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September 8, 1943 presaged the victory over fascism. It was the day of a decisive victory over the German fascists in the battle at Kursk and the day when fascist Italy capitulated. But it was also a day of sorrow: the Nazi executioners dragged Julius Fucik to the guillotine and cut off his head.

They knew what they were doing. It was clear to them that Julius Fucik who even in prison did not cease fighting proved able to use the word as a weapon, was an irreconcilable fighter against fascism and for a new world. That was why he had to die. And so it has remained or duty to study his life, his teachings, his legacy and not to forget a single sentence. What he fought for so passionately, why he went with head high to his death is what millions of people are continuing to fight for today.

Julius Fucik became the greatest teacher of many generations of journalists. One of his most important teachings was, there is no such animal as a neutral journalist, a journalist who stands above things. Anyone who has chosen this profession must exercise it as a vital calling, much choose the side on which he stands, must learn to seek and recognise the new.

Julius Fucik, is the Czechoslovak journalist and anti-fascist fighter, whose famous "Report from the gallows" has so far been translated into ninety languages and been published in some three hundred editions. This was the book that Fidel Castro called a beautiful report 'that shook our world and inspired revolutionaries, that inspired us Cuban fighters, all of us who had read his report and taken it as our model, to strengthen our spirits when faced with the risks of the fight."

And in this book, which may rightly be considered one of the most emotional literary testimonies. Fucik sent his message to all the living, to all those as yet unborn, his fiery call: "People, be on your guard!" He gave this message in foreboding of death, but in the name of life, so that man, whatever language of this planet he may speak, might never allow a repetition of such a monstrous thing as Hitler's fascism.

It is a message charged with tragic experience and it is topical.

Who was Julius Fucik?

He was born on February 23, 1903 in Prague. As a twelve year-old schoolboy, he wrote in manuscript for his parents and sisters the first magazine of his life called "The Slav", in which he reacted to the horrors of the First World War. At seventeen he was already contributing to a real newspaper Rude Pravo. He was brutally murdered in the execution hall of the Nazi prison in Plotzensee, Berlin. The executioner ended his life at the age of forty and more than twenty of these years had been fully devoted to Fucik's hobby and passion: journalism.

Pablo Neruda, that giant of a poet born in Latin America dedicated an enchanting poem to the Czechoslovak journalist in 1952. He saw Fucik as a hero who belonged not only to his own country. He saw in him "the architecture of a man of tomorrow".

(Press release issued by Union of Journalists of Sri Lanka)

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