Josef Urválek

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Josef Urválek (born April 28, 1910 in Budweis , Austria-Hungary , † November 29, 1979 in Prague ) was a Czechoslovak attorney general and judge . In the Stalinist show trials in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s, first against Milada Horáková and later in the Slansky trial , he played a leading role and, with the help of fabricated evidence, was responsible for numerous judicial murders .

Life

Josef Urválek was born in Budweis in 1910 as the son of a train driver on the Austro-Hungarian railway . After graduating from the municipal grammar school there in 1929, he completed his legal studies at Charles University in Prague and received his doctorate in 1934 with Vilém Funk . In 1938 he married a high school teacher for Czech and French, with whom he had two sons. From 1930 to 1938 he was a member of the Social Democratic Party . After 1945 he became a member of the Communist Party and was initially a public prosecutor at the People's Court ( Národní soud ), where trials against war criminals and collaborators with the German occupiers such as Radola Gajda took place.

The high point of his career began after the Communist seizure of power in 1948. Urválek worked for the public prosecutor in Prague and in 1953 became chairman of the Czechoslovak Supreme Court. In the Slansky Trial in 1952, he served as Attorney General and Chief Prosecutor. He called for the death penalty for 11 out of 14 defendants and life imprisonment in the remaining three cases , repeatedly pointing out that the majority of those accused in the main Prague trial were Jews. This origin, so the general tenor of the indictment, made them nationally unreliable: to cosmopolitans , conspirators, agents, Zionists and agents of imperialism.

During the Prague Spring 1968 his activities came under severe public criticism in the 1950s. At this time Urválek himself wrote a statement on his activities and granted an interview to the Communist Party organ Rudé právo . He refused to take personal responsibility and accused other actors, in particular the State Security and President Klement Gottwald . As a prosecutor, he alleged that he was unaware of the psychological and physical pressure exerted on the defendants by the State Security Service to force them to make confessions. Under this pressure the defendant Otto Fischl accused himself of lying at the request of the public prosecutor and stated on record that “this organized flight of the Jewish bourgeoisie and the export of their property does not prevent” and “identifies with and supports the interests of the Jewish bourgeoisie” to have. In his closing argument, the prosecutor requested a "judgment like an iron fist without the slightest mercy, [...] a fire that burns this shameful tuber of treason at the root."

Josef Urválek died in 1979 and is reported to have committed suicide.

At the beginning of 2020 it became known that Urválek, together with the later Minister of Justice Helena Válková , had written an article in 1979 in which the intensified measures and harassment against dissidents, at that time also against Charter 77 activists, were resolutely defended.

Quote

“What on earth do you want me to do? Do you think I should end my life? No, I cannot and do not want to jump from the Petřín Tower , it is not possible. If I did that, Editor, I would take the blame, acknowledge my guilt, and I don't feel that, it's someone else's. Therein lies the contradiction between the whole situation of these years and the present. "

- Josef Urválek in an interview with Rudé právo , 1968

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry in the baptismal register
  2. ↑ Jan Gerber : A trial in Prague: The people against Rudolf Slánský and comrades . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016. S. 12. Partial online view
  3. ^ Daily Report, Foreign Radio Broadcasts CIA
  4. ↑ "I AM A LUMP, MR PROSECUTOR!" . In: Der Spiegel of December 26, 1956
  5. ↑ Josef Urválek's biography
  6. ↑ Petr Stehlík: Elity Komunistické strany na Československa stránkách Rudého práva v 50. letech 20. Století. (The KSČ elites on the pages of Rudé právo in the 1950s.) Faculty of Education, University of South Bohemia in Budweis , 2015, p. 12.
  7. ↑ info.cz/ ; Text of the article from 1979: Josef Urválek and Helena Válková: Některé poznatky z výzkumu ochranného dohledu v souvislosti s prokurátorským dozorem (Some findings from the investigations into protective supervision in connection with the surveillance by the public prosecutor's office), in: 1/1979 25ff., Online at: info.cz/
  8. ↑ Past human rights commissioner consulted , Czech Radio (Czech Radio's international broadcast), January 10, 2020, online at: radio.cz/
  9. ↑ Co tedy, proboha, po mně chcete, abych udělal? Vy si myslíte, že si mám sáhnout na život? Ne, nemohu a nebudu skákat z petřínské věže, to není možné. Kdybych to, pane redaktore, udělal, vzal bych na sebe celou vinu, potvrdil bych svou vinu a já ji necítím, tu má někdo jiný. V tom je rozpornost celé situace tehdejších let i dneška. In: Alžběta Vašáková: Život Josefa Urválka . Charles University Faculty of Education, Prague 2018. Online

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Urválek, Josef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czechoslovak Prosecutor General, lead prosecutor in the Slansky trial
DATE OF BIRTH April 28, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Budweis , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH November 29, 1979
Place of death Prague , Czechoslovakia