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