Marianne Baum
Marianne Baum (9 February 1912 – 18 August 1942) was a German communist and anti-Nazi. Baum was executed after an attack on a propaganda show in Berlin. Life. Baum was born in Saarburg in 1912 into a Jewish family. Her brother, Lothar Cohn was also a communist activist. In 1927, aged 14 she was attending political groups where she met Herbert Baum. She married Herbert and they formed the "Gruppe Herbert Baum" in Berlin. This was a communist Jewish resistance group that planned and executed a successful attack on an anti-Communist propaganda exhibition in Berlin titled "Soviet  Paradise". The 18 May 1942 attack annoyed the highest members of the Nazi Party and many members were arrested. Marianne Baum and eight fellow activists were sentenced to death because of their "treason". They were guillotined on 18 August 1942 at the Berlin-Plötzensee penitentiary. Legacy. There is a plaque in the Weißensee Cemetery in Berlin commemorating the Herbert Baum Group and there is also a street near the cemetery named Herbert-Baum-Straße. In Berlin's Lustgarten a monument designed by Jürgen Raue was erected in 1981 commemorating the 1942 attack. While the East German government, which established these  memorials, emphasized Baum's allegiance to Communism, other historians (as well as veterans of the group) have noted the group's multiple political and cultural influences and the significance of the Baum group as an example of Jewish resistance to Nazism.