Guillaume Hoorickx

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Guillaume Hoorickx (pseudonym: Bill Orix ) (born April 12, 1900 in Antwerp , † 1983 in Paris ) was a Belgian painter, resistance fighter of the Red Chapel and intelligence agent for the Soviet Union.

Life

Hoorickx was part of the Belgian Kent network from autumn 1940 to the end of 1942 . He was married to Caroline , née Sterk, but divorced before the war. In 1940 his ex-wife introduced him to her lover Makarow , who recruited Hoorickx and instructed him in the work of an informant and courier. For this purpose, Hoorickx used trips to France, which he carried out on behalf of. In February 1941, Gurewitsch took him over as a seller for his company Simex . This made it possible for Hoorickx, as a permanent courier in Paris, to hand over and receive information for Leopold Trepper and Gurevich.

Hoorickx and his friend Henri Rauch left the Simex company on the advice of Trepper for additional protection. Hoorickx, Rauch and Charles Daniels ( Russian Шарль Даниельс ) together founded a new company, the board of which was in Brussels in the same building as Simex. At the end of 1941, Hoorickx maintained contact with Reimaker ( Russian Реймекер ) and obtained documents for the members of his organization.

The Russian painter Anna Staritskaja (1908–1981) was Hoorickx's lover during the war.

On December 28, 1942, Hoorickx was arrested along with Anna. He came to the Mauthausen concentration camp , where he worked as a doctor. He returned to Belgium on June 2, 1945. In 1946 Hoorickx married Anna Staritskaja and both work as painters. Hoorickx, who took the pseudonym Bill Orix annaħm, initially processed his experiences in the concentration camp in his pictures, but from 1949 turned to abstract painting. The couple lived in Nice for the following years and moved to Paris in 1952. In 1957 the couple separated. Due to progressive blindness, Hoorickx gave up painting during the last years of his life. After Anna Staritskaja's death in 1981, he devoted himself primarily to her artistic estate. He outlived his wife by two years.

After the war, Hoorickx tried to reorganize the Simex company to sort out his relationship with Trepper. In April 1946 he took over documents from Claude Spaak that the latter had kept for Hersch and Miriam Sokol , who had died in the Gestapo cellars. In November 1946, Kent's former mistress, Georgie de Winter, visited him in Brussels . He kept in touch with Charles Daniels, who lived in the Belgian capital.

The Soviet embassy in Brussels tried to establish a connection with Hoorickx with the help of Waltraud Heger ( Russian Вальтрауд Хегер ), Rauch's stepdaughter. In 1954, the Belgian authorities learned that Hoorickx and his wife Anna Starizkaja in Paris, on the Prospect Emile Zola NR. 150 lived and had one more apartment in Nice, where they often drove because of the poor health of Hoorickx. The 1954 police report noted that Hoorickx was suspected of engaging in illegal espionage.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bill Orix in the Belgian Art Museum
  2. ↑ Gilles Perrault: ptx calls moscow Der Spiegel, May 27th. 1968, accessed May 9, 2020
  3. ↑ Biography of Anna Staritskaja (Russian)
  4. ^ Dictionnaire des peintres juifs , accessed May 8, 2020
  5. ↑ Elisabeth Ivanovsky: Anna Staritsky vania-marcade.com, July 30, 2015. Retrieved on May 8, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Hoorickx, Guillaume
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Orix, Bill (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian painter and spy for the Soviet Union
DATE OF BIRTH April 12, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Antwerp
DATE OF DEATH 1983
Place of death Paris