In October 1940, Horkheimer requested detailed information from the Spanish border police. He was told Benjamin's death was 'not suicide but from natural causes,' and that his personal effects taken into custody consisted of "[...] a leather briefcase of the type used by businessmen, a man's watch, a pipe, six photographs, an X-ray photography, glasses, various letters, periodicals and a few other papers, the contents of which are not noted, as well as some money [...]" (334).
The letter from Benjamin to Adorno is an error on the part of Gershom Scholem, it was actually a letter from Henny Gurland to her cousin Arkadi Gurland... in it H. Gurland notes that Benjamin had requested of H. Gurland writes, "Please transmit my thoughts to my friend Adorno and explain the situation in which I find myself placed" (H. Gurland citing a letter that Benjamin is said to have written to Adorno).
The report of Benjamin's suicide came from Lisa Fitko to Gershom Scholem (1980). Fitko informed Chimen Abramsky in 1980 that she had traveled over the Pyrenees to Spain forty years prior.
The coincides with Henny Gurland's letter to a cousin on Oct 11, 1940, writes, "He [Benjamin] told me that he had taken large quantities of morphine at 10 the preceding evening and that I should try to present the matter as illness; he gave me a letter addressed to me and Adorno... Then he lost consciousness. I sent for a doctor... the death certificate was made out the next morning.... I had to destroy tthe letter to Adorno... It contained five lines saying that he, Benjamin, could not go on, did not see any way out, and that he [Adorno] should get a report from me, likwise his son.
A conspiracy linked by 40 years of distance? - finding its coincidence in a completely unrelated setting (the Pyrenees) in an innocent remark to a professor on sabbatical leave?).
someone is selling something, ken