Jochen Stern, born on September 10, 1928 in Frankfurt/Oder, was arrested by the Soviet secret service in 1947 together with more than 40 people as political opponents. They were accused of forming an illegal group and spying and agitating against the Soviet Union. The 19-year-old new teacher spent almost a year in pre-trial detention in Potsdam’s Lindenstraße under catastrophic conditions. In September 1948, he was brought before a Soviet military tribunal together with 13 other defendants and sentenced to 25 years of forced labor on the basis of statements he had been forced to make through torture and beatings. After six years in the Soviet special camp in Bautzen, he was released to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1954, where he made a career as an actor.

The extensive donation includes documents relating to his political persecution, arrest and conviction by the Soviet secret service. As part of the so-called “LO Group” from Frankfurt/Oder, he was imprisoned in the Soviet secret service prison in Potsdam’s Lindenstraße in 1947/1948. The donation contains interrogation records, instructions from the Soviet secret service (NKVD), the summary of the indictment and the verdict against the individual members of the group. Jochen Stern also gave the foundation letters from his later imprisonment in the Bautzen special camp. They are addressed to his parents, who only found out about his conviction in 1949 and did not know what had happened to their son for over two years.