Krafsur, Samuel Simon, 1913-1983

Samuel Simon ("Bill") Krafsur was born January 10, 1913 in Boston, Massachusetts. He attended Northeastern University for a year, and is alleged to have joined the Communist Party in the 1930s. He volunteered to fight in Spain and sailed on the SS Paris in January 16, 1937, arriving at Le Havre, France on January 23rd. He joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain, was reported as wounded in May 1937 and left Spain through Barcelona in July 1937. In the spring of 1938, he was in New York, serving as an editorial staff member of The Volunteer for Liberty, a publication of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. He also worked a secretary to the novelist (and his one-time brother-in-law), Elliot Paul, author of Life and Death of a Spanish Town.

Krafsur worked for TASS, the Soviet news agency, in New York and in Washington, DC covering Capitol Hill and the White House, from 1941 to 1949. In the 1950s, he operated Rogers Toy Store in Bethsda, MD, and sold real estate in the DC area. In 1956 he told the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee that he was not then, and had not been during his employment at TASS, a member of the Communist Party. (The recent release of material from the Venona Files brought allegations that he was an agent of Soviet Intelligence during this period.) He declined to answer questions relating to the period before 1940. Krafsur worked for the British news agency Reuters from 1959 to 1978, first as Washington office manager, then, from 1968, as a correspondent covering financial and commodity news. He lived, in retirement, in St. Petersburg, FL, and died while visiting relatives in Memphis, TN in June 1983. An obituary in Reuters World referred to his "vast knowledge of the Washington scene" and described him as "a delightful man and an excellent journalist."

From the guide to the Samuel Krafsur Papers, 1937-1983, (Tamiment Library / Wagner Archives)