The Ragged Edge of Night

by Olivia Hawker

But the founders of the White Rose and the students who follow them—they are too young, too precious. The whole of their lives lies ahead. Or should lie ahead, if God had more power in Germany than Hitler.

What has gone before drags behind. As we move through our lives, our workaday habits, we trail our ghostly wakes.

Strange, that love can grow at all in a world shaded out, strangled by vines of hate.

Truth cannot feed your children. Integrity doesn’t keep a man warm.

Like seedlings sprouted in a dark corner, they shoot up thin and spindly, grasping and pale. Who can grow strong roots when the very earth is unsafe, when we are starved for light?

Somewhere, beyond the ragged edge of night, light bleeds into this world.

To the memory of Herr Herter, Anton whispers, “I only want to be good to Elisabeth, and to your children. God willing, my friend.” He hopes it’s enough to dissipate the chill in the air.

What a world we live in, where an eleven-year-old boy must trouble himself with a man’s concerns.

He thinks, I might, after all, avoid making a mess of this new life. I might even excel at this husband business—who can say?

Because they are memory. And miracle. They’re the last proof I have that God exists, that He ever existed in this cold, bleak world.

God has said, Thou shall not kill. But God never stopped the gray bus from coming.

I wonder, is Christ truly divorced from me now, or has some worse fate befallen Him? Am I a woman cast off, or am I a widow, like your Elisabeth?

Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be governed, without opposition, by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct. It is certain that today, every honest German is ashamed of his government. Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible crimes—crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure—reach the light of day?

Wir schweigen nicht, wir sind euer böses Gewissen.

This is a small happiness, in a mad and dangerous world. But it’s better than gold, better than music, to know you made another person happy. To know you’ve kept them safe.

Who can choose the worst of our government’s crimes? If you point to any execution, any plan of extermination, and you say, This is the worst, the vilest thing we have ever done, then you excuse, in part, all the rest.

Your feelings are your compass. They guide you to what’s right.”