Ten Mounted Photographs to Honor Sophie Scholl’s 100 Birthday

Charlestown, Rhode Island, May 5, 2021.   Starting on May 9, BoP Gallery at 289 Narrow Lane will be showing ten historic photographs illustrating the heroic lives of Munich’s White Rose resistance group. Sophie Scholl, German teacher and student (1921-1943), was a principal figure in a cell that would grow beyond 23 members at the…

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Sophie Scholl’s Show Trial

sophie-scholl-trial-germany_

Justizpalast, Munich Germany, Site of Scholl and Probst Trial, 2/22/43 “What we wrote and said is what you all think too! Only you don’t have the courage to say it out loud!”  The below excerpt from “With You There Is Light” is a dramatic interpretation of the Scholl siblings’ and Christoph Probst trial. Because the…

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Sophie Scholl, Diary Entry December 1941

December 1941

The following passage is an excerpt from “With You There Is Light: Based on the True Story about Sophie Scholl and Fritz Hartnagel.”  Medical students at the University of Munich, Hans Scholl and Traute LaFrenz, met up with Sophie Scholl and together went skiing in Coburg, Bavaria. Sophie’s quote as expressed below is an actual…

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Translation of Sophie Scholl’s Gestapo Interrogation Notes

Sophie Scholl interrogated here after her arrest, February 1943

Fortsetzung der Vernehmung der Beschuldigten Munich, February 20, 1943 Context: Two days earlier, siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl were captured and arrested at the University of Munich after distributing Professor Kurt Huber’s sixth edition of the “German Resistance” leaflets. They were interrogated by Chief Inspector Robert Mohr at the State Secret Police Headquarters on Briennerstrasse. The below…

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To Fritz Hartnagel, Munich, February 16, 1943

Context: Fritz Hartnagel survives Stalingrad. It is World War II’s most horrific battle. He is recuperating from near starvation and amputations from severe frostbite at a field hospital in occupied Poland. Sophie is studying Nazi approved philosophy with her brother and his friends at the University of Munich. They have kept their resistance activities, started…

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Resistance Then and Now: Social Media vs. Leaflets

White Rose Memorial LMU

Young people in the Islamic Republic of Iran are taking great risks to publicly protest against their President Rouhani and cleric leader, Ayatollah Khameni. With the help of social media, Iranians are gathering in the streets to protest theocratic corruption – rampant hunger and an estimated 40% unemployment plagues their country. The state controls all…

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Christmas Greeting from Stalingrad

With You There Is Light Sophie Scholl Alexandra Lehmann

Translated here into English for the first time with permission of S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt. To Sophie Scholl from Fritz Hartnagel, December 1942. Yesterday, my dear Sophie, as the Russians fired on our position with heavy artillery and the sirens went berserk, a little bird suddenly sat at the edge of our trench and peeped…

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