PRESS RELEASE
With an entire nation blindly following an evil leader, where did a handful of students find the courage to resist? The thrilling and timely book FREIHEIT!: The White Rose Graphic Novel tells the dramatic true stories of the young university students who formed the White Rose, an undercover resistance movement in Nazi Germany which wrote and distributed now-infamous pamphlets calling for resistance against the Third Reich before their untimely deaths at the hands of the Gestapo. Their story, which has been celebrated in print and film, will be experienced in graphic novel form for the very first time, accompanied by Italian artist Andrea Grosso Ciponte’s haunting imagery which will resonate with today’s students and activists.
The young university students who formed the White Rose knew that doing so could cost them their lives. But some things are worth dying for. Beginning on June 27, 1942, the White Rose printed and distributed leaflets to expose Nazi atrocities and wake up their fellow citizens. Just seven short months later, on February 18, 1943, The Gestapo caught and executed them. Sophie Scholl was twenty-one; her brother Hans, twenty-four; Christoph Probst, twenty-three; Alexander Schmorell and Willi Graf, twenty-five. But while its leaders were killed too soon, the White Rose was not silenced—and its message, and the heroism of its leaders, continues to inspire new generations of resistors, who know that while the challenges they face may differ, the need for young people to stand up against evil, whatever the cost, will remain.
The incredible story of the brave young people behind the White Rose movement is beautifully told in graphic novel form for the very first time by Italian artist Andrea Grosso Ciponte. Ciponte’s dreamily painted art drifts between brutal reality and poignant metaphor while quotes from German writers and thinkers allow the story to toggle seamlessly between the personal and the political, past and present, timely and timeless. The story of these iconic resistance leaders who lived and died almost 80 years ago echoes resoundingly into the present moment, making FREIHEIT!: The White Rose Graphic Novel an urgent and hopeful read for a modern audience.
FREIHEIT!: The White Rose Graphic Novel will be available in bookstores on February 16, 2021.
