Question: When did the soviet Union seal off the city where the author of The Wandering Jews worked?

full_context: Document 1: Germany: After Germany surrendered, the Allies partitioned Berlin and Germany's remaining territory into four military occupation zones. The western sectors, controlled by France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, were merged on 23 May 1949 to form the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland); on 7 October 1949, the Soviet Zone became the German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik). They were informally known as West Germany and East Germany. East Germany selected East Berlin as its capital, while West Germany chose Bonn as a provisional capital, to emphasize its stance that the two - state solution was an artificial and temporary status quo.
Document 2: West Berlin: West Berlin was 100 miles (161 kilometres) east and north of the Inner German border and only accessible by land from West Germany by narrow rail and highway corridors. It consisted of the American, British, and French occupation sectors established in 1945. It was, however, a de facto part of West Germany. It had a special and unique legal status because its administration was formally conducted by the Western Allies. At the same time, East Berlin, de jure occupied and administered by the Soviet Union, was the de facto capital of East Germany. The Berlin Wall, built in 1961, physically separated West Berlin from its East Berlin and East German surroundings until it fell in 1989.
Document 3: History of Germany (1945–1990): The intended governing body of Germany was called the Allied Control Council. The commanders - in - chief exercised supreme authority in their respective zones and acted in concert on questions affecting the whole country. Berlin, which lay in the Soviet (eastern) sector, was also divided into four sectors with the Western sectors later becoming West Berlin and the Soviet sector becoming East Berlin, capital of East Germany.
Document 4: Journey Through a Small Planet: In "Journey Through a Small Planet" (1972), the writer Emanuel Litvinoff recalls his working-class Jewish childhood in the East End of London: a small cluster of streets right next to the city, but worlds apart in culture and spirit. With vivid intensity Litvinoff describes the overcrowded tenements of Brick Lane and Whitechapel, the smell of pickled herring and onion bread, the rattle of sewing machines and chatter in Yiddish. He also relates stories of his parents, who fled from Russia in 1914, his experiences at school and a brief flirtation with Communism. Unsentimental, vital and almost dream like, this is a masterly evocation of a long-vanished world.
Document 5: Berlin Wall: The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer, pronounced (bɛʁˈliːnɐ ˈmaʊ̯ɐ) (listen)) was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany), starting on 13 August 1961, the Wall cut off (by land) West Berlin from virtually all of surrounding East Germany and East Berlin until government officials opened it in November 1989. Its demolition officially began on 13 June 1990 and finished in 1992. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area (later known as the ``death strip '') that contained anti-vehicle trenches,`` fakir beds'' and other defenses. The Eastern Bloc portrayed the Wall as protecting its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the ``will of the people ''in building a socialist state in East Germany.
Document 6: Weimar Republic: Weimar Republic (German: Weimarer Republik (ˈvaɪmaʁɐ ʁepuˈbliːk) (listen)) was an unofficial, historical designation for the German state between 1919 and 1933. The name derives from the city of Weimar, where its constitutional assembly first took place. The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich; it had remained unchanged since 1871. In English the country was usually known simply as Germany. A national assembly was convened in Weimar, where a new constitution for the Deutsches Reich was written, and adopted on 11 August 1919. In its fourteen years, the Weimar Republic faced numerous problems, including hyperinflation, political extremism (with paramilitaries -- both left - and right - wing), as well as contentious relationships with the victors of the First World War. The people of Germany blamed the Weimar Republic rather than their wartime leaders for the country's defeat and for the humiliating terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Weimar Germany fulfilled most of the requirements of the Treaty of Versailles although it never completely met its disarmament requirements, and eventually paid only a small portion of the war reparations (by twice restructuring its debt through the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan). Under the Locarno Treaties, Germany accepted the western borders of the republic, but continued to dispute the Eastern border.
Document 7: Israel: Some new immigrants arrived as refugees with no possessions and were housed in temporary camps known as ma'abarot; by 1952, over 200,000 immigrants were living in these tent cities. During this period, food, clothes and furniture had to be rationed in what became known as the Austerity Period. The need to solve the crisis led Ben-Gurion to sign a reparations agreement with West Germany that triggered mass protests by Jews angered at the idea that Israel could accept monetary compensation for the Holocaust.
Document 8: What I Saw: Reports from Berlin, 1920-1933: What I Saw: Reports from Berlin, 1920-1933 is a book of reportage by the Austrian writer Joseph Roth from the era of the Weimar Republic. The selection of pieces from Roth's large journalistic output was made by Michael Bienert and published in German in 1996. The English translation with the present title was made by Michael Hofmann and appeared in 2003. The pieces in the book "record the violent social and political paroxysms that constantly threatened to undo the fragile democracy" of those years, but some of them also report on more prosaic aspects of life in Berlin in those years, such as the public parks and the rising entertainment industry.
Document 9: Fred Wander: Wander was born Fritz Rosenblatt in Vienna, he left school at 14 and worked as an apprentice in a textile mill, before travelling around Europe taking whatever jobs were going. He spent quite some time in pre-war Paris and this is where he first started to write. In 1938 after the German annexation of Austria, Wander escaped back to Paris via Switzerland. After France declared war on Germany in 1939 he was interned and eventually sent back to Austria, where he ended up in Auschwitz concentration camp, later being sent to Buchenwald concentration camp. Wander survived the camps and after World War II he lived in East Germany (GDR) from 1958 – 1983. It was while a resident in the GDR that in 1971 "The Seventh Well" () was published, it was an account of his experiences in the concentration camps. The book won much critical acclaim following a later re-release, including the 2009 JQ Wingate Prize.
Document 10: Modern history: Europe spent these years rebuilding and coming to terms with the vast human cost of the conflict. The economy of the United States became increasingly intertwined with that of Europe. In Germany, the Weimar Republic gave way to episodes of political and economic turmoil, which culminated with the German hyperinflation of 1923 and the failed Beer Hall Putsch of that same year. When Germany could no longer afford war payments, Wall Street invested heavily in European debts to keep the European economy afloat as a large consumer market for American mass-produced goods. By the middle of the decade, economic development soared in Europe, and the Roaring Twenties broke out in Germany, Britain and France, the second half of the decade becoming known as the "Golden Twenties". In France and francophone Canada, they were also called the "années folles" ("Crazy Years").
Document 11: The Wandering Jews: The Wandering Jews is a short non-fiction book (1926–27) by Joseph Roth about the plight of the Jews in the mid-1920s who, with other refugees and displaced persons in the aftermath of the First World War, the Russian Revolution and the redrawing of national frontiers following the Treaty of Versailles, had fled to the West from the Baltic States, Poland and Russia. "They sought shelter in cities and towns where most of them had never been and, unfortunately, where they were made despicably unwelcome." Poverty stricken villagers, they were set apart by their origins, their piety and their dress. In the last five months of 1926 he visited the Soviet Union where he wrote the final section, "The Condition of the Jews in Soviet Russia". Walter Jens called it the best book on its subject in German. An English translation by Michael Hofmann was published in 2001.
Document 12: Die Pleite: Die Pleite was a German periodical founded and edited by George Grosz, Wieland Herzfelde, and John Heartfield, which ran from 1919 to 1924. The magazine was part of the Berlin Dada scene and was known for its ruthless critiques of the Weimar Republic in addition to its prescient awareness of the emergence of right-wing extremism throughout Europe.
Document 13: Berlin Wall: The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany), starting on 13 August 1961, the Wall completely cut off (by land) West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin until government officials opened it in November 1989. Its demolition officially began on 13 June 1990 and finished in 1992. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area (later known as the ``death strip '') that contained anti-vehicle trenches,`` fakir beds'' and other defenses. The Eastern Bloc portrayed the Wall as protecting its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the ``will of the people ''in building a socialist state in East Germany. In practice, the Wall served to prevent the massive emigration and defection that had marked East Germany and the communist Eastern Bloc during the post-World War II period.
Document 14: Estonia: In the face of the country being re-occupied by the Red Army, tens of thousands of Estonians (including a majority of the education, culture, science, political and social specialists) chose to either retreat with the Germans or flee to Finland or Sweden where they sought refuge in other western countries, often by refugee ships such as the SS Walnut. On 12 January 1949, the Soviet Council of Ministers issued a decree "on the expulsion and deportation" from Baltic states of "all kulaks and their families, the families of bandits and nationalists", and others.
Document 15: People on Sunday: "People on Sunday" is notable not only for its portrayal of daily life in Berlin shortly before Adolf Hitler became Chancellor, but also as an early work by the future Hollywood writer/director Billy Wilder before he moved to the United States to escape from Hitler's Germany.
ground_truth: 1961
sub_queries: The Wandering Jews >> author Answer: Joseph Roth
Joseph Roth >> work location Answer: Berlin
when the soviet union sealed off the city of Berlin Answer: 1961