As such work developed, I found myself working for the release of political prisoners in over forty countries where they are held, half forgotten, for deeds which were often praiseworthy. Many prisoners in many lands have been freed, we are told, as a result of my colleagues' and my work, but many remain in gaol and the work goes on. Sometimes I have got into difficulty about this work and had to bear considerable obloquy, as in the case of Sobell and, later, in regard to the freeing of Heintz Brandt. The abduction and imprisonment by the East Germans of Brandt, who had survived Hitler's concentration camps, seemed to me so inhuman that I was obliged to return to the East German Government the Carl von Ossietsky medal which it had awarded me.
Source: The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, v.3 chap. 4
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