The plight of refugees at this time still had a powerful resonance in East and West Germany, since many of the millions caught up in the ethnic cleansing of the later 1940s had settled in one or other of the two Germanies. During 1989/90 a new wave of westward bound refuges was being released - albeit in very much smaller numbers and under very different circumstances - by the break-up of the Soviet Union. Some were members of the ethnic Russian minorities in the soon to be independent Baltic states. Others were simply or people who suddenly found themselves unexpectedly freed from Soviet labour camps. Ehrhart and Hildigund Neubert were instrumental in setting up the "Free Baltics Committee" ("Komitee Freies Baltikum") in order to help some of the escapees. They also participated in regular street demonstrations outside the Soviet embassy, demanding the ending of Soviet control from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, to be accompanied by the withdrawal of Soviet troops, after more than fifty years of occupation. On the domestic front, for a number of months the Neuberts accommodated a young Lithuanian deserter from the Soviet army in their Berlin home.