Today I was showing my World History students the powerful award-winning film, Sophie Scholl: The Final Days. This exceptional movie is about three young Germans in 1943 that belonged to an anti-Nazi resistance movement called The White Rose. They are apprehended, interrogated, subjected to a People’s Court show trial, and executed. Towards the beginning of the film Sophie and Hans Scholl are seen carefully placing flyers at their college for distribution among other students. One of my students asked if the Nazis had surveillance cameras filming the hallways like our school has. “No,” I answered, “the German students under National Socialism were freer than you are today in this regard.” Later when the Gestapo policeman asked Sophie and Hans for their student IDs, I told my students to always have your IDs ready. “You never know when you will need to produce your ID for a Nazi.”

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