Short life of sophie scholl

I have been teaching Sophie Scholl's short life in school again.

It never stops hurting, and this year, it was particularly difficult, considering the fact that more than 21% of voters in my home country seem to be willing to elect an openly homophobic, racist, misogynist and white supremacist party with roots in fascism. If the polls don't lie, it might even end up the strongest party, with the democratic prerogative to choose the prime minister.

Teaching Sophie Scholl and her group of Munich friends, opposing Hitler during the Second World War, in this atmosphere of hopelessness is chilling. Over and over again, I realise that Nazi Germany has become romanticised horror fiction in the Anglo Saxon world, and this view is copied in the Scandinavian countries which are fed a regular Anglo Saxon media and movie diet. The Second World War - that means action movie, soldiers wading through ice or water, or spy thrillers and villains with funny accents. It means swastikas symbolising the caricature of comic strip evil, and the ghostly surreal terror of the Holocaust as a sad tragedy on the sidelines. That is exciting and exotic - but not REALLY real, in the minds of many young students.

Teaching Sophie Scholl means making the ter

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