Anatoly Markovich Gurevich (; 7 November 1913 – 2 January 2009) was a Soviet intelligence officer. He was an officer in the GRU operating as "разведчик-нелегал" (razvedchik-nelegal, illegal resident spy) in Soviet intelligence parlance. Gurevich was a central figure in the anti-Nazi Red Orchestra in France and Belgium during World War II.
Gurevich had a number of aliases that he used to disguise his identity, including Vincente Sierra, Victor Sukolov, Arthus Barcza and Simon Urwith. He also used a number of code names for radio communications, including Kent, Fritz, Manolo, Dupuis and Lebrun. Gurevich ran one of the seven groups of networks, located in Belgium that were controlled by Leopold Trepper in France. He was the second leading Soviet agent in Europe during the war years. Upon his return to the Soviet Union in 1945, Gurevich was sentenced for treason and spent 15 years in detention and was rehabilitated in 1990.
Life Gurevich was born into a Jewish family in Kharkov. Both his father and his mother were pharmacists. From 1929 to 1933, he was a member of the paramilitary sports organisation called OSOAVIAKHIM. After that, he was a part of the air defence and later took a communication operator course.
In 1933, he enrolled at the Leningrad Institute of Railway Transport where he displayed proficiency for learning languages and translation. He learnt German, French, and English there. On 1 September 1935, he was appointed to a course for training people at the Intourist travel agency. When the Spanish Civil War began, Gurevich volunteered to help. Along with a large group he travelled to Spain and arrived at Cartagena on 30 December 1937. He was appointed as an adjunct translator on submarine C-4 of the Second Spanish Republic, Spanish Republican Navy. In Autumn 1938, Gurevich returned to Moscow. In 1939, he underwent training in the intelligence school of the Main Intelligence Directorate in Moscow.
Soviet agent
On 15 April 1938, Gurevich was ordered by the Soviet Main Intelligence Directorate to travel to France to commence his work as an agent. Disguised as a Mexican tourist, he travelled through Finland, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands, before finally arriving in France. In Paris, Gurevich changed his passport from a Mexican tourist into a Uruguayan passport. In the same month, he carried out his first operation when he was instructed to travel to Berlin to contact the Luftwaffe officer Harro Schulze-Boysen. Gurevich was ordered to re-establish Shulze-Boysen as an intelligence source and arrange a courier service. Sukolov was given the telephone number of Schulze-Boysen and been ordered to phone him and arrange a meeting somewhere in the city. He was not to meet him at his home, however. When Gurevich phoned, Libertas Schulze-Boysen, the wife of Harro Schulze-Boysen answered. They met on the platform of an underground station, later moving to a cafe where Schulze-Boysen joined them later.
In July 1939, Gurevich, posing as the wealthy Vincente Sierra, arrived in Brussels while travelling on a Uruguayan passport that had been issued in New York City on 17 April 1936. The passport gave the holders date and place of birth as 3 July 1911 in Montevideo and his permanent address was Calle Colon 9, Montevideo. On 17 July 1939, Sukolov made contact with Leopold Trepper in Ghent, who at the time was head of the Soviet intelligence network in Belgium. Trepper planned to teach the operation of the Foreign Excellent Raincoat Company to Gurevich. To make contacts in different strata of society, Gurevich started to familiarize himself with Belgium society and studied the country to enable the collection of economic knowledge. Gurevich took part in ballroom dancing and riding lessons and as he travelled between luxury hotels, mail bearing the stamps of Uruguay awaited his arrival. To improve his language skills in French, English and German, Gurevich enrolled at the Free University of Brussels.
Gurevich's cryptonym or code name was Kent. His colleagues in Brussels had no idea where the code name has come from, in fact it was the name of fictional British agent character in a book that Gurevich had read when he was a boy called Diary of a spy by N G Smirnov. Although he was industrious, he was generally disliked for a number of reasons, which included being arrogant, and was considered a bit of a bluffer who was known for his socialising and profligate spending which included owning 40 luxury suits in his large apartment in Avenue AJ Sleggers. Trepper viewed both Gurevich and Mikhail Makarov as the Young Guard and considered both himself and his immediate colleagues including Hillel Katz, the Old Guard Sukolov had never been tested in battle.
Gurevich's original instructions were to establish an espionage network in Copenhagen, but in the months leading up to the war, Trepper's plans changed with Sukolov having to be introduced into the Belgian network gradually. He eventually ended up working as an assistant to Trepper and performed the normal bureaucratic operations of an espionage network as a cypher clerk, deciphering instructions from Soviet intelligence, preparing reports from information forwarded from a contact in the Soviet Trade Representation of Belgium.
In October 1939, Gurevich visited Daan Goulooze, the director of the Communist Party of the Netherlands (CPN), as a contact to the CPN to build his network and to request assistance. Gurevich asked that a temporary wireless telegraphy link be established for his use and this was provided by Goulooze and used until January 1940. In July 1940, Gurevich again visited Goulooze to request the reserve code that he had received from Soviet intelligence the year before.
After the invasion of the Netherlands which ended on 14 May 1940, Gurevich anticipated no difficulties in travelling incognito as a Uruguayan student.
Between March and April 1940, Gurevich made a three-week business trip to Switzerland to meet Alexander Radó, a Rote Drei agent to deliver $3000 to finance the Swiss network. During this period, Gurevich was passing intelligence from Schulze-Boysen through his WT station in Brussels.
Greta Barcza In May 1940, Gurevich met Margarete (or Marguerite) "Greta" Barcza, the daughter of a Czech millionaire. During the invasion of Belgium when Brussels was being heavily bombed, Barcza met Gurevich while cowering in the cellars at 106 Avenue Émile de Beco in Brussels. Gurevich lived in the same building and one floor above Barcza. At the time, Gurevich was still posing as Uruguayan Vincent Sierra and over several weeks they formed a relationship and eventually became lovers, becoming inseparable which eventually impacted Gurevich's espionage work. In Treppers view, Barcza was a bad influence on Gurevich.
In July 1940, when Trepper had to move to France to flee the German advance and start a new French network, he turned the Belgian network over to Gurevich. Gurevich, operating from a safehouse located at 101 Rue des Atrébates in Brussels, used Makarov as his wireless radio operator, Zofia Poznańska as his cipher clerk, Rita Arnould as a courier and housekeeper, and Isidor Springer, who worked as a courier between Gurevich and Trepper and as a recruiter. Gurevich reorganised the network and from that point only referred to Trepper on points of policy. When the Raincoat Company was sequestered by German soldiers during the invasion into Belgium on 17 May 1940 as Grossvogel was Jewish, Gurevich started work to create a replacement organisation. Known as Simexco, it was a joint-stock company to be used as a cover for espionage work and was established by March 1941. The firm was established as a genuine business and was even granted telephone and fax facilities by the German authorities providing a regular and privileged way to enable Trepper and Gurevich to communicate.
In June 1941, Trepper sent Anton Danilov to assist Makarov with radio transmissions. In September or October 1941, Trepper ordered Abraham Rajchmann, a Polish career criminal and forger, to join Gurevich On 18 October 1941, among other assignments, Gurevich was ordered to contact the Harnack/Schulze-Boysen group to restore the connection between the Main Intelligence Directorate and the group. He was ordered to visit Hans Coppi that was the groups' radio operator but was unable to repair the radio. On 13 December 1941, the Gestapo arrested Gurevich's WT operator Anton Danilov in an apartment at 101 rue des Attrebates, Etterbeek in Brussels and Trepper happened to be in Brussels at the time, found out and warned Gurevich of the arrest. Gurevich's first concern was to arrange for Barcza to leave Belgium for France to ensure she was safe. Gurevich arranged travel documents with Rajchmann. Barcza and her son Rene arrived in France in late December 1941. Gurevich himself hid in the house of Nazarin Drailly, an agent of the Gurevich group, to evade the Gestapo, while Gurevich made arrangements to transfer ownership of the Simexco espionage organisation to Drailly.
In the summer of 1942, Trepper evolved a plan to get Barcza to Switzerland and live out the rest of the war but it was rejected by Gurevich. At the same time, Gurevich was increasingly finding himself in arguments with Trepper. By that point, he was no longer part of the Soviet espionage network, was defeatist in his outlook and started to offer reasons why he was no longer using his transmitter. Trepper eventually had to call in two radio specialists to check the radio and found it in perfect working order. In January 1942, Trepper ordered Gurevich to travel to Marseille and establish a new branch office of Simex.
Arrest On 9 November 1942, Gurevich was arrested with Margaret in his apartment at 75 Rue Abbé de l'Épée in Marseille by the French police. Gurevich was handed over to German Police and then on the order of the person who was head of the Gestapo in France, Karl Bömelburg, was fetched by a truck from Marseille and taken to a house in Rue des Saussaies in Paris. He was subsequently moved to Fort Breendonk in Belgium then taken to be interrogated by the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) in Prince Albertstrasse, Berlin.
Funkspiel Gurevich told the Germans that he had not been active as a professional agent for some time and had tried to create a new life for himself and Margaret Barcza in Marseille. He stated that he knew before his arrest that he was being surveilled at his Marseille address and the reason that he had not fled was that no longer considered himself part of the Rote Kapelle. Although he showed a readiness to work for the Germans there was still a great distrust of Gurevich amongst his interrogators. However, Gurevich was continually brought into the office of the Gestapo for further interrogation, where over several days he managed to convince them that he was genuine. Gurevich laid out a plan to the Gestapo to get back in touch with the Russian intelligence service and enable playbacks to commence which the Gestapo accepted. Playbacks, the British term or the American term, G-V Game or Funkspiel as it was known in Germany was the transmission of controlled information over a captured agent's radio so that the agent's parent service had no knowledge that the agent had turned. Although Gurevich decided to cooperate on the funkspiel, he refused to name any agents he had recruited. To initiate the funkspiel, it is believed Gurevich sent a letter to the Red Army intelligence via the Soviet consulate in Sofia but it is not known how a reply was sent by the Soviets. Once he made contact with Red Army intelligence, the strict discipline under which he was held was relaxed and he was allowed visits by his wife Margaret.