Lew Szwarcman

Lev Leonidovich (Aronovich) Shvartzman (; 25 July 1907 13 May 1955) was a Soviet MGB officer, notorious for his brutality, who was executed for using torture to extract false confessions from prisoners. His victims included Marshal Blyukher, the Colonel general Grigory Shtern, the writer Isaac Babel and the theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold.

Biography

Early career He was born in Shpola, in Ukraine, the son of a Jewish bank official. During the Russian Civil War, his parents supported the White army against the Bolsheviks. His father served in the army of General Yudenich, and was killed in battle in 1919. His mother served as a military doctor. His two brothers fought in the army of Rüdiger von der Goltz. Lev Shvartzman left school at 14.

Despite his family background, he was allowed to join Komsomol in 1925. Having worked as a newspaper seller, he was taken on as a reporter in Kiev, and in February 1929, was transferred to Moscow to work for the newspaper Moskovski Komsomolets.

NKVD career Shvartzman was recruited to the NKVD in 1935 and rapidly advanced during the Great Purge. In mid-1938, he was put in charge of investigating writers, artists, and publishers but was considered ineffective so was given the job of conducting 'intensive investigations'. and allegedly raped by Shvartzman and his colleague Boris Rodos.

From August 1941, Shvartzman was deputy head of the NKVD / NKGB / MGB Investigation Department of the USSR of Special Importance. On 14 February 1943, he was raised to the rank of colonel of state security. In June 1949 he was sent to Bulgaria to assist in the investigation of Traicho Kostov, a member of the Political Bureau of the Bulgarian Communist Party. By the end of his career Shvartzman was so infamous for brutality that he had only to say his name during an interrogation and the prisoner would confess at once. Under interrogation, Shvartzman confessed to being a 'Jewish nationalist' and the linchpin of a terrorist organisation, organised with the connivance of Abakumov, made up of every senior Jewish officer in the security services. According to the former MGB officer Pavel Sudoplatov:

After Stalin's death, the Doctors' Plot was exposed as a fabrication, and Lavrenti Beria, who had regained control of the security services, offered Shvartzman a deal, that if he admitted extracting false confessions under torture, the charge of being a Zionist conspirator would be dropped, and he would receive a prison sentence. That offer was withdrawn after Beria's own downfall. Shvartzman was sentenced to death on 3 March 1955, and executed on 13 May 1955 after the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Council rejected a request for pardon.