Activities and affiliations

Political and party leadership Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) 1867–1919 ✕ Murdered

The revolution's underground organizer, always behind the scenes, until he had to lead

On 10 March 1919, still investigating the killings of Luxemburg and Liebknecht, Jogiches was arrested and shot in the back of the head in Berlin's Moabit prison within hours. His last words to an interrogator: 'You will never find these murderers.'

Polish-Jewish Marxist revolutionary. Co-founded the SDKPiL with Rosa Luxemburg in 1893, the main forerunner of the Communist Party of Poland. During the First World War he was the key behind-the-scenes organizer of the underground Spartacus League in Germany. For decades Luxemburg's closest political comrade and personal companion, a brilliant organizer who struggled to write for himself. After Luxemburg and Liebknecht were murdered in January 1919, Jogiches took over KPD leadership and investigated their killings, only to be assassinated by the same Freikorps milieu two months later.

Social movements and organizing Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) 1882–1968 ○ Natural causes

Polish Social Democrat who forged an independent revolutionary path from the SDKPiL underground to the Comintern

In June 1911 she gave birth to her son Jan in Warsaw's Pawiak prison and lived with him in her cell for eight months.

Born into a Polish-Jewish family in Warsaw and trained at the Warsaw Conservatory, Sofia Dzerzhinskaya joined the SDKPiL in 1904 and became a core cadre of the Polish revolutionary movement alongside Rosa Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches. Despite repeated arrests and Siberian exile, she continued underground newspaper publishing and exile organizing in Kraków, then served with the Soviet diplomatic mission in Bern (1918) before settling in Moscow. From 1939 to 1943 she handled Polish affairs on the Comintern Executive Committee, directed Radio Kościuszko broadcasting communist messages into occupied Poland during World War II, and received the Order of Lenin three times.