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