11 Facts About Greta Kuckhoff

Margaretha "Greta" Kuckhoff was a Resistance member in Nazi Germany, who belonged to the Communist Party of Germany and the NKVD spy ring that was dubbed the Red Orchestra by the Abwehr.

Greta Kuckhoff was married to Adam Kuckhoff, who was executed by the Third Reich.

Greta Kuckhoff's father was a carpenter and built musical instruments; her mother was a seamstress.

Greta Kuckhoff later wrote warmly about her childhood; she attended Kleist School, wrote poems for the archbishop and attended the Lyzeum and Oberlyzeum in her hometown.

Greta Kuckhoff was friendly with others in her own group, such as Adolf Grimme.

Greta Kuckhoff was arrested by the Gestapo at her apartment on 12 September 1942; her husband in Prague on the same day.

Greta Kuckhoff's sentence was lifted on 4 May A few months later in a second trial on 27 September 1943, her civil rights were revoked for "abetting the progress of an organization of high treason and encouraging the enemy".

Greta Kuckhoff was sentenced to 10 years in a labor prison and served her sentence first at the women's Zuchthaus in Cottbus; on 4 February 1945 she was sent to Waldheim Zuchthaus, where she was liberated by the Red Army on 8 May 1945.

Greta Kuckhoff's husband was executed at Plotzensee Prison; she learned of his death from the prison chaplain.

In 1945, Greta Kuckhoff re-joined the KPD and in May 1945, was appointed the leader of the postwar reconstruction Bureau of Denazified and Abandoned Factories in Berlin.

Greta Kuckhoff was cremated and honoured with burial in the Pergolenweg Ehrengrab section of Berlin's Friedrichsfelde Cemetery.