Stalin Handed Hundreds of Communists Over to Hitler
During the 1930s, many communists and socialists from Germany and Austria sought refuge from the Nazis in the USSR. But in a shocking betrayal, the Soviet secret police handed over hundreds of them to Hitler's Gestapo.
Former members of the Austrian Schutzbund, the paramilitary wing of the Austrian Social Democratic Party, were among those handed to the Nazis by the NKVD. (Photo: German Federal Archives)
The Soviet Union’s 1936 constitution afforded “the right of asylum to foreign citizens persecuted for defending the interests of the working people.” But Soviet authorities shamefully broke this promise when dealing with hundreds of German and Austrian exiles, handing them over to the Nazis from the late 1930s on. The victims included veteran revolutionaries, Jewish […]
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