Agent Sonya

Striking sixteen-year-old Ursula Kuczynski with a baton during a demonstration, the Berlin police officer, unknowingly, determined her fate. A girl from an educated Jewish family, whose father and brother held leftist views, she became a staunch supporter of communism and spent twenty years spying for the Soviet Union. Agent Sonya was baptized in combat in Shanghai by Richard Sorge, went through intelligence school in Moscow, almost took part in the assassination attempt on Hitler, personally assembled radio transmitters, transmitted atomic secrets to the USSR during World War II, obtained from scientist-spy Klaus Fuchs, and never failed a mission. Sociable and cheerful, she fell in love and raised children, cared for her parents — and gave no reason for the clumsy detectives of MI5 to suspect her double life. The fate of Ursula Kuczynski-Gamburger-Burton is an extraordinary example of how one can remain true to their beliefs without betraying or being betrayed, in a world engulfed by catastrophe, where black and white swap places or merge into one. Perhaps her secret lies in the ability to love and change without betraying oneself.