By 1939 many of the Germans who had fled to Moscow as refugees for reasons of race and/or political activism after 1933 had not survived the . Kurt Liebknecht did survive. Sources speculate that his cousin Wilhelm Liebknecht, the son of his Uncle Karl, intervened on his behalf. Wilhelm Liebknecht, a lawyer like his father, had lived in Moscow since 1928, intervened with the authorities on behalf of a number of family members during the later 1930s and beyond, until he himself fell under suspicion and after 1941 was banished, with his family, to Uzbekistan. Kurt Liebknecht was one of relatively few Germans in the Soviet Union to be fully rehabilitated in the aftermath of the purges, though he lived with the awareness that he was being constantly monitored and his luck might turn again. During the rest of his time in the Soviet Union he took care never to speak German for fear of raising suspicion.