Trepper, Léopold, 1904-1982

Leopold Zakharovich Trepper (23 February 1904 – 19 January 1982) was a Polish-Israeli Communist, career Soviet agent of the Red Army Intelligence and resistance fighter. With the code name Otto, Trepper had worked with the Red Army since 1930. Trepper and Richard Sorge, a Soviet military intelligence officer, were the two main Soviet agents in Europe and were employed as roving agents to set up espionage networks throughout Europe and in Japan. While Sorge was a penetration agent, Trepper ran a series of clandestine cells for organising agents in Europe. Trepper used the latest technology at the time—small wireless radios—to communicate with Soviet intelligence. Although the Funkabwehr's monitoring of the radios transmission eventually led to the destruction of Trepper's organisation, this sophisticated use of the technology enabled the espionage organisation to behave as a network with the ability to achieve tactical surprise and deliver high-quality intelligence, such as the warning of Operation Barbarossa. In 1936, Trepper became the technical director of a Soviet Red Army Intelligence unit in western Europe. He was responsible for recruiting agents and creating espionage networks. Trepper was an experienced intelligence officer, and an extremely resourceful and capable man completely at home in the west. He 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. By the start of World War II, Trepper controlled a large espionage network in Belgium, that had links with Dutch, German and Swiss agents and operated seven separate espionage networks in France. By 1942, his operation had been discovered and he was arrested on 24 November 1942 by the Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle, who gave it the name Red Orchestra ("Rote Kapelle"). Trepper agreed to work with the Germans. He eventually betrayed many of his collaborators who went to their death, in an effort to shield the French Communist Party (PCF) from investigation. He eventually betrayed them as well. On 13 September 1943, he managed to escape. At the end of the war, he returned to the Soviet Union and was imprisoned for 10 years. When he was released, he returned to Poland. In 1974, he migrated to Isreal with his wife and three sons.