Freiheit!: The White Rose Graphic Novel

The stark artwork conveys the bleak time in which these young people lived. How can anything be bright and beautiful when fascism is taking over Germany? There isn't a lot of backstory here, you're living in the moment with these characters. The steadfastness of the beliefs espoused by the White Rose are very inspiring. Yet the bleakness of the situation throws a shadow on everything. All they did was distribute leaflets to college students. That's all. And they were executed for it. An by guillotine, no less. Wait, isn't the guillotine so 300 years ago? Nope, it saw use well into the 1900's. And the merciless guillotine used to take these young lives? It still exists. Mind-blowing. There are translations of each of the leaflets show more included at the end of the novel, for those interested in reading the ideas these young people died for. This would be a great reading choice for anyone interested in resistance or anti-fascist efforts, as well as general World War II history. show less

Freiheit, The White Rose Graphic Novel-Andrea Grosso Ciponte, author
At first, I found some of the graphics off-putting and confusing. However, the presentation of the leaflets at the end, clarified a great deal of the message, making the presentation more intelligible and digestible. The story is too important to be unread. It is based on an organization of young students fed up with Hitler and his minions, young men and women willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the country. The White Rose existed. It was a resistance effort, in Germany, during WWII. The effort and the message should be introduced in schools and studied.
The exemplary behavior of these ordinary, young citizens who chose to work together to end the scourge of show more Hitler, at the risk of their very lives, many of whom were, indeed, lost to the evil of The Third Reich, is beyond one’s ability to adequately offer praise. One has to wonder what motivated such courage? The readers will wonder if they possessed that kind of bravery and valor. These resistance fighters should be counted among the true heroes and heroines of the war. Facing danger and their own fear, they did what they believed was right. They struggled to return freedom, not only to their country, Germany, but also to those who forgot its value, who lost sight of their own humanity, prompting man’s inhumanity to man to flourish.
The book is inspiring, however, it needs to have the guidance of an educator to fill in the blank spaces about the Holocaust. There is much more to the story of the barbarism of the Nazis. Still, the message of this book is profound in its simplicity. All it takes to effect great change, for the good of mankind, are a few good people. All it takes for evil to take hold are a few people who choose to remain blind, deaf and dumb to its horrors. Fascism must be resisted or it will grow into a malignant tumor with desires to spread throughout the world, a monster that will be difficult to conquer. It would be better to stop it in its infancy. show less

It's good to have this account of the White Rose group in a format that makes their ideas, actions, and fate so accessible. It is especially valuable to have the full text of their 6 leaflets readily available. The first leaflet should be required reading. Regardless if you share the Christian specifically Catholic origin of their ideas, their demand for radical individual responsibility should be the context for confronting political and social realities.
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. - Martin Luther King

Freiheit! The White Rose Graphic Novel by Andrea Grosso Ciponte is a beautifully rendered, but ultimately disappointing, look at one of the greatest stories of resistance from the Second World War. I think the idea of telling this story in comic form is a great one, but in the end the story didn't provide any new insights into the lives of the group's members, nor did it present what it does offer in what I would consider an organized fashion, choosing instead to jump from incident to incident almost at random. There were some places where I nearly lost the thread of the plot entirely due to large chunks of time being skipped with no reference or update for the reader at all as to what had happened during the missing months. This show more includes the founding of The White Rose, which I felt Ciponte should have at least touched on briefly, along with more of the history behind what drove each member to become disillusioned with the Nazi regime. Freiheit gives the reader the distinct impression that the impetus and driving force behind The White Rose was almost coldly intellectual in nature, when a deeper dive into Hans and Sophie's past could have revealed it to be so much more.

I did love the way the text of the leaflets was interspersed throughout, however; it added an emotional core to the story that carried me along even when I lost my way. In concert with the illustrations, they saved the book for me. Ciponte also handled the interrogations brilliantly, illustrating each member's bravery with subtlety and grace. Overall I think Freiheit is a noble effort, but it could have been so much more. show less

I've heard about the university students who resisted Hitler by forming the White Rose, an underground resistance movement that distributed fliers - but I really didn't know too much about them (I didn't even know they all died - I'm some history buff). This graphic novel shows how and why they banded together to speak out against Nazi Germany and it uses lots of direct quotes from the fliers and from Nazi leaders. These students knew what they were doing was highly dangerous and in fact, they all ended up being executed - but their story and heroism inspired thousands of resistors. It's not a casual, pick up for fun, graphic novel but I think it is an accessible education tool that is wonderfully illustrated. After the conclusion of show more the graphic novel - all six of White Rose's resistance letters are printed in their entirety. show less

Andrea Grosso Ciponte’s Freiheit!: The White Rose uses the graphic novel medium to tell the story of Weiße Rose (the White Rose), a non-violent student resistance group in Nazi Germany. The group, led by students, was active from June 1942 through February 1943 and conducted a leaflet and graffiti campaign expressing opposition to the Nazi party. Ciponte alternates between the core White Rose members Professor Kurt Huber, Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf, Christoph Probst, Hans Scholl, and Hans’ sister, Sophie Scholl, giving some insights into their lives and the intellectual works that inspired them, though he does not intend this to serve as a definitive historical work. Rather, it introduces the history and would work well in an show more undergraduate classroom as a supplement to an historical monograph. The real beauty in this work is Ciponte’s gorgeously painted art, which alternates between the photo-realistic and the expressionist. One panel references Oscar Reutersvärd’s Penrose stairs or M.C. Escher’s “Relativity” in a way to evoke the characters’ sense of being trapped without an escape as well as the circular justice system they would face that promised nothing more than a show-trial. Ciponte concludes this book with an appendix featuring a reproduction of the first page of the first White Rose leaflet as well as Arthur R. Schultz’s translations of all six leaflets. Highly recommended for AP and undergraduate courses covering World War II and Nazi Germany. I would recommend Freiheit!: the White Rose for AP and undergraduate courses covering World War II and Nazi Germany as well as those teaching students about forms of resistance and civil disobedience. show less

Freiheit is the German word for both liberty and political freedom! And that’s what this graphic novel is about - university students in Nazi Germany printing and distributing The White Rose, leaflets that tried to expose Nazi atrocities and wake up and rally their fellow Germans!

This is a really important book, and I wish everyone would read it! These students paid with their lives in trying to stand up to what was wrong in their country. A lot of this echoed with me after living through four years of Trump, though in no way was it as devastating as Germany at that time. This book has a cool bonus - there are reprints of six leaflets at the back! Freedom and honor in black and white!

Great artwork too! I really liked the Escher style show more on page 77 and the split panels of the brother and sister on page 80.

“Families were charged with an invoice of 600 marks for wear and on the guillotine.” Smh. show less