We Will Remember
To the people of Minneapolis taking care of their neighbors - you are the best of America
In Berlin’s Schöneberg district stands a secondary school named for Sophie Scholl, a member of the White Rose resistance movement executed in 1943 for resistance to National Socialism.
She and her brother were caught distributing leaflets on the campus of Munich’s Ludwig Maximilian University urging passive resistance to the Nazis. They were put on trial, convicted of high treason, aid to the enemy, and distributing subversive propaganda.
The Berlin school is one of many streets, schools and plazas all over Germany and Austria that are named in honor of the young woman revered by Germans, today, as one of “our best.”
But Sophie Scholl was not always considered one of Germany’s best, certainly not on February 22, 1943 when she was executed by guillotine at Stadelheim Prison.
I’m always struck by the number of streets, buildings, schools and plazas in this city that bear the names of people who once reviled as criminals, traitors or terrorists.
The community center where my son took swimming lessons honors Kurt Ritter, executed by the Nazi regime in 1944. In addition to the Kurt Ritter Sports Platz, there is a memorial at the Georgen Parochial Friedhof IV on Boxhagener Strasse that honors Ritter and two others: Fritz Riedel and Willi Heinze.
A nearby street is named for Hildegard Jadamowitz, a member of Herbert Baum’s resistance group, executed in 1942.
These are just a few examples.
“Our current ‘state’ is the dictatorship of evil. We know that already, I hear you object, and we don’t need you to reproach us for it yet again. But, I ask you, if you know that, then why don’t you act? Why do you tolerate these rulers gradually robbing you, in public and in private, of one right after another, until one day nothing, absolutely nothing, remains but the machinery of the state, under the command of criminals and drunkards?”
-Partial text of a White Rose leaflet. [English translation]
I cannot fathom the courage it took to continue to a struggle against what seemed like an all-powerful regime with most of society under its sway. To, first of all, not sacrifice your own morality and humanity out of sheer exhaustion. But also to not lose hope that the future could be better.
When I look to the United States and see its leaders and much of its population hold that power and political allegiance matter more than the law, that accepts and normalizes lying, that contends empathy is misguided, that encourages federal agents to violate the Constitution, it almost makes me lose hope for the future.
A federal agent shoots and kills an unarmed citizen for disobeying his command, calls her a “fucking bitch,” and then is heralded a patriot and rakes in hundreds of thousands of dollars on GoFundMe. Other agents execute a man who was not a threat to them, then one turns to people yelling at them and, mocks them, saying “Boo hoo.”
When these people are revered, but the VA nurse and mom they killed, and the children and refugees — and citizens! — they disappear, are called criminals and terrorists, there is not much hope for society.
Renee Good and Alex Pretti are just two of at least nine people to die after encounters with ICE agents since the beginning of the year.
Related:
CNN/US: Text messages and a moved SUV: How the government’s case against a Chicago woman shot by a Border Patrol agent fell apart
PBS: A U.S. citizen says ICE forced open the door to his Minnesota home and removed him in his underwear after a warrantless search
The Guardian: US immigration agents detain two-year-old Minnesota girl: ‘depravity beyond words’
Al Jazeera: US witnessed many ICE-related deaths in 2026. Here are their stories
But the people of Minneapolis have not lost hope.
In the face of literal threats to their life, they have refused to back down and cower in fear. They refuse to lie and turn on their neighbors. They have not stayed hidden and turned away. They have come out in even greater numbers to protest and resist. And they do so not with guns and weapons and retribution - but cameras and signs and voices.
As I write this, the Trump administration has announced the removal of ICE Commander-at-Large Greg Bovino from Minneapolis, to be replaced by “border czar” Tom Homan. In several social media posts, the president now says he is now on “a similar wavelength” with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, after a phone call.
It is not the complete removal of ICE nor an independent investigation of the deaths. But it is a start. Resistance is working.
The day after the killing of Alex Pretti, a writer that I admire, Staci Greason, wrote on Instagram: “You cannot build happiness, peace, or lasting security on the suffering of others. Full stop.”
Another wrote: “But as God surely knows –– there will come a reckoning. Hate always finds a way to eat itself.”
These two sentiments best sum up the way that I feel but most often cannot find the words to express. These are the real American values.
A better day will come. And when it does, we will remember the real American patriots.
Sophie Scholl will live forever for her stand against evil and her courage to do what is right.
Your quotation of the White Rose pamphlet stopped me in my tracks today. 🙏🏻