Erich Muhsam

• Berlin, Imperial Germany

Erich Muhsam was a German anarchist poet and NAZI critique in German Third Reich, lead by Adolf Hitler. Erich Muhsam was arrested by the NAZI government, tortured and murdered at the Oranienburg concentration camp. - AsNotedIn

His widow declared this evening that, when she was first allowed to visit her husband after his arrest, his face was so swollen by beating that she could not recognise him. He was assigned to the task of cleaning toilets and staircases and Storm Troopers amused themselves by spitting in his face, she added. On 8 July she saw him for the last time alive. Despite the tortures he had undergone for fifteen months, she declared, he was cheerful, and she knew at once when his "suicide" was reported to her three days later that it was untrue. When she told the police that they had "murdered" him, she asserted they shrugged their shoulders and laughed. A post mortem examination was refused, according to Frau Muhsam, but Storm Troopers, incensed with their new commanders, showed her the body which bore unmistakable signs of strangulation, with the back of the skull shattered as if Herr Muhsam had been dragged across the parade ground.