NEZNÁMÝ POHLED NA DOZNÁNÍ ARTURA LONDONA A PROCES SLÁNSKÉHO
AN UNKNOWN PERSPECTIVE ON THE CONFESSION OF ARTUR LONDON AND THE SLÁNSKÝ TRIAL

Summary/Abstract: Ota Hromádko (1909–1983) was a Communist activist and journalist, a member of International brigades and French resistance in WW II, but also a political prisoner of the 1950s. Between 1931–1937, he worked as a secretary of regional organizations of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (CCP) and an editor of the Communist press. For distribution of illegal periodicals, he was imprisoned for several times. In 1937 he volunteered and joined the international brigades in Spain where he was a political commissioner of the Masaryk battalion. After the fall of the Spanish Re-public, he got to internment camps in Saint Cyprien, Gurs and Vernet d’Arriège in France. Yet, he managed to escape in 1941 and join the French Resistance in Paris, in the rank of captain he commanded ten units of foreign resistance members and participated in fights for Paris in August 1944. After coming back to Czechoslovakia, Hromádko became deputy head of the organisation department in the Central Committee of CCP, led by M. Švermová. In 1949 he got transferred to army and in January 1950 became secretary of the CCP organisation in the whole military. In February 1951 he was arrested together with other high-ranking officers and after three-years imprisonment sentenced for alleged espionage to 12 years on April 1, 1954. He was released in April 1956 and worked as a worker till his rehabilitation in 1963 when he retired. In 1966–1968 Hromádko contributed to the discussion on Czechoslovak International brigade members and on the CCP policy after WW II by several articles. In 1968, after invasion of Warsaw pact armies, he emigrated to Switzerland where he worked for the Schweizerischer Sozialarchiv in Zürich. He sent voluminous letters to many people and also editorial boards from his Swiss exile in which he showed manipulation with the facts in the successful memoirs book by Artur London The Confession. The London’s book, published in 1968, caused a sensation. One of such texts by Hromádko has been preserved as a photocopy of a French text in the Zürich archives. This document, published in its integrity here, shows a remarkable view of the author not only on the London’s Confession and on the Slánský trial, but also on the political trials of the Stalinist era in general.

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