Recall To Moscow, Imprisonment, & Death
The NKVD chief in Spain, Alexander Orlov, knew that Stern's recall meant certain imprisonment and death because in Moscow Joseph Stalin and Nikolai Yezhov were busy purging the Red Army. He offered to employ Stern as a member of the NKVD. While awaiting orders, Stern spent his final months in Spain relaxing at a small orange plantation and entertaining his young Spanish mistress. Kliment Voroshilov denied his transfer and ordered his return to Moscow.
In May 1939 a Military Collegium condemned Stern to fifteen years of hard labor. He became a non-person. His name was deliberately withheld from official Soviet histories of the Spanish Civil War. The remaining years of his life were spent in the Gulag and he died of exhaustion at a labor camp in Sosnovka on February 18, 1954.
Read more about this topic: Manfred Stern
Famous quotes containing the words recall to, recall and/or death:
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—Bible: Hebrew, 2 Kings 4:40.