Tasteless comparison with Sophie Scholl – folder on strike

A “lateral thinking” activist compares herself to Sophie Scholl in a speech in Hanover. An alleged steward does not want to accept that, he storms forward, tells her his opinion. The video of the incident went viral.

At a “lateral thinking” demonstration in Hanover, a speech by a 22-year-old activist from Kassel caused a scandal – a video of the incident caused violent reactions on the Internet. “I’m Jana from Kassel and I feel like Sophie Scholl, because I’ve been active in the resistance for months, giving speeches, going to demos, handing out flyers and also registering meetings since yesterday,” she says to the cheering participants on Saturday. Like Scholl, she is 22 years old. (You can see the scene in the video above or here.)

Background: Sophie Scholl is symbolic of the fight against National Socialism in the Third Reich, she was a member of the student resistance group “White Rose”. In February 1943 she was arrested by the Gestapo during a leaflet campaign and executed by the Nazis.

“Don’t make a folder for such nonsense”

In the video, the self-proclaimed “Sophie Scholl” in Hanover is faced with fierce headwinds after just a few sentences of her speech. A young man walks up to her in front of the stage and puts an orange safety vest in her hand. “I don’t make a folder for such nonsense,” he calls out. He repeats several times that it is “playing down the Holocaust”. “That is more than embarrassing”. From the ranks of the lateral thinking demonstration, however, the man also met with anger: “Shut up” or “Let them finish” can be heard from the people.

The 22-year-old speaker, on the other hand, seems paralyzed and replies: “I didn’t say anything.” Then she starts crying, throws away her microphone and leaves the stage. Policemen appear and escort the man away from the stage.

The woman can be seen again in another excerpt, which was posted later. In it she is “shocked that I was offended by a passerby or whatever”. She begins her speech again with a comparison to Sophie Scholl.

Man is celebrated in the network

Numerous Twitter users marked the video with “Like” and it has already been viewed over a million times. But in the comment columns there are also indignation and rejection: the parallels with Sophie Scholl are irresponsible, the equation with the member of the student resistance group “White Rose” during the Nazi era is shameful. The young man, on the other hand, is celebrated. One user wrote: “Respect for the ex-folder who recognized the mockery of the real Holocaust victims and opposed it.”

However, it has not yet been confirmed whether the man was a steward. In any case, he wore a mask. The “Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung” reported, however, that he was a left activist.

But whether the man was a steward or not, the horror at the comparison of the woman with Sophie Scholl is great. “Anyone who compares himself to Sophie Scholl o Anne Frank today is mocking the courage it took to take a stand against the Nazis,” writes Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on Twitter. “That belittles the Holocaust and shows an unbearable oblivion of history.”

In Hanover, more than 900 people demonstrated against the Corona measures on Saturday. The organizer of the protest rally in the city center was the organization “lateral thinking”, which organizes protests in many cities against the current policy in the fight against the pandemic. More than 300 people took part in counter rallies, including around 120 left-wing autonomists.