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Carl von Ossietzky, (born Oct. 3, 1889, Hamburg, Germany —died May 4, 1938, Berlin.

Carl von Ossietzky was  a German journalist and pacifist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace for 1935.Ossietzky opposed German Militarism and political extremism of both the left and the right. By the time Hitler became German Chancellor in January 1933, Ossietzky had resumed his editorship, in which he uncompromisingly attacked the Nazis.

Refusing to flee Germany, he was arrested on Feb. 28, 1933, and sent to Esterwegen-Papenburg concentration camp. After enduring three years of incarceration and torture in the camp, Ossietzky was transferred in May 1936 to a prison hospital in Berlin by the German government, which was growing alarmed at the international publicity his case had begun to attract. Ossietzky was mercilessly mistreated by the guards while being deprived of food.

In November 1935, when a representative of the International Red Cross visited Ossietzky, he reported that he saw “a trembling, deadly pale something, a creature that appeared to be without feeling, one eye swollen, teeth knocked out, dragging a broken, badly healed leg . . . a human being who had reached the uttermost limits of what could be borne”.