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Wittenstein remembers his role in revolution
Once a medical student in Munich, doctor recalls his part in White Rose revolutionary group during the Holocaust
Makenna Bishop
Issue date: 4/23/09 Section: News
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The Daily Barometer
To help honor the memory of the Holocaust, Dr. George Wittenstein spoke in the LaSells Stewart Center last night as part of the Holocaust Memorial Program at Oregon State.
Wittenstein was actively involved with the White Rose, a small group of mostly medical students from the University of Munich who risked everything to speak out against the Nazi regime during World War II.
Wittenstein said he didn't understand how anyone who grew up with a proper background and the knowledge available to everyone couldn't see what was going on in Germany.
He said Hitler had transformed a democratic country into one of the worst dictatorships in history.
The White Rose denounced the persecution and killing of Jews, whom Wittenstein referred to as the scapegoats of the political organization.
The group, Wittenstein said, was not an organization, and there were no membership cards. It was an informal group of three pairs of friends who had similar interests. He said they agreed on the same philosophy, liked the same music and attended the same concerts and lectures.
At this time, the dictatorship had obtained almost full control - even private organizations were heavily influenced and threatened in order to comply.
Wittenstein said children were told and encouraged to denounce their own parents if they said anything to oppose Hitler, the Nazi regime or the state.
Because of this, it was virtually impossible for groups to form and even more difficult to communicate. Phones were tapped, mail was searched and Nazi spies infiltrated daily life.
Today, it is known that there were more than 300 other groups similar to the White Rose, but it was impossible to join forces. While the White Rose spread its views through a series of pamphlets it had printed, some groups fought with weapons.
Wittenstein said it was only 20 years ago that these other groups were made known, and most of the groups' members were youth. He said he was amazed at the stories he has heard about what they did.
While visiting a Jewish Synagogue in Santa Barbara, where Wittenstein currently resides, he found a map that pinpointed every place in Germany where an anti-Nazi group was.
He said according to the law, a student could not enter a university until serving at least one year in the Nazi services, where they were forced to take an oath for Hitler.
During World War II, all medical students were drafted into the German army.
As the members of the White Rose watched Germany dissolve, they realized they must take action. They began to print and distribute leaflets, which described and explained their views against the Nazi Regime.
This made them targets to the Nazis when their identities were discovered. Two key members of the group, Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans Scholl, were caught distributing pamphlets at a university when a janitor arrested them.
Wittenstein said Hans Scholl was bigger and stronger than the janitor and could have knocked him over, allowing he and his sister to escape. Wittenstein said they did try to fight their fate and it ended extremely tragically.
Six members of the group were arrested and beheaded.
Wittenstein doesn't know why or how he was able to escape from a similar fate.
"There are many things I will never understand, and there is no answer to that," he said.
Gestapo, the German state secret police, interrogated Wittenstein and when he expected to be arrested, he volunteered for the front lines of the war, where Gestapo couldn't touch him.
At the front, Wittenstein collected weapons from fallen and injured soldiers and sent them on a secret currier to Freedom Action Bavaria, which was a group of rebel soldiers.
The group helped save Munich from total destruction.
"If I wasn't out front, I would have fought with them," Wittenstein said of Freedom Action Bavaria.
He said he took off with other men for Germany when the front collapsed. Along the way, he was shot in the hand by an American fighter jet, despite the red crosses that labeled the men as medics, and he was forced to operate on himself. His scars remain today.
Wittenstein said that even after the war, Germany and Europe were like a prison. He was able to escape in 1948 and he came to the United States. Here he became a professor and a cardiovascular surgeon.
Wittenstein will be 90 years old this Sunday. He has four children and 11 grandchildren, and he has been married to his wife, Christel Bejenke, for more than 40 years.
Bejenke said it was extremely difficult for Wittenstein to speak about the resistance and his experience for 50 years. She said when they recently visited her husband's close friends from before they were married, the friends were shocked to hear about his experience because he was such a nice and quiet man.
Paul Kopperman, professor of history and chair of the Holocaust Memorial committee, said Wittenstein is one of the last survivors of the legendary White Rose group.
He said Wittenstein's visit might represent the last opportunity for the campus community to hear from the inside about what actually happened during the war.
Bejenke also said that Wittenstein is very modest and never speaks of himself, but of the White Rose as a whole.
Wittenstein said he only started speaking about his experience after reading numerous publications that had incorrect information about the White Rose. He added that there were many books published about the group, none of which he felt were good accounts of the truth.
Wittenstein spoke last night to a crowd of students and community members to share the story he remembered, the way he knew it best.
"He felt like he owed it to his dead friends to tell what he knew," Bejenke said.
Makenna Bishop, senior reporter
news@dailybarometer.com, 737-2231
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