Bruno Mahlow 's eponymous father ( Bruno Mahlow 1899-1964 ) had been a founder member of the German Communist Party back in 1918 , and after fifteen years as a party activist had emigrated from his Berlin home , via Prague , to Moscow two months after the Hitler government took power at the start of 1933 , which is how Bruno Brunowitsch Mahlow came to be born in Moscow . By this time the elder Bruno Mahlow was a semi-invalid , having damaged his spine in a fall while escaping through Czechoslovakia . In 1937 the father was caught up in one of Stalin 's purges and arrested , but the next year , gravely ill , he was released . In August 1941 , like many Germans in Moscow at the time of the German invasion the family were banished from Moscow , initially to Astrakhan and from there , the next month , further east to Tashkent ( then in the Uzbek SSR ) . It was in Tashkent that in 1944 Mahlow started his schooling . The Mahlows remained there till May 1947 when , following the end of the war , they were able to return to east Berlin in the Soviet occupation zone in what remained of Germany
purges
Great Purge
Bruno Mahlow (son)