libertas Schulze-boysen
providing information to the enemy will often cost you your life
Not everyone who signed up as a member of the Nazi Party stayed affiliated with it. In 1937 Libertas Schulze-boysen and her husband, Harro, left – they’d finally fallen out of love with the regime. However, not wanting to sit back, they formulated a plan.
Libertas began collecting photographs that documented violent crimes committed by members of the Nazi Party while her husband recruited for the German resistance organisation that they had called the Red Orchestra. Then in 1941 an opportunity fell into their laps that they couldn’t resist.
Harro managed to pass intelligence to someone at the Soviet embassy about Hitler’s plans to invade the Soviet Union. At last their work had achieved something. But the Soviets ignored them and the human cost was high.
Meanwhile Harro was arrested – he’d been rumbled. Eight days later they came for the pregnant Libertas but they didn’t put her on trial right away. Instead they waited until she’d given birth and then on 19 December 1942 she was sentenced to death for high treason. The last sound she heard was the guillotine hurtling towards her neck.
“our death must be a beacon”