Remembering Julius Fučík – the dreamer in Red.
The year was 1938. Under the guise of rescuing the Sudeten Germans, Hitler assumed control over the frontiers of Czechoslovakia. The Munich pact signed between UK, France, Italy and Germany readily paved the way for him. The rest of Czechoslovakia was wrested a year later from a meek leadership and was brought under the realm of the Nazis, driven endlessly by their desire of establishing the Aryan Supremacy in Europe. This annexation was met with almost no military resistance and made millions of Slovaks who constituted “the others” vulnerable to mindless persecution and inexplicable wrath. Anti-Semitism was not the only threat. “The others” also constituted Slovaks who tried to flee their Nazi-held Czechoslovakian homelands, homosexuals, artists who dared to decry the Nazi authority and the Communists. Members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPC) were already ostracised by the incumbent democratic Government in Prague prior to the arrival of the Nazis. Julius Fučík joi...