Thirteen anti-fascist resistance members of the “Red Orchestra” ring(s) were efficiently beheaded by the Plötzensee Prison fallbeil on this date in 1943.
Let no one say that I wept and trembled and clung to life. I want to end my life laughing, laughing the way I loved and still love life.
They were:
-
Karl Behrens
Erika Gräfin von Brockdorff (nee Erika Schönfeldt)
Wilhelm Guddorf
Helmut Himpel
Walter Husemann
Walter Küchenmeister
Friedrich Rehmer
John Rittmeister*
Philipp Schaeffer
Heinz Strelow
Fritz Thiel
German Wikipedia’s list of executions in the Reich has only the above 11 listed for this day; via … @KrasnojKapelle on Twitter and this Bundesarchiv page, the others were
* A psychoanalyst, Rittmeister contributed through his correspondence the whimsical/ominous title of a volume about the history of his field — “Here Life Goes on in a Most Peculiar Way”: Psychoanalysis before and after 1933.
On this day..
- 1826: Francis Irvin, the first hanging in Ohio County, Kentucky - 2020
- 1948: Johannes Rasmussen, Danish Resistance betrayer - 2019
- 1920: Rickey Harrison, Hudson Duster - 2017
- 1619: Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, laandsadvocaat - 2016
- 1803: Peter Stout - 2015
- 1559: The remains of David Joris, Anabaptist fugitive - 2014
- 1945: Bruno Dorfer and Rainer Beck, Wehrmacht deserters - 2013
- 1828: Carbonari in Ravenna - 2012
- 2005: Shanmugam Murugesu, for the chronic - 2011
- 2005: Michael Ross, the Roadside Strangler - 2010
- 1880: Edwin Hoyt, in Bridgeport - 2009
- 1881: Not Billy the Kid - 2008