Dr Alexandra Lloyd, Fellow by Special Election in German at St Edmund Hall and author of ‘Defying Hitler - The White Rose Pamphlets’ (Bodleian Library Publishing, 2022), is co-hosting new podcast Traces of the White Rose. The podcast, produced by SANSARA and the White Rose Project, tells the story of the White Rose resistance: five students and a professor who stood up to Nazism and paid with their lives. Through newly-translated letters, diaries and resistance pamphlets, Alexandra and co-host Tom Herring trace the story of the White Rose resisters in their own words, alongside powerful and moving choral music by English and German composers from SANSARA’s album Traces.
Speaking about the podcast, Alexandra says: “On 12 October 1943, a 25-year old medical student called Willi Graf was executed by the Nazis. He was one of a group of university students and a professor who together wrote, printed, and circulated anti-Nazi, anti-war pamphlets. All six members of the core resistance group were sentenced to death for this act of defiance against the regime.
2023 marks the 80th anniversary of the White Rose arrests and executions. This is a powerful story which deserves to be better known and which has so much to teach us today.
Traces of the White Rose introduces this courageous group of resisters through their own writings. It’s a truly collaborative effort, with music by SANSARA, and translations by students at the University of Oxford. As a lecturer and author, it’s amazing to hear this story brought to life and to hear traces of these incredible individuals who risked everything for freedom.”
Tom Herring, Artistic Director of SANSARA, says: “A key part of our mission is to give voice to powerful human stories. In this podcast, we hear remarkable voices of resistance recorded in English for the first time, allowing them to inspire and speak directly to a wider audience than ever before.
We’ve learned from Dr Alexandra Lloyd’s work on the White Rose that music was one of the things that brought the members of the White Rose together and sustained them through dark times. The choral music in the series represents their cultural imagination and embodies their connections to each other: multiple voices working together to express their profound sense of responsibility and their collective demand to be heard.”
A live performance of music and readings from the podcast will take place on Saturday 11 November at the Wiltshire Music Centre, with a pre-concert talk with Alexandra and Tom. Further details are available here.
