Augusto Alfredo Roggen - shot for spying. 34 year old Roggen was executed by firing squad at the Tower of London on the 17th of September 1915, becoming the second spy executed there in a week.  (see Ernst Mellin on the 10 of September) Roggen had been born in Uruguay.  His father was originally German but had taken Uruguayan citizenship.  Roggen was married to a German woman. Roggen had arrived in England on the 30th of May 1915 and was allowed through immigration and travelled onto Edinburgh.  Here he sent two postcards to H. Flores in Rotterdam which were intercepted and copied by British Intelligence.  The address in Rotterdam was known to the security services as a spy base.   By the 9th of June Roggen was staying in a hotel at Tarbet on Loch Lomond near Loch Long which leads t the Firth of Clyde and during World War I was in a restricted area where fishing was banned.  It was on that same day that Roggen was arrested at this hotel and transferred to London.  He was found to

🇬🇧WWII uncovered: Stanley Elton Hollis of the Green Howards: Honoured with the Only Victoria Cross Awarded for D-Day According to the Imperial War Museum: "Stan Hollis was Company Sergeant Major, D Company, 6th Battalion Green Howards. This battalion was one of two that were in the first wave of landings, King Sector, Gold Beach, at 07.32 on the morning of D-Day." "Thirty-one years old on D-Day and being one of the most experienced men of the unit, he was put in charge of three machine gun and three mortar teams that were to cover the advance of the company off the beach, up a hill beyond and over the crest towards their main objective, the German heavy naval artillery position at Mount Fleury.  The first company objective of the day was a house with a distinctive round driveway that overlooked the beach. It was here Stan performed the first of two acts of heroism that were to honour him with the only Victoria Cross awarded on D-Day." "When the lead

Ruth Ellis- the last woman to hang. On Wednesday, the 13th of July 1955 at London's Holloway Prison, Ruth Ellis secured her place in history becoming the 18th and last woman to be executed in Britain in the 20th century. Her case is memorable because she was hanged, had she had been given a life sentence she would have been forgotten in a few weeks by most people.  Ruth Hornby was born in the seaside town of Rhyl in North Wales on the 9th of October 1925, the third of six children.  She moved to London in 1941 and in 1944 became pregnant by a Canadian soldier, giving birth to her son Clare Andrea Neilson.  Ruth became a model and also a night club hostess, working initially at the Court Club where she met, and in November 1950, married dentist George Ellis.  In 1951, she gave birth to a daughter, Georgina, whom George refused to acknowledge.  The couple split up soon afterwards and Ruth went back to nightclub work, becoming the manager of the Little Club in 1953.  This was

DAYS OF REMEMBRANCE – U.S. ARMY LIBERATION OF OHRDRUF “The most appalling sight imaginable.” --GEN Patton Ohrdruf, the first camp encountered by the U.S. Army, was liberated by elements of the 602nd Tank Destroyers’ Battalion, the 4th Armored Division, and the 89th Infantry Division of the Third U.S. Army commanded by General George Patton on 6 April, 1945.  A small sub-camp of the much larger Buchenwald complex, the size of Ohrdruf belied the horrors within, and its discovery made an outsized impact on the American soldiers and commanders who witnessed the atrocities perpetrated there.  Within the walls of that run-down hilltop compound, the liberating units of the Third Army encountered what was described by Patton as “the most appalling sight imaginable.” When the U.S. Army arrived, Ohrdruf was littered with corpses; the dead were victims of starvation, overwork, and brutal execution at the hands of recently-departed SS guards, who had liquidated the camp’s population rath

WILLIAM WALLACE _ GRUSOME DEATH   The nation was crushed.  Though Wallace remained at large, the hunters were on his track; of the great army he had led at Stirling, and Falkirk only a few men remained.   At last, in the early summer of 1305, Wallace was captured some say by the treachery of his servant, and delivered to Sir John Menteith, who ordered him to be taken to London.   There, in Westminster Hall, with a wreath of laurel tied round his head in mockery, he was accused of treason.   In vain he protested that he could not be a traitor, as he had never sworn fealty to Edward; he was sentenced to death, and on the same day, the 23rd of August the sentence was put into execution with every refinement of medieval torture.    The head of the patriot was hung upon London Bridge, and his limbs were placed over the gates of Newcastle, Berwick, Stirling, and Aberdeen. Thanks for reading, leave your thought in the comment section below.

Four Female Jewish Prisoners Were Hanged At The Lagererweiterung of Auschwitz For Assisting The Sonderkommando. 1945 6 January 1945 | Four female Jewish prisoners were hanged at the Lagererweiterung of Auschwitz: Ella Gartner, Róża Robota, Regina Safir & Estera Wajsblum.  They were condemned to death for assisting the Sonderkommando in the revolt that broke out on 7 October 1944 in Birkenau.  They provided the Sonderkommando with explosives from the depots of the Weichsel-Union-Metallwerke, where three of the women worked, to the camp. Róża Robota smuggled the material to the Sonderkommando. The execution had two stages. Two of the women were hanged during the evening roll call in the presence of the male and female prisoners who worked the night shift at Weichsel-Union. Two others were hanged after the return of the squad that worked the dayshift.  The reason for the sentence was read by the Auschwitz camp commander SS-Hauptsturmführer Franz Hössler.  He screamed that „

A Jewish child is separated from his family as he is about to be sent to another concentration camp, 1942 Seen here is a child who is about to be sent to the Chełmno concentration camp. Chełmno was a killing centre which was located in west central Poland.  It was used to execute Jews who were living in Poland, Luxembourg and Germany. This child was sent there as part of the "Gehsperre Aktion", an event which saw Jews being transferred from the Lodz ghetto to other concentration camps. Once the Jews arrived at Chełmno, they were stripped and led through a cellar to a van. Once they entered the van, they were told they were going to be transported to Germany to work as labourers.  Instead, the van was closed and sealed, and poisonous gas was pumped into it through a tube in the exhaust pipe. The van would then transport the bodies to a forest nearby, where the bodies would be dumped in a mass grave. The van had a capacity of 50-70 people. At least 172,00 people d

In 1916, a young poet, journalist and patriot called Joe Plunkett was marched to the lonely execution yard of Kilmainham Gaol… The taste of his new bride, Grace Gifford's, last kiss still on his lips. The lovers had married only hours before, an all too brief humble service in the prison chapel.  The patriotic romance and tragedy was immortalised in the song "Grace" by the Wolfe Tones.  As Plunkett, the youngest signature of the Proclamation faced the firing squad he said:  “I am very happy I am dying for the glory of God and the honour of Ireland". No doubt Grace's dark eyes were the last thing he saw as the bullets flew.  But there was even more darkness to this romantic image. An artist and political activist in her own right, Grace's life as a widow would be marred by loneliness and poverty. Rather unfairly Plunkett had made her promise to never remarry, lest it tarnish her image as a martyr's wife.  Also, Grace didn't receive anything fro

HONORING THE SERVICES OF "ROBERT SHELDON SCOTT" HE WAS AWARDED THE MEDAL OF HONOR. Robert Sheldon Scott of Washington, D.C., a Colonel in the U.S. Army, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his extraordinary actions on July 29, 1943, near Munda Point airstrip on New Georgia, Solomon Islands. Scott, a second lieutenant at the time of his action, was a member of the 172nd Infantry Regiment of the 43rd Infantry Division that successfully captured Munda Point airstrip on the island of New Georgia, Solomon Islands, from its Japanese defender in the summer of 1943.  On July 29, 1943, Japanese soldiers counter-attacked against the American assault on Morrison-Johnson Hill overlooking the airfield.  Scott became detached from the rest of his men, and despite being alone, shot in the left hand, and having received a shrapnel wound to the head, he used a combination of his carbine and grenades to kill 28 Japanese soldiers, causing the rest to withdraw. His colleagues took the

The Painful Murder Of Czeslawa Kwoka In Auschwitz Extermination Camp, By Phenol Injection In The Heart. Her name was Czeslawa Kwoka, and her crime was being Polish, Catholic, and 14 years old.  Her red triangle was for political prisoners, because of where she was born in Poland.   After this photo was taken, she was killed in Auschwitz extermination camp on March 12, 1943 with a phenol injection in the heart.   Just before the execution, she was photographed by prisoner Wilhelm Brasse, who would later testify against the executioner of Czeslawa, a woman.   Just before the photo, the executioner punched Czeslawa in the face, as the hematoma on her lip shows.   This is the face of a terrified little girl, who didn't even speak the language of her executioner.    She had lost her mother a few days before.  But she dried her tears to look presentable for the photo.  They took her hair and her life, but they couldn’t take her dignity. She was only one of about 250,000 children a

John Bedford - a strange jealousy murder. 41 year old John Bedford was hanged at 8.00 a.m. on Wednesday the 30th of July 1902 within Derby’s Vernon Street Gaol by William Billington, assisted by Henry Pierrepoint, for the murder of his girlfriend, 48 year old Nancy Price at “Oxpasture” in Parker’s Lane, Sutton-cum-Duckmanton, near Chesterfield, Derbyshire on the 25th of June of that year.   Nancy was married to Joseph Price who was a lot older than her.  He ran a fish and chip shop and it appeared that Nancy did not work. For several years Nancy had been having an affair with Bedford who was more her own age.  However she would not leave her husband for him, something that rankled with Bedford. On Wednesday the 25th of June 1902 while Joseph was at his shop, Nancy and Bedford visited the White Hart pub in Callow where they met Alice Round.  She went back to Nancy’s home with them to pick up a skirt that Nancy had been altering for her. The following morning Bedford was in the W