Havana, Monday June 8, 2009. Year 13 / Number 159
90 years later, Rosa Luxemburg's remains are found
By Ingo Niebel Gara
A CubaNews translation by Giselle Gil.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Sooner or later victims reappear and demand
justice. This typical crime novel thesis has been confirmed once more in
Germany. Michael Tsokas, director of Pathology at the Charité hospital
in Berlin, has reported the existence of a body that could be that of
communist leader Rosa Luxemburg
This charismatic communist leader was killed and made to disappear by
right-wing militarists in 1919. The crime was perpetrated with the
blessings of the German Social Democrats, one of its perpetrators
acknowledged in 1970. The possible appearance of Luxemburg's
remains will have consequences for the Social Democratic Party of
Germany (SPD) in a very important election year. This party is fighting
for its survival as a mass party.
When Michael Tsokas became head of Pathology at the Charité hospital in
2007 he came across the remains of an anonymous woman who had been part
of his institute's collection for 90 years. The body is missing its
head, arms and legs. After two years of research, Tsokas made the
results of its findings public: he believes that these are the remains
of communist heroine Rosa Luxemburg, because the skeleton measured one
and a half meters and has a hip deformation consistent with the
political activist’s characteristic way of walking. However, Tsokas'
finding is inconsistent with the report drafted by the two most
prestigious German coroners in 1919. It seems they performed an autopsy
on another woman’s body, whose hip was perfect. Furthermore, the wound
they found in her skull is not consistent with the brutal blow inflicted
with a rifle butt Luxemburg received, before she was shot in the temple
at close range.
MANY QUESTIONS:
Who was buried with her comrade Karl Liebknecht on June 19, 1919 in the
Friedrichsfelde cemetery in Berlin under the name of Rosa Luxemburg? Who
ordered this violation of the law? Did the SPD, governing at the time,
pressure the forensic experts into falsifying an autopsy so as to
rapidly take a dead woman who was still causing them serious problems
off their hands? This recent discovery does not change the historical
facts. On January 15, 1919, several soldiers led by the ultra right-wing
official Waldemar Pabst, arrested Luxemburg and Liebknecht after the
failure of a communist uprising in Berlin. They took the two activists
to their headquarters where they tortured them brutally. Pabst ordered
them killed after receiving approval from the highest echelons of the
SPD. The party was carrying out an uncompromising struggle for power
against all political parties to their left. They did it with the
support of the most reactionary forces of the defunct monarchy.
During that civil war, rightwing soldiers executed thousands of leftists
without any trial. In 1962 Pabst acknowledged that the Minister of War,
Gustav Noske (SPD) authorized all the deaths. In 1970, he added that the
authorization required the endorsement of the president and head of the
German SPD, Friedrich Ebert. That night in January, Liebknecht was shot
in the back. His body was then handed over to the police, claiming he
died during an “escape attempt ". The lifeless body of Luxemburg was
thrown in one of the channels of Berlin, where it appeared four months
later.
REQUEST FOR A PROPER BURIAL
Tsokas believes the arms and legs are missing, because they tied weights
to the body with cables and, in an advanced state of decomposition, the
cables cut them off. The coroner did not rule out that the skull could
have disappeared, because at that time pathologists included the head of
the famous in their macabre collections. Now, he is expecting that a DNA
test will reveal the identity of the dead woman. A niece of Luxembourg
is now living in Warsaw.
Should Rosa Luxemburg’s identity be confirmed, the head of the Die Linke
parliamentary group, Gregor Gysi, will demand from the President, from
the Federal Government and from Linke a proper burial in the “cemetery
of the Socialists" in Berlin. Every second Sunday in January, thousands
of activists pay tribute here to those who died for a better world.
In this election year, Die Linke could take advantage of the appearance
of Luxemburg in the battle of ideas against the SPD, not just by
clarifying the collaboration established by the social democrats with
the extreme right-wing in 1919, but also by clarifying the doubts
concerning the alleged suicide with firearms of the high echelon of the
Red Army Faction (RAF) in a high-security prison in 1977. These violent
deaths occurred when Helmut Schmidt was head of the social democratic
government.
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A
la carismática líder comunista la mataron e hicieron desaparecer
militares derechistas en 1919. El crimen ocurrió con el
beneplácito de la socialdemocracia alemana, como reconoció uno
de sus autores en 1970. La posible reaparición de los restos
mortales de Luxemburg salpica al Partido Socialdemócrata de
Alemania (SPD) en un año electoral muy importante, en el que
está luchando por su supervivencia como partido de masas.| [http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/2009/06/08/base.htm] | ||
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/2009/06/08/interna/artic06.html
ORIGINAL SOURCE:
http://www.gara.net/paperezkoa/20090603/140260/es/Hallan-90-anos-despues-cadaver-Rosa-Luxemburg
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8074334.stm