25 Facts About Ignace Reiss

Ignace Reiss was a lifelong friend of Walter Krivitsky; his assassination influenced the timing and method of Whittaker Chambers's defection a few months later.

Ignace Reiss's mother was a Lithuanian Jew but his father was not Jewish.

Ignace Reiss visited Leipzig, Germany, to meet, fatefully, German Socialist Gertrude Schildbach, who would later conspire in his assassination.

Ignace Reiss earned a degree from the Faculty of Law, University of Vienna.

In 1918, Ignace Reiss returned to his hometown, where he worked for the railway.

In early 1919, Ignace Reiss joined the newly formed Polish Communist Party, since his hometown had become part of the Second Polish Republic.

In early 1920, Ignace Reiss was in Moscow, where he met and married his wife, Elisabeth.

Ignace Reiss was arrested and charged with espionage, which carried a maximum five-year sentence.

En route to prison, Ignace Reiss escaped his train in Krakow, never to return to Poland.

From 1921 to 1929, Ignace Reiss served in Western Europe, particularly Berlin and Vienna.

Ignace Reiss himself received a summons back to Moscow but allowed his wife to travel there in his stead in late 1936, staying into early 1937.

Ignace Reiss returned the Order of the Red Banner with his letter, stating that to wear the medal "simultaneously with the hangmen of the best representatives of the Russian worker" was beneath his dignity.

Ignace Reiss went on to condemn the excesses of Stalin's purges and the actions of Soviet state security services.

Ignace Reiss declared "I am joining Trotsky and the Fourth International".

Ignace Reiss then fled with his wife and child to the remote village of Finhaut, Valais canton, Switzerland, to hide.

Ignace Reiss refused a request by Abbiate to give Reiss a box of chocolates filled with strychnine but agreed to set up a meeting with him.

Ignace Reiss stayed with Schildbach and was then to board a train for Reims, France, to meet Sneevliet.

Ignace Reiss later identified the body carrying Eberhardt's passport as that of her husband.

Ignace Reiss, then using the alias "Eberhardt", was lured by Schildbach onto a side road near Lausanne, where Roland Abbiate was waiting for him with a Soviet PPD-34 submachine gun.

Ignace Reiss was hit by fifteen bullets from Abbiate's submachine gun, killing him instantly: he was found with five bullets in the head and seven in the body.

Ignace Reiss would wait no longer, he had made up his mind.

Ignace Reiss who loved nature and cherished life looked about him with empty eyes.

Ignace Reiss's soul was in the cellars of the Lubianka.

Ignace Reiss appears in the 1952 memoirs of Whittaker Chambers, Witness: his assassination in July 1937 was perhaps the last straw that caused Chambers not only to defect but to make careful preparations when doing so:.

Swiss filmmaker Daniel Kunzi made a 53-minute documentary film called Ignace Reiss: Vie et mort d'un revolutionnaire about Reiss's life and death, following several years of research.