With Trotsky, until the end

ByJoe Hansen

A 81 years of the assassination of Leon Trotsky, we publish Joe Hansen's story, personal secretary of the Russian revolutionary in Mexico, who caught and interrogated GPU assassin Ramón Mercader before he was arrested by Mexican police.

Since the machine gun attack made by the GPU on Trotsky's bedroom the 24 of May, The house in Coyoacán had practically been transformed into a fortress. The guard was increased, I was better armed. Bulletproof doors and windows were installed. A redoubt was built with a bomb-proof roof and floor. Double steel doors were installed in the place of the old wooden door where Robert Sheldon Harte was surprised and kidnapped by GPU persecutors., controlled by electrical switches. Three new bulletproof towers dominated not only the courtyard but the entire surrounding neighborhood.. Tangles of barbed wire and bomb nets were being prepared. All this construction was possible thanks to the sacrifices of the sympathizers and militants of the Fourth International, who did everything they could to protect him, knowing that it was certain that Stalin would attempt another more desperate attack after having failed. 24 of May. The Mexican government, the only country on earth that had agreed to asylum Trotsky in 1937, tripled the number of guards who took turns outside the house, doing everything in his power to safeguard the life of the most famous exile in the world. Only the form of the new attack was unknown.. Another machine gun attack with more attackers? Bombs? ¿Cachiporrazos? Poisoning?

20 August 1940

I was on the roof, near the main guard tower with Charles Corneü and Melquíades Benítez. We were connecting a powerful siren to the alarm system to be used when the GPU attacked again.. at sunset, between the 17:20 and the 17:30, Jackson, whom we knew as a supporter of the Fourth International and as the husband of Sylvia Ageloff, formerly a member of the Socialist Workers Party, He arrived in his Buick sedan. Instead of parking it with the radiator facing the house, as was his custom, he made a complete turn in the street, parking the car parallel to the wall, with the nose towards Coyocán. When he got out of the car, He greeted us by waving his hand and shouted: “Sylvia has arrived.?”We were a little surprised. We did not know that Trotsky had quoted Sylvia and Jacson, but we relate our lack of knowledge to a forgetfulness of Trotsky, which was common in relation to these issues. “No”, and told Jackson, "hang on a minute". So, Cornell operated the electrical controls and double doors and Harold Robins received the visitor in the courtyard. Jacson had a raincoat crossed over his arm..

It was the rainy season and although the sun was shining over the southwest mountains there were dark clouds that threatened a storm..

Trotsky was in the yard feeding the rabbits and chickens (It was his way of getting a little exercise for the locked-up life he was forced to lead.). We hope that, as was his custom, Trotsky would not enter the house until he had finished feeding them or until Sylvia arrived.. Robins was in the yard. Trotsky was not in the habit of seeing Jacson alone..

Melquiades, Corneü and I continue working. For the next ten or fifteen minutes I sat in the main tower writing the names of the guards on white tags that would be placed on the switches connecting their rooms to the alarm system..

A terrible scream cut through the calm of the afternoon. A long, agonizing scream, almost a sob. Made me jump to my feet, with a chill that chilled my bones. I ran to get out of the guard onto the roof. Was it an accident involving one of the ten workers who were remodeling the house?? Sounds of violent fighting came from the Old Man's study., and Melquíades was pointing a rifle at the window below. Trotsky became visible for a moment in his blue work jacket, fighting hand to hand with someone.

“¡No tires!”, I yelled at Melquíades, “You can hit the Old Man!”. Melquíades and Corneü stayed on the roof, covering studio outings. I turned on the general alarm, I went down the stairs to the library. When I entered through the door that connected the library with the dining room, The Old Man stumbled out of his study a few meters, with blood dripping down his face.

“Look what they have done.”

At the same time, Harold Robins entered through the north door of the dining room with Natalia following him. Natalia, throwing his arms around Trotsky, he took him out to the balcony. Harold and I ran after Jacson, who was standing in the studio panting with his upset face, his arms fallen. An automatic pistol dangled from his hand. Harold was closer to him. “Take care of him.”, said, “I'll go see what happened to the Old Man.”. I had not finished turning around when Robins already had the murderer reduced to the floor.. Trotsky crawled to the dining room. Natalia, crying, I was trying to help him. “Look what they have done.”, she said. When he hugged the Old Man he collapsed near the dining room table..

The wound on his head seemed superficial at first glance.. I hadn't heard any shots.. Jacson must have hit him with some instrument. "What happened?” I asked the Old Man.

“Jacson shot me with a revolver. “I am seriously injured… I feel like this time is the end”. "It's just a superficial wound.". "He's going to recover.", I tried to give him confidence.

“We talk about French statistics”, answered the Old Man.

“Did he hit him from behind?”?” I asked him. Trotsky did not respond.

“He didn't shoot him.”, I told him; “We didn't hear any shots.. “He hit him with something.”

Trotsky seemed to doubt. He squeezed my hand. Among the phrases we exchange, spoke with Natalia in Russian. He continually brought her hand to his lips.. I climbed back onto the roof and yelled at the police on the other side of the wall.; “Call the ambulance”. I told Corneü and Melquíades: “It is an attack. Jacson…” At that moment my wristwatch showed the 16:50. He was again next to the Old Man. Corneü was with me. Without waiting for the city ambulance, We decided that Corneü would go look for Dr. Dutren, who lived nearby and had cared for the family before. Since our car was locked in the garage, with double doors, Corneü decided to use Jacson's car that was stopped on the street.

When Corneü left the room, Sounds of fighting were again heard coming from the studio where Robins had Jacson..

“Tell the boys not to kill him.”!”, said the old man. “You have to talk”.

I left Trotsky with Natalia and entered the studio. Jacson lay on the nearby table. There was a bloody instrument on the floor., which in my opinion was a digger's pick, but with the back shaped like an axe-la. I threw myself into the fight against Jacson, hitting him in the mouth and jaw below the ear, breaking my hand.

As Jacson regained consciousness he groaned.. “They imprisoned my mother… Sylvia Ageloff had nothing to do with this… No, It wasn't the GPU. I have nothing to do with the GPU…” He underlined the words that differentiated him from the GPU as if he had suddenly remembered that the script for his paper said that here you had to speak out loud.. But he had already given himself away. When Robins took down the murderer, Jacson thought it was the end. He had writhed in terror.; Words escaped his lips that he could not control.: “They forced me to do it”. I had told the truth. The GPU made him do it. Corneü burst into the studio. “The keys are not in the car.”. He tried to find them in Jacson's clothes but he couldn't.. While I was searching, I ran to open the garage doors. In a few seconds Corneü was changing, in our car.

We waited for Corneü to return. Natalia and I were kneeling next to the Old Man, holding your hands. Natalia had wiped the blood from his face and put ice on his head., that was already swelling. “He hit him with a pickaxe”, I told the old man. He didn't shoot him. I'm sure it's just a superficial wound.". “No”, responded. “I feel here (indicating the heart) that this time they have achieved”.

I tried to give him confidence, “No, It's just a superficial wound; It's going to get better.".

But the Old Man only smiled slightly with his eyes. He knew… “Take care of Natalia. has been with me many, “many years”. He squeezed my hand as I looked at her.. He seemed to be drinking in her features, as if I were about to leave her forever, compressing, in these fast seconds, all the past within one last look. “We will do it”, I promised him. My voice seemed to launch among the three of us the understanding that this really was the end.. The Old Man held our hands, suddenly squeezing them. Suddenly tears came from her eyes. Natalia cried uncontrollably., pouring over him, kissing her hand.

When Dr.. Dutren arrived, The Old Man's left side reflexes were already failing.. a few minutes later, The ambulance came and the police entered the studio to take the murderer away..

Natalia did not want to let them take the Old Man to the hospital – it was in a hospital in Paris that her son, Leon Sedov, He had been murdered just two years earlier..

For a moment or two, Trotsky himself, lying on the floor, had doubts.

“We will go with you”, I told him.

“I'll let you decide.”, told me, as if he were now leaving everything in the hands of those around him, As if the days of making decisions were a thing of the past.

Before having placed the Old Man on a stretcher, he whispered again: “I want everything I have to be Natalia’s”. So, with a voice that penetrated deeply to the best feelings of the friends kneeling at his side... "They are going to take care of her..." Natalia and I made the sad journey with him to the hospital. His right hand was lost above the sheets that covered him, until they touched a basin near his head and he found Natalia. Trotsky whispered, pulling me down insistently, close to his lips so that I could listen: “He is a political murderer. Jacson is a member of the GPU or a fascist. Most likely from the GPU”.

Impressions of Jacson were running through the Old Man's mind.. In the few words that complained to him, He was telling me the course he thought our analysis of the attack should take., based on the facts we already had. Stalin's GPU is guilty but we must leave open the possibility that they had help from Hitler's Gestapo. He did not know that Stalin's calling card in the form of a “confession” was in the murderer's pocket..

The last hours

in the hospital, the most important doctors in Mexico met in consultations. The old, exhausted, mortally wounded, with eyes almost closed, I looked to my side from the narrow hospital bed, and weakly moved his right hand. “Joe, Do you have... a... notebook?"How many times have I asked myself the same question?"! But in a vigorous tone, with the subtle irony that he threw at us about “North American efficiency”. Now, his voice was pasty, you could hardly make out the words. He spoke with a lot of effort, fighting against the darkness that invaded him. I leaned on the bed. It seemed that his eyes had lost those quick flashes of the energetic intelligence so characteristic of the Old Man.. His eyes were fixed, as if they no longer perceived the outside world and yet I felt that enormous will pushing away the darkness that extinguished it, refusing to give in to his enemy until he has accomplished his last task. Slowly, choppy, dictated, painfully choosing the words of his last message to the working class in English, a language that was foreign to him. On his deathbed he did not forget that his secretary did not speak Russian!!

“I am close to death due to the blow of a political assassin… who hit me in the room. I fought him... we started,…a…conversation about French statistics…he hit me…Please tell my friends…I am sure…of victory…of the Fourth International…Go ahead.”

Tried to say more things; but you couldn't understand the words. His voice was disappearing, tired eyes closed. He did not return to consciousness.. This happened about two and a half hours after he was hit..

They took an X-ray of the wound and the doctors decided that an operation was necessary immediately. The surgeon in charge of the hospital did the delicate work of trephining in front of the main Mexican specialists and the family doctors. They discovered that the spike had penetrated seven centimeters, destroying a lot of brain tissue. Some of these doctors declared that the case had no solution. Others gave the Old Man the chance to fight it. More than twenty-two hours after the operation, Despair took turns hoping I would survive. For terrible hours we listened to the Old Man's heavy breathing as he lay in the hospital bed. With his head shaved and bandaged, The resemblance to Lenin was striking.. We remember the days when they had led the first triumphant revolution of the working class. Natalia refused to leave the room., I didn't eat, looked with dry eyes, hands intertwined, with white knuckles, as the hours passed one after another during that long and terrible night. And the next day, that was endless. Doctors' reports saw favorable signs, occasional improvement and, until the end, we feel that somehow, this man who had survived the tsar's prisons, the exiles, three revolutions, the Moscow trials, would survive this nameless treacherous blow that Stalin had given him. But the Old Man was over sixty years old. He had been in poor health for a few months. At 19:25 of the 21 of August, entered the final crisis. The doctors worked for twenty minutes, using all the scientific methods at their disposal. But not even adrenaline could revive the great heart and the great mind that Stalin had destroyed with an axe-pick..

Originally published in the magazine Fourth International Vol. 1 Num. 5 in october 1940.