I am very sorry about your mother’s tragic end, Chandra. It is terribly sad that you would embrace the very censorious policies the Nazis used to achieve power, silence their critics, and round up both your and my ancestors for concentration.

I will continue following in the footsteps of those who valiantly sacrificed their lives to defend the freedoms fascists trampled during their stampede to totalitarianism. They would be ashamed to see their descendants trading their most precious treasure for the illusion of safety and comfort.

“In the name of all the German youth, we demand that Adolf Hitler’s government return to us our personal freedom, the most valuable possession a German owns. He has cheated us of it in a most contemptible manner.

“We have grown up in a nation where every open expression of opinion is callously bludgeoned. Hitler Youth, the SA and SS have tried to conform, revolutionize, and anesthetize us in the most fruitful years of our educational lives. The despicable methodology was called ‘ideological education’; it attempted to suffocate budding independent thought and values in a fog of empty phrases.…

“This is a beginning in the fight for our free self-determination; without this, intellectual values can never be created.…

“This has to do with genuine scholarship and true freedom of thought! No threats can dismay us, not even the closing of our colleges.

“This is a battle that we all must fight for our future, our freedom and honor in a political system that is conscious of its moral responsibility.…

“We grew up in a state in which all free expression of opinion is ruthlessly suppressed. The Hitler Youth, the SA, the SS, have tried to drug us, to regiment us in the most promising years of our lives.”

—White Rose Leaflet #6