Resistance Eyes EN

Willi Graf was an devout Catholic and an active supporter of the White Rose. He was forced to serve as a medical orderly for almost two years and was shocked by the atrocities he witnessed, in Poland and especially in the Soviet Union. In vain he tried to convince friends to join the resistance.  

​​Willi Graf was born in 1918 in the Rhineland and moved to Saarbrücken with his family in 1922. At the age of eleven, Graf joined a reform-oriented Catholic youth association, from 1934 on he also took part in a Catholic boys’ association called Grauer Orden, even when it was banned in 1936. In January 1938 he was imprisoned for some weeks because of his involvement with the Catholic youth organization. Willi Graf constantly refused to join the Hitler Youth. 

​After finishing school Willi Graf had to perform the mandatory Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labour Service). Beginning in winter 1938 he studied medicine in Bonn. In January 1940 he was drafted to the Wehrmacht and had to serve as a medical orderly until April 1942. During this time he witnessed the terrible warfare and the suffering of the civilian population in the Soviet Union which touched him deeply. 

​In April 1942, Willi continued his studies in Munich. He was assigned to the 2. Studentenkompanie (Second Students’ Company) where he met Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell. They were like-minded, also in their critical attitude towards the National Socialist regime, and became close friends.  

​From mid July until the end of October 1942 Graf served at the front near Moscow along with Hans Scholl, Alexander Schmorell and others from the Students’ Company. After their return, Graf actively supported the resistance of the White Rose. He also tried gain supporters among his friends in Cologne, Bonn, Saarbrücken, Freiburg and Ulm.  

​From January 1943 Willi Graf helped to produce and distribute the fifth and sixth leaflet. In February, Willi Graf, Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell wrote “Down with Hitler”, “Hitler Mass Murderer” and “Freedom” on the walls of the university and numerous other buildings in the center of Munich.  

​Together with his sister Anneliese Graf he was detained on 18 February 1943, the same day, Hans and Sophie Scholl were arrested. The Volksgerichtshof (People’s Court) sentenced Willi Graf to death on 19 April 1943, along with Alexander Schmorell and Kurt Huber.  

​Willi Graf was executed 12 October 1943, after seven months on death row and further interrogations. ​ 

​​Traute Lafrenz, an early opponent of the Nazi Regime, was a close friend of Hans Scholl and his family. She helped to print leaflets of the White Rose and brought them to Hamburg and Vienna. After the war, Traute moved to the United States where she passed away at the age of 103.  

​​Traute Lafrenz was born in Hamburg on 3 May 1919. Her parents were politically national and conservative. After the Nazis came to power, Traute quickly developed a critical attitude towards the regime. Her open-minded teacher Erna Stahl in the Lichtwark Schule strongly influenced her.  

​In 1939 Traute began studying medicine at the University of Hamburg, where she met Alexander Schmorell. In summer 1941 she switched to the University of Munich. There she met Alexander Schmorell again and fell in love with his friend Hans Scholl. After their love affair, she remained closely associated with him and his family. Traute Lafrenz took part in reading evenings and political discussions of the circle of the White Rose. 

​When she received a leaflet in summer 1942, she recognized Hans Scholl as the author. She began to support the resistance activities. In November 1942 she brought two different White Rose leaflets to her former classmate Heinz Kucharski in Hamburg and later sent him another. Kucharski copied them and passed them on. At Christmas 1942, Lafrenz took a leaflet to relatives in Vienna and tried to organize a hectograph. Together with Sophie Scholl, she procured envelopes and stamps in January 1943. 

​On 20 February 1943, Traute Lafrenz travelled to Ulm and informed the parents of Hans and Sophie Scholl about the arrests of their children. She was also courageous enough to accompany the Scholl family to the funeral in Munich on 24 February. On 5 March, she herself was interrogated by the Gestapo for the first time, later arrested and sentenced to 12 month in prison by the Volksgerichtshof (peoples court).  

​In the course of the investigation against the “Hamburg branch of the White Rose”, the Gestapo arrested her again on 14 March 1944 and took her to the Gestapo prison in Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel. Towards the end of the war, she and other women were transferred to prisons in Cottbus, Leipzig and finally Bayreuth, where she was liberated by US forces on 14 April 1945.  

​In 1947 Traute Lafrenz was invited by a Jewish friend to San Francisco. Here she met her future husband Veron Page in 1948. She finished her studies in the USA and stayed there. For 23 years she ran a school for disadvantaged children in Chicago. Since 1995 Traute Lafrenz-Page lived in South Carolina.

Sophie Scholl played an active role in the White Rose resistance group. She was exceptionelly politically minded and self-reflective. During the Gestapo interrogation she firmly denounced the Nazi regime and explained her resistance stance. She was the only woman of the group that was executed. 

​​Sophie Scholl was born 1921 in Forchtenberg, a small town in Württemberg of which her father was the mayor. In 1932 her family moved to Ulm. When Sophie was twelve years old, she joined the Bund Deutscher Mädel (Young Girls League), a Hitler Youth organization for girls, and became a group leader. As a result of the arrests of her siblings for forbidden activities of the free youth movement in 1937, she increasingly rejected National Socialism.  

​Hoping to avoid compulsory Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labour Service), Sophie began training as a kindergarten teacher. Nevertheless, she was called up for Labour Service in the spring of 1941. The experience of enforced subordination and lack of freedom, as well as her intense interest in literary and religious themes, strengthened her opposition against the Nazi regime.  

​Sophie Scholl had a great artistic talent and had the idea of studying art. However, she began to study biology and philosophy in Munich in May 1942 and was accepted into her brother´s circle of friends. They established contacts with writers, philosophers and artists. The question of how to behave as a Christian in a dictatorship was one of her main issues. Because her boyfriend Fritz Hartnagel was a military officer, they frequently discussed whether war could be legitimate.  

​In summer 1942 Sophie had to perform auxiliary war service at a rivet factory in Ulm. During that time, her father was in prison for three months because he had made a critical remark about Hitler. In November, back at university, Sophie moved into a flat together with her brother Hans. From now on, she played an active part in the resistance group. She bought envelopes and stamps on a large scale, took part in the reproduction and distribution of the last two leaflets in Munich and took 3,000 copies by train to Augsburg, Ulm and Stuttgart.  

​On 18 February 1943, when Sophie and Hans Scholl handed out the sixth leaflet at Munich University, they were arrested. Four days later, the Volksgerichtshof (People´s Court) sentenced her to death together with her brother and their friend Christoph Probst. That same afternoon they were executed at the Munich-Stadelheim prison. ​ 

Kurt Huber was one of the few German professors who opposed the Nazi Regime. In December 1942, Huber joined the White Rose group. The defeat of Stalingrad at the beginning of February 1943 inspired him to draft the sixth leaflet.  

​​Kurt Huber was born in Chur, Switzerland, in 1893. Three years later his family moved to Stuttgart. After completing high school, Huber began studying musicology, philosophy and psychology at Munich university. He received his doctorate in musicology in 1917 and was habilitated in psychology in 1923. 

​Huber taught at the University of Munich from 1926 onwards. He dealt with theoretical phenomena of music and became a leading representative of international folk song research. In 1937 Huber was appointed vice president of department for folk song studies at the State Institute for German Music Research in Berlin. Hopes of a permanent appointment were dashed due to intrigues. He was accused of having an anti-party attitude. Huber returned to the University of Munich. There, too, he was considered politically ambiguous. He reluctantly joined the NSDAP in 1940 in order to secure a better income to support his family. He was then appointed as an associate professor. 

​Huber’s lectures were characterized by free thinking. That is why they were also attended by students critical of the regime. These included the Scholl siblings and Willi Graf. In June 1942, Huber met Hans Scholl at a private reading evening. Scholl anonymously sent him the first two leaflets of the White Rose. In order to maintain the connection with Huber, Scholl wrote him a letter from the medical mission on the Eastern front, which Graf and Schmorell also signed.  

​At the end of 1942, Huber became an active part of the resistance group. In January 1943 he added an important message about freedom to the fifth leaflet and drafted the sixth leaflet at the beginning of February. About 3,000 copies were printed and distributed by the group in Munich. 

​A few days after the Scholl siblings spread the sixth leaflet at the university, were arrested and sentenced to death, the Gestapo arrested Huber on 27 February 1943. The university expelled him and revoked his academic titles. Huber continued his academic project in prison, where he also drafted a defense speech. 

​At his trial on 19 April 1943, the People’s Court sentenced Huber to death, along with Alexander Schmorell and Willi Graf. On 13 July 1943, Professor Kurt Huber was executed in the Munich-Stadelheim prison. 

​​Hans Scholl was the central figure of the White Rose, an anti-Nazi resistance group in Munich. Scholl, together with friends, wrote, produced and distributed six leaflets denouncing the Nazi regime. Hans Scholl was arrested and sentenced to death. Just before his execution he shouted: “Long live freedom!”. 

​​Hans Scholl was born in 1918 in Ingersheim, a small town in Württemberg. His father was the mayor there and at the family`s later place of residence, Forchtenberg. In 1932 his family moved to Ulm. Hans Scholl joined the Hitler Youth in 1933 when he was fourteen years old, although his father was against the Nazi regime.  

​Hans was responsible for a group of 160 boys. After a while he found the rigid structures of the Hitler Youth confining and began to follow the more liberal ideals of the forbidden Bündische Jugend (free youth movement). Hans was arrested during a wave of arrests aimed at these groups and was accused of homosexual behavior in April 1938. His rather small penalty was suspended due to a general amnesty. 

​Before Hans Scholl was allowed to start studying medicine in Munich in 1939, he had to complete the Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labour Service) and two years of service in the Wehrmacht.  

​As a student and soldier, he was assigned to the 2. Studentenkompanie (Second Students´ Company) where he met Alexander Schmorell in June 1941. They soon became close friends. They shared literary and artistic interests and encouraged each other in their critical attitude towards National Socialism. In June and July 1942 Scholl and Schmorell published four “Leaflets of the White Rose” numbering some 100 copies each. 

​From mid July to the end of October 1942 Hans Scholl, Alexander Schmorell and other friends served as medical orderlies with their Students´ Company at the front near Moscow. The impression of the criminal warfare strengthened their opposition against the Nazi regime. Upon their return to Munich, they convinced more friends to support their resistance activities.

In January and February 1943, the group distributed a fifth and sixth leaflet, now supported by Professor Kurt Huber and others. Several thousand copies were produced and spread in major German cities. Hans Scholl, Alexander Schmorell and their friend Willi Graf also wrote clearly visible slogans on facades in Munich and at the university`s main entrance: “Down with Hitler”, “Hitler Mass Murderer” and “Freedom”. 

​When Hans and his sister Sophie Scholl spread the sixth leaflet at Munich University on 18 February 1943, they were arrested. After only four days, the Volksgerichtshof (People’s Court) sentenced them to death, along with their friend Christoph Probst. That same afternoon they were executed at the Munich-Stadelheim prison.

Hans Leipelt was a student at Munich University. He received a copy of the sixth leaflet of the White Rose on the day the Scholl siblings were arrested. He and his girlfriend Marie-Luise Jahn copied it and passed it on with the added title “…and their spirit still lives on”. 

​​Hans Leipelt was born in Vienna on 18 July 1921. His mother came from a Christian family of Jewish descent. Hans and his sister Maria, who was born after their move to Hamburg in 1925, were raised Protestant. In 1935, the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Race Laws stigmatized the siblings as “first-degree Jewish half-breeds” and the mother as a “privileged full Jew”. After the death of Hans Leipelt`s father, the only “Aryan” family member, in 1942, they were left without any protection.  

​After performing compulsory Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labour Service) Hans Leipelt joined the Wehrmacht and took part in the invasion of Poland in 1939 and the French campaign in 1940. In June 1940 he was decorated for his service but two months later he was dishonourably discharged from the Wehrmacht because he was labeled “half-Jewish”. This exclusion hit him deeply.  

​In 1940 Hans Leipelt began studying chemistry at the University of Hamburg. In 1941 he moved to Munich, where he found protection against anti-Semitism at the Chemical Institute under Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Wieland. At the institute he met a circle of like-minded people. They openly discussed literature and modern art and listened to forbidden music and foreign radio programs.  

​On 18 February 1943, Leipelt received a copy of the sixth leaflet of the White Rose and showed it to his girlfriend Marie-Luise Jahn. Until then, they had been unfamiliar with the White Rose and its acts of resistance. Both decided to copy and distribute the leaflet. During the Easter holidays they brought copies to friends in Hamburg. 

​On 8 October 1943, Hans Leipelt was collecting money for the destitute family of Professor Kurt Huber, who had been sentenced to death. The collection of money was reported to the Gestapo and he was arrested. Further arrests among friends in Munich and Hamburg followed. Leipelt’s sister, Maria, and mother, Katharina, were also arrested. Katharina Leipelt took her own life in a cell in Fuhlsbüttel police prison on 9 December 1943. 

​After a year in pre-trial detention, the trial of Hans Leipelt and six co-defendants took place on 13 October 1944 in Donauwörth before the Volksgerichtshof (People’s Court ). Hans Leipelt was sentenced to death. He was executed at the Munich-Stadelheim prison on 29 January 1945. 

Christoph Probst came from an unconventional family and was the only one of the White Rose students who had children. He was sentenced to death for writing an unpublished leaflet in which he called for resistance against the Nazi regime: “Decide! (…) And once you´ve decided, take action!”.

​​Christoph Probst was born in Murnau, Bavaria, as the second child of the private scholar Hermann Probst and his wife Katharina, who was a teacher. His parents separated in 1921. Because his father’s second wife Elise Rosenthal was Jewish, Christoph soon experienced the Nazi regime as a concrete threat. After his father’s suicide in 1936, his close relationship with his stepmother remained. 

​Probst joined the Hitler Youth in 1934 at the age of fifteen. His personal freedom meant a lot to him, and he soon found the structures in the Hitler Youth too constricting. In 1935 he met Alexander Schmorell and the two formed a deep and lasting friendship. After compulsory Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labour Service) and two years of military service in the air force, Probst began studying medicine in Munich in the summer 1939. At the age of 21 he married Herta Dohrn, who came from a family critical of the Nazi regime. Together they had three children.  

​Being a soldier in the air force, Christoph Probst was transferred from Munich to Strasbourg, then to Innsbruck. He met Hans Scholl in spring 1941 through his friend Alexander Schmorell. Probst took part in the meetings of the White Rose group during occasional visits to Munich. Since he already had a family, he did not involve himself in the dangerous resistance activities. 

​At the end of January 1943, Probst wrote a draft leaflet, mainly inspired by the devastating German defeat at Stalingrad. He denounced the murdering of Jewish population and the criminal warfare in Poland and the Soviet Union and stated: “Hitler and his regime must fall in order for Germany to survive”. When Hans Scholl was arrested at Munich University on 18 February, the handwritten draft was in his pocket. He tried in vain to tear it up and hide it. Two days later Probst was arrested in Innsbruck. The Volksgerichtshof (People’s Court) sentenced him to death along with Hans and Sophie Scholl on 22 February 1943. He was accused of drafting an unpublished leaflet and listening to English radio stations. Christoph Probst was executed in the Munich-Stadelheim prison. 

​​Alexander Schmorell was born in Russia but grew up in Germany. In the summer of 1942, he and Hans Scholl produced and distributed four illegal leaflets. A passage in the second leaflet condemning the murder of Jews as a crime against humanity was written by Schmorell. 

​​Alexander Schmorell was born in Orenburg in Russia. His father Hugo Schmorell, a doctor, was from a German family that had settled there in the 19^th century. His mother Natalja was Russian and died of typhus when Alexander was one year old. In 1920, his father remarried.  

​During the Russian Civil War, the family was forced to leave the country and settled in Munich in 1921. Alexander and his two younger siblings grew up bilingual and Russian culture was an important part of their upbringing.  

​From 1933 onwards Alexander Schmorell was a member of National Socialist youth organizations. After school, in 1937, he had to perform Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labour Service), and later he had to join the Wehrmacht. When he had to swear the obligatory oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler he asked, in vain, to be discharged from the Wehrmacht. His unit was deployed in the invasion in Austria in 1938 and later during the occupation of Czechoslovakia. The drill and uniformity of military life were at odds with his longing for independence and freedom. 

​In 1939, Schmorell began studying medicine. He was then assigned to the 2. Studentenkompanie (Second Students´ Company) where he met Hans Scholl in June 1941 and Willi Graf at a later time. They became friends because of their shared interest in art and literature and their critical attitude towards National Socialism. In June and July 1942, Schmorell and Scholl published four “Leaflets of the White Rose”. 

​From the end of July to October 1942, Schmorell and his friends from the Students´ Company were forced to serve as medical orderlies on the Eastern Front near Moscow. This return to his early childhood homeland, the experiences at the front and the impression of the criminal conduct of the war convinced him to intensify the resistance against the Nazi regime. 

​When the Scholl siblings were arrested on 18 February 1943, Schmorell decided to flee Munich. He planned to hide in a camp for Soviet prisoners of war near Innsbruck. When this plan failed, he returned to Munich where he was betrayed in an air-raid shelter on 24 February and handed over to the Gestapo. 

​The People’s Court sentenced Alexander Schmorell to death on 19 April 1943, along with Kurt Huber and Willi Graf. The sentence was carried out on 13 July when Schmorell was executed in the Munich-Stadelheim prison.​

​​Zofia Haltof-Mikołajewska was a member of the Polish resistance and served as a liason officer and nurse with the Home Army. She was arrested and sent the Auschwitz Concentration Camp for her independence activities.​ 

​​Zofia Haltof-Mikołajewska was born on 25 October 1921 in Kraków. During the occupation she was an active member of the resistance, being a part of the Związek Walki Zbrojnej (the Union of the Armed Struggle of the Home Army) since 1940.  

​Initially Zofia served as a liaison office but after completing the underground NCO training course ran by the Women’s Military Service she was tasked with organizing nurse training sessions.  

​On 20 October 1943 Zofia was arrested by the German forces under the suspicion of being a member of the resistance. She was brutally tortured for several weeks at the Gestapo headquarters on Pomorska Street in Kraków. Her trial also took place there and lasted for weeks after which she was transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.  

​She was granted the status of political prisoner (number 70452). She was subjected to pseudo-medical experiments in the camp. The Germans injected her with typhus bacteria as part of research into the disease. Luckily, she managed to survive. When the camp staff ordered a march out of the camp in January 1945 (later called the death march), Zofia hid in a warehouse together with her fellow prisoners. Until the camp was liberated by the Red Army, she took care of the seriously ill.  

​Thanks to Zofia the Kraków branch of the Polish Red Cross started to organize medical aid for female prisoners remaining in Birkenau as early as the beginning of February 1945. 

​In the years 1976-1982, Zofia was active in the Association of the Disabled War Veterans. She was also strongly committed to commemorating the victims of German terror. 

​Zofia passed away on 27 July 2010 and was posthumously promoted to the rank of captain. ​