A Heart Attack Made in Moscow - Karlstor
In the stairwell of Karlsplatz 8, beside the medieval Karlstor, KGB assassin Bohdan Stashynsky sprayed cyanide gas into the face of Ukrainian exile editor Lev Rebet on 12 October 1957. The pathologist certified a heart attack, and the truth stayed buried for four years.
Sobre este lugar
The Stachus is Munich's loudest square, a roundabout of trams and buses wrapped in the neo baroque curve of the Stachus Rondell and anchored by the Karlstor, the west gate first recorded in 1302. On the morning of 12 October 1957, Lev Rebet, a lawyer, professor, Auschwitz survivor and chief theorist of the democratic Ukrainian exile movement, climbed the stairs of Karlsplatz 8 to his newspaper office and met a young man coming down. A faint pop, a cloud of vapour, and Rebet collapsed; a cleaning woman found him, and the autopsy recorded sudden cardiac death. The killer was KGB agent Bohdan Stashynsky, armed with a laboratory built tube that crushed an ampoule of prussic acid and fired the gas into a victim's face, leaving no trace. He used it again in 1959 on Stepan Bandera. Only his defection to West Berlin in August 1961, hours before the Wall rose, exposed both murders. In October 1962 the Federal Court of Justice sentenced him to a mere eight years as an accomplice of the KGB chief, a ruling still debated by German jurists. The square hides a second chapter: on 16 December 1976 the 21 million mark ransom for kidnapped heir Richard Oetker vanished through a steel emergency door in the underground passage below your feet.
Datos clave
- 12 October 1957 — Lev Rebet died on the stairs of Karlsplatz 8 after a KGB gas pistol sprayed prussic acid into his face; the autopsy certified sudden cardiac death.
- 8 years in prison — The full sentence handed to double assassin Bohdan Stashynsky by the Federal Court of Justice on 19 October 1962, as an accomplice rather than a murderer.
- 21 million marks — Germany's largest ransom, for kidnapped heir Richard Oetker, handed over on 16 December 1976 through an emergency door in the Stachus underground passage.
📍 Karlsplatz (Stachus) 8, 80335, München