Purim
There is a tale in the Hasidic Chabad movement that supposedly Joseph Stalin died as a result of some metaphysical intervention of the seventh Chabad leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, during the recitation of a discourse at a public Purim Farbrengen. Stalin was suddenly paralyzed on 1 March 1953, which corresponds to Purim 1953, and died 4 days later. Due to Stalin's death, nationwide pogroms against Jews throughout the Soviet Union were averted, as Stalin's infamous doctors' plot was halted.
Anna Tieke
Joseph Stalin died in 1953 and his successors began, little by little, to identify and, between themselves, discuss some of the atrocities over which the dictator had presided. A cautious but perceptible political thaw ensued. Supported by the International Red Cross, Rudolf Tieke tried to find out what had happened to his wife and children. At the end of 1955 he got hold of an address for his daughter. He sought and obtained permission to leave the location of his internal exile and go to his daughter in Kazakhstan where, after eighteen years, father and daughter were reunited. By this time Ursula had acquired a husband of her own in the form of Meier Schwartz, a former Gulag inmate originally from Romania: the couple had two children. Rudolf Tieke also managed to re-establish contact with his younger son, Günter and received the (false) information from the security services on the circumstances surrounding the deaths of his wife and elder son.