Ignace Reiss

Who was Ignace Reiss?

Ignace Reiss, AKA "Ignace Poretsky," "Ignatz Reiss," "Ludwig," "Ludwik", "Hans Eberhardt," "Steff Brandt," and Nathan Poreckij was one of the "Great Illegals" or Soviet spies who worked in third party countries where they weren't 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.