In Autumn 1932 , during a speech at a women 's meeting held in connection with a public transport strike in Berlin , Niederkirchner was arrested . During a period of intensifying political polarisation she had drawn attention to herself by delivering speeches and political leaflets on behalf of the Communist Party . A couple of months later , seizing an opportunity presented by several years of parliamentary deadlock , in January 1933 the National Socialists took power and lost no time in transforming Germany into a one-party dictatorship . The authorities were particularly uncompromising in their attacks on the activities carried out on behalf of the ( now illegal ) Communist Party . Members of the Niederkirchner family had already faced several politically driven expulsion orders over the years , but these had , till now , never been implemented . This time the situation had changed , and Käthe Niederkirchner was forced to leave the country on 27 March 1933 . Although the family still retained their Hungarian citizenship , Hungary had been moving towards fascism since the installation of Gyula Gömbös as miniszterelnök ( head of government ) in October 1932 . Käthe Niederkirchner instead made her way to Moscow to start a new life . After the authorities released her father and deported him from Germany in June 1934 she was reunited with her parents and three of her four siblings in the Soviet Union . ( Her youngest sister , Mia ( 1911-1982 ) stayed behind , " living underground ( unregistered ) " in Germany for another couple of years . ) During the 1920s many youthful western communist idealists had grown up seeing the Soviet Union under its communist leadership as humanity 's best hope for the future . Käthe Niederkirchner arrived ready to embrace her new homeland , and after arriving in Moscow in many ways she was able to benefit from the new opportunities , even though she never returned to a career in tailoring . She intensified her study of Marxism – Leninism and other important subjects . She appears to have been able to support herself without difficulty . For a while she worked as a German-language presenter for Moscow Radio . However , the Soviet Union was also affected by growing political tensions . St the height of the Stalinist purges , her older brother Paul Niederkirchner was arrested in Moscow by the security services . He was shot dead on 19 October 1938 . The situation changed further in June 1941 when the German government unexpectedly ( to most ) repudiated an important existing non-aggression agreement launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union . In 1941 Käthe Niederkirchner married Heinz Wieland , a communist hero of the recently concluded Spanish Civil War . However , it is unclear whether they were ever able to live together , since in the chaos of war party authorities moved Wieland , who had been badly wounded in Spain , to a home for invalids in Osh ( Kyrgyzstan ) . One indirect result of the German invasion of the Soviet Union was Soviet sponsorship of the " antifascist Free Germany " ( Freies Deutschland ) organisation , under the auspices of which Niederkirchner involved herself extensively in training/propaganda work with German prisoners of war . She also undertook intensive training in after-dark parachute jumping and for " underground work " in Germany
Stalinist purges
Great Purge
Käthe Niederkirchner