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Other sources claim that Reilly was born Georgy Rosenblum in Odessa on 24 March 1873. In one account, his birth name is given as Salomon Rosenblum in Kherson Gubernia of the Russian Empire, the illegitimate son of Polina (or "Perla") and Dr. Mikhail Abramovich Rosenblum, the cousin of Reilly's father Grigory Rosenblum.
- 1917–1921
- Second Lieutenant
May 2, 2024 · Sidney Reilly was a spy who obtained Persian oil concessions and German naval secrets for Britain. Many of the romanticized stories about him may have been inventions of his own. Born the illegitimate son of a Jewish doctor in Odessa, he studied chemistry in Vienna (1890–93) before going to Brazil.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Supposedly, Reilly himself claimed that Rosenblum wasn’t his real name, but that when his father—a Russian Army colonel with connections at the Czar’s court—died, he learned the dreaded family secret that he was the progeny of an affair between his mother and her Jewish doctor, named Rosenblum.
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Sidney Reilly (born Sigmund Rosenblum), the first “superspy” of the 20th century who was behind a plot to depose the Bolshevik government, was executed on Nov. 5, 1925. Born in Odessa in...
Aug 31, 2023 · Sidney Reilly, born Sigmund Rosenblum, entered the world in 1873 in the bustling port city of Odessa, Russia. His early years were shrouded in mystery, a fitting prelude to a life that would...
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What little is known of Sidney Reilly’s early life indicates that he had a taste for subterfuge from a young age. He was probably born Salomon or Sigmund Rosenblumaround 1873 in the Ukrainian city of Kherson, then part of the Russian Empire. At various times in his tangled and bewildering life, he claimed to have been born to an Irish sea captain o...
In reality, most of Reilly’s account was probably a lie. No records substantiate his claims, and recent evidence suggests that Dr. Rosenblum was none other than Reilly’s uncle. In 1892, there was student unrest in Odessa, at the same time he Reilly claimed to have been studying there. The young Rosenblum probably fled to Paris to escape the Okhrana...
Reilly had never been good with money, and after gambling and squandering much of his wife’s fortune away, he seems to have turned to an elaborate scheme counterfeiting Russian rubles to support himself. By summer 1899, the Okhrana had caught on, and Reilly and Margaret, traveling on his passport, fled to Port Arthur, Russia’s largest port in the P...
Reilly returned to espionage in 1918 when he met Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming— the legendary “C.” Smith-Cumming was one of the earliest and most influential heads of the British Secret Service Bureau’s Secret Intelligence Service, today known as MI6 — and would later inspire Ian Fleming’s spymaster M. SIS wouldn’t accept Reilly without an officer’s ...
Almost immediately upon his return to England, Reilly was sent back to Russia in November 1918 to support and spy on the monarchist White Armies in the budding Russian Civil War. With his background, Reilly had no trouble fitting in on the staff of General Anton Denikin, one of the most successful White commanders. Reilly was able to see the writin...
It wasn’t until he was well inside Soviet territory that Sidney Reilly finally realized that it had been a sting operation carried out by the OGPU, forerunner of the KGB. Captured, he first responded to interrogators with a stony stubbornness. Although Reilly wasn’t tortured, he was subjected to a mock execution — an experience that terrified him e...
- Morgan Dunn
Rosenblum, 1874 - 1925) Getty Images. Follow Russia Beyond on Twitter. Anti-Communist spy Sidney Reilly was detained by the Soviets on Sept. 27, 1925 and shot soon after. Though Reilly’s life...
