In 1933 , Ottwalt and his wife , Waltraut , left Germany and went into exile in Denmark , then , by way of Czechoslovakia , ended up in the Soviet Union . Living in Moscow , Ottwalt wrote for the German exile magazine '' Internationale Literatur '' ( published by Johannes R. Becher ) and was an editor at Vegaar Bibliothek . He also wrote for the '' Deutsche Zentral Zeitung '' . In 1936 , he and his wife were ensnared in the Stalinist purges and arrested by the Soviet secret police , the NKVD . He was charged with suspicion of espionage , sentenced to forced labor and deported to a gulag near Archangelsk . His wife was sentenced to forced labor in Kotlas . She was deported back to Germany in January 1941 and did n't learn about his death until January 1958 , when the Soviet Red Cross informed her that her husband had died on 24 August 1943
purges
Great Purge
Ernst Ottwalt