ABSTRACT
The Düsseldorf Hauptbahnhof is a bustling hub of activity, filled with train gates, eateries, a café, a large bookstore, a beautiful florist, and other shops. It is well-worn terrain—a very familiar and yet, simultaneously, foreign place to the city’s visitors. Brass bricks, or Stolpersteine, mark the location of some of Düsseldorf’s former Jewish residents or their places of employment, but I know of no such markers to commemorate Communists who were tortured under the Third Reich in a nearby cellar. On 11 July 1933, 2 when Karl Schwesig was arrested for the first time under the Third Reich in Düsseldorf-Dernedorf, he was taken to the abandoned basement of the Schlegel Brewery, located on the Bismarckstraße. There he and other Communists were tortured relentlessly, 3 some to death, over a four-day period. The postwar charges against one Hilfslehrer involved in Karl Schwesig’s torture underscores this point: “The one in question, A. S., 4 actively participated in bringing about the severe physical abuse, causing the death of those affected.” 5
