Ignace Reiss

Ignace Reiss AKA Ignace Poretsky, Ignatz Reiss, Ludwig, Ludwik, Hans Eberhardt, Steff Brandt, Nathan Poreckij, and Walter Scott was one of the Great Illegals or Soviet spies who worked in third party countries where they werent nationals in the late 1920s and 1930s. An NKVD team assassinated him in September 1937 near Lausanne, Switzerland, a few weeks after he declared his defection in a letter addressed to Joseph Stalin. He was a lifelong friend of Walter Krivitsky his assassination influenced the timing and method of Whittaker Chambers defection a few months later.

Reiss was born Nathan Markovic Poreckij in 1899 in Podwooczyska , then in Galicia, AustriaHungary, just across the river from Volochysk, then in Podolia, Tsarist Russia . His mother was a Russian Jew from across the river and his father nonJewish. His father had his elder brother and him educated in Lwow , the provincial capital. There, he formed lifelong friendships with several other boys, all of whom would become committed Communist spies. These boys included Kalyniak, Willy Stahl, Berchtold Umansky , his brother Mikhail Umansky , Fedia , and the young Walter Krivitsky . During World War I, the friends traveled when they could to Vienna, where they gathered around Fedia and his girlfriend Krusia. The name Krusia became a codename between these friends in later years. Reiss also visited Leipzig, Germany, to meet German Socialists there, he met Gertrude Schildbach, who later aided his assassination. He earned a degree from the Faculty of Law, University of Vienna. In 1918, he returne

Source: Wikipedia