As someone who has passed racks of tourist brochures, doubting that I would find something that related to me, I cautiously opened the Destination Maryland: The Official Maryland Travel Magazine. As a new traveler there, it had both good information and more information than I could handle. I had to admit that whoever put it together knew how to spotlight its regions and varied offerings. This magazine was made for casual reading but print size made a difference, and too much small print didn’t work for me. I was glad to see an impressive mural by Michael Rosato at the Harriet Tubman Museum. (Rosato created a marvelous mural for the Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport two years ago.)

The current obit in The Economist was for Traute Lafrenz, 103, whose close friends had been executed in Germany for distributing subversive leaflets during WWII. She and her friends had joined the Hitler Youth group, before denouncing atrocities through a group called The White Rose. Days after throwing leaflets over a railing into an atrium at Munich University in February 1943, two of her friends were caught, tried and guillotined. Lafrenz never complained about spending a year in prison for having bought paper and envelopes that The White Rose used. Despite efforts to destroy all the leaflets dropped at the university, one made it to Norway, then Sweden and England, getting copied along the way. In July 1943, the British RAF dropped millions of copies over Germany. The obit didn’t fill out details of this remarkable woman’s life in the United States. Traute Lafrenz was the last living member of The White Rose.

http://rokeefehistory.com/blog: #amreading; #WomensHistory; #CarolynComitta; #magazines; #DestinationMaryland; #MichaelRosato; #FDGRIAirport; #RochesterNY;