Red Orchestra (64 page)
Authors: Anne Nelson
This photo (presumably taken by a German soldier) surfaced after the war with the inscription, “Last Jew in Vinnitsa.” In 1942 the Schulze-Boysen group began to collect similar atrocity photos from soldiers returning from the front. Libertas Schulze-Boysen secretly copied and archived them at the UFA film studio for use in future war crimes prosecutions.
This flyer, dated June 1942, includes highly detailed images of execution pits in the Ukraine. It was clandestinely published by German Communist Wilhelm Knöchel. Knöchel exchanged anti-Nazi documentation with the Schulze-Boysen circle through John Sieg and Elisabeth Schumacher.
Leopold Trepper was a professional Soviet intelligence agent based in Brussels. In late 1941 Moscow ordered him to make contact with the group in Berlin. Trepper, who was unacquainted with the Berliners, was horrified when Moscow sent their names and home addresses over the radio. The German military intercepted the message and soon decoded it.
Anatoli Gourevitch, a Soviet agent in Trepper's Brussels operation, was sent to Berlin to contact the Schulze-Boysens and establish radio communications.
The Gestapo arrested Harro Schulze-Boysen on August 30, 1942. Other arrests quickly followed. These police photos shows Harro Schulze-Boysen (above), Helmut Himpel, who already shows signs of abuse (right), and Arvid Harnack (below).
Also arrested were nineteen-year-old Liana Berkowitz (right), Greta Kuckhoff, and Adam Kuckhoff.
Hermann Göring summoned Luftwaffe judge advocate Manfred Roeder from Vinnitsa, Ukraine, and ordered him to prosecute Schulze-Boysen and his group.
Most of the Rote Kapelle executions took place in this room at Berlin's Plötzensee prison. The women and some of the men were guillotined. A special beam was equipped with meat hooks to slowly strangle the men who were considered central to the case.
Greta Kuckhoff was one of a few survivors of the Berlin circle. She worked with the Nuremberg investigators to bring Manfred Roeder to trial for war crimes, but he was protected by U.S. Army intelligence. Greta settled in East Germany, where she was later purged from her government position. The East Germans heavily censored her memoirs.
Katja Casella is the last known survivor of the
Rote Kapelle.
She and her friend Lisa were the two Jewish art students who hid fugitives for the group. Katja became an accomplished painter, she now lives outside Berlin.
Copyright © 2009 by Anne Nelson
All rights reserved.
RANDOM HOUSE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Photographs: Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, Berlin
library of congress cata l oging-in-publication data
Nelson, Anne.
Red Orchestra : the story of the Berlin underground and the circle of friends who resisted Hitler / Anne Nelson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN: 978-1-58836-799-0
1. Anti-Nazi movement—Germany—Berlin—History. 2. World War, 1939–1945—
Underground movements—Germany—Berlin. 3. Rote Kapelle (Resistance group).
4. Espionage—Germany—Berlin—History—20th century.
5. Berlin (Germany)—History—1918–1945.
I
. Title.
DD
256.4.
B
47
N
45 2009
943′.155086—dc22 2008023465
v3.0