Published secret documents - received the Nobel Peace Prize

Let me tell you a short story about a man who had access to secret documents and information. All the information he had suggested that a leading super power was acting in a manner that ran contrary to what they promised and agreed to with much of the rest of the world a few years earlier. His name was not Julian Assange.

The man I'm talking about is Carl von Ossietzky:




He dosen't even look like Assange?



Assange however kind of looks like Karl from the movie "Die Hard":



One more picture just to emphasize the similarity between them:



But anyway, let's forget about Karl and Julian Assange and return to the person this blog post is about - Carl von Ossietzky.

Carl von Ossietzky was German and was born in 1889 in Hamburg. He died in 1938 after having spent several years in various concentration camps.

The crime he was guilty of was publishing leaked documents and data which revealed that Nazi Germany had begun to rebuild their war machine - in complete violation of the Versailles Treaty.

Because of his critical stance and his inability to shut up even though what he said was extremely uncomfortable for those in power he was sentenced to prison several times.

In any case Carl von Ossietzky was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1936 for his courage and his willingness to stand up to those power and their lackeys and speak up about what was actually going on in Germany at the time.

The last known picture of Carl:



German authorities refused him a passport to attend the ceremony in Oslo. And even if they had let him go it's doubtful whether he would have made it since he was dying of tuberculosis at the time (diseases are rampant in concentration camps, apparently).

After the Nazi takeover in Germany the press worked nonstop to demonize Carl von Ossietzky and not a single newspaper reported on the fact that he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The last time Carl appeared in public was at a trial where his lawyer was charged with embezzling the prize money that comes with the Nobel Prize.

Wrong kind of lawyer:



So what's my point with this blog entry? Perhaps that we should be very vigilant when powerful forces want to silence uncomfortable voices.