With their new baby the Pleners had to escape to Copenhagen after Kurt Plener [de] (1905-1980) displeased the authorities with an article he contributed to a Communist Party newspaper in which he explained "how to use sports training as a defence against Nazis" ("... wie man sich sportlich ertüchtigen kann, um gegen Nazis wehrhaft zu sein").
Kurt remained, for the time being, in Copenhagen where he worked for the communist "Red Sport International" organisation and campaigned unsuccessfully for the reversal of the 1931 decision to hold the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.
Her six and a half year old daughter and Ulla's younger brother were consigned to a children's home in Ivanovo, a textiles town to the north-east of Moscow.
[2] It was only some time after the war ended that the family were reunited in Berlin.Between 1951 and 1956 Ulla Plener studied History at a Moscow university.
[3] She followed this up in 2009 with a biography of Mirko Beer, supported with photographs and documentation covering his time as a military doctor with the republican fighters during the Spanish Civil War.
[12] Also of interest is her publication in a single volume of previously unknown diaries and letters covering the final years of his life, 1929-1933, written by the so-called "Communist bandit" or "Red Robin Hood", Max Hoelz.