The Fascist grip on Germany was complete after 1934. Leaders of other political parties were jailed or killed; state governments were replaced. It was dangerous to befriend Jews or to associate with those who spoke against the Nazis. George (Jürgen) Wittenstein, studying philosophy, psychology, and medicine at the University of Munich during those dark years, did both. At personal risk and with great loyalty to his friends, he took part in the White Rose resistance, the only German resistance group to publicly condemn the extermination of European Jews. He was one of the few White Rose members to survive and in 1947 published the first report on them: “The Munich Student Movement.”
A longtime Santa Barbara resident, Dr. Wittenstein died on June 14 at age 96. His mother, Elisabeth Vollmoeller, was a successful businesswoman; his father, Oskar Wittenstein, a doctor of chemistry, concert pianist, and aviation pioneer, died six months before George’s birth while testing an airplane. A philosophy of personal responsibility and justice was instilled during Wittenstein's boyhood by the Vollmoeller family and Schule Schloss Salem, which remains one of the finest schools in Europe. Salem's revered headmaster, Kurt Hahn, spoke openly against Hitler and fled to England in 1933.
Instead of the ubiquitous swastika, 13-year-old Jürgen's bicycle flew the flag of the Paneuropean Union, a peaceful unification group banned by Hitler. Compulsory labor and military service preceded his military medic training in Munich, where he befriended Alexander Schmorell, and they shared their hatred of the Nazi regime. His mentor, the art historian Dr. Kurt Badt, was brutalized in 1938's Kristallnacht attacks on Jewish citizens, and the next day Wittenstein was ordered by the Gestapo, as a German soldier, to stop associating with Jews. More ominously, the Gestapo accused him of homosexuality, a feared Nazi ploy to eliminate enemies.