Word: headsman
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...dawn that day in a misty Berlin prison courtyard two cringing figures in suits of coarse sacking were led out, their hands chained behind their backs. Headsman August Gröber, 67 and spry for his age, advanced in impeccable full dress exuding Eau de Cologne. An artist, as are all great executioners, Gröber keeps his blade on ice until the last second, figures that blood has a tendency to congeal on an iced blade and hence will not spout on his boiled shirt. Swish-clump! Swish-clump!-two heads rolled in the sand. One of them, declared...
...details, finally satisfied themselves that an axing had occurred. With the backs of their heads shaved bald, the Baroness von Berg and Frau von Natzmer were led in coarse, nondescript prison garb to the blood-caked block from which so many heads now roll in the sawdust. The headsman, incongruous in his yellowish celluloid shirtfront, his old silk hat and his red-spotted tailcoat, raised the gleaming ax. Twice it swished down to sever a lovely neck and send the blood of a German woman spouting high. According to Nazis, the Baroness von Berg was the first female aristocrat...
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...
...spurious confirmation to the lie Elizabeth has spread about her kinswoman. The Lords then murder Darnley, shift the blame to Bothwell when he marries Mary. They defeat Mary and Bothwell in battle. Mary escapes from their jail into Elizabeth's jail and her tragedy waits only on the headsman's sword. Author Anderson entirely whitewashes Mary and Bothwell for the murder of Darnley...
Adolf Hitler's electioneering bark that when he became Dictator "Heads will roll in the sand!" ended factually in the sharp-bitten order of Sub-Dictator Hermann Wilhelm Goring to revive the medieval headsman's axe and chopping block in executing criminals duly condemned by Prussian courts to Death (TIME, Aug. 14). Last week three heads rolled off bloody blocks in the courtyards of Berlin prisons and a prominent Nazi official furnished correspondents with beheading facts...