Who was the last infamous inmate of Spandau Prison?
"said: ""The Germans, who today live separated into East and West, have never stopped and will never stop to feel like one nation."" His speech was, however, censored in the official Communist Party newspaper ""Pravda"". However, when German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher protested against this to his Soviet counterpart Eduard Shevardnadze, the speech was then printed unabridged in the lesser paper ""Izvestia"". Weizsäcker also appealed to the Soviet authorities to agree to a pardon for the last inmate in the Spandau Prison, former Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess. This proved unsuccessful, and Hess committed suicide six weeks later. The visit was"
"crimes against humanity for his deportation of the Viennese Jews. He served 20 years as a prisoner in Spandau Prison. On 20 July 1949 whilst Baldur von Schirach was imprisoned, Henriette filed for divorce, because of her romantic involvement with Peter Jacob, former husband to German film director Leni Riefenstahl. The divorce was granted a year later in July 1950. In 1956, there was discussion in the media about the last three Nazi war criminals detained at Spandau, (Rudolf Hess, Albert Speer, and Baldur von Schirach), due to the long time for detention and high cost to the international community"
"the Waldfriedhof Cemetery in Berlin. Eugene K. Bird Lieutenant Colonel Eugene K. Bird (11 March 1926 – 28 October 2005) was US Commandant of the Spandau Allied Prison from 1964 to 1972 where, together with six others, Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess was incarcerated. In March 1971, Bird’s superiors at the US Mission in Berlin became aware of Bird's cooperation with Hess in the writing of a book about Hess. He was put under house arrest and eventually made to resign his position as Commandant of Spandau Prison. This episode, in effect, also ended his military career. Eugene K. Bird was"
"to Spandau Prison in 1947. Of the 12 defendants sentenced to death by hanging, two were not hanged: Martin Bormann was convicted in absentia (he had, unknown to the Allies, died while trying to escape from Berlin in May 1945), and Hermann Göring committed suicide the night before the execution. The remaining 10 defendants sentenced to death were hanged. The definition of what constitutes a war crime is described by the Nuremberg principles, a set of guidelines document which was created as a result of the trial. The medical experiments conducted by German doctors and prosecuted in the so-called Doctors'"
"Richard Rudolph (concentration camp survivor) Richard Rudolph (June 11, 1911 – January 31, 2014) was the last surviving victim of ""double persecution"" in that he was incarcerated for nearly nine years in Nazi prisons and concentration camps and then was imprisoned for a further ten years in the communist German Democratic Republic (East Germany). He was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen, Neuengamme, and Ravensbrück concentration camps and the Salzgitter-Watenstedt Leinde subcamp of Neuengamme in addition to various police, penitentiary and juvenile prisons. Grounds for his imprisonment and persecution in the Nazi era were his stand as a conscientious objector, for which he"
"the Swedes in 1634. In 1806, after the Battle of Jena and Auerstedt, French troops under Napoleon took possession of the city and stayed there until 1807. In 1812, Napoleon returned and the Spandau Citadel was besieged in 1813 by Prussian and Russian troops. The poet and revolutionary Gottfried Kinkel was an inmate of the Spandau town prison from 1849, until he was freed by his friend Carl Schurz on the night of November 6, 1850. Before World War I, Spandau was a seat of large, government, cannon foundries, factories for making gunpowder, and other munitions of war making, it"
"the last execution of any criminal and six years before the suspension and later abolition of the death penalty. Guenther Podola Guenther Fritz Erwin Podola (8 February 1929 – 5 November 1959) was a German-born petty thief, and the last man to be hanged in Britain for killing a police officer. His trial was notable and controversial because of his defence of amnesia and the use of expert witnesses to determine whether his illness was real. Podola was born in Berlin, Germany. He was a fanatical member of the Hitler Youth movement. Podola moved to Canada in August 1952. On"
"Eugene K. Bird Lieutenant Colonel Eugene K. Bird (11 March 1926 – 28 October 2005) was US Commandant of the Spandau Allied Prison from 1964 to 1972 where, together with six others, Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess was incarcerated. In March 1971, Bird’s superiors at the US Mission in Berlin became aware of Bird's cooperation with Hess in the writing of a book about Hess. He was put under house arrest and eventually made to resign his position as Commandant of Spandau Prison. This episode, in effect, also ended his military career. Eugene K. Bird was born in Lambert, Montana, United"
"Guenther Podola Guenther Fritz Erwin Podola (8 February 1929 – 5 November 1959) was a German-born petty thief, and the last man to be hanged in Britain for killing a police officer. His trial was notable and controversial because of his defence of amnesia and the use of expert witnesses to determine whether his illness was real. Podola was born in Berlin, Germany. He was a fanatical member of the Hitler Youth movement. Podola moved to Canada in August 1952. On 1 March 1957 he was sentenced to 10 days' imprisonment following a conviction for burglary in Montreal. Then on"
"with British, French and Soviet soldiers, continued until Spandau's last prisoner, Rudolf Hess, died in 1987. Until the end of the Cold War, members of the brigade were eligible for the Army of Occupation Medal with Germany clasp. Because of the legal status of West Berlin, it was technically occupied territory left over from World War II. During the early 1980s, the U.S. Army Regimental System initiative renamed a large percentage of infantry, armor and artillery battalions to align overseas commands with units assigned to stateside brigades, reinforcing the Army's regimental designations and unit morale. The original intent was to"
"Rudolf Brazda Rudolf Brazda (26 June 1913 – 3 August 2011) was the last known concentration camp survivor deported by Nazi Germany on charges of homosexuality. Brazda spent nearly three years at the Buchenwald concentration camp, where his prisoner uniform was branded with the distinctive pink triangle that the Nazis used to mark men interned as homosexuals. After the liberation of Buchenwald, Brazda settled in Alsace, northeastern France, in May 1945 and lived there for the rest of his life. Although other gay men who survived the Holocaust are still alive, they were not known to the Nazis as homosexuals"
"of Germany. Both were in West Berlin, Germany, and existed during the Cold War from 1948 to 1989. These were the Berlin Air Safety Center and Spandau Prison (which was demolished in 1987 when Rudolf Hess, the sole remaining prisoner, died). These two organizations were uniquely four-powered in that American, British, French, and Soviet authorities cooperated in their management. This was a far cry from the intensely adversarial relations the allies had with the Warsaw Pact leader in almost every other aspect of world affairs during this time. Both organizations remained low-profile and secretive during their existences to avoid highlighting"
"and especially, the West Berlin government, who were left to foot the Spandau bill yet suffered a lack of space in their own prison system. The debate surrounding the imprisonment of the seven war criminals in such a large space, with such a numerous and expensive complementary staff, was only heightened as time went on and prisoners were released. Acrimony reached its peak after the release of Speer and Schirach in 1966, leaving only one inmate, Hess, remaining in an otherwise under-utilized prison. Various proposals were made to remedy this situation, ranging from moving the prisoners to an appropriately sized"
"in 1947, where he served a life sentence. Repeated attempts by family members and prominent politicians to win his early release were blocked by the Soviet Union. While still in custody in Spandau, he died by suicide in 1987 at the age of 93. After his death, the prison was demolished to prevent it from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine. Hess, the oldest of three children, was born on 26 April 1894 in Alexandria, Egypt, into the ethnic German family of Fritz Hess, a prosperous merchant from Bavaria, and Clara Hess (""née"" Münch). His brother, Alfred, was born in 1897 and"
"Pavel Wonka Pavel Wonka (January 21, 1953 in Vrchlabí – April 24, 1988 in Hradec Králové) was a Czechoslovak of partly German origin and is known in the Czech historical context as a dissident, an anti-communist, and the last political prisoner to die in a communist prison in the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia. He is the last Czechoslovak political prisoner who died while imprisoned. After being arrested for his liberal views, he was beaten by the police. He was released because of bad health condition, but the judge, Marcela Horváthová, sent him back to prison for another five months. There"
"along with 10 other prisoners, five men and five women. The convicts were on the backs of 11 trucks, bound hand and foot. Pauls was collared with a noose at the center of the central gallows and pushed out of the truck. On one side of him, Gerda Steinhoff, on his other side, an unknown Kapo. It is generally believed that the execution was filmed. Johann Pauls Johann Pauls (born 9 February 1908 in Danzig – died 4 July 1946 in Gdańsk) was a German SS-""Oberscharführer"" in Stutthof concentration camp. He was executed for war crimes. Pauls was the third"
"were discovered and came under fire from the NVA border troops. Gueffroy was hit in the chest by two shots and died in the border strip. Gaudian, badly but not fatally injured, was arrested and was sentenced on 24 May 1989 to imprisonment of three years by the Pankow district court for attempted illegal border-crossing of the first degree (""""versuchten ungesetzlichen Grenzübertritts im schweren Fall""""). In September 1989 Gaudian was freed on bail by the East German government, and on 17 October 1989 he was transferred to West Berlin. Chris Gueffroy is often erroneously named as the last person to"
"that the number of people executed by hanging by Nazi Germans is unknown, altogether at least 1,580 people were executed in Pankrác Prison between 1930 and 1989. The Czech dissident Pavel Wonka, who was the last political prisoner to die under the communist regime, was imprisoned at Pankrác, although ultimately he died at a prison in Hradec Králové in 1988. In 2011, prisoners started secret preparations for a riot. After discovering a large stockpile of stabbing and slashing weapons in Pankrác Prison's workshops, the Prison Service and the Czech Police uncovered plans for a coordinated riot in 5 different prisons"
"Toivo Koljonen Toivo Harald ""Kirves"" Koljonen (12 December 1912 – 21 October 1943) was the last Finn executed for a civilian crime. He was executed by firing squad for a sextuple murder. Koljonen was born 1912 in Lahti, Finland. He had been sentenced to prison and had been incarcerated at Riihimäki prison, where he had been moved to Huittinen auxiliary prison. He escaped from prison in 1943 and attempted to hide from the authorities. He found a nearby farmhouse, where a family of six--a mother, grandparents and two children--lived; the father and eldest son had been conscripted into the army."
"Church, Paris, which houses a memorial chapel to victims of Deportation. Officials, diplomacy representatives, as well as militants and association representatives were in attendance. It was yet another opportunity to recall that in the last three years of his life, Rudolf had become a unique witness, and that remembering homosexual deportation today remains essential in the struggle against discriminations. Rudolf Brazda Rudolf Brazda (26 June 1913 – 3 August 2011) was the last known concentration camp survivor deported by Nazi Germany on charges of homosexuality. Brazda spent nearly three years at the Buchenwald concentration camp, where his prisoner uniform was"
"execution and burial site in Ryvangen where he was executed. Bishop Hans Fuglsang-Damgaard led the service with participation from the royal family, the government and representatives of the resistance movement. On 19 September 1947 a memorial wall in the Copenhagen Police Headquarters with the names of 157 policemen who lost their lives during the occupation including that of Glendau was inaugurated. Similarly a memorial plaque for Glendau was mounted at the police station in Antonigade 11. Svend Glendau Svend Glendau (12 March 1910 – 27 February 1945) was a member of the Danish resistance executed by the German occupying power."
"were transported by aircraft to the Allied military prison at Spandau in Berlin on 18 July 1947. The Soviet member of the tribunal, Major-General Iona Nikitchenko, filed a document recording his dissent of Hess's sentence; he felt the death sentence was warranted. Spandau was placed under the control of the Allied Control Council, the governing body in charge of the military occupation of Germany. It consisted of representatives from four member states: Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union. Each country supplied guards for the prison for a month at a time on a rotating basis. After the"
"to undress in the freezing cold of winter, and then doused them with ice cold water. When the women moved, Paradies beat them. For this and other brutality, including causing the deaths of some prisoners, she was sentenced to death. She was publicly executed by short-drop hanging on 4 July 1946 with 10 other Stutthof guards and kapos (five women and six men total); she was the last of the women to hang. Ewa Paradies Ewa Paradies (17 December 1920 – 4 July 1946) was a Nazi concentration camp overseer. In August 1944 she went to Stutthof SK-III camp for"
"of Hitler, and journalists such as Egon Kisch and Carl von Ossietzky, were held there in so-called protective custody. Spandau Prison became a sort of predecessor of the Nazi concentration camps. While it was formally operated by the Prussian Ministry of Justice, the Gestapo tortured and abused its inmates, as Egon Erwin Kisch recalls in his memories of Spandau Prison. By the end of 1933 the first Nazi concentration camps had been erected (at Dachau, Osthofen, Oranienburg, Sonnenburg, Lichtenburg and the marshland camps around Esterwegen); all remaining prisoners who had been held in so-called protective custody in state prisons were"
"he died due to a lack of medical care. Horváthová still works as a judge. Pavel Wonka Pavel Wonka (January 21, 1953 in Vrchlabí – April 24, 1988 in Hradec Králové) was a Czechoslovak of partly German origin and is known in the Czech historical context as a dissident, an anti-communist, and the last political prisoner to die in a communist prison in the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia. He is the last Czechoslovak political prisoner who died while imprisoned. After being arrested for his liberal views, he was beaten by the police. He was released because of bad health condition,"
"theft and assassinations. Betrayal from within the group led to Schreuder's arrest on 7 February 1945. He was imprisoned in the infamous ""Scholtenshuis"" in Groningen, the headquarters of the Sicherheitsdienst (S.D., a branch of the SS), where he was tortured and eventually shot and died in Anloo, Netherlands at the age of 32. Dwight Eisenhower (as Supreme Commander of SHAEF) commended Schreuder posthumously for ""brave conduct while acting under his orders during the liberation of the country"". On 15 December 1983 Schreuder was posthumously awarded the Resistance Memorial Cross, presented by Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld to his widow. Pieter Meindert"
"Barbara Erni Barbara Erni (15 February 1743 – 26 February 1785) was a Liechtenstein woman known for stealing from inns throughout western Europe using a confidence trick. Known in Liechtenstein legend as Golden Boos, Erni was the last person to be executed by Liechtenstein. Erni was born in Feldkirch to a homeless couple. In 1779, she married Tiroler Franz, a man with a reputation for criminal behaviour. According to the legend, the Golden Boos was a woman with red-blond hair and great strength who travelled throughout the European countryside with a large treasure chest or backpack. Wherever she rested for"
"of 65 POWs when the Czechs decided to move them all by foot in June 1945. When a train passed the march route, Hanke and several other POWs made a break for it and clung on to the train. The Czechs opened fire, with Hanke falling first while two other POWs slumped on the track. They were then beaten to death with rifle butts by the Czechs. Karl Hanke Karl August Hanke (24 August 1903 – 8 June 1945) was the last ""Reichsführer"" of the ""Schutzstaffel"" (SS), and an official of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Nazi Germany. He served"
"Rainey Bethea Rainey Bethea (c. 1909 – August 14, 1936) was the last person in the United States. Bethea, who confessed to the rape and murder of a 70-year-old woman named Lischia Edwards, was convicted of her rape and publicly hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky. Mistakes in performing the hanging, and the surrounding media circus, contributed to the end of public executions in the United States. Born in Roanoke, Virginia, Bethea was a black man orphaned after the death of his mother in 1919 and his father in 1926. Little is known of his time before he arrived in Owensboro in"
"all prisoners were strip-searched and inspected and given new clothes before and after meeting lawyers. During a collective hunger strike in 1974, which led to the death of Meins, philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre visited Baader in Stammheim Prison where he was being held. He allegedly described Baader after the meeting as being a ""twat"" (""Quel con!""). Although he did not like Baader's behavior, he criticized the harsh conditions of imprisonment Baader endured. Meinhof was found dead in her cell at Stuttgart-Stammheim on 9 May 1976, hanging from the grating covering her cell window. Members of the Red Army Faction and others"
"His accomplices received lesser penalties, and after appeal, the death sentence (as was practice at the time) was changed in Svea Hovrätt (appellate court) to a lifetime of hard labour. Hadjetlaché allegedly succumbed to mental illness in jail, and died in confinement in Långholmen in 1929. The last woman sentenced to death – also the last death sentence ""not to be reprieved"" – was the ""angelmaker"" Hilda Nilsson, who was sentenced to the guillotine on 14 July 1917 for the murder of several infant children. She preempted the execution by hanging herself in her cell in Landskrona Citadel. It is"
"were taken for outdoor walks around the prison grounds for an hour each day, separated about apart. Some of the rules became more relaxed as time went on. Visits to Spandau of half an hour per month were allowed, but Hess forbade his family to visit until December 1969, when he was a patient at the British Military Hospital in West Berlin for a perforated ulcer. By this time Wolf Rüdiger Hess was 32 years old and Ilse 69; they had not seen Hess since his departure from Germany in 1941. After this illness, he allowed his family to visit"
"released early, the last being Otto Brinkmann on May 9, 1958. Brinkmann had been convicted along with three others in the Einsatzgruppen Trial. These last four inmates were released from Landsberg at the conclusion of the U.S. War Crimes program. As measured by the 2,400-strong staff of the Mittelbau-Dora complex, only a small number were actually charged: Only 19 defendants were indicted in the Dora Trial and 5 in the collateral proceedings. Also, in relation to other Dachau concentration camp procedures, the number of defendants was rather low. The tendency for leniency in the Dora Trial was clear: In the"