Autor: FIR | 9. 9. 2023
The FIR remembers an important Czech anti-fascist personality who - like so many - is gradually being pushed out of the public consciousness, Julius Fucik. He was and is known worldwide for the book “Reportage written under the rope”. The text was translated and distributed in almost ninety languages of the world, yet it was neither his first, nor his only book - in fact, not his book at all. For it was reconstructed and published only after his death by his wife Gusta Fucikova based on the recovered records from Fucik’s time in prison.
Born 120 years ago, on February 23, 1903, in Prague-Smichov, Fucik was a popular left-wing journalist during his lifetime, who first made a name for himself through theater and literary criticism. About his journalistic work he himself formulated: “I have written numerous cultural and political articles, reportages, literary and theatrical studies and papers. Many of them belong to the day and have died with the day. Let them lie. Some, however, belong to life.”
Enthusiastic about the Socialism building in the USSR, he traveled the country for a long time in the early thirties on behalf of the Czech newspaper “Tvorba”. Fucik’s attention was less on the results presented than on the people themselves who wanted to build socialism, whom he had come closer to during months of his stay.
In his own country, as a communist, he experienced political conflicts with the conservative government in Prague on several occasions, which put parts of his works on the index. Nevertheless, he saw himself as a Czech who, out of national responsibility, contributed with his journalistic possibilities to the mobilization of the Czech population when the threat of German fascism increased in 1938.
Naturally, he protested against the Munich Dictate and the separation of the Sudeten territories. After the Nazi troops invaded Czech territory in the spring of 1939, Fucik went underground, only to return to Prague a short time later under the name “Prof. Horak.” There he wrote for the underground newspaper of the Communist Party, the “Rude Pravo”, and worked in the anti-fascist resistance. From the spring of 1941 he belonged to the illegal CC of the KPČ.
His arrest occurred by chance. When the Gestapo realized who they had in their clutches, a long period of interrogation began in Prague’s Pankrac Gestapo prison. During this time, Julius Fucik, with the assistance of two Czech keepers, found a way to take notes and have these smuggled out of the prison undetected.
It has often been speculated whether these records would have served as information for the Gestapo. However, all known documents prove that Fucik’s texts were in fact never in the hands of the Gestapo. They were hidden by a relative of the Czech keeper Adolf Kolinsky. It would be incomprehensible why the Gestapo should have continued its interrogations and other reprisals if it had already obtained the desired information in this way.
The records break off with June 9, 1943, with reference to the imminent transfer from Pankrac. From there Fucik’s way led via Bautzen to Berlin, where the “People’s Court” sentenced him to death for high treason. 80 years ago, on September 9, 1943, he was murdered at the Berlin-Plötzensee execution site in connection with a killing campaign against numerous foreign prisoners.
Gusta Fucikova, who was interned in Ravensbrück concentration camp at the time, only became certain of her husband’s fate after liberation. When she returned to Prague and learned of her husband’s records, she made every effort to publish them. The response was so amazing that the text was soon published in German (by the Globus publishing house in Vienna) and translated into many languages of the world. For reasons that lay in the political situation of the time, not all the texts were printed in the first editions. It was thanks to the commitment of the anti-fascist and journalist Vera Pickova and the friends of the Julius Fucik Society that a complete edition appeared for the first time about 30 years ago. Julius Fucik’s “Report written under the rope” is an enduring document of the will to survive and of anti-fascist journalism. His final message, “People, I loved you, be vigilant,” is still widely quoted as a reminder today.
International Federation of Resistants Fighters (FIR) - Association of Antifascists
