Léon Grossvogel

His father was Osias Grossvogel, who was a Jewish religious scholar. In 1926, Grossvogel and his sister, moved to Belgium via Strasbourg, initially staying in Ghent. In 1929, he became a member of the Belgian Communist Party. In May 1938, Grossvogel married Jeanne Fernande Pesant at Holborn Registry Office in London. Jeanne Grossvogel ran the Ostend branch of Le Roi du Caoutchouc. The couple gave birth to a daughter, Nicole Germaine Grossvogel, in October 1942. ==Work==

Grossvogel ran a small Brussels business called Le Roi du Caoutchouc or The Raincoat King on behalf of its owners. His sister Sarah Kapolowitz was married to one of the directors, his brother-in-law Louis Kapolowitz. In 1937, his job position changed when he became the travelling inspector for the company. Although Grossvogel was related to one of the owners by marriage and who recognised him as a good worker, he had become unpopular with his employees due to his communist sympathies and his errant behaviour during a strike at their Brussels plant in 1938. ==Foreign Excellent Raincoat Company==

In the autumn of 1938, Polish Communist and agent of the Red Army Intelligence agent, Leopold Trepper made contact with Grossvogel, whom he had known while he was in Palestine in the 1920s. He travelled under the alias Adam Mikler, a wealthy Canadian businessman, and had a plan to create a business that would be the export division of The Raincoat King and agreed with Grossvogel the plan to create a new business, without telling Grossvogel of his own intelligence mission It would be the ideal cover for espionage network. Trepper financed Grossvogel to the sum of $8,000 to create the new business, that was given an unidiomatic name of Foreign Excellent Raincoat Company. Grossvogel became manager of the new firm. As a representative of the company, he made trips to Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, and Finland, in the spring and summer of 1939, i.e. the places Trepper planned to establish bases for operations against the United Kingdom. After the start of World War II, Trepper abandoned the idea of trying to expand the raincoat company overseas, stopping intelligence activities against Britain. ==Simex==

In the autumn of 1940, Grossvogel efforts led to the establishment of the Simex firm in Paris firm, becoming its managing director. The companies name was a metonym for S for Societe, IM for Import, EX for Export and was established as a large company, offering military engineering contract services for Nazi German contracts resulting from the occupation. Grossvogel's task was to grow the business, while Trepper used the business to mask his clandestine activities unnoticed. Payments Grossvogel was paid a retainer by Russian intelligence, at 175 dollars per months. After the start of the war, this was increased to 225 dollars per month. ==Arrest==

On the 30 November 1942, Grossvogel was arrested, while waiting for a rendezvous with the forger and criminal, Abraham Rajchmann, at the Café de la Paix in Paris, and tortured by the Gestapo, as they had been told by captured Soviet agent, Anatoly Gurevich, that he knew the code that was used to encrypt communications between the espionage group and Soviet intelligence. However, he refused to divulge the secret. It is unknown whether Grossvogel was executed as other members of the Red Orchestra were, or that he survived the war (sources vary). It was likely he was still alive during the allied invasion ==Awards and honours==

The Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation has a document that attest that Grossvogel was awarded diplomas for acts of resistance during the war. These were • 1945 Croix de Guerre 1940 with palm • 1945 Knight's Cross of the Order of Leopold II with palm • 1949 Cross of the Order of the Resistance 1940-1944 • 1957 Commemorative War Medal 1940-1945 • 1957 Medal of Resistance ==References==