Heinrich Koenen
Encyclopedia
Heinrich Koenen was a German engineer, anti-fascist resistance fighter and agent of the Soviet military intelligence service GRU
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Heinrich Koenen was born in Berlin, the son of Communist Reichstag deputy Wilhelm Koenen. He was selected as political head of the German Communist Youth (KJVD). He studied engineering at the Technical University of Berlin but was expelled in 1933 before his final examination for political reasons. He emigrated via Denmark and Sweden to the Soviet Union, where he worked as an engineer in a Moscow tractor factory and in 1940 became a Soviet citizen.
After Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, he volunteered for military service and was trained for use in Germany as a paratrooper and radio operator. He was given the task of restoring the broken links between the Moscow headquarters of the Comintern and the GRU and the Berlin group of the Red Orchestra. On 23 October 1942 Koenen parachuted behind German lines at Osterode in East Prussia and made his way to Berlin. He was arrested on 29 October 1942 in the apartment of Ilse Stöbe
, his contact in West Berlin, by a waiting Gestapo official.
Koenen was executed without trial in February 1945 in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp
. His name is inscibed on a memorial stone in the Gedenkstatte der Sozialisten
Socialist Memorial in Lichtenberg, Berlin.
GRU
GRU or Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye is the foreign military intelligence directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation...
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Heinrich Koenen was born in Berlin, the son of Communist Reichstag deputy Wilhelm Koenen. He was selected as political head of the German Communist Youth (KJVD). He studied engineering at the Technical University of Berlin but was expelled in 1933 before his final examination for political reasons. He emigrated via Denmark and Sweden to the Soviet Union, where he worked as an engineer in a Moscow tractor factory and in 1940 became a Soviet citizen.
After Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, he volunteered for military service and was trained for use in Germany as a paratrooper and radio operator. He was given the task of restoring the broken links between the Moscow headquarters of the Comintern and the GRU and the Berlin group of the Red Orchestra. On 23 October 1942 Koenen parachuted behind German lines at Osterode in East Prussia and made his way to Berlin. He was arrested on 29 October 1942 in the apartment of Ilse Stöbe
Ilse Stöbe
Ilse Stöbe was a German journalist and anti-Nazi resistance fighter.Ilse Stöbe grew up in a working class home in Berlin...
, his contact in West Berlin, by a waiting Gestapo official.
Koenen was executed without trial in February 1945 in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Sachsenhausen or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in May, 1945. After World War II, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used as an NKVD...
. His name is inscibed on a memorial stone in the Gedenkstatte der Sozialisten
Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde
The Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery , also known as the Memorial to the Socialists , is a cemetery in the borough of Lichtenberg in Berlin. When the cemetery was founded in 1881 it was called the Freidrichsfelde Municipal Cemetery Berlin...
Socialist Memorial in Lichtenberg, Berlin.