Margrit Bolli

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Margarete Schatz-Bolli (born December 15, 1919 in Basel ; † October 13, 2017 in Therwil ) was a Swiss radio operator for the Red Orchestra .

Life

Bolli is the daughter of an Italian anti-fascist . She completed training as a dancer, but could not always live on the fees paid there. She was working as a waitress in a café in Bern when Sándor Radó from the " Rote Kapelle " resistance organization sought her acquaintance. Radó advised her to learn French and the ten-finger system. Later, when she relatives in Lausanne lived, she met the former Spanish fighters and GRU -Funker Alexander Foote know who her the Morse code and the encryption taught messages.

Then Bolli started working for Radó. She received 400 Swiss francs a month for this . In September 1942 she moved to Geneva to carry out the instructions from Radó, whom she knew by the alias Albert . From October 1942 to March 1943 she received encrypted messages and passed them on. To do this, she used the apartment at 8 rue Henri Mussard and a radio set that she had received from Radó. The apparatus was built into the case of a mobile gramophone . Bolli passed on the encrypted reports under the code name Rosa three times a week between midnight and one o'clock at night. Her salary was increased to 600 francs a month, plus expenses and repair work.

Around mid-1943, Bolli got to know the hairdresser Hans Peters, an informant who worked for the 3rd Department of the German Defense and who had been specially assigned to Bolli and Helene Radó under the code name Romeo . She gave him the name of the book she used for the encryption or he succeeded in stealing the book. The book was It began in September by Grete von Urbanitzky . She and Peters were arrested by the Swiss counterintelligence on October 13, 1943 in his apartment. She stated that she worked for Radó to fight against National Socialism . Since she had noticed the surveillance of her apartment before, she asked Radó to pick up the radio. However, he left some evidential little things like the headphones in the apartment.

Your defense lawyer was Jacques Chamorel , a lawyer from Lausanne. In 1947, a Swiss military court (Division Court 1A) sentenced Margarete Bolli to ten months probation and a fine of 500 Swiss francs for intelligence service against foreign states. Otto Pünter paid a bail for her so that the radio operator was released. She married the businessman Artur Schatz. In 1956 the couple moved to Basel.

The filmmaker Heidi Specogna produced the documentary alias Rosa in 1993 about the life of Margrit Bolli.

People of the "Red Chapel"

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Death: Treasure Margarete. October 16, 2017. Retrieved October 28, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Bolli, Margrit
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schatz-Bolli, Margarete; Honey, Margrit; Rosa (alias); Rosie (alias)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss radio operator of the Rote Kapelle
DATE OF BIRTH December 15, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Basel
DATE OF DEATH October 13, 2017
Place of death Therwil