81 Facts About Leopold Trepper

Leopold Zakharovich Trepper was a Polish-Israeli Communist, career Soviet military intelligence officer of the Red Army Intelligence and resistance fighter.

In 1936, Leopold Trepper became the technical director of a Soviet Red Army Intelligence unit in western Europe.

Leopold Trepper was responsible for recruiting agents and creating espionage networks.

Leopold Trepper was an experienced intelligence officer, and an extremely resourceful and capable man completely at home in the west.

Leopold Trepper was a man who could not be drawn in conversation, who lived a reclusive life, and had a talent of judging people that enabled him to easily penetrate significant groups.

Leopold Trepper eventually betrayed many of his collaborators who went to their death, in an effort to shield the French Communist Party from investigation.

On 23 February 1904, Leopold Trepper was born to a large Jewish family of 10 children in Nowy Targ, Poland, which was part of Austria-Hungary at the time.

Leopold Trepper's father was a travelling farm machinery and seed merchant who later died when Leopold Trepper was almost twelve, leaving the family in financial straits.

Leopold Trepper's parents sent him to school in Lwow, to escape the strongly militant and anti-Semitic tradition in Poland.

Leopold Trepper worked in a chocolate factory and took evening classes to train as a teacher.

Leopold Trepper was a Jewish communist who travelled under the aliases Sarah Orschitzer and Luba Brekson.

Leopold Trepper found work first as a workshop locksmith, mason, and later worked in the mines in Katowice.

Leopold Trepper applied for a visa to France when he found it impossible to obtain work after the uprising, but was refused.

Leopold Trepper was involved in an illegal communist demonstration, and was arrested and jailed; she would have been deported had she not married a Palestinian citizen.

Between 1928 and 1930, Leopold Trepper was the organiser of the Ehud or Unity faction, a Jewish-Arab communist labour organisation within the Histadrut trade union body; most of its members came from the Kerem HaTeimanim area and worked against the British forces in Palestine.

Leopold Trepper organised a hunger strike after learning that the communist prisoners were to be deported.

Leopold Trepper was released after news of the hunger strike reached London and the British newspapers, and he and the hunger strikers were placed on stretchers outside the prison, as they were too weak to walk due to lack of food.

In March 1930, after he was given the choice of leaving Palestine or being forcefully deported to Cyprus, Leopold Trepper travelled via Syria to Marseille, France, and worked as a dishwasher.

Leopold Trepper then travelled to Paris where he found work as a decorator living a poor existence.

Leopold Trepper came into contact with numerous left wing intellectuals and communist workers that eventually led him to become a member of the Rabkor, an illegal political organisation that was dominated by communists who sent both men and intelligence to Moscow.

Leopold Trepper continued to work for the organisation until French intelligence dismantled it in 1932.

Leopold Trepper left Paris on a Polish passport and escaped to Berlin by train, where he contacted the Soviet embassy.

Between 1932 and 1935, Leopold Trepper worked to become a GRU agent by learning his trade.

Leopold Trepper was in constant touch with the Russian intelligence instructors who taught him the practical skills of an espionage agent.

In 1935, Leopold Trepper submitted a newspaper column covering art to the newspaper for Russian Jews called Truth.

In 1935 or 1936, Leopold Trepper was given the post of technical director of Soviet intelligence in Western Europe and was known as the Big Chief.

Leopold Trepper returned to Paris on a passport under the name Sommer, and spent five months investigating the extensive network and accidentally exposed a double agent: a Dutch Jew who was the former head of the Soviet espionage network in the United States and was turned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Leopold Trepper returned to the Soviet Union under the name Majeris to inform Soviet intelligence of his findings and went back to Paris five months later.

Leopold Trepper used provided money to create the export division of The Raincoat King called the Foreign Excellent Raincoat Company, which dealt in raincoat exports and was considered by Leopold Trepper to be the ideal cover for the group's espionage network.

On 6 March 1939, Leopold Trepper used the alias Adam Mikler and identified as a wealthy Canadian businessman, traveled from Quebec while being accompanied by wife, who traveled as Anna Mikler.

On 25 March 1939, Leopold Trepper met the GRU intelligence agent Mikhail Makarov in a cafe.

Makarov's original duty was to provide Leopold Trepper with forged documentation, but since Grossvogel had introduced Abraham Rajchmann, who became the group's forger, he became a WT operator for the group instead and was posted to Ostend to work at a branch of the Raincoat Company, which was sold to him to strengthen his cover.

In 1939, Leopold Trepper met the American classical dancer, Georgie De Winter in Brussels.

In July 1940, Leopold Trepper fled Belgium with Grossvogel and moved to Paris, where Grossvogel and Polish Jew Hillel Katz were Leopold Trepper's main assistants.

Leopold Trepper changed his alias to Jean Gilbert and got in touch with General Ivan Susloparov, who was the Soviet military attache in the Vichy government.

Leopold Trepper arranged to have his wife and child returned to Moscow, and they left in August 1940.

Leopold Trepper spent lavishly on bribes, the upkeep of the Chateau de Billeron, sundries, and large daily expenses to maintain his cover as a successful businessman.

In September 1941, Leopold Trepper met with Comintern agent Henry Robinson, who was one of the most important sources of intelligence in Paris.

Leopold Trepper ran his own large espionage network, which had revealed to the Soviets that Hitler was inclined to call off Operation Sea Lion, the plan to invade the British Isles.

Leopold Trepper learned of a radio transmitter that was being run by the French Communist Party in Paris from Robinson, and was ordered to take charge of Robinson's network.

Around that time, Leopold Trepper was introduced to Anna Maximovitch by her brother Basil Maximovitch.

In May 1942, a meeting was arranged between the two men in Brussels, where Leopold Trepper instructed Jeffremov to take over Gurevich's Belgian and low-countries espionage network.

Leopold Trepper instructed him to maintain radio silence for six months, and gave Jeffremov 100,000 Belgian francs for expenses.

In January 1942, Leopold Trepper ordered Gurevich to travel to Marseille with Jules Jaspar and Alfred Corbin to establish a new branch office of Simex to enable the recruitment of a new espionage network.

Leopold Trepper spoke of Gurevich and exposed the Trepper espionage network in France.

Leopold Trepper asked Robinson to arrange a radio link to Soviet intelligence, but the latter refused.

Leopold Trepper turned to Gurevich in Marseille and visited him several times to establish contact with the Soviets, but Gurevich refused to use his transmitter and was effectively lost to the network.

Leopold Trepper was forced to turn to Pierre and Suzanne Giraud, who were established to have a transmitter either at Saint-Leu-la-Foret or Le Pecq by Grossvogel and ordered to master the equipment.

However, no espionage material was found and the interrogation of prisoners failed to determine the whereabouts of Monsieur Gilbert, the alias that Leopold Trepper was using in his dealings with the firm.

Leopold Trepper was imprisoned on a third floor room at 11 Rue des Saussaies in Paris.

Leopold Trepper offered to collaborate with the Abwehr, who subsequently treated Trepper leniently in the expectation that he would serve as a double agent in Paris.

Leopold Trepper was allowed to take daily walks and go into town to buy necessities, but always accompanied by two Sonderkommando guards.

On 25 December 1942, Leopold Trepper was informed that he would be running a funkspiel that was known as "Eiffel".

When Leopold Trepper wrote his memoir, "Le grand jeu", he attached such great importance to the Funkspiel as a successful operation that he considered it his greatest victory.

Leopold Trepper wrote that he succeeded in turning the worst of situations in his favour by convincing the Germans that only a meeting with a PCF contact could convince Soviet intelligence that he was free.

Leopold Trepper warned Soviet intelligence of the arrests in Paris and convinced them to seriously participate in the funkspiel, so as to both poison the funkspiel communications in a way that was beneficial to the Soviets and at the same time expose German plans.

On 25 December 1943, the first message sent by the funkspiel, was an request for Leopold Trepper to meet with a PCF contact.

The GRU didn't believe that Leopold Trepper messages were part of a deception plan and continued to arrange meeting dates, although the Comintern believed he was captured and tried to warn them.

The message exchange proves that Leopold Trepper passed his message to Moussier in June 1943.

On 7 July 1943, the first part of Leopold Trepper's report was transmitted to Soviet intelligence by Jacques Duclos.

The reasons for Leopold Trepper changing the dates in his memoir are not clear.

Leopold Trepper named his associate "Michel" as Louis Grojnowski as the person he wished to meet.

For between four and five months, the Sonderkammado were operating against the PCF with the help of Leopold Trepper, that resulted in many GRU and PCF resistance fighters being captured.

On 13 September 1943, Leopold Trepper escaped Gestapo custody while visiting a pharmacy, Pharmacie Baillie, near the railway station at St Lazare.

Leopold Trepper contacted De Winter, and they both agreed to hide out in Le Vesinet, where he wrote to Heinz Pannwitz to explain his disappearance was not an escape, but merely an attempt to ensure he stayed alive as a move that designed to provide the maximum advantage for Soviet intelligence.

Leopold Trepper wrote to Pannwitz a second time, deploring the fact that in spite of his request, a search was being made for him, and that he was placed in a very uncomfortable position.

At the time, Leopold Trepper was the subject of an Identification Order in France, German and Belgium as a "wanted dangerous spy".

Leopold Trepper contacted Suzanne Spaak and Jean Claude Spaak through De Winter, using the alias Jean Gilbert, in the hope that he could make contact with the French Communist Party who could send a message to the Soviet military attache in London to warn them of the collapse of the network.

Suzanne had a wide range of contacts and it was through her influence that Leopold Trepper hoped to contact Moscow.

Leopold Trepper sent De Winter to the treff, on several Sundays in a row, but no contact was made.

Leopold Trepper, who wanted to restart his clandestine activities, was wary of De Winter being identified by the Gestapo due to her constant visits to the Spaak household.

Leopold Trepper asked Jean Claude for the 100,000 francs, that had been deposited by the Sokols which he gave to De Winter for expenses and sent her to a hideout in a village near Chartres in the hope that she could be smuggled into the non-occupied zone.

Leopold Trepper learned the Gestapo had visited all his previous addresses and were close to capturing him.

Leopold Trepper warned Jean Claude, who sent both his wife and children to Belgium, before travelling to Paris, where he hid out with friends until the end of the war.

Leopold Trepper last saw Jean Claude before the liberation of 23 October 1943.

In 1945, Leopold Trepper was related to the Soviet Union and was arrested upon arrival.

Leopold Trepper was personally interrogated by SMERSH Chief Viktor Abakumov, and was interned in Lubyanka, Lefortovo, and Butyrka prison.

Leopold Trepper vigorously defended his position and managed to avoid execution, but remained in prison until 1955 for unknown reasons.

Leopold Trepper was elected to run the Jewish cultural society Yidisher Kultur Farband and ran its publishing house, Yiddish Bukh.

However, while the Polish communist government promoted and encouraged the emigration of thousands of Jews at that time, Leopold Trepper was continually refused a visa and placed under house arrest.

Leopold Trepper died in Jerusalem in 1982 and was buried there.