When George Orwell returned to Barcelona
for the third time, on June 20th, 1937, he discovered that the Spanish
secret police were after him. He had been forced to return to the front
in order to have his discharge papers countersigned and, in his absence,
the Communists had initiated a purge of their perceived enemies. Orwell
was on the list. As he arrived in the lobby of the Hotel Continental,
Eileen approached him calmly, placed her arm around his neck, and smiled
for the benefit of anyone watching. Once they were close enough she
hissed in his ear:
“Get out!”
“What?”
“Get out at once.”
"What?”
“Don’t keep standing here! You must get outside quickly!”
Eileen guided a bewildered Orwell toward the hotel exit. Marceau
Pivert, a French friend of Orwell’s who was just entering the lobby,
seemed distressed to see him and told him he needed to hide before the
hotel called the police. A sympathetic member of the staff joined in,
urging Orwell to leave in his broken English. Eileen managed to get him
to a café on a discreet side street, where she explained the seriousness
of the situation.
*
David Crook, a young Englishman working for
the Independent Labour Party’s (ILP) Barcelona office, had become
friends with both Orwell and his wife over the last few months. He was
not what he seemed. He had arrived in Spain in January 1937, the month
after Orwell, eager to join up with the International Brigades and fight
the Fascists. He was descended from Russian-Jewish immigrants and
grew up in Hampstead, attending the prestigious Cheltenham College.
Like many young men who grew up after
the First World War, he was attracted to left-wing causes. He moved to
New York City, where he attended Columbia University and
embraced radical politics, joining the Young Communist League. As
a student delegate he traveled down to Kentucky to support the famous
miners’ strike in Harlan County, witnessing its brutal suppression by
the National Guard. On his return to London he became a member of the
British Communist Party. At one meeting, the doomed poet John Cornford
spoke about the Republican cause in Spain, and Crook was inspired to
enlist.
Like Hyndman, Crook was thrust straight into the action at the
Battle of Jarama, taking three bullets to the leg. Recovering in
Madrid, he socialized with the literary set, including the brilliant war
correspondent Martha Gellhorn, her lover Ernest Hemingway, Mulk Raj
Anand, and Spender. At this point he came to the attention of Soviet
intelligence agents. After recruiting him, the NKVD sent him to a
training camp in Albacete, where he was given a crash course in sabotage
and surveillance techniques.
There he became a Communist spy. Crook’s mission was to infiltrate
the ILP and report on all their activities. The Soviets already had one
agent in place, David Wickes, who volunteered as an interpreter with the
ILP and passed what information he found on to his handlers. Now Crook
was to infiltrate deeper and get hold of documents. Orwell was his most
prestigious target. ... [mehr] https://lithub.com/the-communist-plot-to-assassinate-george-orwell/
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