Ramón Mercader

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Portrait of Mercaders on his tombstone in Moscow

Jaime Ramón Mercader del Río (born February 7, 1913 in Barcelona , † October 18, 1978 in Havana ) was a Spanish communist and agent of the Soviet secret service NKVD . He became known as the murderer of Leon Trotsky .

Life

Early years

Ramón Mercader was born in Barcelona to María Eustaquia Caridad del Río Hernández and Pau (Pablo) Mercader Marina. He spent much of his youth in France with his mother .

Even as a young man he was enthusiastic about the idea of communism . After founding a communist organization, he was arrested on June 12, 1935. He was released again in 1936. After his mother became an agent of the Soviet secret service NKVD, he too was recruited as an agent. In 1937 he traveled to Moscow , where he received military training. In the Spanish Civil War he fought as a lieutenant on the Aragon front and carried out partisan assignments in the hinterland of the Franco army.

The assassination

Mercader received the order to kill Leon Trotsky from the deputy director of the NKVD foreign branch , Pavel Sudoplatov , who had been personally entrusted with its management by Stalin . Trotsky lived with his wife Natalia Sedova in Coyoacán , a suburb of Mexico City, since 1937 , in an old villa since May 1939. After a first assassination attempt on him led by David Alfaro Siqueiros failed on May 24, 1940, the property was converted into a fortress.

Two years earlier, in July 1938, Mercader, the alleged son of a Belgian diplomat under the name Jacques Mornard , had won the trust of Sylvia Ageloff , an American supporter of Trotsky, in Paris . He followed her to the USA, where he entered with a forged Canadian passport made out in the name of Frank Jacson . As a reason for the name change, he stated that he wanted to avoid the Belgian military service. The couple got engaged and lived in New York City for a while .

In October 1939, Mercader finally came to Mexico City. Through Ageloff, who worked as Trotsky's secretary, he met the French couple Marguerite and Alfred Rosmer , whom Trotsky's grandson Vsevolod Volkov had brought to Mexico from Paris . To visit the Rosmers, he was admitted to Trotsky's estate and met him there for the first time on May 28, 1940, just a few days after the first unsuccessful assassination attempt. As a result, he visited the house several times and made friends with the guards. Trotsky finally became suspicious: “I don't like him! Who is he anyway? We should find out more about him. "

The scene of the crime: Trotsky's study

Nevertheless, Trotsky allowed Mercader to make another visit on August 20, 1940, which eventually led to an assassination attempt. Mercader had an ice ax , dagger, and pistol hidden in his coat. When Trotsky was reading an article he had brought with him at about 5:20 p.m., Mercader hit Trotsky's skull from behind with an ice pick. This could still pounce on Mercader and bite his hand. The rushing bodyguards would have killed Mercader immediately if Trotsky had not stopped them himself: “Don't kill him! This man has a story to tell. ”Trotsky was taken to a hospital where he died the following day, August 21, 1940, from a serious head injury.

The verdict: 20 years imprisonment for murder

Mercader's mother Caridad and her partner, the NKVD officer Leonid Eitingon , waited in two getaway cars in front of Trotsky's property. When he did not appear, the two left the country. Sylvia Ageloff was initially arrested as an accomplice, but the allegations were dropped.

The condemnation

When he was arrested, Mercader gave his alias Jacques Mornard . However, this identity was questioned when the real Jacques Mornard went public. Mercader was convicted of murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Since he showed no remorse, he had to serve the entire sentence. The NKVD's preparations for his liberation (Operation "GNOME") had been interrupted after his mother suspected that they really wanted to kill him.

The last few years

In August 1953, Mercader's true identity was revealed after comparing his fingerprints . On May 6, 1960, he was released from Palacio de Lecumberri Prison in Mexico City. The Czechoslovak authorities issued him a passport in the name of Jacques Vendendreschd . Mercader first traveled to Cuba on his way to Eastern Europe , where he was welcomed by the Castro government. After that he lived in Prague and Moscow, and later allegedly also in the GDR. On October 18, 1978, he died in Havana, where he had spent his life in recent years, to cancer . Mercader was buried at the request of his widow in the Kunzewoer cemetery in Moscow under the name Ramon Ivanovich Lopez.

Awards

Mercader was awarded the Order of Lenin by Stalin in 1940 . The order was given to his mother. After his imprisonment on May 31, 1960, he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union (№ 11089). The Golden Star was presented in Moscow in 1961. He is one of the 21 people who were not citizens of the Soviet Union and who received this honor.

literature

Literary processing of the attack

The person of Mercader is dealt with playfully and literarily in the novel The Second Death of Ramón Mercader by Jorge Semprún , and also in Trotsky in exile by Peter Weiss from 1970. Mercader is still at the center of Núria Amat's 2011 novel Amor i guerra , published in Catalan .

In his novel The Man Who Loved Dogs, Cuban author Leonardo Padura describes the life of Ramón Mercader, Leon Trotsky's time in exile and the life of the Cuban writer Iván, who happened to meet Mercader on the beach in Havana in three narrative strands.

Depiction on stage and in film

Web links

Commons : Ramón Mercader  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Born in 1913 according to the tombstone . According to other sources on February 7, 1914.
  2. ↑ Trotsky murderer: Covered tracks . In: Der Spiegel . No. 21 , 1960, p. 58-62 ( online ).
  3. ↑ a b Vadim S. Rogowin: World Revolution and World War . Mehring, 2002, ISBN 3-88634-082-1 , p. 348 f.
  4. ↑ a b Simon Hardy: The Assassination of Leon Trotsky . accessed on September 10, 2010 (English)
  5. ↑ Trotsky's Last Hiding Place ( Trotsky's Last Hiding Place ), publication of the Sydney Morning Herald of March 18, 2002: “ It was an open secret that Stalin had given orders to liquidate his rival. ”(Accessed June 12, 2008, English)
  6. ↑ My Grandfather the Revolutionary . In: The Guardian , February 13, 2003, “ Stalin was responsible for the death of practically all of Trotsky's family, whatever their political stance… In August, Ramon Mercader, an NKVD agent of Spanish origin, murdered the 'Old Man'. "(English). Retrieved June 12, 2008
  7. ↑ Trotsky murder weapon may have been found . ( Memento of September 12, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) (German: weapon for the murder of Leon Trotsky possibly found) cnn.com, July 14, 2005 (English)
  8. ^ Long report about the GNOME project-the plot to get Trotsky's murderer out of prison . ( Memento of September 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) nsa.gov; accessed September 13, 2010
  9. ↑ KGB: The sword hits the innocent too . In: Der Spiegel . No. 27 , 1984, pp. 112-135 ( Online - July 2, 1984 ).
  10. ↑ Ramon Mercader . Find a Grave
  11. ↑ Isaac Don Levine: The Mind of an Assassin . D1854 Signet Book, 1960, pp. 109-110, 173.
  12. ^ Translation of the book The Mind of an Assassin . Farrar, Straus and Cuday 1959 / Signet book (NY) 1960
  13. ↑ Felip Palou: Nuria Amat gana el Llull con su obra 'Amor i guerra' . In: La Vanguardia , February 3, 2011; accessed on October 1, 2013 (Spanish)
  14. ↑ Asaltar los cielos in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  15. ↑ cinema.de
personal data
SURNAME Mercader, Ramón
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mercader del Río, Jaime Ramón; Lopez, Ramon Ivanovich (tombstone); Raymond (alias); Mornard, Jacques (wrong name); Vendendreschd, Jacques (wrong name); Jacson, Frank (wrong name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish communist and murderer of Leon Trotsky
DATE OF BIRTH February 7, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Barcelona , Spain
DATE OF DEATH October 18, 1978
Place of death Havana , Cuba