed or try to measure it against others who have nothing other than age and gender in common with her.

[–] Squeeth2 12 years ago

I liked the bit in the film where the Englischer terrorflieger are overhead bringing vengeance just before she's murdered.

Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.

[–] alfa-16 12 years ago

Considering it's a mainly conversational piece, it manages to be gripping and intelligent throughout with almost no trace of mawkish sentimentality.

It's given me a bit of thing for Julia Jentsch though.

[–] znapper (33) 7 years ago

There were many many people arrested and killed for opposing the Nazi-regime in Germany.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_resistance_to_Nazism

There were also many attempts to kill the b*stard; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassination_attempts_on_Adolf_Hitler

The problem in Germany, was that it was virtually impossible to organize a national resistance group, since, well, the country was saturated by the Nazi dictatorship, who would you talk to, to organize such a thing?

I am pretty fed up as well, with the black and white tales of both Hitler and the German people.
Hitler was a human being, not even an insane one, he was a megalomaniac and a hard-core ideologist war-criminal.

There have been several like him; Stalin, Pol-Pot, Idi-Amin, Kim-Il Sung and probably several more, no one had horns and hooves, even though they did evil deeds.

A great part of the German people were pro-Hitler, but so was much of the world, also in the US (Ford and Lindberg to mention a couple).
During the war, Germany became an information-bubble, controlled by the state. Listening to the BBC was actually punishable by death or life-imprisonment.

It's not like people had smart-phones and the Internet, people knew what the Nazi-controlled press told them, and the threat of Stalin coming for a visit with his troops would surely keep many in the ranks.

[–] twinA (4826) 5 years ago

Excellent info. More people need to read it.

Here is a reply from an anonymous commenter from the Irish Central which is very eye-opening:

"While there is no excuse for the seemingly pro-Nazi sympathies, no one ignored the horrors of Hitler than the United States. IN 1943, the House of Representatives was considering a bill to condemn Hitler, but FDR's State Department opposed it, so it was not considered. 1943! What did the racist State Department not know about Hitler? The American people knew nothing about what was going on because FDR always invoked 'national security' as a reason. What FDR did to Japanese Americans was criminal,and, since it was domestic, the newspapers openly commented on 'concentration camps'. In 1944, when word of concentration camps in Europe were reported, the American newspapers stopped using the word, and started calling them 'relocation camps'. They failed to say that their property was stolen from them. My politics? Liberal Democrat. Facts can be very inconvenient."

~~/o/

[–] judoo 12 years ago

Millions of people millions of stories from WWII. As another poster said, Anne put a face on the victims of the holocaust. Why do people always have to compare, knock down others... Instead of just whining about Sophie not being as well known, have you done anything, contributed anything to further her story?

Reminds me of when people were upset that Princess Diana got more attention when she died than Mother Teresa. Like apples and oranges. Different dynamics. Everyone heard so much about Princess Diana, they felt they knew her. And for someone to choose to help in unglamorous places, when they were living a fairy tale... It can be argued that Mother Teresa didn't have many choices. No venom, please, they were both wonderful people, they don't have to be compared. Mother Teresa said (and it can be applied to this topic)

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”

And in the end, all that matters is what God thinks of what you have done.

[–] jaynekranc 9 years ago

I just watched this film and Anne Frank Remembered both this week, oddly enough. And I think personally (gets ready to duck rotten tomatoes) the problem for me with Anne is EXACTLY that everyone always wanted to make her a symbol of the Jewish victims of the holocaust and she just doesn't fit the bill.

The Franks weren't Jewish until the Nazis made them Jewish. Otto Frank was never bar mitzvahed, and while his wife was more religious than he was, their marriage was not recognized by the Orthodox synagogue. They didn't keep Kosher and the children didn't go to religious school until they were forced to and certainly no one in the family counted Yiddish among the many languages they learned. Otto was not even buried in Jewish cemetery. Otto's well publicized fight with Meyer Levin about Otto's insistence on making Anne's story a universal one is well known.

There's a reason school children now are reading Night instead of The Diary of a Young Girl.

My daughter's high school German teacher uses this Sophie Scholl film in her classes.

[–] jimmye184 8 years ago

This film should be viewed by every American college student that thinks things are so bad on their campus that they need a 'safe space'.

let's go and say a prayer for a boy who couldn't run as fast as I could

[–] 8 years ago

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