Red Heads Roll

Red Holls Roll

In the cold white fog that rose from the Rhine all sounds seemed magnified. Official witnesses and a handful of newshawks turned up their coat collars and shivered in the Cologne prison yard. Down below the Rhine steamers hooted mournfully. A door clanked. Out marched brownshirts, prison guards and the official executioner --a Cologne butcher on other days. Hoarfrost formed on the nap of his official top hat, on the shoulders of his official tailcoat. The door banged again. Out marched the prisoners, six of them with necks shaved and prison blouses open at the throat. One by one they knelt at the red-painted wooden block. Six times the executioner's broad sward flashed in a silver circle to crash down on a human neck.

So last week did Nazi Germany do to death six Communists, all under 26, who were convicted of the shooting of two Nazi Storm Troopers last February.

Theirs was far from the last execution. In Breslau another top-hatted headsman swung his sword on another Communist neck. Ten more Reds were sentenced to death in Dessau while 19 others were waiting in German jails for headsmen to get their second wind.

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