Gustav Sobottka Jr.

Gustav Sobottka Jr. was the younger son of Henriette "Jettchen" (née Schantowski) and Gustav Sobottka, a trade unionist and prominent Communist Party functionary. He had a sister and an older brother and was baptized in the Lutheran church in Röhlinghausen, today a district in Herne. His older brother was named Bernhard Sobottka (6 June 1911 – 20 July 1945). Sobottka attended gymnasium in Germany and joined the Communist Youth in 1929. After the Nazis seized power, the Communist Party (German: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, or KPD) was outlawed, but Sobottka continued working for the party. He was arrested by the Gestapo on 11 August 1933 and was sent to the Nazi concentration camps at Oranienburg and Sonnenburg. He was released at the end of the year and fled to the Saarland, then under foreign occupation. He continued on to Paris, where his father had fled. His father was called to Moscow in 1935 and he and his mother made their way there at the end of 1935. His brother remained in Germany, working underground for the KPD. He was later arrested and sent to a concentration camp. In 1937, he, his brother and his parents were all deported by the Nazis. == Exile and arrest ==

In the Soviet Union, he began using the cadre name "Hans Boden" Later, he began attending evening classes at a Moscow institute. Subsequent interrogations in the following days included abuse and torture, which began when Sobottka denied having engaged in counter-revolutionary activity. He was called a fascist and was repeatedly pressured to sign a confession, at one point, with a pistol held against his chest. He was transferred to the Taganka Prison infirmary, where he was surrounded by other prisoner patients who were bedridden with spinal cord injuries and other severe injuries resulting from torture, and he became convinced that his situation was hopeless. During an NKVD interrogation session on 21 April 1938, two years after the publication of their article together, other young German exiles, Max Maddalena Jr., son of another important party functionary, Max Maddalena; and Harry Schmidt, named Hans Boden as one of the people involved in an espionage and sabotage ring. Sobottka was accused of having been "assigned"—by a leading KPD functionary—the difficult job of assassinating Vyacheslav Molotov. and one by Wilhelm Pieck to Dmitry Manuilsky on April 9, 1939, recommending release for 16 people, including Sobottka, he was not released from prison. He added that if his faith in the party were shattered, the result would be his mental and physical collapse. according to some sources, from injuries sustained during torture; His parents weren't told about their son's death until the beginning of 1941. More than a decade after his death, a declaration of death was issued. Sobottka was rehabilitated in 1956 after an examination of his case found "no incriminating evidence". == References ==