They Hung Them On Meat Hooks

They hung them on meat hooks. The prisoners sat shackled in their cells awaiting the inevitable. They spent their last hours in what they called “the house of the dead,” a building that sat adjacent to the Plotzensee execution chamber.1 The guards came for the prisoners and led eight of them at a time across a colorless courtyard to their demise. The chamber was small, gray and reeked of death. Just a few months before, it housed the infamous Nazi guillotine which took the lives of 188 people. The guillotine was no more. In its place hung a large steel beam with eight hooks attached to it. The prisoners were lined up shoulder to shoulder. They were not allowed final words. Some wept while others remained silent. They were not hung all at once. Instead they were forced to watch and wait as one by one had a noose made of butcher wire, a thin, sharp cord that cut into the flesh, wrapped around their neck. The first prisoner was hoisted onto the meat hook and left to hang. It was not a quick death. His neck did not snap. He was suffocating as the wire ripped into the flesh of his neck. His struggling only made it worse. The other seven captives could only stand and watch knowing their time was coming.
They men executed at Plotzensee Prison were the resisters behind the July 20 Plot. Once highly decorated officers in the upper echelons of the Nazi regime, they now paid the ultimate price for their attempt to take down Adolf Hitler and salvage Germany. Many know about the brave men involved in the attempted assassination and the coup in Berlin but few know about the rebellion in Paris. For three hours, the German resistance held Paris in its control without firing a single shot. General Stulpnagel and Colonels Hofacker and Boineburg took the capital despite the failure in Berlin. Very little is known about these men and the events they set in motion on the night of July 20 1944 but what is known is that they very nearly succeeded in overthrowing the Nazi regime. What