"p. 54 on a slide rail,
on which the eight hooks were positioned.
They were made by a black paper laid between each hook, to isolate each
offender. Eight men each time were made
to stand on the stools.. The loops from
the hooks were fastened around their necks, and removed after death.
I had not
seen the process of hanging, since it took place in a closed room. I was not permitted to, since they always
paid with their heads [the heads were removed from the bodies after death]. The doctor always assured, the hung very swiftly
lost consciousness, so that their blood ceased to circulate, death appeared by
the fracture of the neck vertebrae. Its
duration was much longer than that of the guillotine. It took at best twenty minutes to be certain
that they were dead. The executions took
place by candlelight, after electricity had been shut off for the night. Seriously
in the early morning, at eight o’clock, the exhausted hangman began his
activity, in order to resume in the evening with renewed strength.
In these three September nights,
360 men died on the gallows: teachers,
lawyers, workers, officers and artists.
Near the execution shed laid still
day after day a mountain of naked corpses.
They could not be moved because the bombing raids interfered with
transporting them. Oh, that belongs to
the gruesome crush, I can never forget:
the defaced and bleached corpses of men, one after another, thrown like
beggars.
p. 55 I knew so far
of one German Resistance organization which spent the last hours before their
execution with me. Then I waited with
the foreign resisters to Hitler, in particular the Dutch, Norwegian and Czech
groups who came to me. The German
anti-fascist Resistance learned what all these groups had known: in the Schulze-Boysen-Harnack group and the 20
July group there were imprisoned members that I looked after.
The Gestapo had the custom, such a
large criminal trial complex with so many files to look after and deal with that
they were assigned passwords. The
Schulze-Boysen-Harnack group received the name the Red Orchestra. Why I have I spoken out? I seemed to me dubious as a name, that would
have been more correctly translated as Red Chamber Orchestra. It was probably nothing more than a technical
designation of the political police. The
records say that there were black and yellow orchestras as well. The 20 July group’s name from the
Gestapo- in contrast to the Red
Orchestra- Baroque.
It cannot be my task here to write
the history of the German Resistance.
Then I searched for the political intentions
p. 56 of the captives
who were entrusted to me. I did not
realize that questions as to the political motives and deeds must only make the
captives distrustful. Also, members of
the Red Orchestra were in bad trouble I did not ask to the extent that they did
not want to talk about themselves.
During the
year 1943 I was aware of the great activity of political organizations. Eleven people from the Resistance were executed
on 22 December 1942. Ober Lieutenant Schulze-Boysen and his wife,
Libertas Schulze-Boysen; States Attorney in the Finance Ministry, Dr. Arvid Harnack,
Kurt Schulze, sculptor Kurt Schumacher and his wife Elisabeth, legation board
member Rudolf von Scheliha, secretary at the Foreign Office Ilse Stöbe,
Hand Coppi, student Horst Heilmann and trade commission John Graudentz- the Gestapo was supplied a whole row of
captives-some eight people were put in Plötzensee. It was men and women who had worked
together. All of them were detained
pending trial, but for the most part were condemned to death....
Through the
political work that the Red Orchestra did they get the opinions of and certain
information from the Nazis. It means
that Dr. Harnack and Ober Lieut. Schulze-Boysen had gatherings in Berlin of
differing groups of people where they did not have to hide their contempt for
the state. Among these people were some
members of the old German Communist Party, others included those who were
socialists; their work against the Nazi state was negative. Some still fanatically followed the Communist
Party. They led their discussions
p. 58 Marxist and Leninist
literature was discussed, above all in these little circles young men of
varying classes improved their intellects. They drew up essays and
reports, increased their knowledge in their own little circles, spread their
heartfelt Communist writings in order to assess and attack the regime.
Launching the German-Russian pact from 13 August 1939 initially imposed a
certain reticence back by the group, so they put that behind them after the
beginning of the Russian campaigns (22 June 1941) their disintegrating and destructive
activity continued. With their propaganda they were looking for in
particular to win artists, businessmen, the police and the German Army.
With its many pamphlets and brochures representing to them again and again the
thought that only together can we save the empire with Bolshevism.
The reminiscence period- according to the reports of the survivors and the
files that you have seen, these other points follow:
There existed constant contact with
antifascists in Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia and Russia.
It saw antifascism fight in secret ways in foreign countries. It saw
secretly transmitted radio operations from revolutionary organizations in
Germany, and it traveled to foreign climes. It had copious leaflets
composed and disseminated, among them agitating writings: ‘The Will of
the Nazi Movement.”
p. 59 “How it had come to
war. Why the war is lost, calling for resistance. More illegal
pamphlets dropped from planes, including the life of Napoleon compared to the
life of Hitler, they also contained speeches by Thomas Mann, Roosevelt, Stalin
Ernst Wiechert [a contemporary poet] and Bishop Wurm [of the Confessing
Church]. One further flyer contained a stirring appeal to resistance by
all professions and organizations to the Hitler regime, another brought a
revealing ‘North German Industries, a commentary on the war-led
relations.’ A magazine, Inner
Fronts, was published by John Sieg and Guddorf; a flyer, Clausewitz,
by John Sieg; an analysis of National Socialism’s imperialism by Harnack; a
flyer Freedom and Force, an appeal of Adam Kuckhoff’s: to the
worker, and to the end of the fist, not to struggle against Russia; a letter
from Police Captain Deuken to his son. The organization for industrial
sabotage grew further. Central unifying actions, also the holding of
purification actions to educate the elite, by Schulze-Boysen and Harnack; the
Marburger professor Werner Krauss and the neurologist Dr. Rittmeister created
work. The organization of this large and far-reaching circle of the Red
Orchestra writes one of its survivors, the poet Günther Weisenborn, in the
periodical Lilith, Berlin Vol. 5, March 1948, was due to Schultze-Boysen,
a great nephew of Tirpitz, and a marvelous young creation in the story of
Germany’s struggle for freedom. He was slender, blond, kindly and highly
gifted. He was thought of in the Aviation Ministry as one with a great
future, he had gone to school in Berlin.
p. 60 In 1931 he played a
leadership role, then edited the magazine Adversaries. After 1933
began, the progress of socialism was lost, and paralleled the establishment of
illegal groups. The contacts went through Zurich, Brussels, and
Stockholm. Radio transmission was established, sent in part from a
sailboat on Lake Wannsee.
Dr. Arvid Harnack, an upper attorney in the government, with his objective,
scientific nature, with the great dignity of a defense attorney, a man who was
known to be eminently gifted and cautious, whose work was discussed by the
world … He was a prominent personality in the movement for German freedom
… as Arvid Harnack and Harro Schultze-Boysen’s group united began a time
of great activity.
One other member of this group, the wife of writer Adam Kuckhoff, Greta
Kuckhoff, in February 1943 he was sentenced to death by the Reich’s Criminal
Court, and she was sentenced to ten years in prison. She was pardoned
(through the work of the Red Army in May 1945), and wrote about the work of
both men together, Schultze-Boysen and Harnack in her biography Adam
Kuckhoff Remembrances, Aufbau Publishing, Berlin: “In all ways
they were temperamentally different, they had one thing in common: the
progress of the Fatherland in the world, helping it to go forward. It
should by the rapid end to the war, by their own liberation from National
Socialism powerful enough omitted, forces for freedom and progressivism are
fully unwinding in the world
p. 61 … once more. For
nine years I witnessed discussions and actions, and all the love growing for
our homeland. Indeed the critical love,
the love of a socialist is the love that cannot be blind."
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