Button: White Rose symbol
$2.00
WR
At least four books have been published in English about the White Rose group. We carry the most recent (2006) "Sophie Scholl & The White Rose") and three films have been made in Germany in the 1980's and the most recent in 2005, (which we carry: "Sophie Scholl: The Final Days"). Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans were the founders of the secret group at their university. Any opposition to Hitler or Nazism was strictly illegal and punishable by imprisonment and death, as Hitler had abolished any semblance of a legal republic or parlimentarian representative government when he consolidated power under his administration.
Over the course of six months the students of the White Rose secretly mimeographed and distributed a series of six leaflets they wrote against the Nazi regime in their country. They distributed the leaflets anonymously to cities throughout Germany. When a janitor at the university in Munich noticed them placing the leaflets in the atrium of the university, he turned them over to the Gestapo on February 18, 1943. They were imprisoned and interrogated for four days, put on "trial" (a show trial for propaganda purposes in the totalitarian state that was Germany in 1943), found guilty of treason and were immediately beheaded after the "trial." The Nazis were very worried that the White Rose group represented a nascient student uprising against the Fuehrer and the Nazi Third Reich. They were, in fact, the only known organized group that actively opposed Hitler inside of Nazi Germany, besides the Red Orchestra group. See the outstanding historical drama film, "Sophie Scholl - The Final Days" about the White Rose. It is available in the DVD section of the catalog.
Today, in Germany the students of the White Rose are recognized as national heroes. Every February 22nd (the anniversary of their execution), many Germans wear a white rose in memory of their courage and resistance to the tyranny most Germans remained silent about. In one of their leaflets they wrote: "We will not be silent. We are your guilty conscience." We, too, in the America of today and beyond, should take inspiration from their actions, and tell our own government that "we, too, will not be silent" about the current injustice, repression, lies, deceit and war. Help make this contemporary designed white rose symbol as recognized and known as the peace symbol. (which was designed in 1958)
• You can read a four page summary about the White Rose on
• You can read an eleven page history of the White Rose on the website that gives more detail about the group, its history and its members.
• You can read the text of all of their leaflets in English, as well as more information about them, on the website for the film: www.sophieschollmovie.com
• See also the book "Sophie Scholl & The White Rose" in the Books section of this catalog.
• See also the DVD, "Sophie Scholl: The Final Days" (Germany, 2006) in the Videos & DVD section of this catalog.
• Of the three films about the White Rose made in Germany in the 1980's, the best was "The White Rose." It is out-of-print on VHS and has not been released on DVD. If you would like to borrow a VHS videotape of the 1983 film, "The White Rose" , call or email us: (860) 455-9621 or clay@donnellycolt.com. Just pay for postage to ship (no rental fee). It is only available on VHS videotape. It is in German with English subtitles. It runs 108 minutes, was directed by Michael Verhoeven, and stars Lena Stolze and Wulf Kessler. For educational purposes it is interesting to compare with the 2005 film which we carry on DVD.
