Jan Rys-Rozsévač

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Jan Rys-Rozsévač (November 1, 1901 in Bílsko u Hořic - June 27, 1946 in Pankrác Prison in Prague) was a Czechoslovakian journalist and politician and leader of fascist organisation Vlajka.

Jan Rozsévač began to study medicine at a university but didn't finish his studies. In 1936 he joined Vlajka (in Czech the flag), a nationalistic organisation founded in 1930. At the time he adopted pen name Jan Rys. Under this name he published books "Židozednářství - metla lidstva" (Jewish freemasonry - the scourge of humankind, 1938) and "Hilsneriáda a TGM" (Hilsner Affair and Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, 1939). After the Munich Agreement in 1938, Vlajka was officially disbanded and Rys-Rozsévač imprisoned. He was released just before the rest of Czechoslovakia was occupied (March 15, 1939) to became leader of Vlajka.

Rys-Rozsévač attempted to establish a mass fascist organization and helped to move Vlajka from traditional anti-German chauvinism to collaboration with Nazis and Gestapo. During 1939 - 1940 Vlajka organized mass meetings against politicians of the First Republic of Czechoslovakia as represented by Masaryk and Beneš. The German occupational authorities nevertheless decided to support a group of collaborators around Emanuel Moravec, his political competitor. Because of constant propaganda attacks on Moravec, Vlajka was disbanded at the end of 1942 and the leaders, including Rys-Rozsévač, were sent as privileged prisoners into the Dachau concentration camp and kept here until the end of the war.

After the war Rys-Rozsévač and three his coworkers (Josef Burda, Jaroslav Čermák and Otakar Polívka) were sentenced to death, and several others to were sentenced to long term imprisonment. Rys-Rozsévač was hanged in Pankrác Prison.

[edit] Literature

Milan Nakonečný: Vlajka, 2001, ISBN 80-86183-24-6. Republished as Český fašismus (Czech fascism), 2006, ISBN 80-86226-73-5. Narrative description of Czech fascism and its reprezentants.