Julius Fucik

Julius Fucik (February 23, 1903 - September 8, 1943) was a Czechoslovakian journalist, Czech communist party leader, and a leader in the forefront of the anti-Nazi resistance. He was imprisoned, tortured, and executed by the Nazis.

Julius Fucik was born into a working-class family. His father was a steel worker. In his early youth, he joined the Czech Communist Party and soon became the editor of Tvorba and the communist paper, Rude Pravo. After Hitler's forces occupied Bohemia and Moravia, he was arrested by the Gestapo on April 24, 1942. He was sent to a Nazi prison in Pankrác, Prague, where he wrote his famous Notes from the Gallows, with the clandestine support of a sympathetic prison attendant, named Kolinsky. Fucik was condemned to death by a Nazi court on August 25, 1943 and was executed two weeks later. After the war, his wife, Gusta Fucikova, who had also been in a Nazi concentration camp, researched and retrieved all of his prison writings and published them as Notes from the Gallows, which became a legendary piece of literature and a best seller.