The authors approach the extraordinary life and fate of actress Carola Neher (1900-1942) from different perspectives in the anthology initiated by MEMORIAL Germany. Although Carola Neher always considered herself solely as an artist and never belonged to the Communist Party, her fate embodies like few others the ambivalence of the communist movement in 20th-century Europe, which became a driving force for cultural innovation, while the party-state apparatus acted as an executor of mass terror. The celebrated star actress of the 1920s and 1930s was arrested in Moscow in 1936 after her emigration from Nazi Germany and died on June 26, 1942, in the Soviet camp Sol-Iletzk. By placing the stages of her biography within the cultural and theater historical as well as the political and contemporary context, her life is comprehensively illuminated.