On February 22, 1943, 21-year-old Sophie Scholl is executed by the Nazis for her resistance activities.

Such a fine sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?
Sophie’s last words before execution  

Sophie, and two others were arrested February 18, 1943, when they were spotted dropping flyers off on the University Munich campus. After a quick, sham trial, Sophie, her brother Hans and Christoph Probst were found guilty of treason and sent to the guillotine on February 22, 1943. 

  

100th Birthday Sophie Scholl (May 9, 1921 – February 22, 1943) 
German stamp issued May 6, 2021

1 stamp, FDC, 3 cancels (only one shown here)
Designed by Detlef Behr, Cologne

The indictment papers, in the image above, that were given to Sophie during her trial. When she was sentenced to death, she wrote Freiheit, which means Freedom on the back of the papers. 
image courtesy of Institute fuer Zeitgeschichte and Sophie Scholl and the White Rose | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans (nationalww2museum.org)
 

Sophie was a member of the German anti-Nazi group The Weiße Rose / White Rose. She and fellow University of Munich students distributed anti-Nazi flyers and posted graffiti defying authorities.  During interrogation, the trio refused to betray their fellow White Rose members. It took months to track them down, but eventually all were found and executed. 

When she finally moved to Munich to study biology and philosophy in May 1942, her brother Hans, a medical student at the same university, and some of his friends had already begun to actively question the system. Serving on the Eastern Front, they learned about the crimes committed in Poland and Russia first hand and saw the misery with their own eyes. They knew they couldn’t remain quiet. Starting in June 1942, they began printing and distributing leaflets in and around Munich, calling their fellow students and the German public to action. 
Sophie Scholl and the White Rose | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans (nationalww2museum.org)

Excerpt from the first leaflet:

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 of crimes – crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure – reach the light of day?

If the German people are already so corrupted and spiritually crushed that they do not raise a hand, frivolously trusting in a questionable faith in lawful order of history; if they surrender man’s highest principle, that which raises him above all other God’s creatures, his free will; if they abandon the will to take decisive action and turn the wheel of history and thus subject it to their own rational decision; if they are so devoid of all individuality, have already gone so far along the road toward turning into a spiritless and cowardly mass – then, yes, they deserve their downfall. Goethe speaks of the Germans as a tragic people, like the Jews and the Greeks, but today it would appear rather that they are a spineless, will-less herd of hangers-on, who now – the marrow sucked out of their bones, robbed of their center of stability – are waiting to be hounded to their destruction.  “The White Rose Leaflets” Revolt & Resistance www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

Flyer # 6, the last flyer

We grew up in a state in which all free expression of opinion is unscrupulously suppressed. The Hitler Youth, the SA, the SS have tried to drug us, to revolutionize us, to regiment us in the most promising young years of our lives. “Philosophical training” is the name given to the despicable method by which our budding intellectual development is muffled in a fog of empty phrases. A system of selection of leaders at once unimaginably devilish and narrow-minded trains up its future party bigwigs in the “Castles of the Knightly Order” to become Godless, impudent, and conscienceless exploiters and executioners – blind, stupid hangers-on of the Fuhrer. We “Intellectual Workers” are the ones who should put obstacles in the path of this caste of overlords.   Excerpt from flyer courtesy “The White Rose Leaflets” Revolt & Resistance www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

Sophie Scholl: Student who resisted Hitler and inspires Germany (bbc.com)