 He was murdered by agents of Stalin's NKVD during the Spanish Civil War.Kurt Landau was born on 29 January 1903 in Vienna, the son of the wine merchant Abraham Simon (1872-1940 murdered in a concentration camp) and Rosa Feldmann (1878-1935).He studied in Vienna and was a member of and chairman of the Währing section of the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) from 1921 to 1926.