12 Facts About Otto Katz

Otto Katz, known as Andre Simone amongst other aliases, was a Czech agent.

Otto Katz was one of the most influential agents of the Soviet Union under Stalin in Western intellectual and artistic circles during the 1930s and 1940s.

Otto Katz was hanged after he was convicted in the Slansky trial.

Otto Katz became an international spy unconditionally faithful to Stalin, and unlike some of the communist Jewish intellectuals who ran the Comintern at the time, he accepted the German-Soviet Pact and was entrusted with the implementation of secret policies by Stalin's politburo.

Otto Katz was strongly suspected, without conclusive evidence, of involvement as Ramon Mercader's handler in the assassination of Leon Trotsky, and in the supposed murder of Willi Munzenberg who was found hanged in a French forest.

Otto Katz did not finish his studies and was sent by his father for military training.

The young Otto Katz's marked preference was for literature, theatre, pretty actresses and all the cultural life of Prague which was very active at that time.

Otto Katz frequented fashionable cafes such as the Arco and the Continental, where he rubbed shoulders with the young intelligentsia who spoke only of social or artistic revolution.

Otto Katz was close to Egon Kisch with whom he shared communist political views.

Otto Katz met a leftist actress Sonya Bogsova, whom he married but their communist activities monitored by the Prague authorities encouraged them to settle in Berlin in 1921.

Otto Katz was tried under the name Andre Simone in the Slansky trial, convicted and eventually hanged in the Ruzyne Prison at 3am on 3 December 1952.

Otto Katz's body was cremated and his ashes were scattered beside a small road near Prague.