Newborn - Sophie Scholl and the White Rose

ACCLAIM FOR SOPHIE SCHOLL AND THE WHITE ROSE

The animated narrative reads like a suspense novel.

The New York Times

This is a story that commands our attention.

Newsweek International

Inspiring and could not be more timely. Studs Terkel

Superbly written. Library Journal

Unusually powerful and compelling... Among the indispensable literature of modern political culture. Hans-Wolf von Wietersheim,

Das Parlament (Official publication, German Bundestag)

Heart-wrenching and inspiring... a story few readers will forget.

San Francisco Chronicle

Could change your life forever. Dayton Daily News

Dumbach and Newborn have told their compelling story beautifully.

Washington Jewish Week

This is an impressive, highly readable and beautifully researched account of two brave German youths and their comrades who rejected Hitlers demonic vision and fought to open their countrymens eyes to the horrors that lay aheadat the cost of their lives... This book drives home the high cost of courage in world gone mad, and the brilliant light these brave young people shone into the dark night of Nazi Germany.

Susan Rubinowitz, Political Reporter, New York

A must for anyone, especially young people, to read.

Evelyn Rubin, author of Ghetto Shanghai

A dramatic story of courage during the darkest period of the 20th century... And its a story with new chapters unfolding. This book is a fundamental resource and a memorable read.

Toby Axelrod, author and reporter, Berlin & New York

This book, chapter by chapter, builds into an incontestable argument for the power and possibilities of action over passive acceptance and fundamental resource and apathy.

Jewish Chronicle

TESTIMONIALS ABOUT THE WHITE ROSE BY NOTABLE CONTEMPORARIES

Good, splendid young people! You shall not have died in vain; you shall not be forgotten. The Nazis have raised monuments to indecent rowdies and common killers in Germanybut the German revolution, the real revolution, will tear them down and in their place will memorialize these people, who, at the time when Germany and Europe were still enveloped in the dark of night, knew and publicly declared: A new faith in freedom and honor is dawning.

Thomas Mann, Nobel Laureate (Broadcasting from exile to
Germany on the radio series German Listeners,
June 27, 1943)

If [the White Rose manifesto] is genuine, and there is no reason to doubt that it is, we can see in it the beginning of the end of the nightmare period in Germany itself... These young Munich studentsfew or manyrepresentative or otherwiserose gloriously... protesting in the name of principles which Hitler thought he had killed forever. In years to come we, too, may honor Sergeant [sic] Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl, Christophe Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Kurt Huber and William Graf, slain in Munich for a cause that is also ours.

The New York Times (Young German Martyrs, Lead Editorial
Eulogizing the White Rose, August 2, 1943)

I will never forget the excitement when a leaflet was pressed into my hand by somebody in the editorial room of the Allgemeine Zeitung. The leaflets were being circulated by White Rose followers in Hamburg. Something inflammatory, hearteningyes, magical!emanated from these typewritten and hectographed [mimeographed] lines.

We copied them off and passed them on. A wave of enthusiasm swept over uswe who risked so damned little in comparison.

Ursula von Kardoff (reporter at Nuremberg War Crimes
Tribunal, 1945)

I never saw these two young people. In my rural isolation I got only bits and pieces of the whole story of what they were doing, but the significance... was such that I could hardly believe it. The Scholls are the first in Germany to have had the courage to witness for the truth. The movement they have left at their death will go on... They died in all radiance of their courage and readiness for sacrifice, and thereby attained the pinnacle in lives well lived... We will all of us, someday, have to make a pilgrimage to their graves and stand before them, ashamed.

Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, 1943, memoirist; author of
Diary of a Man in Despair

When we heard about what was happening in Munich, we embraced each other and applauded. There were, after all, still human beings in Germany.

Former Concentration Camp Inmate

I realized that she (Sophie Scholl) was the same age as me, and I realized that she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler. At that moment, I really sensed it was no excuse to be young and that it might have been possible to find out what was going on.

Traudl Junge, Blind Spot: Hitlers Secretary

DESPITE EVERYTHING, THEIR SPIRIT LIVES ON!
SCHOLL LIVES!

Anonymous graffiti appearing on walls

(Munich, February and March, 1943)

MODERN-DAY TESTIMONIALS ABOUT THE WHITE ROSE

THE MOST IMPORTANT WOMAN OF THE TWENTIETH
CENTURY

Brigitte Magazines readers (circ. 4,000,000) voted Sophie
Scholl the most important woman of the last century, over
Madeline Albright and Madonna.

OUR BESTTHE GREATEST GERMANS

ZDF, a German TV station, in 2005 invited its viewers to nominate the greatest Germans ever. Hans and Sophie Scholl of the White Rose were voted into fourth place, above Bach, Goethe, Albert Einstein, Willy Brandt, Gutenburg, and Bismarck. Among young people, they were voted first.

Rip off the cloak of indifference... choose before it is too late. A half-century has passed since the White Rose called out these words before their arrest and death... Each new generation, including our own, realizes that those words are really addressed to us. Again and again, we feel their deep echo... Each person is responsible for what he does and for what he allows to happen. In the darkest moment of 20th century history, the White Rose demonstrated this truth.

Richard von Wiezscker, former President of Germany, in a
special introduction to the German edition of this book

We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience.

A Oneworld Book

First published in USA as Shattering the German Night in 1986
This revised, expanded international edition first published by
Oneworld Publications in 2006
Reprinted 2006 (three times)
New edition published by Oneworld Publications in 2007
This ebook edition published by Oneworld Publications 2011

Reprinted 2009, 2010

Text copyright Annette Dumbach & Jud Newborn 1986, 2006
Foreword copyright Studs Terkel, 2006
This edition copyright Oneworld Publications, 2006, 2007

All rights reserved
Copyright under Berne Convention
A CIP record for this title is available
from the British Library

ISBN 9781780740508

Typeset by Jayvee, Trivandrum, India
Cover design by Henry Steadman

Oneworld Publications
185 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 7AR, England
www.oneworld-publications.com

The publishers are very grateful to George Wittenstein for permission to reproduce the photographs on p. iv, & Plates 25, & 813. Copyright George Jrgen Wittenstein, 1942. The photograph on Plate 16 Copyright Jud Newborn, 1983. The publishers would also like to thank Dr Wolfgang Huber for permission to reproduce the photograph of Professor Huber, and would like to express their sincere gratitude to Ursula Kaufmann, at the White Rose Stiftung, whose cheerful help in locating images has been invaluable. The publishers have made every reasonable effort to identify and contact the owners of the copyright to the photographs included in this book, and to attribute copyright accordingly. Any errors are accidental and will be corrected in future printings upon advice to the publisher.