1951: Arno Esch, liberal
Add comment July 24th, 2018 Headsman
On this date in 1951, liberal East German activist Arno Esch was shot in Lubyanka Prison outside of Moscow.
Just 17 when World War II ended, Esch emerged as a leading student activist for the Liberal Democratic Party in the postwar Soviet Occupation Zone — a pacifist who advocated political liberalization and civil rights.
These weren’t times for any common fronts: “a liberal Chinese is closer to me than a German communist,” Esch remarked, denoting a clear and present danger in the communist zone: his party attempted in vain to form a coalition across the nascent Iron Curtain with its like-minded brethren in the western zones.
Esch was arrested in 1949 and prosecuted as a spy and counterrevolutionary by a Soviet military tribunal.
On this day..
- 2003: Allen Wayne Janecka, hit man - 2020
- 1833: Anastasio Aquino, Nonualco rebel - 2019
- 2010: Michel Germaneau, AQIM hostage - 2017
- 1653: Six beheaded and one hanged for the Swiss Peasant War - 2016
- 1722: Marie-Jeanne Roger, "la Grande-Jeanneton" - 2015
- 2008: Christopher Scott Emmett, jocund - 2014
- 1471: Dmitry Isakevich Boretsky, son of Marfa Boretskaya - 2013
- 1735: Patience Boston, converted - 2012
- 1588: Nicholas Garlick, Robert Ludlam, and Richard Simpson - 2011
- 1892: Ruggles brothers lynched - 2010
- 1942: Joan Peiro i Belis, Catalan anarchist - 2009
- 1794: Not Thomas Paine - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Activists,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,East Germany,Execution,Germany,History,Martyrs,Occupation and Colonialism,Power,Shot
Tags: 1950s, 1951, arno esch, cold war, communism, liberalism, liberals, lubyanka, lubyanka prison, moscow
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