Leopold Trepper
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Leopold Trepper (February 23, 1904 - January 19, 1982) was an organizer of the Soviet spy ring "Rote Kapelle" (Red Orchestra) prior to and during World War II.
Leopold Trepper was born to a Jewish family on February 23, 1904, in Nowy Targ, Poland (part of Austria-Hungary in that time). His family moved to Vienna, Austria, when he was child. After the October Revolution he joined the Bolsheviks and worked in the Galician mines. In 1923 he organized a strike in Cracow and was imprisoned for eight months.
Trepper moved from Poland to Palestine in 1924 as a member of Hashomer Hatzair. He joined the Palestine Communist Party and worked against the British forces in Palestine. He was identified as a communist agent and expelled in 1929. He went to France and worked for an underground political organization called Rabcors until French intelligence broke it up in 1932. Trepper escaped to Moscow and worked as an GRU (Soviet) 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 beginning of German attacks on Soviet Union, he sent information about German troops transferred from other fronts to Operation Barbarossa through a Soviet military attaché in Vichy France. Eventually the Gestapo uncovered the network and Trepper fled to France.
In France Trepper created another network, but eventually the Abwehr tracked him down. They arrested Trepper on November 16, 1942, from a dentist's chair. The Gestapo did not force him to betray most of his contacts but treated him friendly because they tried to run him as a double 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 managed to escape and went underground. He emerged with the French Resistance after the liberation of Paris. He later claimed that he had managed to contact 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 by NKVD-chief Viktor Abakumov. After his release he returned to Poland and to his wife and three sons. He became a head of the Jewish Cultural Society.
After the Six Day War, anti-semitism increased in Poland and Trepper decided to try to immigrate to Israel. Initially the Polish government refused permission until international protests forced Poland to allow a number of Jews to leave for Israel. He settled in Jerusalem in 1974. In 1975 he published his autobiography, The Great Game. A few years before, a book about the Red Orchestra, containing interviews with both Russians and Nazis had appeared, written by Gilles Perrault.
Leopold Trepper died - a convinced communist revolutionary - in Jerusalem in 1982. His funeral was accompanied by the presence of the highest echelon of the Israeli army, including defence minister Ariel Sharon.
Page 409 Epilogue to the Great Game by Leopold Trepper, "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, "Havent 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."
