Going barefoot
I am taking off those shoes that have had pebbles in them for over thirty years. I need to get my life back.
What follows does not disparage any of you, my readers whom I cherish, in any way. Nor does it insult loyal friends who have supported me every step of the way.
Rather, this post as well as Tuesday’s Pebbles, outlines my frustrations at lack of recourse because of massive shifts occurring in Washington, DC. I am writing as well about my frustrations at myself for having allowed myself to get in this position, for having poured 100% of the equity from the sale of my house in Vegas into White Rose work. That’s a Denise-frustration, not a you-frustration.
Some of the below remedies may sound extreme to you. I’m afraid too many people (including true friends) are like my misogynist not-friend who accused me of making massive profits off the sale of Gestapo interrogation transcripts and the like. I would have to sell 100 copies monthly of the print version of those transcripts at $42 each [or 76 copies a month of the digital version] just to cover Center for White Rose expenses. That has not been happening.
So none of what follows is directed at any of you. I am simply outlining what I must do to save my own life, to keep myself from going under.
I am putting my options “out there” as publicly as I know how, because I know how much I hate it when a person or an organization suddenly starts charging for something that has always been free, or when a nonprofit vanishes, goes under without warning.
I am NOT asking for “paid subscriptions” — although those are always welcome. Substack is in too much turmoil with too many people having their hats out. I will keep most of my “content” (gawd, I hate that word) free. Only posts that are written for scholars will be behind a paywall. Scholars, especially professors and journalists, are willing to pay for other research materials. And it’s tended to be unethical scholars who’ve been the bane of my existence.
When you get to the part about “what you can do,” if you can help, please know I would love to have you join what often feels like solitary efforts. If you are not in a position to help, I get that too. I don’t have nearly enough money or time to help all the worthwhile organizations out there.
Whew. This introduction is now almost as long as the post itself. Siiiiiiigh, and thanks for your patience.
Please do read all the way to the end. Nonpartisan protest and resistance against MAGA is very much on point for White Rose work.
On Tuesday, I posted Pebbles in my shoe, outlining the ways that sludge, personal finances, business finances, misogyny, and “no sleep” are affecting my physical and mental health.
I am now determined not to live this way, Trump or no-Trump. Yes, the sludge will still be oppressive. Frankly, I do not have a good solution for that. On the one hand, I will not let multi-billion-dollar corporations like Intuit and Microsoft take any more of my money than necessary. So yes, I will keep fighting for those refunds and looking for alternatives.
But I am no longer going to fight to keep Center for White Rose Studies alive. Nor will I continue to sacrifice my personal well-being and finances to combat historical revisionism. Nor will I pour good money after bad, keeping prices for products “low” with almost no margin to repay me for cost of goods sold, just so more people can afford to buy them (Gestapo interrogation transcripts in English translation, Histories, greeting cards).
I am taking off those shoes that have had pebbles in them for over thirty years. Over thirty years of doing this for almost-free, seeing others steal my work and earn substantial money, having others become “experts” on the back of my research. Worrying about paying bills. Fretting that I will be the next “old woman” living in her car.
Therefore effective August 1, 2025, the following will take place. There’s an old saying, “Water finds its channel.” That is my new mantra.
Summary of actions:
Center for White Rose Studies. I will no longer support CWRS out of pocket.
Exclamation! Publishers. I’ll no longer offer print copies of publications (Gestapo interrogation transcripts or Histories) unless I have an order in hand for at least twenty copies.
Scholarly assistance. I will no longer answer students’ or professors’ questions for free.
What this looks like going forward.
Center for White Rose Studies (CWRS). Important note: CWRS is a 501( c)(3) educational nonprofit, public charity status 170(b)(1)(A)(vi). Copy of our 501(c )(3) approval letter available upon request. Effective date: January 18, 2005. Chartered in Pennsylvania. I will be ecstatic the first year I cannot file a Form 990-N because we have more than $25,000 in donations!
Unless I have $100,000 in pledges by August 1, 2025, the CWRS Web site is coming down. It costs me $848 a year. I will move all content from that Web site to this Substack and redirect the white-rose-studies.org URL to this Substack, Why This Matters.
You the reader will lose the nice order and coherence of a static Web site. As you are aware, Substack has no decent way to create a navigation bar. Part of the transfer will include the simple index of Substack posts, organized by seven primary topics. It’s not the same as a navigation menu, but it will have to do.
I am also looking for a home for our archives. My short “wish” list includes Dartmouth, USC, Penn, Clark, and Stanford. If your university or related Holocaust nonprofit or library wishes to buy CWRS’s archives, please contact me. My pretty little home has long served solely as White Rose Central, with all closets and bookshelves and storage space dedicated to almost nothing but White Rose. I need to get my life back.
I’ve half-joked about buying a burn barrel if no institution wants CWRS archives. No, I won’t do that just yet. Be aware, however, that the thought has crossed my mind.
Note that the pledge goal of $100,000 is fairly firm. That would merely get me back to $0, i.e., it would allow CWRS to reimburse me four years of outstanding invoices for Microsoft, Intuit, Shogun, external storage, and other out-of-pocket expenses incurred since June 2021. It does not pay any deferred wages, nor does it touch the $750,000+ I’ve spent on White Rose research since 1994.
Also no more free help with research or papers. My “female” instincts, drilled into me from decades of work in an office, of being told women aren’t supposed to be assertive, nearly had me writing “sorry” as an apology for starting to charge for something I’ve done for free for over thirty years. But no apology. My time and expertise are undervalued when I answer every question without remuneration. I wish my attorney, plumber, mechanic, handyman, and IT tech worked for free!
We’re also not starting any projects until at least half-funded. The project page on the current CWRS Web site gives realistic estimated total cost by project. Our local bank permits nonprofits to open restricted accounts with no extra service charge, so as money for projects comes in, we will bank the funds appropriately.
Exclamation! Publishers (EXCL). As noted, we will discontinue printed publications unless there’s an order for 20+ of a single publication, e.g., for class-room use or for a bookstore to sell. I have $20,000+ of printed publications taking up space in one of my home’s closets, all paid for in 2021 and 2022. Once those are sold, I am not replenishing inventory.
I will also shut down the Web site for DEHeap Enterprises, Inc. (DEHEI) effective August 1, 2025 and move all content to a separate section of the Exclamation! Publishers Web site. Saves $400 per year.
My writing to-do list for this Substack had previously included an announcement that EXCL and CWRS were reviving Leaflets of Our Resistance (LOOR). LOOR is one of our more meaningful non-primary-source publications. We gave voice to Armin Mruck, Gerhard Strasser, Leo Melamed, Christine Faye Kohler, Annie Laura Smith, Linda Bliesner, Drew Vernon, and others as they wrote about Holocaust survivors, Holocaust resistance, and how we can live by these dangerous words.
But I cannot spend time and energy on something that does not have broad community support. EXCL will revive this anthology and issue a “call for papers” only once we have that necessary community support. — I still see it as a great way for new writers, undergraduates, and grad students to break into writing professionally. However, it’s got to be profitable, which includes sales.
Re those dadblasted greeting cards: I have eighteen fifteen sets of the genuinely nice 8.5x5.5” greeting cards, printed by a professional printer on high-quality digital presses with color matching and fidelity, on 12-point, 100#, matte cover stock, with luxe matte coating. Yes, they are expensive. But as mentioned on Tuesday, that price represents the addition of Trump’s tariffs to print costs. Once those eighteen fifteen sets are sold, I’m not having more printed until we have regime change, or until I have twenty orders in hand. I’ll leave the product on the EXCL site so you can order, but I cannot go out of pocket to have them printed.
I still want the cards to be out there for anyone who believes in White Rose and informed dissent. Therefore I have added a much cheaper version that won’t be 1/10 as nice. They will be printed on my HP Color LaserJet, on 100# (nice) copy stock. No matte coating on cover stock, no matte finish (much less a “luxe” matte finish) on the front. No nice crisp fold from a machine.
You can order either version here: White Rose greeting cards, roses. Blank. Pack of six with three designs. The less expensive cards will be P.O.D., print on demand. Not adding to inventory asset value. Cost for a six-pack, $10.00.
DEHeap Enterprises, Inc. (DEHEI). Effective August 1, 2025, I will be spending more time on translation, genealogy, and accounting projects. Any money earned through those projects will not go into either EXCL or CWRS, but solely to my savings account.
As noted, DEHEI Web site will be merged with EXCL’s to save money. Therefore the current URLs for Translations Verbatim, Finding Family, and accounting services will change after August 1.
Absent donor support, I will also switch my Substack emphasis from this Substack (Why This Matters) to Now More Than Ever, where unlike here, I write about politics from a partisan standpoint, and I also write about translations, genealogy, small business, accounting, travel, and Texas history. I will still write here, but likely only once a week, instead of two to three times a week as I’ve tried to do the last four years.
What you can do.
1) If you are a fundraiser or grant-writer, and can either volunteer your services or work on a contingency basis, and you believe in our work, please contact me. I hesitate putting this out there, because on LinkedIn, you get flamed if you write something like this.
I’m hoping this is not LinkedIn, and that I will not get flamed. I’ve been told you never ask grant-writers or fundraisers to work “for free” or on a contingency basis.
2) If you are a university student, ask your German-history-philosophy-Holocaust studies-library sciences-whatever department what it would take for you to do an (unpaid, sadly) internship with CWRS. It would be a win-win. I cannot do everything by myself, and I hope you’d gain good experience and knowledge. I have experience writing meaningful internship program curricula, so ask your professor or department chair to contact me.
3) If you work with a civic organization or church or synagogue or university or high school that has a budget for speaking fees, invite me! I am a lot less expensive than most people out there. [I could probably speak every weekend if I were willing to do so for free.]
4) If you need help with your family tree, hire me! If you have a document that needs an official translation (e.g., immigration or finance), where Google Translate isn’t enough, hire me! If you are working on a trip to southern Germany, or Las Vegas, or SoCal, or Gettysburg, and need assistance with your itinerary, hire me!
If you are a small business that’s fed up with paying huge fees to Intuit for SaaS, hire me to help you convert to, drumroll, Excel. I bashfully admitted on LinkedIn that I had done so. You’d be surprised how many techies admitted they had also abandoned accounting software for Excel. If your business has exploded (positively) and you suddenly need written processes or procedure guides to pass an external audit or review, hire me!
Genealogy or accounting or translations or travel or general process consulting won’t help CWRS, but it will keep me from becoming that “old woman” living out of her car.
5) Donate to Center for White Rose Studies. These URLs likely won’t be valid after August 1. But for now, they work. Donate to our general fund, or donate to a specific project.
These are the steps I will be taking to right my own ship, to get those damn pebbles out of my shoes.
Next Tuesday, I will post about what we as a nation must do to right our national ship, to make this a place where liberty and justice prevail.
Where there’s recourse for “sludge.”
Where Big Tech Bros cannot support big biz on the backs of small businesses.
Where citizens are citizens and where legal immigrants are legal immigrants and where we simplify the expensive path to citizenship, and where the Fourteenth Amendment is honored and respected.
Where women are not subjected to the whims of their husbands or fathers (the idiotic “umbrella” of Bill Gothard’s poison).
Where we celebrate one another — I never thought we would regress to having to fight all over again for people of color, for our indigenous population, for our LGBTQ+ brothers and sisters.
Where we recognize that our country is but one part of the global community, subject to treaties, promises, laws.
Where employers pay fair wages. Where employees quiet-work. Where the military defends us militarily. Where police protect and serve. Where our senators and representatives are not cowed by an authoritarian who loves authoritarians. Where each of us is free to express our viewpoint. Where my rights end at your nose.
If you think this has nothing to do with White Rose (or other German) resistance, then you don’t know White Rose (or other German) resistance.
Because:
“Nothing is more shameful to a civilized nation than to allow itself to be ‘governed’ by an irresponsible clique of sovereigns who have given themselves over to dark urges —and that without resisting. Isn’t it true that every honest German is ashamed of his government these days?” — Leaflet I. Hans Scholl.
“And he must not merely feel pity — no, much more: He must share in the guilt. It is his apathetic conduct that gives these sinister people the possibility to carry out their deeds. He tolerates this ‘government’ that has incurred such infinite guilt. Yes, he is even guilty himself that this government could come into existence!
“Each man wishes to be acquitted of his complicity – everyone does so, then lies back down to sleep with a calm, clear conscience. But he may not acquit himself. Everyone is guilty, guilty, guilty!” [Bold in original.] — Leaflet II. Alexander Schmorell.
“And now every resolute opponent of National Socialism must ask himself this question: How can he most effectively contend with the current ‘State’? How can he deal it the severest blow? Undoubtedly through passive resistance. Clearly, it is impossible for us to give every individual specific guidelines for his personal conduct. We can only allude to general issues. Everyone must find his own way to realize resistance.
“Sabotage in armaments factories and other businesses vital to the war effort. Sabotage in all assemblies, rallies, festivities, organizations that were breathed into life by the National Socialist Party, prevention of the smooth operation of the war machine (a machine that operates only for one war, one that focuses on the preservation and maintenance of the National Socialist Party and its dictatorship). Sabotage in all scholarly and intellectual realms that exist for the continuance of the current war – this whether it be in universities, colleges, laboratories, research facilities, or technical offices. Sabotage at all cultural events that could possibly exalt the ‘prestige’ of fascists among the people. Sabotage in all branches of the fine arts that have the least connection to National Socialism and serve its goals. Sabotage in all areas of literature, all newspapers that are on the payroll of the ‘government,’ and that fight for their ideas, for the dissemination of the brown lie. Do not put even one penny in the collection plate, even if it is disguised as a charity.” [Bold in original.] — Leaflet III. Alexander Schmorell.
“Though we are aware that the might of National Socialism must be broken militarily, we seek to achieve a revival of the deeply wounded German spirit from within. However, this rebirth must be preceded by a clear confession of all the guilt the German nation has incurred and by a ruthless battle against Hitler and his too-numerous helpers’ helpers, Party members, Quislings, et al. The chasm between the better part of the nation and everything connected with National Socialism must be brutally forced open. There is no punishment on this earth that is adequate for the deeds of Hitler and his followers. Out of love for the generations to come, we must make an example [of them] after the conclusion of the war so that no one will ever have the slightest desire to attempt something similar. Do not forget even the little scoundrels of this regime. Note their names, so that no one escapes! After all these atrocities, they should not be able to change sides at the last minute and thereby pretend as though nothing had happened!” — Leaflet IV. Hans Scholl.
“Germans! Do you and your children wish to suffer the same fate as the Jews? Do you wish to be measured with the same measure as your seducers? Shall we forever be the most hated and rejected nation in all the world? No! Therefore, separate yourselves from the National Socialist subhumanity! Prove with your deeds that you think differently! A new War of Independence is beginning. The better part of the nation is fighting with us. Rend the cloak of apathy that you have wrapped around your hearts! Make up your minds, before it is too late!” — Leaflet V. Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell.
“For us now there is but one watchword: Fight against the Party! Get out of the Party organizations in which they wish to keep us politically muzzled! Get out of the lecture halls of the SS-Noncom-or-Major-Generals and the Party sycophants! This has to do with genuine scholarship and true freedom of thought! No threats can dismay us, not even the closing of our colleges.
“This is a battle that we all must fight for our future, our freedom and honor in a political system that is conscious of its moral responsibility.
“Freedom and honor! For ten long years, Hitler and his associates have abused, stomped, and twisted these two glorious German words till they are loathsome. Only dilettantes are capable of doing this, dilettantes who cast the highest values of a nation before swine. Over the last ten years, they have more than shown us what freedom and honor means to them — they have destroyed all material and intellectual freedom and all moral substance in the German people. The terrible blood bath that they have caused in all of Europe in the name of the freedom and honor of the German people — a blood bath that they cause anew every day — has opened the eyes of even the stupidest German.
“The German name will be forever defamed if German youth does not finally arise, avenge, and atone, if he does not shatter his tormentor and raise up a new intellectual Europe.” – Leaflet VI. Prof. Dr. Kurt Huber.
“Today, all of Germany is encircled just as Stalingrad was. All Germans shall be sacrificed to the emissaries of hate and extermination. Sacrificed to him who tormented Jews, eradicated half of the Poles, and who wishes to destroy Russia. Sacrificed to him who took from you freedom, peace, domestic happiness, hope, and gaiety, and gave you inflationary money.
“That shall not, that may not come to pass! Hitler and his regime must fall so that Germany may live. Make up your minds: Stalingrad and destruction, or Tripoli and a future of hope. And when you have decided, act.” — Leaflet VII (unpublished). Christoph Probst.
Yes. This. Matters.
© 2025 Denise Elaine Heap. Please contact us for permission to quote.
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