IN LATE OCTOBER 1940, the decayed remains of a man were found on the Vichy French side of the Swiss border. The corpse was identified as that of Willi Münzenberg, a Communist refugee from Nazi Germany.

Interned, like other anti-Nazi refugees, as an enemy alien in France at the outbreak of the war, Münzenberg had made a break for freedom as Hitler's armies swept through France in June 1940. He was on the run not only from the Gestapo but also Stalin's NKVD.

The Vichy coroner ruled