‘red Orchestra’ Film Sharply Criticized

A West German documentary film on the “Red Orchestra,” the World War II Soviet espionage network in Western Europe that was headed by Leopold Trepper, was sharply criticized today by Trepper’s wife. Mrs. Luba Trepper, visiting Holland on behalf of the Dutch Trepper Defense Committee, called the film, shown on local television, “calumnious.” She said it portrayed the Germans “too favorably” and was “proof that neo-Nazism is again tolerated in West Germany.”

Trepper, living in Warsaw, has been denied an exit visa by Polish authorities. In the current issue of the Dutch weekly Haagse Post, Trepper criticized the German documentary for “inaccuracies.” Similar criticism was made by Gilles Perrault, head of the French Trepper Defense Committee and author of the book “The Red Orchestra.” In an interview in the Dutch daily Het Parool, he said the documentary was made “with the preconceived commercial intention to sell it to former Nazi-occupied West European countries.”