Many of the political refugees from Germany who had settled in Moscow during the 1930s in order to get away from Hitler, and then been evacuated with the native Muscovites in 1941, were left in their remote places of exile for years. Others joined the hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war who had survived monumental military defeat atStalingrad, only to end up in the Soviet camps. Party General Secretary Stalin was a famously mistrustful man at the best of times, and the arrival of three million well-equipped German soldiers on Soviet territory in June 1941, together with the ensuing slaughter and destruction, had evidently made him more mistrustful than ever of German people. But there were still a few German comrades whom he trusted. Wilhelm Pieck (who had been seriously ill as an evacuee in Bachkiria) returned to Moscow on 27 March 1942. It is not clear whether Eleonore and her husband accompanied him, but she was certainly back in Moscow by the end of 1942. During 1942/43 she was employed with International Red Aid as head of the department for Political Emigrants in the organisation's Soviet section. During 1943 she was recruited by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (Interior Ministry) to join a radio editorial team, as plans were drawn up for a , intended to attend to the perceived (by the ministry) needs of the many German prisoners of War detained in the Soviet camps.