You watch the men take Paul from your apartment-do you warn the others?

You watch men in uniform take Paul from your apartment-do you warn the others, or keep the secret that keeps them faithful?

You watch the men take Paul from your apartment-do you warn the others?

In this episode, we follow Roberta Gropper’s life from a cigarette factory in Ulm to the halls of the Reichstag, then into arrest and a Soviet camp. We trace the choices, loyalties, and the single sentence she speaks in custody that will haunt her comrades and the movement-what would you do in her place?

Person: Roberta Gropper Person: Paul Langner Date: Arrest November 1937 Location: Moscow / Soviet camp Event: Workers' movement membership, Reichstag deputy 1930-1932

- At thirteen Roberta left school for factory work and joined the workers' youth organization, forming her politics on the shop floor. - By twenty-one she sat on Ulm’s workers’ council and co-founded the local Communist Party in 1919. - She rose through party ranks: treasurer in Stuttgart, leader of women's sections, and Reichstag member at thirty-three. - Association with the Neumann-Remmele group cost her Berlin positions in 1932 and became the later basis for her 1937 arrest. - On a January morning men in uniform took Paul from their apartment; inside the camp she told another prisoner a sentence that protected the workers’ illusions.

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