Ignaz Reiss

Ignaz Reiss

Ignaz Reiss (* 1899 in Pidwolotschysk , Austria-Hungary , † September 4, 1937 in Lausanne , Switzerland) was a Soviet spy and dissident.

In his role as head of a Soviet secret service network, he broke with Stalin in 1937 in view of the Moscow trials . He asked the Dutch Trotskyist Hendricus Sneevliet to pass on internal information about the methods, procedures and goals of the NKVD to Leon Trotsky and to warn him of his impending assassination. In addition, on July 18, in a letter to the Central Committee in Moscow, he expressed his criticism of the party and declared his accession to the nascent Fourth International led by Trotsky .

He was kidnapped in Switzerland on behalf of the NKVD; On the night of September 3rd to 4th, 1937, he was murdered by several bullets on a Lausanne road. Agent Gertrud Schildbach , who was his friend , had lured him into a trap on behalf of the NKVD. The Swiss and French police suspected Sergei Efron and Mark Zborowski of having been involved in this attack.

Awards

• Order of the Red Banner (1928)

literature

• Isaac Deutscher : Trotsky. The outcast prophet 1929-1940 . Kohlhammer. Stuttgart.
• Peter Huber : Stalin's shadow in Switzerland. Swiss communists in Moscow: defenders and prisoners of the Comintern . Chronos Zurich 1994, ISBN 3-905311-29-1
• Vadim S. Rogovin : 1937 - the year of terror . Mehring Verlag 1998, ISBN 3-88634-071-6
• Eberhard Raetz : Hotel de la Paix. Political murder in Lausanne . Info Publishing Company 2006, ISBN 3-88190-434-4
• Peter Huber: Reiss, Ignaz. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .

Web links

• Newspaper article about Ignaz Reiss in the press kit of the 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .