Artur London, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Artur London

politician from Czechoslovakia

Date of Birth: 01-Feb-1915

Place of Birth: Ostrava, Moravian-Silesian Region, Czech Republic

Date of Death: 08-Nov-1986

Profession: writer, politician

Nationality: Czech Republic

Zodiac Sign: Aquarius


Show Famous Birthdays Today, Czech Republic

👉 Worldwide Celebrity Birthdays Today

About Artur London

  • Artur London (1 February 1915 – 8 November 1986) was a Czechoslovak communist politician and co-defendant in the SlánskĂ˝ Trial.
  • He was born in Ostrava, Moravia, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic) to a Jewish family. London spent 1934 to 1937 in Moscow.
  • In 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, he left for Barcelona where he worked for SIM (Servicio de InformaciĂłn Militar), an intelligence service run by the Soviet NKVD.
  • He moved to France after the defeat of the Republicans.
  • In World War II he was active in the French resistance, was arrested by the Nazis and sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp.
  • After the war, he lived in Switzerland but soon moved with family to Prague, where he became a leading figure in the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and was eventually nominated deputy minister of foreign affairs in 1948. In 1951, he was arrested and became a co-defendant with Rudolf SlánskĂ˝ in the SlánskĂ˝ trial, one of several show trials against Eastern European communists at the time.
  • Accused of being a Zionist, Trotskyite and Titoist, he was forced to confess and sentenced to life in prison.
  • After the SlánskĂ˝ trial, London collaborated with the authorities and served as a lead witness in other construed political processes against top Czechoslovak communists, such as Eduard GoldstĂĽcker, Josef Pavel, Osvald ZávodskĂ˝, Gustáv Husák, Otakar Hromádko and others.
  • Following Stalin's death in 1953, London was released in 1955.
  • After his rehabilitation in 1963, he moved to France with his wife, Lise London, a French communist he had met in Moscow.
  • In 1963 London published Espagne, a book about his time in the Spanish civil war.
  • The couple wrote the book L'Aveu (1968), an autobiographical account of his ordeal in the Prague Trials.
  • The English translation The Confession by Alastair Hamilton appeared in 1968.
  • (In England the translation was published in 1970 under the title On Trial).
  • While the main defendants were senior to London, he gained prominence worldwide by writing the book.
  • The book was made into the 1970 film The Confession directed by Costa-Gavras, starring Yves Montand and Simone Signoret.
  • Chris Marker made the short film On vous parle de Prague: Le deuxième procès d'Artur London, an on-set documentary about the making of this movie.
  • Lise later narrated the documentary A Trial in Prague, directed by Zuzana Justman (2002, 83min).
  • Artur London died in Paris in 1986, at age 71.
  • Lise later died there in 2012, at age 96.

Read more at Wikipedia

See Also