The political separation implicit in the military occupation zones created in 1945 came to be enforced by a physical frontier during the 1950s. In 1956 Melzer relocated to East Berlin where she lived till her death there on the night of 2/3 October 1960. There are suggestions that her health was damaged and her life thereby shortened by torture she had suffered at the hands of the Gestapo. Her sister Klara's attempts to have the 1953 indictment lifted posthumously were rejected by the West German authorities who inferred that her relocation to East Germany in 1956 was tantamount to a confession of guilt.