Hilde Coppi

German communist and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime. She was a member of the anti-fascist resistance group that was later called the Red Orchestra by the Abwehr, during the Nazi period.

She was working in Berlin as a clerk at the Reich Insurance Institute for Clerical Workers when she got to know Hans Coppi, who had only just been released from prison. By 1933, she had contact with members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).

Together, Hilde and Hans Coppi – who wed on 14 June 1941 – hid persecution victims of the Nazi régime. During the war, Hilde Coppi listened to "Voice of Russia" (i.e. Radio Moscow) and shared the information broadcast over the radio with the Red Orchestra and other resistance groups. She also relayed greetings and any other signs of continued life heard on Radio Moscow from German prisoners of war to their kin. This was especially important, as Nazi propaganda had it that Soviet troops shot their enemies out of hand, and did not take prisoners. Moreover, she busied herself by broadcasting her group's messages through leaflets and stickers. She conducted a sticker campaign against the Nazis' anti-Soviet propaganda exhibition called The Soviet Paradise.

Coppi and her husband were both arrested on 12 September 1942, along with Hans' parents and brother, and Hilde's mother. Hilde was pregnant by this time, later giving birth to the couple's son at the Barnimstrasse women's prison on 27 November. On 22 December 1942, her husband was put to death, and Hilde, too, was sentenced to death in the new year, on 20 January. A petition for clemency was made in her case in July, but Hitler refused to grant it. The execution was delayed until August, so that she could nurse her child, Hans. On 5 August 1943, Hilde Coppi was beheaded at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin seven months after her husband.

After the end of the war, her son was raised by her husband's parents, Freda and Robert Coppi, in the garden colony Am Waldessaum.