[Marxism] 90 years later, Rosa Luxemburg's remains are found

[marxist front]

  GRANMA  Havana, Monday June 8, 2009.
 
  90 years later, Rosa  Luxemburg's remains are found
 
 By Ingo Niebel Gara
 
 
 
 http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs2466.html
 
 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.
 
 
 



Lal Salam (Red Salute)

P (India)


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