“How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause? Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?" -Sophie Scholl, member of the White Rose
Opening in the Theology and Ministry Library Atrium Gallery on March 13, 2017, the White Rose is an inspiring exhibition depicting student resistance against Hitler in Munich during 1942-43. Created by The White Rose Foundation, this traveling exhibit is sponsored by the Boston College Libraries in collaboration with the Consulate General of Germany to New England. The exhibit will open with a panel discussion entitled: The White Rose: Invoking Moral Courage and Resistance from 4:00 – 5:00 PM followed by a reception from 5:00 – 6:30 PM. Consul General Ralf Horlemann will attend and will offer opening remarks.
Members of the panel are Dr. John Michalczyk, Dr. Bernhard Knorn, S.J., Rabbi Sara Paasche-Orlow and the moderator is Dr. Nicole Eaton.
Dr. Michalczyk is a Boston College Fine Arts Professor and director of the university’s Film Studies Program. He is a filmmaker whose documentaries have focused on issues of social justice, and he often uses the examinations of painful human experiences to shed light on our humanity. Dr. Michalczyk’s documentaries explore issues of discrimination, hatred, war and peace. He has published on the subject of the White Rose (Confront! : Resistance in Nazi Germany ed. By John Michalczyk), and he worked with a White Rose survivor both at Boston College and in Germany at the University of Munich.
Dr. Knorn is a Jesuit priest from Germany and a research scholar in theology. Before joining the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry as international fellow in 2016, Fr. Knorn studied at the Universities of Munich and Mainz as well as in Rome. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the theology of reconciliation (“Versöhnung und Kirche”, published in 2016). Among his research interests are the Christian motivation of the resistance against the Nazi regime and the efforts of the churches for reconciliation after the Second World War. He studied in particular the participation of the Jesuit Alfred Delp in the Kreisau Circle resistance group and the German-Polish reconciliation process.
Rabbi Sara Paasche-Orlow is a Conservative Rabbi, certified Chaplain, and the Director of Spiritual Care at Hebrew SeniorLife (HSL). She founded and leads the HSL Chaplaincy Institute. She is the great granddaughter of General Kurt von Hammerstein, who attempted to arrest Hitler at the Polish front, and her great uncles were part of the 1944 July 20th plot. Rabbi Sara has been a partner with Action Reconciliation Service for Peace for the past decade bringing a young German volunteer each year to work with Jewish elders and survivors at HSL. She is the co-author of Deathbed Wisdom of the Hasidic Masters, Jewish Lights, 2016, in addition to numerous articles, and chapters in Spiritual Manifestos: Visions for Renewed Religious Life in America, and Flourishing in the Later Years, Jewish perspectives on Long-Term Pastoral Care.
Dr. Nicole Eaton is an Assistant Professor in the History Department at Boston College. Her fields of interest include modern European social and cultural history; German and East Central European history; and the Second World War and the Eastern Front. Her teaching interests include courses on Soviet history and the Russian Empire, the Second World War, and European history of cities and everyday life. She is currently working on a book on the extended German-Soviet encounter in Königsberg/Kalingrad during the 1940s–the only place ruled by both Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Russia as their own patrimony.
Boston College students, faculty, and staff as well as the greater Boston Community are warmly invited to experience the exhibition to learn about the individuals of the White Rose, their paths to resistance, actions, and persecution by the Nazi regime.