WORKERS KNOW YOUR HISTORY - ERICH MUHSAM.

            Across the planet and through the years anarchist have come in for some brutal and truly barbaric treatment at the hands of the sadistic dupes of the state. We could probably fill the London telephone directory with names of our comrades who have suffered in this way. February marks the 78^th. anniversary of the arrest of one such comrade. The following from wikipedia.

Erich Mühsam (6 April 1878 – 10 July 1934) was a German-Jewish anarchist essayist, poet and playwright. He emerged at the end of World War I as one of the leading agitators for a federated Bavarian Soviet Republic. Also a cabaret performer, he achieved international prominence during the years of the Weimar Republic for works which, before Hitler came to power in 1933, condemned Nazism and satirized the future dictator. Mühsam was murdered in the Oranienburg concentration camp in 1934.

Mühsam was arrested on charges unknown in the early morning hours of 28 February 1933, within a few hours after the Reichstag fire in Berlin. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, labelled him as one of "those Jewish subversives." It is alleged that Mühsam was planning to flee to Switzerland within the next day. Over the next seventeen months, he would be imprisoned in the concentration camps at Sonnenburg, Brandenburg and finally, Oranienburg.

         During his short stay in various concentration camps, Mühsam suffered dreadfully and was treated to unbelievable barbaric cruety. The following is one report of some of his treatment. Again from  Wikipedia.

"After breaking his teeth with musket blows; stamping a swastika on his scalp with a red-hot brand; subjecting him to tortures which caused him to be taken into a hospital, even now the fascist hyenas of the Sonninburg concentration camp continue their beastly attacks upon this defenseless man. The last news are really atrocious: the Nazi forced our comrade to dig his own grave and then with a simulated execution made him go through the agony of a doomed man. Although his body has been reduced to a mass of bleeding and tumefied flesh, his spirit is still very high: when his traducers tried to force him to sing the Horst-Wessel-Lied (the Nazi's anthem) he defied their anger by singing the Internationale."

It was even alleged that the camp's guards had even ripped out pieces of Mühsam's beard in order to make him look more like the caricatures of orthodox Jews seen in anti-semitic newspapers and tracts.

On 2 February 1934, Mühsam was transferred to the concentration camp at Oranienburg. The beatings and torture continued, until finally on the night of 9 July 1934, Mühsam was tortured and murdered by the guards, his battered corpse found hanging in a latrine the next morning.[3]

        Those with power will always fear, revile and attempt to eliminate those who call for justice and freedom. The state will not tolerate those who will stand up to its threats, that is why it carries on its relentless propaganda against and repression of anarchists.

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