The Rote Kapelle (Red Orchestra) was the Gestapo's name for a group of dissident artists and intellectuals living in Nazi Germany's Berlin. The members of the circle, half of them women, were appalled by Nazi anti-Semitism and took action to secretly support their Jewish friends and neighbors. Those of the band who worked inside the Nazi bureaucracy found out early what was going on in the concentration camps. Many group members, but not all of them, were Communists. All of them were willing to sacrifice everything to topple the Third Reich. For most, however, their audacious acts of courage resulted in their tragic and cruel deaths. Nevertheless their heroism is greatly unappreciated, because the label the Gestapo put on them still sticks: Red Orchestra. Propaganda turned this resistance group into an organisation of Moscow paid Communist spies and saboteurs. The Cold War prevented their rehabilitation. Only now, almost 70 years later, a young American author, Anne Nelson, has written a book that tries to redeem those unsung heroes who resisted Hitler and lost their lives.
Thank you for this post. Thank you so much.
ReplyDeleteThank you and thank you.
In 1968 a sequence of investigation articles was published by DER SPIEGEL that I remember well. But what I didn´t know up today is, that only on november 8th in 2009 the german parliament officially anulled the judgements of treason against the members of ROTE KAPELLE. Thus late, nearly 70 years after their death, hundreds of men and women having lost their lifes in fighting against the nazi system were disburdened of dubious estimation and were fully rehabilitated
ReplyDelete@AnneNelson
ReplyDeleteThank you so much