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.

On 23 February 1904, Leopold Trepper was born to a large Jewish family of 10 children in Nowy Targ, Poland, which was part of Austria-Hungary at the time.

[2] After leaving the mines, he worked in Dąbrowa Górnicza where, due to extreme poverty and lack of food, he agitated the workers in Dombrova to strike.

[13] In March 1930, after he was given the choice of leaving Palestine or being forcefully deported to Cyprus, Trepper travelled via Syria to Marseille, France, and worked as a dishwasher.

For most of 1937, he was concerned with extensive planning and re-organisation of Soviet intelligence operations in Western Europe; in that year he visited Switzerland, the British Isles, and Scandinavia.

[26] Makarov, a wireless telegraphy (WT) operator, forger, and expert on secret inks,[26] had been sent from Moscow via Stockholm and Copenhagen to Paris whilst travelling on a Uruguayan passport, under the alias Carlos Alamo.

Gurevich took part in ballroom dancing and riding lessons, and as he travelled between luxury hotels, mail bearing the stamps of Uruguay awaited his arrival.

[32] Trepper changed his alias to Jean Gilbert and got in touch with General Ivan Susloparov, who was the Soviet military attaché in the Vichy government.

When the war started, the funds were sent via Switzerland in dollar amounts that were agreed in advance with Soviet intelligence via radio and delivered to Trepper.

Trepper spent lavishly on bribes, the upkeep of the Château de Billeron, sundries, and large daily expenses to maintain his cover as a successful businessman.

[40] He ran his own large espionage network, which had revealed to the Soviets that Hitler was inclined to call off Operation Sea Lion, the plan to invade the British Isles.

[42] It was unusual for two senior agents to meet, but an exception was made as it was felt by Soviet intelligence that Robinson's extensive contacts could help Trepper build his French network.

[38] Basil had an affair with Margarete Hoffman-Scholz, secretary to Wehrmacht colonel Hans Kuprian, who was on a committee that processed prisoners from the Vichy government for slave labour, and a niece to General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, military commander of Paris.

[46][47] On 30 November 1941, the house at 101 Rue des Atrébates in Brussels, run by Rita Arnould and Zofia Poznańska and used to transmit intelligence, was discovered by the Funkabwehr.

In January 1942, Trepper ordered Gurevich to travel to Marseille with Jules Jaspar and Alfred Corbin to establish a new branch office of Simex to enable the recruitment of a new espionage network.

[53] On 29–30 June 1942, the house that Wenzel was transmitting from, 12 Rue de Namur in Brussels, was raided by the local police under the command of Abwehr officer Harry Piepe.

[54] Wenzel was interrogated and tortured by the Gestapo for six to eight weeks and confessed to everything, including the cypher keys he used and his code name,[55] which allowed the Funkabwehr to decipher a large amount of back traffic belonging to the group.

[61] Trepper was forced to turn to Pierre and Suzanne Giraud,[61][a] who were established to have a transmitter either at Saint-Leu-la-Forêt or Le Pecq (sources vary)[61][62] by Grossvogel and ordered to master the equipment.

However, no espionage material was found and the interrogation of prisoners failed to determine the whereabouts of Monsieur Gilbert, the alias that Trepper was using in his dealings with the firm.

[69] In 2002, author Patrick Marnham suggested Trepper not only exposed Soviet agent Henry Robinson, but may have been the source that betrayed French resistance leader Jean Moulin.

[c][77] In June 1943, Soviet GRU officer Ivan Bolchakov conducted an analysis of the received messages from December 1942 and found that 23 out 63 were of sufficient quality and only 4 were considered valuable.

[82] He contacted De Winter,[82] and they both agreed to hide out in Le Vésinet,[83] where he wrote to Heinz Pannwitz to explain his disappearance was not an escape, but merely an attempt to ensure he stayed alive as a move that designed to provide the maximum advantage for Soviet intelligence.

[83]> Trepper wrote to Pannwitz a second time, deploring the fact that in spite of his request, a search was being made for him, and that he was placed in a very uncomfortable position.

[83] Jean Claude had not heard from Trepper since 1942, when the Sokols had left a large sum of money, their identity, and ration cards with Spaak for safekeeping.

Trepper, who wanted to restart his clandestine activities, was wary of De Winter being identified by the Gestapo due to her constant visits to the Spaak household.

He asked Jean Claude for the 100,000 francs, that had been deposited by the Sokols[83] which he gave to De Winter for expenses and sent her to a hideout in a village near Chartres in the hope that she could be smuggled into the non-occupied zone.

[3] After the Six-Day War in June 1967, Władysław Gomułka of the Polish United Workers' Party gave an anti-Semitic diatribe, and when student unrest broke out in the spring of 1968, a state-organised antisemitic campaign began in Poland that led Trepper to begin the process of migrating to Israel.

[3] However, while the Polish communist government promoted and encouraged the emigration of thousands of Jews at that time, Trepper was continually refused a visa and placed under house arrest.

[3] Permission was refused until international pressure from worldwide publicity campaign that included his sons' protests and hunger strikes, forced the authorities to allow him and a few Jewish people who were in a similar situation to leave.

[3] According to a contemporary report from the news agency, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, "no government representatives or officials attended his funeral", though the Israeli Defence Minister Ariel Sharon, later the 11th Prime Minister of Israel, subsequently awarded Trepper the Emblem of Israel in a ceremony "attended by dozens of former members of anti-Nazi partisans and fighting groups".