Former master spy Leopold Trepper is in a sanitarium near Warsaw and has written to his son that his chances of getting a Polish visa to emigrate to Israel are “worse than ever.” Trepper’s son, Michael Brodje, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he received a letter from his father who had been missing from his Warsaw apartment for the past week.
The 68-year-old former leader of the “Red Orchestra,” wrote that his health was “very bad” but that he hoped to be out of the sanitarium by his next birthday, Feb. 23. Trepper closed his letter with the words, “Please take care of mother.” His son told the JTA that this meant that Trepper has little hope of seeing his wife again. Mrs. Elisabeth Trepper was permitted to leave Poland last year and has been campaigning on her husband’s behalf in Western Europe.
Trepper’s son said he received a letter from the president of the Human Rights Committee in Belgium, Lowell Aronstein, saying that the committee’s recent letters to the Polish Embassy protesting Trepper’s plight were returned unopened.
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.
