Richard Aßmann (works council chairman)
Richard Aßmann (16 December 1875 – 21 June 1933) became a Works Council Chairman ("Betriebsratsvorsitzender") with the AOK (national Health Insurance provider) in Berlin. He also involved himself in politics and was a member of the centre-left Social Democratic Party ("Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands" / SPD). On 20 June 1933 he was forcibly removed from a tram by Nazi paramilitaries and taken away. His body was found, badly degraded, in a sack in the Dahme (river) on 11 July 1933. His daughter, Hilde Aßmann, was required to identify the body, which she was able to do because she recognised his wrist watch. Although the precise date of his death was never established, Richard Aßmann is generally seen as the first of an estimated 500 victims – at least 23 of whom were murdered while in detention and subsequently identified – of Köpenick's week of bloodshed ("die Köpenicker Blutwoche"), one of the first recorded mass-atrocities carried out by the Nazis after they took power in January 1933. Life Richard Aßmann was a clerical worker employed by the AOK (national Health Insurance provider) in Berlin. During Germany's inter-war democratic period his fellow workers elected him as an employee representative to the organisation's works