It's Wednesday, April 14, 1943, a spring evening in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp north of Berlin. A man jumps from a window in Barrack 3 at Special Camp A.
The special camp is an area for prominent prisoners separated from the rest of the prison population. It's 140 meters (460 feet) long and 50 meters wide, sealed off from the main camp by a brick wall. A 2.6-meter high-voltage fence is intended to prevent inmates from escaping.
The man is wearing high boots and soldiers' trousers, and his black hair is uncovered. "Corporal, corporal," he shouts at SS Rottenführer Konrad Hafrich. "Shoot me!"
Hafrich shouts that he should return to the barrack, but the man keeps going. "Don't be a coward," the prisoner yells, as he walks toward the electric fence. "When he grabbed the wire," Hafrich said, "I shot him, as ordered."
It is shortly after 9 p.m. The man at the fence is dead. His body stiffened as he was jumping. The left leg is almost horizontal in the trip wire, and the right leg is bent. The body is left in this position for a considerable amount of time. It's a sensitive case for camp commandant Anton Kaindl, who has notified the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin. When an SS officer and two professors arrive the next day, the dead man is photographed, lifted out of the barbed wire and taken to the camp crematorium.
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