Crooked Cross

A passion oratorio for Hans and Sophie Scholl (2023)
Duration: 60’

On February 18, 1943, German officials arrested two college students named Hans and Sophie Scholl. Operating under the enigmatic name Die Weiße Rose (“The White Rose”), they and a group of friends had distributed leaflets urging their fellow Germans to resist the Nazi regime and war effort. Just five days after their arrest, the Scholls were executed.

Their protest was not only political; it was spiritual. They became convinced that their country’s program of conquest and murder was incompatible with their Christian faith—and that the regime’s adherents had come to resemble Christ’s persecutors more than his followers. For this conviction, they were willing to take up a cross.

Their story, then, is a Passion narrative. But ironically, it is a Passion in which the persecutors are themselves believing Christians. For even as they embraced fascism, the vast majority of Germans still considered themselves followers of Christ. In fact, for many the notions of God and Country were so intertwined that standing against the nation was itself a form of godlessness. For them, the way of the cross meant the way of the Hakenkreuz: the Nazi swastika—or, more literally translated, the crooked cross.

Christian or not, this fact should unsettle each of us. It shows the vast distance that often separates our actions from our asserted beliefs. It shows that the name of God can be used to justify hellish atrocities.

Above all, it forces us to ask ourselves the uncomfortable question: do we stand with the persecuted, or with the persecutors?