In Germany, the remains of the Dutchman Marinus van der Lubbe, who was executed in 1934, have been dug upreports The Mirror. A team of pathologists is investigating whether the left-wing activist sentenced to death for the Reichstag fire had been drugged.
Read also: Lessons from the Reichstag fire
Van der Lubbe is known worldwide as the arsonist of the German Reichstag building in Berlin on February 27, 1933, shortly after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor. But despite his confession during the trial against him, there have always been doubts whether he was guilty. Or at least wasn’t the only one to blame and got help from other communists.
Apathetic impression
The then 24-year-old Van der Lubbe made an apathetic impression during the trial and that may have been because he had been administered scopolamine, or truth serum. To get a definite answer, his body was exhumed at the end of last month in Leipzig, where he was beheaded on January 10, 1934. The result of the toxicological report is according to The Mirror expected in a few weeks.
Van der Lubbe said after his arrest that he set the fire to wake up the German workers to the danger of National Socialism. The Nazis, who had just come to power, took advantage of the burning down of the Reichstag building to declare a state of emergency and to detain political opponents, especially communists, en masse.