Three Communists were executed in Germany last week. A detachment of police and of S.S. (Black Shirts) raided the secret printing press of the ╥Thuringer Volksblatt,╙ a Communist paper printed illegally at Erfurt. Six Communists were arrested, of whom three were executed by the S.S. men.
Hitherto many Republicans have been shot on the pretence that they were trying to escape (or even when they were really trying to escape), some have been beaten to death, many have been murdered in other ways, and many have been driven to suicide, but these are the first deliberate summary executions under the Hitlerite dictatorship.
As soon as the identity of the three men was established by their captors they were sentenced by a kind of drum-head court-martial and shot. One of them was Joseph Ries, the chairman of the local Freethinkers╒ League; another was Alfred Noll, a member of the Central Committee of the German Communist party.
COMMUNIST ACTIVITY
The Communists have succeeded in re-establishing their organisation in Germany, and are circulating a large number of illegal newspapers, periodicals, and leaflets in Germany. Some of them are extremely well printed. In the factories they produce small hectographed sheets which pass from hand to hand and are eagerly read. One of those, which is in the possession of one of your correspondents, is headed ╥In Spite of Hitler.╙ It contains a manifesto against the threatened execution of the Communist leader Torgler for the Reichstag fire. It accuses the German Government of having set fire to the Reichstag and refers to the memorandum, parts of which were first published in the ╥Manchester Guardian╙ (the so-called Oberfohren memorandum).
Oberfohren (the leader of the Nationalist party who was alleged to have committed suicide) was, so this leaflet declares, murdered by the Nazis because he wrote the memorandum. The Government, although knowing Torgler to be innocent, means to hang him. ╥He fought for the poor and oppressed and against the rich and the parasitical. That is why Hitler╒s gangs of murderers want to murder him. The proletarian masses must therefore act and help him. Save Torgler from Hitler╒s gallows.╙
The ╥Rote Fahne,╙ the former Communist daily newspaper, appears with fair regularity in Berlin, and has a big circulation. The last number begins with a manifesto against another war.
COMMUNIST SACRIFICES
These Communist activities mean frightful sacrifices (as the executions at Erfurt show). Those found with leaflets in their possession are often taken to a ╥Nazi lokal╙ and tortured until they confess where they obtained them. The tortures are so inhuman that only men of iron nerve and character can remain silent under them. The dangers to which the Communists expose themselves grow day by day as the Terror gets worse ╤ and it has got progressively worse since the Dictatorship began ╤ and as the espionage of the Nazis grows more efficient.
In Kopenick (Berlin), the Terror is much more frightful than it seemed at first. (It was referred to in the ╥Manchester Guardian╙! last week). Not only Stelling, the former Premier of Mecklenburg, and the Schmaus family (father, mother, and son) were killed, but a number of others also. And the Terror is still going on.
A glimpse of the hell into which Kopenick has been converted by the Brown Shirts is afforded by a letter written last week by the daughter of a man who was murdered by the Nazis. (The name must be withheld, so much the precise date of the letter.) It says:
╥Only a few lines. Father is dead, mother has gone half-crazy. I am not quite in my right mind either.╙
