[citation needed] He was a prisoner in the Gulag when Joseph Stalin was General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

[1] After the Nazi Party was elected in Germany, he concluded he couldn't return home, so he applied for residence in Belgium but was rejected.

[2] After the war, he was arrested by the Soviet MGB in the city of Lvov in the Ukrainian SSR as he was trying to cross the border with his family; he was charged with conspiracy and insulting the fatherland.

In 1956 he and his jazz band were filmed in the Soviet comedy The Carnival Night, gaining further popularity among movie fans.

Sensing that the end was near, he applied to Soviet authorities for permission to immigrate to his birthplace and was allowed to return to his native Berlin in 1973.