Julius Fučík (1903–1943)

Julius Fučík was born to a working-class family in Prague, Czechoslovakia. He was the nephew and namesake of composer Julius Fučík. As a young teenager, he was interested in politics and literature. In 1920, he joined the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Workers' Party, a forerunner of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPC). He wrote for the CPC newspaper and became an editor with the literary newspaper Kmen (Stem)and later with the literary magazine Tvorba (Creation). In 1930, he visited the Soviet Union for four months, including the Czechoslovak collectivist colony Interhelpo in Central Asia, and wrote the book V zemi, kde zítra již znamená včera (In a Land, Where Tomorrow is Already Yesterday, 1932). In 1934, he visited Bavaria and described what he saw in Cesta do Mnichova (The Road to Munich). In 1938, he married Augusta Kodeřičová, afterwards known as Gusta Fučíková. In the wake of the Munich Conference, the Czech government officially disbanded the CPC and it went underground. After Nazi Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Fučík began working for the CPC resistance. In 1942, he and six others were arrested in Prague by the Gestapo. He was imprisoned in Pankrác Prison in Prague where he was also interrogated and tortured. His notes, written on pieces of cigarette paper, were smuggled out of the prison and in 1947 were published as Reportáž psaná na oprátce (English: Notes from the Gallows). In 1943, Fučík was sent to Germany and executed at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin. After the war, his wife, Gusta Fučíková, who survived a Nazi concentration camp, researched and retrieved all of his prison writings. His appeal from prison, "Be on your guard" against fascism -- became an inspiring legacy for democratic journalists.