Julius Fučík

23 February 1903
Born
Prague, Austria-Hungary
8 September 1943 (aged 40)
Died
Berlin, Nazi Germany
Occupation Journalist
Ethnicity Czech
Citizenship Austrian, Czechoslovak
Notable work(s) Reportáž psaná na oprátce

Julius Fučík (23 February 1903 – 8 September 1943) was a Czechoslovak journalist, an
active member of Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Komunistická strana Československa,
KSČ), and part of the forefront of the anti-Nazi resistance. He was imprisoned, tortured, and
executed by the Nazis.

Early life
Julius Fučík was born into a working-class family in Prague. His father was a steelworker. 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.

Journalism and politics

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 leftwing 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". Within the CPC he became responsible for cultural work. In the year 1929 he went to
literary critic František Xaver Šalda's magazine "Tvorba". Moreover, he constantly worked on the
CPC newspaper "Rudé Právo" and several other journals. In this time Fučík was arrested repeatedly
by the Czechoslovakian Secret Police, managing to avoid an eight-month prison sentence in 1934.
In 1930, he visited the Soviet Union for four months and painted a very positive picture of the
situation there in the book V zemi, kde zítra již znamená včera (1932). In July 1934, just after Hitler
had suppressed the SA, he visited Bavaria and described his experiences in Cesta do Mníchova. 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 Slavik, who criticized developments under 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, Ústecký Kraj) 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 a gun at the time, he did not use it. The only survivor of the incident, Riva
Friedová/Krieglová, claimed in the 1990s that Fučík had had orders to shoot himself to avoid
capture.

Notes from the Gallows

Julius Fučík's Notes from the Gallows (first uncensored Czech

edition, 1995)

First, Fučík was detained in Pankrác Prison in Prague where he was

also interrogated and tortured. In this time arose Fučík's Notes from
the Gallows (Czech: Reportáž psaná na oprátce, literally Reports
Written Under the Noose), which was written on pieces of cigarette
paper and smuggled out by sympathetic prison warders named
Kolínský and Hora. The book describes events in the prison since
Fučík's arrest and is filled with hope for a better, Communist future.
In later years its authenticity was contested. The book was published
in a more "acceptable" version, from which the less pleasant
passages, which did not quite fit into everyone's picture of heroic
resistance fighters, had been stricken.

Trial and death

In May 1943 Fučík was brought to Germany. He was first detained in Bautzen for somewhat more
than two months, and afterwards in Berlin. On 25 August 1943 in Berlin, he was accused of high
treason in connection with his political activities by the Volksgerichtshof, which was presided over
by the notorious Roland Freisler. Fučík was found guilty and was sentenced to death along with
Jaroslav Klecan, who had been arrested with Fučík. Fučík was beheaded two weeks later on 8
September 1943 in Plötzensee Prison in Berlin.

After the war, his wife, Gusta Fučíková, who had also been in a Nazi concentration camp,
researched and retrieved all of his prison writings. She edited them with help of CPC and published
them as Notes from the Gallows in 1947. The book was successful, and its influence increased after
the Stalinist takeover of Czechoslavakia in 1948. It has been translated into at least 90 languages.

By the age of 10 every pupil growing up in communist Czechoslovakia was familiar with Fučík's
work and life.

Fučík as an ideological symbol

The Party found Julius Fučík and his book convenient for use as propaganda and turned them into
one of the most visible symbols of the Party. The book was required reading in schools, and Fučík
became a hero whose portrait was displayed at political meetings. Gusta Fučíková was given a high
position in the Party hierarchy (the chairmanship of a women's organisation), holding it for decades.

Many places were named after Fučík, among them a large entertainment park in Prague (Park
kultury a oddechu Julia Fučíka), the city theatre in Jablonec nad Nisou (1945-98), a factory in Brno
(Elektrotechnické závody Julia Fučíka), a military unit, and countless streets and squares.

In Tom Clancy's 1986 novel Red Storm Rising, about a hypothetical war between the Warsaw Pact
and NATO, the Soviet invasion of Iceland is carried out by amphibious troops landed from a
freighter named the Julius Fučík.

Reassessment
After the Party lost its power in 1989, the legend of Fučík became a target of scrutiny. It was made
public that some parts of the book Notes from the Gallows (around 2%) had been omitted and that
the text had been "sanitized" by Gusta Fučíková. There were speculations as to how much
information he gave his torturers, and whether he had turned traitor. In 1995 the complete text of
the book was published. The part in which Fučík describes how he succumbed to torture was
published for the first time. In it, we learn that he gave false information to his captors, saving
countless lives among the Czech resistance to the Nazis, which at the time was essentially
Communist. This publishing was a logical consequence of political changes, while Fučík's position
as untouchable national hero was lost because of its incompatibility with the newly democratized
Czech political atmosphere. Despite the fact that now we know he was an even greater hero.

Quotations
"It so happens that killing a man is not the greatest evil that one can do that man. The Nazis were
specialists, not only in murder and physical torture, but also in man's degradation and debasement,
in the extermination of his hope, his attachment to life and his faculty of reasoning."
"I would like people to know that there were no nameless heroes. That they were human beings
who had their names, their faces, their longing, and their hopes, and that for that reason, even the
pain of the last one among them was no less than the first one's pain, whose name remains. I would
like them all to stay close to you always, like acquaintances, like kin, like you yourselves."