Johanna Kirchner Assassinated (1944)
Fri Jun 09, 1944
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Johanna Kirchner was a German anti-fascist and Social Democrat who was executed by the Nazis on this day in 1944 for having "treasonably rooted herself in the evilest Marxist high-treason propaganda".
Kirchner was born into a family with social-democratic traditions, and Kirchner herself joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) at the age of eighteen.
When the Second World War broke out in 1939, Kirchner, a known anti-fascist and opponent of the Nazis, fled to France. While there, she collaborated with Eleonore Wolf, organizing the emigration of many officials of the workers' movement out of the Third Reich.
In 1942, Kirchner was arrested by the Vichy Régime and handed over to the Gestapo. Although she was initially sentenced to ten years' hard labor for treason, her case was brought back before the Volksgerichtshof in 1944, and she was sentenced to death for "treasonably rooted herself in the evilest Marxist high-treason propaganda" and "treasonably gathering cultural, economic, political, and military intelligence and communicating" Marxism.
On the day of her death, she wrote to her children in her diary: "Keep Goethe's words in mind, 'Die and become'. Don't cry for me. I believe in a better future for you."
- Date: 1944-06-09
- Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, www.gdw-berlin.de.
- Tags: #Labor, #Marxism, #Assassinations, #Fascism.
- Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org
Can you explain that one? Because as far as I know, it wasn't the social democrats in the SPD that worked together with the Nazis but rather the "communists" under Thälmann that had a joined (short lived) project with a Nazi labour union .
As Thälmann and Co then learned, didn't stop the Nazis from killing SPD and KPD both, but then it was too late.
Did you maybe meant the time directly after the first world war where SPD led government worked together with conservative militias in a quasi civil war which led to the deaths of Rosa Luxemburg andother KPD members? While that was 100 % wrong, it wasn't Nazis they worked together with, but royalists.