BERLIN, Jan. 13 (Xinhua) -- Tens of thousands leftist people from all parts of Germany on Sunday joined events to commemorate prominent communists Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht who were murdered 100 years ago.
Despite the cold and rainy weather early on Sunday morning, people began to arrive from all directions at the Central Cemetery Friedrichsfelde, where the two communists buried, and laid wreaths or red carnations on the tombstones of Luxemburg and Liebknecht, before walking around the monument sites established by the former East German government.
The events were mainly organized by the Die Linke, Germany's major leftist party, with its federal leaders Katja Kipping and Bernd Riexinger, as well as heads of the parliamentary group Sahra Wagenknecht and Dietmar Bartsch attending the wreath-laying ceremony.
"Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were pioneers of the leftist movements in Europe and played important roles in it as well as in the German history at the very critical time," Effi Boehlke, who works for the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation under the Die Linke, told Xinhua.
People also use the events to demonstrate against the current political issues. Some leftists showed slogans "Racism is no alternative", accusing the anti-migration German party AfD. Some protested for the rights of the asylum seekers.
Both born in 1871, Luxemburg and Liebknecht were renowned anti-war activists during the WWI and co-founders of the German Communist Party at the end of 1918. They were killed on Jan. 15, 1919 by the social democratic government after a failed uprising.
They were killed at a very critical time after Germany's defeat in WWI and the newly-born Weimar Republic were stormed by endless political movements.
Some 10,000 leftists, also hailing from other EU countries such as France and Spain, marched from Berlin's Frankfurter Gate square to the cemetery to mark the pairs' death.
The commemorations to Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht are held every year and the graveyard has become a magnet. Organizers estimated that tens of thousands of people will visited here on the 100th anniversary of the two communists' murder.
