Recently, the National Archives released a new batch of secret documents. Most of the press headlines concerned the MI5 files on Aneurin Bevan, the deputy leader of the Labour Party who was followed for more than 20 years. But looking through the other files, I found an interesting one involving a local woman, (Ref KV2/4858).
Sylvia Matthews
On 8 September 1939, just after the declaration of War, Sylvia Matthews with her friend Arnold Ridley, called at a police station in London to make a statement.
She said that in Christmas 1936 she had met a German Socialist refugee called Werner Emil Schmidt, then living in 72 Adelaide Road.
‘I fell in love with Schmidt and lived with him at 35 Boundary Road NW8. He was deported on 23 April 1937, and police escorted him to Newhaven and saw him onto the boat. Schmidt confessed to being a Trotskyist. During this time, I was followed by Special Branch officers. After he was deported, in May 1937, I followed him to France where I lived with him again in Maisons-Alfort’ (a suburb of Paris). She obtained a British passport from Angus Maxey, a fellow Trotskyist. Sylvia said she got the passport so that she and Schmidt could return to London and marry.
Instead, he decided to take Sylvia to Mexico where he began working as a secretary for Trotsky who was living there in exile. Werner deserted her in Mexico leaving her stranded, because she had insisted he get his papers in order, and marry her. With help from Trotsky himself, she left Mexico City on the 25 April 1938 and returned to Paris. Here she found that Schmidt had inserted his photo into the British passport but did not know if he had used it. She tried unsuccessfully to retrieve it from friends and returned to London.
In her statement she declared: ‘I do not belong to any political party or have any communication or contact with them. I am now working at the ARP Canteen in Berkeley Square as a cook. I have a flat at 55 Embassy House in West End Lane where I would prefer to be seen if it is necessary to see me again’. She had given her address as 7 Headfort Place Chapel Street SW1 in Belgravia.
The Air Raid Precautions (ARP) canteen in Berkeley Square was a significant WWII deep-level subterranean shelter and wartime infrastructure hub located beneath Berkeley Square in Mayfair. During the Blitz, it served as a critical ARP headquarters, incorporating a canteen run by the Women’s Voluntary Services and a warden’s casualty command centre. It provided localized emergency food, bunk shelter, and coordination services for defensive civil personnel working in the heart of London’s West End.
With further research we found that Sylvia Blossom Stebbery Matthews was born on 9 June 1910 at the family home, 89 Teignmouth Road Willesden. The census of the following year shows her father Harold Charles Percival Matthews was a wholesale hardware merchant in the City of London. He died in January 1915 at 8 Honeybourne Road West Hampstead leaving his widow Florence Margaret £9,032 (worth about £1M today). By 1921, Florence and 11-year old Sylvia were living at 1 Marlborough Mansions, Cannon Hill West Hampstead with a female servant. Ten years later the family had moved again to 8b St Cuthbert’s Road in Kilburn, where Sylvia was now living with her older sister Joan Vyvian and their mother.
We believe that Sylvia was a minor actress and singer who toured with shows in the late 1930s and 40s. She appeared in shows called, ‘Pleasure on Parade’, ‘Ladies, Legs, and Laughs’, and ‘Yankee Doodle Comes to Town’, where she is called Sylvia Matthews ‘Sweet and Lovely’.
For some reason, on 11 February 1942 she changed her name by deed poll to Sylvia Ross and gave her address as 253 West End Lane. As Sylvia Ross she continued to appear in touring shows until about 1952, when she set up her own theatrical company, Sylvia Ross Productions, with an office address at 3 Portchester House, Philpot Street E1.
Aged only 47, Sylvia Blossom Ross died on 14 September 1957 of ovarian cancer, at the Wood Green and Southgate Hospital. On the death certificate she is shown as the licensed victualler chef and wife of Robert Ross at the White Lion Edgware.
Unfortunately, we have not found a photo of Sylvia Matthews/Ross.
Werner Emil Paul Schmidt
From the MI5 files we see that Schmidt was born in Berlin on 18 October 1911. About to be arrested by the Gestapo, for his left-wing activities, he came to England in February and again in December 1933. After three warning letters from the Home Office about his communist activities and telling him to leave, he went to Leningrad by boat on 27 May 1934. Unable to obtain work, after three weeks he returned to Berlin. He came back to England on 22 May 1936 and worked in a clerical capacity at the HQ of the British Trotskyist organization, 99 Kings Cross Road. At the time they had about 300 members.
In 1937, Sylvia’s mother Florence Matthews wrote to Sir William Davison, an MP who was known for his opposition of political extremists both right and left. She expressed concern for her daughter who was living at 35 Boundary Road (now demolished), a house occupied by people with communist views. Special Branch enquiries showed there were 11 people, six women and five men most of whom were known Trotskyists. When 23-year old Sylvia went to Mexico with Schmidt, her mother dramatically declared she was a victim of white slave traffickers.
When Schmidt was deported on 23 April 1937, he travelled on the boat train with a weekend ticket made out in the name of Arthur Miller. He went from Newhaven to Paris, and later to Mexico.
Trotsky
Trotsky had fallen out with Stalin and was banished from Russia in February 1929. After staying in several countries, including Turkey, France and Norway, he was condemned to death in a Moscow show trial in August 1936, and offered protection by the Mexican Government on 6 December 1936. He and his wife Natalya sailed from Norway aboard an oil tanker and arrived in Mexico in January 1937. The Trotskys lived in the Coyoacan area of Mexico City as guests at the Blue House, the home of the painters Diego Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo. Soon Frida and Trotsky had an affair, much to Natalya’s anger.
Diego and Frida, 1933 (Acme photo)
Werner Schmidt worked as Trotsky’s secretary for about a year in 1937 and 1938. They got on very well, but Trotsky warned the situation was becoming more dangerous, and he suggested to Schmidt that he should leave for New York. Schmidt took his advice and arrived in New York on 20 September 1938.
By May 1939 Trotsky and Rivera had had enough of each other and Trotsky and his wife moved to a house close by on Avenida Viena. On 24 May 1940 an attempt to kill Trotsky by 20 Soviet agents armed with machine guns failed, but he was still in danger.
A charming Spanish Communist Ramón Mercader, using an assumed name, had a love affair with American Sylvia Ageloff, one of Trotsky’s assistants. But Mercader was also a NKVD Soviet agent tasked with assassinating Trotsky. After months of befriending the Trotskys and the guards, on 20 August 1940 he asked Trotsky to look at an article he had written. He suddenly produced a short mountaineer’s ice-axe from his raincoat pocket and stabbed Trotsky in the head. Although he tried to defend himself, 60-year old Trotsky was mortally wounded and died in hospital the next day.
.jpg)
Mercader was attacked by the guards, arrested by Mexican police and sent to prison for almost 20 years. When he was released in May 1960, he travelled to Prague and Moscow where he was made a Hero of the Soviet Union. He lived in Cuba before he died on 18 October 1976 in Havana, and was buried in Moscow.
Realizing she had been used to facilitate the murder, Sylvia Ageloff suffered a severe nervous breakdown and hysterical episode at the scene. Mexican authorities arrested her and charged her as an accomplice. However, after a thorough investigation, the Mexican courts accepted that she had been entirely deceived by Mercader. She was cleared of all charges, released in December 1940, and returned to New York, where she lived out the rest of her life in relative anonymity. Some sources mistake her for Sylvia Matthews and vice versa.
The Mysterious Mr Olsen
In New York, Werner Schmidt applied for American citizenship on 4 January 1939. He was 27 years old and worked as a printer. He gave his address as ‘231 West 16th Street, (care of Olsen)’. To avoid being traced by Russian agents, he had changed his name to Alex Werner Olsen. He enlisted in the American Army on 5 March 1943.
In May 1952, as Alex Werner Olsen, Schmidt married Hilde Berger, an old friend from Germany. During the War she had been in Nazi concentration camps and worked as Oskar Schindler’s secretary. She had survived by typing her name on one of his lists of the approximately 1,200 Jews he saved.
%20and%20Hilde%20in%20NY.jpg)
Alex Werner Olsen died in New York on 16 August 1997.
The National Archive file showed MI5 were still interested in Werner Schmidt as late as December 1972, but were unaware he had changed his name.
This is a previously unknown story of a local woman, her lover and their adventures with Trotsky in Mexico.
Comments
Post a Comment