Ask the Author: Alexandra Lehmann
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Alexandra Lehmann
The original idea for "With You There Is Light" originally came from "negative motivation." I grew up in New York in a time when being of German heritage meant being called a "Nazi." As a sensitive kind of person, being called this hurt a lot. My mother, who survived World War 2 in a "Nazi" orphanage, retreated completely from upper to middle class society in a suburb outside of the City. As a writer, I wanted to urgently dispel this notion and encourage Americans to think about how Germans lived under Hitler. Living without personal freedoms and in my mother and father's case, being victims of extreme hardship (children living with starvation and untold violence) is also a form of suffering. Sophie Scholl and Fritz Hartnagel's story perfectly shows how two brave and extraordinary young people were caught on opposite sides of war - fought to know the truth - and acted on it. Eventually, I began to see that their love story was the truer narrative thread, and although I am not sure I am enough of a writer to be able to capture it, I tried and hope my readers may think that I did.
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