Leopold Trepper - Biography

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 Kraków and was imprisoned for eight months.

Trepper moved from Poland to Palestine in 1924 as a member of the Zionist socialist movement 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 a GRU agent for the next six years, traveling between Moscow and Paris. He escaped the Stalinist purges with support from Soviet 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 for Operation Barbarossa through a Soviet military attaché in Vichy France. Eventually, the Gestapo uncovered the network and Trepper fled to France.

In France, Trepper established 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 leniently in an attempt to make him 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 escaped and went underground. He emerged with the French Resistance after the liberation 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 by NKVD chief Viktor Abakumov. After his release, he returned to Poland to his wife and three sons. He became a head of the Jewish Cultural Society.

After the Six Day War 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 Soviets and Nazis had appeared, written by Gilles 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 your 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.

Commemorative Events

On Tuesday 6 December 2011 former MEP Mark F. Watts of Luther Pendragon Brussels is organising a commemorative event in the European Parliament hosted by Peter Skinner, a senior British MEP, to mark the 70th Anniversary of the raid by the German Abwehr on the Red Orchestra Brussels HQ. It will include a seminar with Hans Coppi, Jr. and other leading Red Orchestra experts, and a commemorative reception. The Russian Ambassador to the EU, H.E. Vladimir Chizhov, is guest of honour. The American and British Ambassadors to Belgium will attend together with a representative of the German Government.

Remembering Leopold Trepper & the Red Orchestra

External links

• Online biography