Helene "Leen" Kullman (31 January 1920 – 6 March 1943 or 1978) was an
Estonia
Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, a ...
n agent of
Soviet military intelligence
The Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, rus, Гла́вное управле́ние Генера́льного шта́ба Вооружённых сил Росси́йской Федера́ци ...
in the Baltic Fleet during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.
Early life
Kullman was born on 31 January 1920 to an Estonian family in Tartu; she was the sixth of eight children of a shoemaker. Her father died in 1933, the same year she left secondary school and enrolled in the Tallinn Pedagogical School. After Estonia was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 she joined the
Komsomol
The All-Union Leninist Young Communist League (russian: link=no, Всесоюзный ленинский коммунистический союз молодёжи (ВЛКСМ), ), usually known as Komsomol (; russian: Комсомол, links=n ...
, having graduated from the Tallinn Pedagogical School in 1937, after which she enrolled in the Tallinn Pedagogical Seminary. She became certified as a junior secondary school teacher in 1941, shortly before the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
World War II activities
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union Kullman was assigned by the Komsomol to help people evacuate Tallinn during the night. She was evacuated from the city on 28 August 1941 with her twin sister Anna to a collective farm in the
Chelyabinsk Oblast
Chelyabinsk Oblast (russian: Челя́бинская о́бласть, ''Chelyabinskaya oblast'') is a federal subject (an oblast) of Russia in the Ural Mountains region, on the border of Europe and Asia. Its administrative center is the city ...
of Russia. After the creation of the 7th Estonian Division in December 1941 she soon joined in 1942 and was assigned to a medical battalion as a nurse until she was transferred to the intelligence directorate in April 1942. In September 1942, she was dropped by parachuted behind German lines in the forest near
Tartu
Tartu is the second largest city in Estonia after the Northern European country's political and financial capital, Tallinn. Tartu has a population of 91,407 (as of 2021). It is southeast of Tallinn and 245 kilometres (152 miles) northeast of ...
. She then began to radio information on the locations and numbers of enemy garrisons, defences, and ships in addition to information about the presence and degree of ice in areas of the Baltic. In January 1943, she was arrested by the local
Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...
and subsequently shot by a prison guard after she spat in his face according to Soviet sources. She was declared a
Hero of the Soviet Union
The title Hero of the Soviet Union (russian: Герой Советского Союза, translit=Geroy Sovietskogo Soyuza) was the highest distinction in the Soviet Union, awarded together with the Order of Lenin personally or collectively for ...
on 8 May 1965.
Post war
In 2000, the Estonian newspaper
Postimees reported that Helene may have in fact cooperated with her captors and turned double-agent, continuing her radio transmissions, and then after the war relocated to West Germany under a new identity where she lived until 1978.
See also
*
List of female Heroes of the Soviet Union
This is a list of female Heroes of the Soviet Union
The title Hero of the Soviet Union (russian: Герой Советского Союза, translit=Geroy Sovietskogo Soyuza) was the highest distinction in the Soviet Union, awarded together wi ...
*
Tatyana Marinenko
Tatyana Savelyevna Marinenko, (; 25 January 1920 – 2 August 1942) was a Soviet partisan and intelligence officer of the NKVD during the Second World War. After she was captured and tortured by the Germans in 1942 she was posthumously declared a ...
*
Marytė Melnikaitė
Marytė or Marija Melnikaitė (18 March 1923 – 13 July 1943) was a Soviet partisan and the only Lithuanians, Lithuanian woman awarded Hero of the Soviet Union. While her partisan career lasted less than two months, Soviet propaganda exaggerated ...
References
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kullman, Helene
Soviet military personnel killed in World War II
Heroes of the Soviet Union
1910 births
1943 deaths
Female resistance members of World War II
Estonian people of World War II
Women in the Russian and Soviet military
GRU officers
People from Tartu
Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic people