Karl Pauker

Karl Viktorovich Pauker (Russian: Карл Викторович Паукер, January 1893, in Lviv – 14 August 1937, in Moscow) was an NKVD officer and head of Joseph Stalin's personal security until his arrest and execution.

Pauker was born into Jewish family in Lviv, which was then part of Austria-Hungary. Prior to the war he was a hairdresser working in the Budapest Operahouse. He served in the Austro-Hungarian army in World War I and was taken as a prisoner of war by the Russians in 1916. Pauker elected to stay in Russia after the revolution and joined the Communist Party in 1918.

Pauker joined the Cheka and became Stalin's bodyguard in 1924. Pauker took an active part in the purges, including the executions of Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev.

Pauker was arrested on 15 April 1937, according to Simon Sebag Montefiore, because he "knew too much and lived too well", and he was executed quietly without trial on 14 August 1937.^[1] He was not posthumously rehabilitated.

References

1. Montefiore, Simon Sebag (2014). Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. London, U.K.: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. pp. 224–225. ISBN 978-1-7802-2835-8. Yagoda's belladonna bore fatal fruit: the Hungarian hairdresser and favourite of Kremlin children, Pauker, forty-four, was arrested on 15, guilty of knowing too much and living too well: Stalin no longer trusted the old-fashioned Chekists with foreign connections. Pauker was shot quietly on 14 August 1937 - the first courtier to die.