Julius Fučík (journalist)

Julius Fučík (23 February 1903 – 8 September 1943) was a Czech journalist, critic, writer, and active member of Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.

For his part at the forefront of the anti-Nazi resistance during the Second World War, he was imprisoned and tortured by the Gestapo in Prague, and executed in Berlin.

While in prison, Fučík recorded his interrogation experiences on small pieces of paper, which were smuggled out and published after the war as Notes from the Gallows.

The book established Fučík as a symbol of resistance to oppression, as well as an icon of communist propaganda.

Julius Fučík was born into a working-class family in Prague.

His father was a steelworker, and his uncle and namesake was the composer Julius Fučík.

In 1913, Fučík moved with his family from Prague to Plzeň (Pilsen) where he attended the state vocational high school.

Already as a twelve-year-old boy he was planning to establish a newspaper named Slovan (The Slav).

He showed himself to be interested in both politics and literature.

As a teenager he frequently acted in local amateur theatre.

In 1920 he took up study in Prague and joined the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Workers' Party, through which he was later to find himself swept up in the left-wing current.

In May 1921 this wing founded the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPC).

Fučík then first wrote cultural contributions for the local Plzeň CPC newspaper.

After completing his studies, Fučík found a position as an editor with the literary newspaper Kmen ("Stem").

Within the CPC he became responsible for cultural work.

He was a member of the literary and artistic group Devětsil from 1926 and in 1929 helped the creation of its more politically motivated successor, Left Front.

In the year 1929 he went to literary critic František Xaver Šalda's magazine Tvorba ("Creation").

Moreover, he constantly worked on the CPC newspaper Rudé právo ("Red Right") and several other journals.

In 1930, he visited the Soviet Union for four months, including the Czechoslovak collectivist colony Interhelpo in Central Asia, and painted a very positive picture of the situation there in the book V zemi, kde zítra již znamená včera ("In a Land, Where Tomorrow is Already Yesterday", published in 1932).

Fučík supported collectivization, and dekulakization; praised the successes of industrialization, and emphasized the temporary nature of all difficulties.

In particular, having visited the USSR on the eve of the Holodomor of 1932-1933, he categorically supported the policy of the Soviet regime.

In this time Fučík was arrested repeatedly by the Czechoslovak Secret Police, managing to avoid an eight-month prison sentence in 1934.

In July 1934, just after Adolf Hitler had suppressed the SA, he visited Bavaria and described his experiences in Cesta do Mnichova ("The Road to Munich").

He went to the Soviet Union again in 1934, this time for two years, and wrote various reports, which again worked to support the Party's strength.

After his return, there were heated arguments with authors such as Jiří Weil and Jan Slavík, who criticized developments under Joseph Stalin.

Fučík took the Stalinist side and criticized such statements critical of Stalin as fatal to the CPC.

In 1938 Fučík married Augusta Kodeřičová, later known as Gusta Fučíková.

In the wake of the Munich Conference, the Prague government disbanded the CPC from September 1938 and the CPC went underground.

After Nazi Germany's troops invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Fučík moved to his parents' house in Chotiměř (Litoměřice District) and published in civilian newspapers, especially about historical and literary topics.

He also started to work for the now underground CPC.

In 1940 the Gestapo started to search for him in Chotiměř because of his cooperation with the CPC, and so he decided to move back to Prague.

Beginning early in 1941, he belonged to the CPC's Central Committee.

He provided handbills and tried to publish the Communist Party newspaper Rudé Právo regularly.

On 24 April 1942 he and six others were arrested in Prague by the Gestapo, probably rather coincidentally during a police raid.

Although Fučík had two guns at the time, he did not use them.

The only survivor of the incident, Riva Friedová-Krieglová, claimed in the 1990s that Fučík had orders to shoot himself to avoid capture.

Fučík was initially detained in Pankrác Prison in Prague, where he was interrogated and tortured.

In this time he composed Notes from the Gallows (Reportáž psaná na oprátce, literally Reports Written Under the Noose), by writing on pieces of cigarette paper and smuggling them out with the help of sympathetic prison warders named Kolínský and Hora.

The book describes events in the prison and is filled with hope for a communist future.

He also details mental resistance techniques to help withstand torture, which have since been used by activists around the world.