She died of tuberculosis in a private room at High Hills, the best
sanitarium in Moscow, at five minutes to nine in the morning, June 4,
1941. She had received a telegram from her collaborator and erstwhile
lover
Bertolt Brecht that day, as he and his family made their way across the
USSR to seek asylum in the U.S. (The Soviet Union was invaded by its
ally, Nazi Germany, in less than three weeks.) Her last words were
"Doctor, doctor, doctor." Her friend Maria Osten, who checked in on her
each day, arrived two minutes too late to say goodbye to her friend.
According to Osten's correspondence with Brecht, an autopsy the
following day revealed that her lungs were almost completely eroded by
the disease. A plaster cast of her face and hands were made for Brecht,
and she was cremated on June 6th. Osten and her child "disappeared"
into the Gulag within weeks, and she was shot as a spy on August 8,
1942, according to the NKVD.
