In August 1933, with the Nazis in power since January, all other political parties were banned and leftists still trapped in Germany were hunted. Long before the beginning of the Holocaust or the construction of the great extermination camps in Poland, a group of some 5,000 Communists and Socialists were arrested and sent to a forced labor camp at Börgermoor near Papenburg, there to face beatings and starvation. In a response to the banning of traditional leftist songs and a particularly brutal pogrom that had taken place the night before, several inmates conspired to write this song. Within two days it, too, was banned.... but as prisoners and guards left the camp it spread far beyond it's confines and became a symbol of resistance to Fascism.