WHITE ROSE by KIP WILSON

It’s Poetry Friday and thank you to Linda Baie at Teacher Dance for hosting. Happy Valentine’s Day! Linda has a sweet Valentine’s poem and some lovely hearts for us all to enjoy.

To celebrate, I’ll share a few hearts on a book mark by artist Michelle Kogan.

Lately, I’ve been reading novels in verse to study craft for my own work in progress. I’d like to recommend WHITE ROSE by author Kip Wilson.

This wonderful story is told in a non-linear fashion, back and forth in time. For me, this added to the suspense of this story about a group of teens rising up to resist Hitler’s lies. It’s based on a true story. Kirkus describes the story as as an “intense, bone chilling experience.” I agree.

Sophie, the smart and brave teen main character, with her brother Hans and other friends were part of a group called White Rose. The mission group’s mission in 1943 was to distribute suitcases of pamphlets telling the truth about the crimes of Hitler and the Reich, to encourage revolt. They didn’t fully appreciate what they were up against.

The book begins near the end of the story, in 1943 at Gestapo Headquarters. Sophie, the protagonist, has been arrested. The reader doesn’t know what Sophie has done, and this reader was hooked immediately:

FEBRUARY 18, 1943
Gestapo Headquarters

The cars screech to a
halt, officers pull
us out by the arms, haul
us inside and off to
         separate
rooms, my heartbeat
pounding 
all the while,
boom-boom
boom-boom

The ‘boom, boom” of Sophie’s beating heart, signifying her fear, is repeated in poems artfully throughout the book, an effective device to create suspense. The next poem takes us to her interrogation.

INTERROGATION

I carefully blend
a cupful of lies
into the bucket of truth
spread out in front of me
as Herr Mohr shoots
questions after question
trying to watch me off-guard.

               Fräulein Scholl, why were you
               carrying
               an empty suitcase with 
               you to the university?

There are more questions, but Sophie takes pride in being a clever liar.

From 1943, we are swept back to a year before their nightmare, 1935, with poems about Sophie, her four siblings and parents, a loving and bookish German family living in the town of Ulm. Before everything changes, she is joyful. She even falls in love. But the community of Ulm is dismantled relentlessly, step by step, by Hitler’s Reich:

RIPPLES

The signs begin 
to appear like
mushrooms after a rain. 

On the Stuttgarterstrafse bridge:
Juden in Ulm nicht erwünscht!
(Jews not wanted in Ulm!) 

On park benches:
Nur fur Arier
(Only for Aryans.)

Sophie and her friends and siblings are expected to be good German youth and support the war effort. But after several years, Sophie and her brother Hans rebel and join White Rose, a group dedicated to spreading the truth and fomenting revolt.

But they can’t save their country, and these idealistic young people are turned in to the Gestapo by a janitor in the university where they are distributing pamphlets.

But, just before the novel ends, the reader is returned to 1934, a flashback of a happier time, when even Sophie believed Hitler’s fantasy of a sunny German future: “The youth is the future/of this Reich.” The reader appreciates how much Sophie has lost at the hands of the Nazis.

Their execution in 1943 follows and this story about these brave young people ends. For me, these young characters risking all for the truth were irresistible.

********

To end, I would like to send a Valentine’s Day greeting to a favorite creature. When I used to visit my mom in Florida, we would go to a place called Blue Springs State Park on the St. John’s River near Deland, Florida, to see the Manatees. It was a sleepy spot on the river shaded by trees hung with Spanish moss. It’s been a while and I often think of these interesting, nonchalant, half-ton friends, sometimes green tinged from algae blooming on their backs.

GREETING

Gentle manatees
hovering in the quiet--
Best wishes to you.