Archive for June 15th, 2018

1944: Raymond Burgard, lycee Buffon inspiration

Add comment June 15th, 2018 Headsman

Anti-fascist teacher Raymond Burgard was beheaded on the fallbeil on this date in 1944, in Cologne.

A literature instructor at Paris’s lycée Buffon, Burgard (English Wikipedia entry | French) was dangerously forthright about his resistance to the Nazi occupation. He wrote and published resistance newspapers and on one occasion publicly sang La Marseillaise at a march celebrating Joan of Arc.

Evidently he was an inspiring teacher, too.

Burgard was arrested over the Easter 1942 break, and as soon as school re-convened the pupils

organized a demonstration, involving children from other schools. Around a hundred school students took part, chanting Burgard’s name and throwing leaflets in the air. (Source)

Alas, Executed Today has already encountered these brave schoolchildren: the five youths who organized this protest were themselves executed in early 1943.

On this day..

Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Beheaded,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Execution,France,Germany,Guillotine,History,Martyrs,Occupation and Colonialism,Power,Wartime Executions

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