One White Rose
- One White Rose
What we leave behind is not the night terror, carrying pamphlets through dark streets, dropping them in corridors to drift like snow fallen before dawn, or the day terror knowing betrayal could come at any time.
What we leave behind is not rage at betrayers, torturers, those who did nothing, or those who sentenced, raised the ax, watched it fall, not the awareness [End Page 56] of blood about to flow, bones about to be severed.
What we leave behind is but one word freedom on a scrap in a cell and one white rose laid upon frozen soil.
Davi Walders is a writer and educator whose poetry and prose have appeared in more than 150 publications including Ms, Lilith, The American Scholar, Washington Woman and such anthologies as Worlds in Their Words: Contemporary American Women Writers; Literature of Spirituality, and Beyond Lament: Poets of the World Bearing Witness to the Holocaust. She developed and directs the Vital Signs Poetry Project, which serves families and patients at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD.
Note
Sophie Scholl (b. 1920-February 22, 1943): She and her brother Hans created the German resistance group White Rose which distributed anti-Nazi literature until they were betrayed by a janitor at the University of Munich in 1943. A scrap of paper with one word was found in her cell after she was beheaded by the Nazis. [End Page 57]
