Acting

Artur London

Artur London (1 February 1915 – 8 November 1986) was a Czechoslovak communist politician and co-defendant in the Slánský Trial in 1952. Though he was sentenced to life in prison, he was freed in 1955; he then settled in France with his wife Lise London. In 1968 he published his memoirs in L'Aveu (The Confession), a book which resonated internationally, soon to be adapted by Costa-Gavras in the movie of the same name. 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 Información 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.