Richard Assmann

Passions

Vocation

German Resistance member tortured and killed by the Nazis. Aßmann was a Works Council Chairman ("Betriebsratsvorsitzender") with the AOK (national Health Insurance provider) in Berlin. He also involved himself in politics and was a member of the centre-left Social Democratic Party ("Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands" / SPD). On 20 June 1933 he was forcibly removed from a tram by Nazi paramilitaries and taken away. His body was found, badly degraded, in a sack in the Dahme (river) on 11 July 1933. His daughter, Hilde Aßmann, was required to identify the body, which she was able to do because she recognised his wrist-watch. Although the precise date of his death was never established, Richard Aßmann is generally seen as the first of an estimated 500 victims - at least 23 of whom were murdered while in detention and subsequently identified - of Köpenick's week of bloodshed ("die Köpenicker Blutwoche"), one of the first recorded mass-atrocities carried out by the Nazis after they took power in January 1933. Link to Wikipedia biography