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Political Persecution of the Former Concentration Camp Inmate and Communist Ernst Busse (1950s)

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III. Anna Busse to the Head of the Private Chancellery of the President of the GDR, Otto Winzer, November 4, 1955


Esteemed Comrade Winzer,

You can well imagine that I can only focus my thoughts on one thing these days. You know that in March of this year we had many telephone conversations about my personal matter, and you promised to clarify the issue of my husband’s case in the swiftest possible way.

At the time, you promised to definitely inform me [about him]. Now, after many people were released from the Soviet Union, we find ourselves in a situation in which I can no longer explain to myself why, to this day, I have not heard anything from you or Ernst.

Can you even begin to imagine my state of mind today? I must go on living as a comrade, a fighter, but also as a human being. I can no longer bear to watch as Ernst’s now nearly eighty year-old mother virtually falls apart on account of this new and absolute uncertainty. Likewise, I can no longer endure this situation either.

Perhaps I may ask you to grant me a meeting with you. I assume that, in your office, in particular, there is now complete clarity about the people released from the Soviet Union. I ask you with equal measures of courtesy and urgency to answer me as quickly as possible.

With Socialist greetings!
[handwritten addition by Anna Busse]
June 17, 1956

Note[:] died 1952



Source: Lutz Niethammer, ed., with Karin Hartewig, Harry Stein, and Leonie Wannemacher, Der ›gesäuberte‹ Antifaschismus. Die SED und die roten Kapos von Buchenwald. Dokumente. [“Cleaned-up” Antifascism. The SED and the Red Kapos of Buchenwald. Documents]. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1994, pp. 384-87, 398 f.

Translation: Thomas Dunlap

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