On January 15, 1951, Chairman Mao personally signed the first certificate of martyrdom in New China, the No. 00001 Certificate of Martyrdom.
Unlike other revolutionary martyrs, this martyr did not hold important positions in the party or army, nor did he have any earth-shattering military achievements, and even until his death, there was no record of him in the relevant archives.
His name was Cong Dezi, and before his death, he was the secretary of Zeng Kuoqing, director of the Political Department of the Eighth Theater of operations of the Kuomintang. So how did such a Secretary of a Kuomintang official become a martyr of the Republic and have Chairman Mao personally issue the first martyr's certificate in New China for his family?
In 1910, Cong Dezi was born into a low-income peasant family in Fengcheng County, Liaoning Province. My father struggled to make ends meet by renting the landlord's land. Although the life was poor, the good family was alive, and the young Cong Dezi grew up healthy under the care of his parents.
At the age of schooling, the father who had undergone the baptism of the ideas of the Xinhai Revolution did not want his child to live at the bottom of society like himself, doing some hard work facing the loess and facing the sky, but hoped that he could learn new ideas and strive to be a useful person in Chinese society. So the family saved money, and my father even gritted his teeth and borrowed money from relatives and friends around him for Cong Dezi to study in the school.
In 1923, Cong Dezi graduated from Fengcheng County High School and was admitted to the Fengcheng Second Normal School, during which he was gradually impacted by progressive ideas under the torrent of revolution.
In 1928, Cong Dezi was admitted to Northeastern University, during the school period came into contact with new ideas, after the September 18 Incident, Northeastern University moved into Beiping, Cong Dezi also came to Beiping, watching the Japanese burning and looting in their hometown, doing no evil, Cong Dezi was angry in his heart, and decided to devote himself to the anti-Japanese national salvation movement.
After graduating from UTokyo, Cong Dezi was assigned to work in the Political Training Office of the Beiping Army Branch of the Northeast Army.
Originally thinking of showing his ambitions in the army, he unexpectedly started to do fratricide - in 1935, the old Chiang Kai-shek successively transferred the Northeast Army to Hubei and other places to fight with the Communists, threatening that "if you want to be outside, you must first be inside."
The morale of the Northeast Army was low, and Cong Dezi picked up the pen and attacked the Kuomintang reactionaries in many newspapers with a sharp style, and propagated the anti-Japanese national salvation proposition of "reactionary civil war, the muzzle of the gun to the outside world" in many newspapers. As a result, he was hated and hostile by the Kuomintang and imprisoned. Later, under the direct negotiation of Zhang Xueliang, Cong Dezi regained his freedom.
After the outbreak of the "Xi'an Incident," Zhang Xueliang arranged for Cong Dezi to join the joint general office of the "Northwest Military Committee of the Anti-Japanese Coalition Army," which was jointly formed by the Northeast Army, the Northwest Army, and the Red Army, and served as a member of the Propaganda Committee, and entrusted him to take over the "Xijing Daily" sponsored by the former Kuomintang Shaanxi Provincial Party Department, change it to "Liberation Daily," and serve as editor-in-chief. Cong Dezi used his pen as a gun and published a large number of current political commentaries, and the Liberation Daily often sent Zhou Enlai directly to read it.
Unfortunately, due to the arrival of the Kuomintang Central Army in Xi'an in 1937, the Liberation Daily had to stop functioning, and the editor-in-chief Cong Dezi lost his job and had to find another way out.
He left Xi'an on February 9 and began visiting classmates and friends working in Beiping, Shanghai and other areas.
After leaving Xi'an, Cong Dezi met Wang Zhuqing in Shanxi, and after the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in 1937, he and Wang Zhuqing became a couple, and found the Eighth Route Army and became acquainted with Deng Xiaoping. Cong Dezi told Deng Xiaoping that he hoped that he could truly contribute to the revolution, that his enthusiasm for blood was nowhere to be brought into play, and that under the specific guidance of Comrades Deng Xiaoping and Xie Jueya, he hoped that he could rely on his extraordinary talent and good image to penetrate into the enemy and do underground intelligence work for our party.
In February 1938, the "People's News Agency" founded by Cong Dezi was officially opened, and Cong Dezi, as the first president, carried out revolutionary propaganda against the large number of refugees pouring in from Lanzhou.
In the following month, Cong Dezi and yu Qian, the only reporter under his command, actively created, enthusiastically engaged in the propaganda activities of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and salvation, as well as reports on the living conditions of the poor masses in Gansu, publishing hundreds of articles in one month, with high quality, high quantity, and earnest speech, which were reprinted by many newspapers and periodicals in ningxia, Gansu.
In order to facilitate the work, Cong Dezi actively organized and mobilized the broad masses to publicize anti-Japanese activities in his open capacity as a progressive cultural person, and used his old connections to rescue Red Army soldiers many times.
Under Xie Jueya's arrangement, Cong Dezi successfully entered the Political Department of the Eighth Theater of the Kuomintang and served as the secretary of Zeng Guoqing, the director of the Political Department.
In addition, Cong Dezi became friends with a man named Zhang Hanchen, a friend of Zhang Xueliang, who had previously worked with Cong Dezi, and through Zhang Hanchen, Cong Dezi accurately collected a lot of intelligence on the Kuomintang's military deployment and facilities.
In June 1939, the Gansu Working Committee of the Communist Party of China was destroyed, and Cong Dezi, who was sticking to Lanzhou, accidentally revealed his identity in the process of collecting intelligence for the party. On February 20, 1941, this day was a small year, the boss warmly invited Cong Dezi to a banquet, when he received the news, Cong Dezi already felt that something was wrong, and friends around him advised Cong Dezi to leave Lanzhou quickly. But Cong Dezi still decided to go to the banquet to inquire about the situation.
In fact, Cong Dezi had already thought about it in his heart, and he understood that this was a feast of the Hongmen Gate, and it must be more fierce and less auspicious. So before leaving, Cong Dezi specially instructed his wife Wang Zhuqing: "The situation is very tense now, if I don't come back tonight, I will be arrested, and you contact the organization to request to leave Lanzhou." ”
This exhortation is more like saying goodbye.
That same night, he was arrested and imprisoned by Zeng's order.
Whether it was torture, coercion and inducement, or the glorious and rich high-ranking official Houlu, both soft and hard, and many means did not work, which made the Kuomintang realize that Cong Dezi was a "hard bone."
Since then, he has been imprisoned for all kinds of torture. In addition to physical torture, there is also mental suffering. He could not stretch his legs when he slept, could not stand straight, ate chaff vegetables, drank vegetable washing water, and all kinds of inhuman tortures were inflicted on him, but Cong Dezi did not waver once. The CCP organized many rescues, but none of them succeeded.
However, even to this point, Cong Dezi showed no signs of softening, he showed the strength and optimism that a Communist Party member should have, and between executions, he often sent letters to other prisoners in prison to encourage them to persevere.
Unfortunately, the reactionaries did not want him to continue to persist, and on April 19, 1942, Cong Dezi had a high fever due to a long prison sentence and asked his enemies in prison to give him a bowl of water to drink. The enemy in prison saw that he had a high fever and gave him a bowl of poisoned sewage. He was then poisoned to death, and his body was discarded in a broken cave under the White Tower Mountain. His former friends and comrades risked the risk of transporting his body out of the burial and burying him in the Yiyuan cemetery in five provinces on the outskirts of Lanzhou. He was 32 years old.
After liberation, Comrade Xie Jueya, then minister of internal affairs of the Central People's Government, had always been grumpy about Cong Dezi's murder, and vigorously searched for the orphans and widows he left behind, and finally paid off his efforts and learned that Cong Dezi's widow was in Lanzhou. Xie Juezha told Chairman Mao the news of Cong Dezi's family, and Chairman Mao also remembered this comrade who had made great contributions to the neutrality of the Xi'an Incident, so Chairman Mao personally signed the "Certificate of Martyrs No. 00001" of the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China.
Before 1951, Cong Dan was not called Cong Dan, she had another name, Gao Jinming.
At that time, Gao Jinming lived in Lanzhou, Gansu, northwestern China, her mother was named Wang Zhuqing, her father was Gao Keming, and a younger brother named Gao Jinmao, who was a happy family of four.
Until this spring, one day, Gao Jinming, who came home from school for lunch, saw her home surrounded by crowds in the distance, and she squeezed through the crowd and returned to her home, only to see her mother take a glass frame from the hands of government workers.
After that, Gao Jinming sent the government workers away with her parents, and when the neighbors also dispersed, Gao Jinming noticed that there was a sign with red characters on a yellow background above the right side of the door of her house, which read "Revolutionary Martyrs' Family" on it.
In the evening, father Gao Keming called 10-year-old Cong Dan and his brother to the room, and told them with a very serious expression: In fact, you are not my own child, you are not called Gao Jinming, your original name is Cong Dan, your brother's original name is Conggan, and the martyr Cong Dezi on the wall is your biological father! Cong Dan was a little difficult to accept for a while, after all, her father, who had lived with herself for 10 years, suddenly told herself that the two did not have any blood relationship, and her biological father had long become a martyr, so she found her mother Wang Zhuqing to verify, and only then did she learn about her father Cong Dezi, but she did not ask much, lest she hurt her adoptive father's feelings!
Since then, Cong Dan and Cong Gan began to enjoy the treatment of martyrs' children, quite taken care of in their studies and life, Cong Dan also became a primary school teacher, and married and had children, living a peaceful and peaceful life!
However, when the special period came, Cong Dan was suddenly told that Cong Dezi had become a "Su Xiu", and she was also implicated, lost her job, and could only take her son to survive. In those years, Cong Dan often stared at the "martyr's certificate" on the wall and fell into meditation, she really did not understand, her father was obviously a revolutionary martyr, why was he classified as a "Soviet secret agent"? In order to unravel this mystery, she began to run around, trying to piece together the path of her father Cong Dezi's life.
In October 1977, with the wish to rehabilitate Zhaoxue' father, who was falsely accused of being a "Soviet revision agent", Cong Dan made a special trip to Beijing, and Wu Xiuquan and his wife received her kindly. It was an event that happened during this period that Cong Dan will never forget.
One day, Deng Xiaoping was busy sneaking around and came to the courtyard for a walk. Wu Xiuquan and his wife brought Cong Dan to meet Deng Xiaoping, and as soon as they saw them, they said: "Comrade Xiaoping, I have brought you a small guest today, she is cong Dezi's daughter, called Cong Dan. ”
After hearing this, Deng Xiaoping immediately developed a strong affection for the strange woman, he walked over and shook her hand, looked up and down, and said, "You really look like your father." ”
Upon hearing Deng Xiaoping's words, Cong Dan couldn't hold back any longer, and cried "wow" until she walked into the house, she was still crying, just like a wronged child who had been wronged outside finally saw his relatives. Zhuo Lin caressed Cong Dan's shoulder and comforted, child, don't be sad. But Comrade Xiaoping said: "Don't persuade, just let the child cry." ”
Deng Xiaoping not only inquired in detail about the life of cong Dan's family over the years, asking with concern whether she had joined the party organization, but also encouraged her to withstand setbacks with her own experience. Before leaving the door, Comrade Xiaoping did not forget to leave an address for Cong Dan and said, "Child, if there is anything in the future, you will tell me directly." ”
Although Cong Dan has never seen "Uncle Dun" since then, she said that meeting she will never forget.
The yellowed martyr's certificate was the final proof of Cong Dezi's identity, and soon after, under Deng Xiaoping's interrogation, Cong Dezi restored his reputation, and he could finally rest in peace under the Nine Springs.
Cong Dan once asked Elder Xie why his father was the No. 0001 martyr? Elder Xie said that this 0001 does not have any special meaning. When the martyrs policy was first implemented, the first thing that came to mind was your father, so the first thing on the list written by the secretary was your father's name.