Mrs. Elisabeth Trepper accused French officials today of slandering her husband, Leopold Trepper who headed the “Red Orchestra”–the Soviet espionage network–in Western Europe during the Nazi occupation in World War II. Mrs. Trepper who was refused a visa to enter France, spoke by telephone from Copenhagen in an interview conducted by French television.
She said the French police lacked “humanity” and claimed that “those who slander my husband today should be proud to have a Trepper living in their midst, if only for a few days.” She was referring to allegations in intelligence circles that Trepper had collaborated with the Gestapo after his arrest by German agents in Paris in 1944. A French radio broadcast quoted Trepper today as saying that if he were in France he would sue the police and intelligence services for slander.
The Treppers, who live in Warsaw, have been trying unsuccessfully for years to obtain exit visas from the Polish authorities so that they could join a son living in Israel. Their visa has been refused on the grounds that Trepper “knows too much” of Soviet espionage techniques.
Mrs. Trepper, granted a temporary visa to visit her son Michael in Copenhagen, told the interviewers that all she and her husband wanted was “to go to Israel and end our lives in quiet and in peace.” She ridiculed the suggestion that Trepper, whom Hitler once called “Europe’s greatest spy,” would be dangerous to the West, “Work is definitely over for us. This sort of work was finished nearly 30 years ago,” she said.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
