Study title

Production of a database of all German communists who emigrated to the Soviet Union after the seizure of power by Hitler with particular consideration of their fate there in view of the purges by Stalin after approx. 1937. Through the opening of the archives (also KGB) for the first time it was possible to resolve the puzzle of the whereabouts of many German communists in the USSR. Currently the investigation encompasses over 2000 cases, but is not yet completed, in part because access to the archives has again become more difficult. Topics: The database encompasses information on name, origins, school education, occupation, party membership and function, emigration, whereabouts and activity in the former USSR, as well as information on arrests, trial and possibly death sentence. (Through recording data with phonetic transliteration into Cyrillic in survey on the occasion of entry as well as the re-transliteration into German when entering the data into the database much information contains gaps or has become unclear.)