Memorial to German Communist heroes Luxemburg, Liebknecht, and Thälmann desecrated

Every year, people lay flowers to commemorate former German Communist leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht at their graves in Berlin to commemorate their murders on Jan. 15, 1919. Here, carnations lay on the grave of Luxemburg. | Paul Zinken / dpa via AP

BERLIN—The headstones of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Ernst Thälmann, and other revolutionary martyrs have been vandalized in a shocking desecration at the Friedrichsfelde Cemetery in Berlin.

The metal plaques carrying the names and dates of birth and death of the leading Communists buried around the Memorial to the Socialists have been taken in an attack reported to German police on Monday.

The tombs surround a giant gravestone bearing the inscription “The Dead Remind Us,” and form part of an enclosed park within the cemetery whose walls bear the names of hundreds of other revolutionaries killed in the struggle, from those slain fighting fascism in the Spanish Civil War to victims of Nazi terror in Germany itself.

Each year, on the second Sunday in January, crowds march to the monument to lay red carnations on the tombs.

Police say they have no clues as to the perpetrators but recognize a political motive is “clearly identifiable.”

The original monument on the site was erected in 1926 on the site where the coffins of Luxemburg and Liebknecht, murdered by far-right paramilitaries on the orders of Germany’s then Social Democrat government in 1919, were interred.

It was destroyed by the Nazis in 1935 but replaced by East Germany’s socialist authorities in 1951. Ernst Thälmann, leader of the Communist Party of Germany from 1925 to 1933, was murdered in one of Hitler’s concentration camps in 1944. His name was added to the memorial during the GDR years.

It has periodically been a target of far-right vandalism.

Morning Star

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Morning Star

Morning Star is the socialist daily newspaper published in Great Britain. Morning Star es el diario socialista publicado en Gran Bretaña.