Dr. Jud Newborn served as Founding Historian and co-creator of New York’s Holocaust museum (Museum of Jewish Heritage). An acclaimed multimedia lecturer, storyteller and erstwhile undercover operative, Newborn is co-author of the now classic Sophie Scholl and the White Rose, currently in a 3rd, special 75th Anniversary edition marking the execution of these incredibly courageous White Rose anti-Nazi student resisters in 1943. Newborn recounts in the book and his programs how Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans - former fanatical Hitler Youth leaders, the latter arrested for a teen gay relationship - transformed uniquely to become the greatest heroes of the German anti-Nazi resistance. Forming the secret "White Rose" with a handful of determined comrades, they issued a staccato burst of six impassioned, eloquent leaflets calling out against Nazi crimes from 1942 to 1943, stymieing an embarrassed Gestapo and outraging Hitler himself. Forcing Germans to confront the Nazi mass murder of Jews, they ended Leaflet Four with these words: “We will not be silent! We are your bad conscience! The White Rose will not leave you in peace!” On February 18, 1943, Hans and Sophie Scholl mounted a gallery high above the University of Munich’s vast atrium and tossed down hundreds of leaflets into the hands of astonished students. It was the only fundamental public protest by Germans against Nazism as a whole ever to be staged. Quickly captured, they were subjected immediately to a show trial - and summarily beheaded. But their message lived on after the war and has only grown in importance, especially as we face the rise of White Nationalism, antisemitism and the extreme right wing today.

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Jud Newborn - Sophie Scholl and the White Rose