reply, but he was not allowed to travel to the GDR, nor to leave Kazakhstan. Rehabilitation In 1955, he managed to contact his old friend, the actor Arthur Pieck, whose father, Wilhelm Pieck, was the general secretary of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party (SED). Arthur Pieck's intervention led to a military review of Damerius' case. The NKVD officer who had been in charge of the original investigation of Damerius in 1938 was interrogated. The officer, Nikolai Mitrofanov, denied beating Damerius and even refused to acknowledge that the NKVD had ever practiced torture. He claimed that Damerius had incriminated himself because other prisoners who had been in custody longer had told him that this would expedite his case. Damerius was rehabilitated in May 1955. The reversal read, "By decision of the Moscow Military District War Tribunal, 22 September 1955, the verdict of 1938 is overturned and Helmut Damerius is reinstated of all rights. The testimony by Wanda Bronskaya that Helmut Damerius wanted to recruit her for the Hitler Youth was fabricated." He returned to working in theater, becoming the director of the Decorations Department of the Jambyl theater in 1955. In 1956, Damerius was allowed to leave the Soviet Union for the German Democratic Republic (GDR), but was warned not to speak or write of his experiences in the Soviet Union, under strict threat of punishment. Final years in the GDR After Damerius' return to the GDR, he became the head of the Concert and Guest Performance Direction, serving in that capacity from 1956 to 1960. From 1960 to 1961, he was the first director of the Artists' Agency, established to oversee and grant permission for East German artists to perform abroad and foreign artists to perform in East Germany. In 1960, he became head of the State Folk Art Ensemble in Berlin, retiring in 1963. From 1980 to 1982, he secretly worked on his memoirs, writing about the "years of his pointless arrest, the loss of the middle years of his life". He secretly gave his complete manuscript to Professor Werner Mittenzwei in 1982. Damerius died in East Berlin. His memoir, Unter Falscher Anschuldigung ("Under False Accusation"), was released posthumously in 1990. Awards and honors In his later years, Damerius was awarded several East German medals and honors. In 1963, Damerius received the Medal for Fighters against Fascism, in 1973, he received an award for 50 years