The Milwaukee Journal (August 21, 1940)
TROTSKY NEAR DEATH AFTER AX ATTACK BY TRUSTED COMRADE
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‘Let Him Live,’ Victim’s Last Words as Guards Grab Assailant; Police Question Woman
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Mexico City, Mexico (UP) –
Leon Trotsky, exiled Bolshevik warlord, lay near death in a hospital Wednesday with surgeons giving him only a 1 to 10 chance of surviving an associate whom members of Trotsky’s entourage now suspect of being an operative of the Russian secret police.
Surgeons who performed an operation on Trotsky for a skull fracture at the Green Cross emergency hospital had said that if he lived for a few hours he might have a fighting chance. His friends said “we can only hope.”
Shortly before noon, an aide issued this summary of Trotsky’s condition.
The old man is very low. Has lost all his reflexes, including even those of his eyelids. Tuesday afternoon, after the attack, he lost the reflexes on his left side. Wednesday he lost all his reflexes. The only encouraging factor is that his pulse is coming closer to normal and also his blood pressure. Doctors say there is faint hope for him.
Dr. Walter Dandy, brain surgeon and professor of neural surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, said at Baltimore Wednesday that he would leave by plane at midnight for Mexico City to treat Trotsky.
The famous revolutionist lay supine in a darkened room, his head propped up slightly, his face mask-like, only his famous goatee still defiant.
Police Guard Hospital
Bodyguards sat outside the room and police guarded the hospital. Mrs. Trotsky had hardly left the room since her husband arrived from their suburban villa Tuesday night. Two surgeons and three nurses remained in attendance.
Trotsky’s assailant lay in the same hospital, having been severely wounded by Harold Robbins, head guard at the fortified Trotsky villa in Coyoacán.
The assailant, a trusted friend who had been given the freedom of the villa, was known as Frank Jackson, an American, and was said to have an American wife. But he told Gen. Manuel Nunez, police chief, at the hospital, that he was Jacques Mornard van den Dreschd, 36, born at Tehran, Persia, of Belgian parents, a newspaperman by profession. He told Gen. Nunez also: “I would give my life blood for Trotsky.” It was reported that Dreschd had disagreed violently with Trotsky in recent weeks on the “Fourth International” which Trotsky had organized to oppose the “Stalinist” Third International.
It was said that Dreschd was the son of a Belgian diplomat. He speaks English and Russian as well as French. He is about 6 feet tall, of average build, with short black hair and wears eyeglasses. He was dressed poorly.
Woman Is Questioned
Police said that they were questioning Sylvia Ageloff, 30, a striking blond with blue eyes, reported to be a native Russian and a naturalized American. She refused to talk to newspapermen. Hatless, she wore octagonal eyeglasses, a smart tailored gray suit, white blouse and coffee colored stockings.
It was reported she and Dreschd met in Paris two years ago. They had been seen together frequently here and it was reported that they had visited the United States recently.
Concerning reports that Dreschd had disagreed with Trotsky on the Fourth International, it was asserted Wednesday that there had been a split in the organization, apparently over administration and policy.
Ever since his arrival here in 1937 from Norway on his long Odyssey of exile, Trotsky has had himself guarded. Since last May 24, when 20 men armed with machine guns burst into the grounds of his villa and fired into his bedroom without wounding him, the guard had been strongly reinforced, three machine gun pillboxes had been mounted on the 15 foot villa wall, and a steel door had been built into the front door frame.
Recently Trotsky had told correspondents that he believed another attempt to kill him would be made when the German invasion of Great Britain started.
Cries Heard From Study
Tuesday afternoon Trotsky was in his study. He had been busy on his autobiography and on propagandist attacks on the present Russian regime, which he regarded as having betrayed the ideals of his collaborator Lenin, and in aiding prosecutors to prepare their case against his many assailants.
Elsewhere in the house were Trotsky’s wife, their grandson, three bodyguards and Trotsky’s secretary, Joseph Hanson.
Late in the afternoon, cries were heard from the study. The guards and the secretary ran in, led by Head Guard Robbins. They found Trotsky desperately wounded, lying on the blood-stained carpet. Standing over him, a pistol in his hand and a British-made raincoat on his arm, was Dreschd.
The pistol had not been used. Dreschd had attacked Trotsky with a sort of cut down alpenstock, something like a small pickax. In a secret pocket of the raincoat was a new dagger, 8 to 10 inches long.
Robbins and Hanson grabbed at Dreschd, who fought but did not fire his pistol. He suffered head wounds and Hanson an injured wrist.
“Let Him Live,” Says Victim
“Let him live! Let him live!” Trotsky cried as the men fought, and then he became unconscious. He had not recovered consciousness early Wednesday.
Looking about after Dreschd had been overcome, the guards found that Dreschd had taken the receiver from Trotsky’s telephone. The guards suggested that his plan had been to kill Trotsky quietly with the alpenstock or the dagger, and use the pistol to shoot his way out if he were discovered.
It was only because he was completely trusted that he was able to get his weapons into the villa. Other visitors had been searched since the May attack.
Trotsky was taken to the Green Cross Hospital, where it was found that the weapon his assailant used had penetrated his skull and pierced his brain, and that he had been wounded in the shoulders and legs.
Dr. Ruben Lenero, chief surgeon of the hospital, Dr. Joaquin Baz, a leading surgeon of Mexico, and Dr. Everardo Garcia of the hospital staff quickly took X-ray photographs of the head wound and injected serum in Trotsky’s veins to strengthen his heart. Then they performed a 15 minute operation.
Skull Also Fractured
Later the hospital issued this bulletin:
There was a hemorrhage of the meninges (a covering of the brain) at a point of the lesion (where the pickax entered) and a slight destruction of the brain. There was a fracture at the base of the skull. The patient’s condition is very grave.
Dr. Gustavo Baz, rector of the National University of Mexico and one of the republic’s most famed surgeons, stayed at the bedside to observe Trotsky’s condition. Dr. Baz witnessed the operation, as did many professors of surgery.
Correspondents saw Mrs. Trotsky, a sterilized white robe over her street clothes, sitting tense beside her husband during the operation, holding his right hand. She remained at his bedside all through the night.
For a moment before the operation, Trotsky had seemed to be regaining consciousness and trying to talk to his surgeons, but he was unable to make a statement.