Traute Lafrenz, Last of the White Rose, German Anti- Nazi Resistance Student Group, Dies Aged 103
- Lafrenz was arrested twice by the Gestapo and eventually liberated in April 1945 and settled in the US. Agence France-Presse in Berlin, The Guardian, 9 Mar 2023. Ed.
The last surviving member of the White Rose resistance movement, which urged Germans to stand up against Nazi tyranny during the second world war, has died, according to the group’s historical foundation. Traute Lafrenz died at her home in South Carolina on Monday at the age of 103, the group said in a statement on Thursday, paying tribute to her “courageous resistance and lasting testimony”.
One of the most famous groups to resist the Nazis in Germany, the White Rose distributed anti-war pamphlets at Munich university in 1942-3, calling on people to rise up against the regime. According to the foundation, Lafrenz met Hans Scholl, one of the founders of the group along with his sister Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst, in the summer of 1941. A year later, Lafrenz, a medical student, came across a flyer and realised Hans Scholl’s involvement from the literary quotations used in the text. She carried flyers to Hamburg where they were distributed by friends.
When Hans and Sophie Scholl were arrested in February 1943, Lafrenz drove to the city of Ulm to inform their family. Following a summary trial, the original White Rose leaders – the Scholl siblings and Probst – were beheaded at the Stadelheim prison in Bavaria, along with others including their philosophy professor Kurt Huber. In April 1943, Lafrenz also fell into the hands of the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police, and was sentenced to a year in prison for “complicity”.
Shortly after her release, she was arrested again by the Gestapo in Hamburg. Lafrenz spent time in 4 Nazi prisons before her liberation from the one in Bayreuth in April 1945. She emigrated to the US in 1947, where she completed her medical studies. On her 100th birthday in 2019, the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, praised her as a “hero of freedom & humanity”. Lafrenz was one of few people who, “faced with the crimes of the Nazis, had the courage to listen to the voice of her conscience & to rebel against the dictatorship & the genocide of the Jews”, he said at the time...https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/09/traute-lafrenz-the-last-of-the-white-rose-anti-nazi-resistance-dies-aged-103
---------------------------
- The White Rose: The German students who stood up to the Nazi regime. (2 mins).
- The White Rose was a non-violent, intellectual resistance group in Nazi Germany which was led by 5 students & one professor at the University of Munich: Willi Graf, Kurt Huber, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Hans Scholl & Sophie Scholl. The group conducted an anonymous leaflet & graffiti campaign that called for active opposition to the Nazi regime. Their activities started in Munich on 27 June 1942; they ended with the arrest of the core group by the Gestapo on 18 Feb. 1943.
They, as well as other members & supporters of the group who carried on distributing the pamphlets, faced show trials by the Nazi People's Court (Volksgerichtshof); many of them were sentenced to death or imprisonment. Hans & Sophie Scholl, as well as Christoph Probst were executed by guillotine 4 days after their arrest, on 22 Feb. 1943. During the trial, Sophie interrupted the judge multiple times. No defendants were given any opportunity to speak.
The group wrote, printed & initially distributed their pamphlets in the greater Munich region. Later on, secret carriers brought copies to other cities, mostly in the southern parts of Germany. In July 1943, Allied planes dropped their 6th & final leaflet over Germany with the headline The Manifesto of the Students of Munich. In total, the White Rose authored 6 leaflets, which were multiplied & spread, in a total of about 15,000 copies.
They denounced the Nazi regime's crimes and oppression, and called for resistance. In their 2nd leaflet, they openly denounced the persecution & mass murder of the Jews. By the time of their arrest, the members of the White Rose were just about to establish contacts with other German resistance groups like the Kreisau Circle or the Schulze-Boysen/Harnack group of the Red Orchestra. Today, the White Rose is well known both within Germany & worldwide...https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose
= new reply since forum marked as read
