"The White Rose"

“The White Rose”

Wherein the Enlightenment had so radiantly shone ...

descended a darkness o'er the land,

a blackening,

not of locusts sent by God ...

but of a more stubborn Pharoah

whose heart was even harder ...

whose command over masses numbing,

but which failed to blot out the light of day.

Had there been no foreshadowing of the darkness?

When the land forgot Moses Mendelssohn,

and bore Adolph Eichmann?

Had not Heine known wherein books are burned,

so will humans eventually be?

Where the din of the mob drowned out

the admonitions of the few prophetic voices

and cynical lawlessness foreshadowed transcendent evil.

When the fearful apathy of a once upright citizenry

began to terrorize living space and individuality's resistance little remained.

Where Jewish blood-letting became a national pastime, an opiate to

drug the masses and passive stupidity replaced the spirituality of free thought.

Not all debauched themselves on the altar of this golden calf.

Hans and Sophie Scholl refused to forsake the ageless distinction between right and wrong,

the primal lesson from the innocence of mankind.

The Gestapo executed Hans and Sophie Scholl

whose parents had taught them diligently and ...

spoken to them of good and evil at home.

Nurtured these young people on individuality's inquisitiveness,

enough so that when almost all had become bad,

Hans and Sophie believed in the courage of adherence to good.

When the many hysterically applauded tyranny's hypnosis,

this brother and sister had the presence of mind

to stand up and proclaim freedom's stubborn persistence.

while the deluded majority clung to falsehoods tenaciously.

Hans and Sophie held that living a lie was a betrayal of life.

Our sages knew few are the righteous who defy evil

across death's yard to the guillotine.

Blossoms push out the rot of weeds and beauty overtakes ugliness.

For who could have foreseen that a WHITE ROSE ...

would burst forth naturally in a land where the ashes of

auschwitz,

dachau,

buchenwald,

treblinka

fertilized

Berchtesgaden.

Where the presumption of guilt

became the obscene standard of perverse justice.

Good people ... tried and condemned perfunctorily

who had managed to remain human in a country

where despotism reigned not because

there were no good people left,

but that there remained so few.

Alan D. Busch
11/5/07