Main NI Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. IV No. 22, 1 June 1940, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Just over two years ago – on April 16, 1938 – the Socialist Appeal reported that George Mink, G.P.U. assassin, was on his way to Mexico with the assigned task of murdering Leon Trotsky.
“He sailed early this week,” the Appeal reported on that date, “from the port of Galveston, Texas, for the port of Vera Cruz, Mexico, to carry out the mission assigned to him by his gangster overlords: to organize the murder of Leon Trotsky!”
We gave in detail at that time many of the known facts about Mink, notorious for many years internationally as a spy, terrorist, and executioner in the service of Stalin’s G.P.U.
In 1935, the New York Times published a dispatch from Copenhagen, Denmark, dated July 30, which stated that “two Americans, George Mink and Nicholas Sherman, arrested two months ago, were condemned today to 18 months in prison under the accusation of espionage.”
Subsequently Mink, under the name of “Alfred Herz” headed the murder squads of Stalin’s G.P.U. in Spain. In Barcelona he was personally responsible for organizing and carrying out the assassinations of hundreds of militant anarchists, members of the P.OU.M., and of the Fourth International.
The Spanish anarchists directly charged “Herz” with organizing the murder of the anarchist leader in Barcelona, Camillo Berneri, and his comrade Barbieri. This charge was published in this country by Carlo Tresca, editor of the anarchist weekly, Il Martello.
The sinister figure of Mink appeared in the murder of Moulin, Fourth Internationalist militant, and in the kidnapping and probable murder – they have never been seen since – of Marc Rein, son of the Russian Social Democrat Rafael Abramovitch, member of the bureau of the Second International, and of Erwin Wolf, former secretary to Leon Trotsky.
Having acquitted himself so well in his master’s behalf in Spain, Mink returned to this country and left almost immediately for Mexico for his new job – the assassination of Leon Trotsky.
Reported at the same time as going to Mexico were a known French Stalinist official, Georges Fournial, and Roland Abbiatte, sought by French and Swiss police as one of the murderers in September, 1937, of Ignace Reiss. Reiss had broken with Stalin’s G.P.U, and joined the Fourth International. When Swiss police raided Abiatte’s room (he was also known as “Rossi”), they found a map of Mexico City and its suburbs, and a duplicate of an application for a Mexican visa.
Other known G.P.U. agents who subsequently joined Mink, Fournial, and Abbiatte in Mexico included Tina Modotti, Italian Stalinist who was held for a time by Swiss police in the Reiss murder, and Sormenti, also an Italian, who goes by the name of “Carlos Contrera.”
These are the creatures assembled in Mexico by Stalin to “get” Trotsky, his most feared and most hated enemy. Their names are written down in the books of the international working class and will remain there until the working class of the whole world has its reckoning with Stalin and Stalinism.
Main Militant Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
Last updated on 3 February 2019