Co-sponsored by the Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic+ (GNS+) and the Wisconsin Historical Society.
On Feb. 18, 1943, during the height of World War II, two German college students at the University of Munich entered one of the main campus buildings, walked to the top of a staircase and tossed a stack of leaflets over the railing and down into the crowded atrium. The leaflet, the sixth in a series of underground publications from a group calling itself the White Rose, exhorted fellow students to rise up against the Nazi war machine.
Those students were Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie, left and center in the photo below, with fellow White Rose member Christoph Probst. That action was seen by the building’s janitor, a
faithful Nazi Party member, and led to their immediate arrest and trial a mere four days later. The three other members of the group were also soon arrested. All would be executed.
WE WILL NOT BE SILENT! Sophie Scholl and the White Rose is a dramatic reading that tells their story and asks some difficult questions about resistance to oppressive regimes, a story that is
being enacted on the streets of Tehran, China and Russia today. A post reading discussion will be led by UW Professor Ulrich Rosenhagen.