- Leopold Trepper
Leopold Trepper (
February 23 ,1904 -January 19 ,1982 ) was an organizer of theSoviet spy ring "Rote Kapelle" (Red Orchestra) prior to and duringWorld War II .Leopold Trepper was born to a Jewish family on
February 23 ,1904 , inNowy Targ ,Poland (part ofAustria-Hungary in that time). His family moved toVienna ,Austria , when he was child. After theOctober Revolution he joined theBolsheviks and worked in the Galician mines. In 1923, he organized a strike inCracow and was imprisoned for eight months.Trepper moved from Poland to
Palestine in 1924 as a member ofHashomer Hatzair . He joined thePalestine Communist Party and worked against the British forces in Palestine. He was identified as acommunist agent and expelled in 1929. He went toFrance and worked for an underground political organization calledRabcors until French intelligence broke it up in 1932.Trepper escaped to
Moscow and worked as aGRU agent for the next six years, traveling between Moscow and Paris. He escaped the Stalinist purges with support from Russian Military intelligence, one of the few forces still relatively immune from Stalin's influence and where the influence of old Bolsheviks remained strong.In 1938, Trepper was sent to organize and coordinate an intelligence network in Nazi-occupied Europe, based in
Belgium . The Nazis named it the Red Orchestra ("Die Rote Kapelle"). Prior to the German attack on the Soviet Union, he sent information about German troop transfers from other fronts forOperation Barbarossa through a Sovietmilitary attaché inVichy France . Eventually, theGestapo uncovered the network and Trepper fled to France.In France, Trepper established another network, but eventually the
Abwehr tracked him down. They arrested Trepper onNovember 16 1942 from a dentist's chair. The Gestapo did not force him to betray most of his contacts, but treated him leniently in an attempt to make him adouble agent in Paris, but the GRU eventually figured out that he had been turned because Trepper managed to inform them by secret hints within his communications.Eventually in 1943, Trepper escaped and went underground. He emerged with the
French Resistance after theliberation of Paris . He later claimed that he had contacted the French communist resistance during his imprisonment by Germans.The Soviets took him to Russia but instead of rewarding him, they locked him up in
Lubyanka prison . He vigorously defended his position and avoided execution for unknown reasons, but remained in prison until 1955. Before that, he was personally interrogated byNKVD chiefViktor Abakumov . After his release, he returned to Poland to his wife and three sons. He became a head of theJewish Cultural Society .After the
Six Day War ,anti-semitism increased in Poland and Trepper decided to try to immigrate toIsrael . Initially, the Polish government refused permission until international protests forced Poland to allow a number of Jews to leave for Israel. He settled inJerusalem in 1974. In 1975, he published hisautobiography , "The Great Game". A few years before, a book about the Red Orchestra containing interviews with both Russians and Nazis had appeared, written byGilles Perrault .Leopold Trepper died - a convinced communist revolutionary - in Jerusalem in 1982. His funeral was attended by the highest echelons of the Israeli army, including Defence Minister
Ariel Sharon .In the epilogue to "The Great Game", Trepper wrote,
I do not regret the commitment of my youth, I do not regret the paths I have taken. In Denmark, in the fall of 1973, a young man asked me in a public meeting, "Haven't you sacrificed you life for nothing?" I replied, "No.""No" on one condition: that people understand the lesson of my life as a communist and a revolutionary, and do not turn themselves over to a deified party.
External links
* [http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUStrepper.htm Online biography]
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