Death at Dawn

Julian Grimau Garcia was 25 and a detective in Madrid when the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936. But he was also a member of the Spanish Communist Party, and his professional police training soon landed him a key job in the Red apparatus. He became chief of "criminal investigations" for Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona, ferreting out supporters of Francisco Franco. Part of Grimau's job was to serve on kangaroo courts, called Chekas (after the onetime initials of the Soviet secret police), which ordered dozens of summary death sentences during the brutal three-year war.

After the Republican collapse Grimau fled, worked as a Communist agent in Czechoslovakia, Russia, Mexico and Cuba. A member of the central committee of the outlawed Spanish Communist Party, he was living in France when he slipped across the frontier in 1959 to reorganize the Spanish Communist underground. After several trips in and out of Spain since 1959, an informer gave him away to police in Madrid last November. Franco's cops clapped him in jail and began a lengthy interrogation. During one session, Grimau leaped, fell, or was pushed from a first-floor window, fracturing his skull and both arms.

Last week, with a large dent in his forehead, gaunt, balding Grimau heard a seven-man military court tick off the charges against him; they ranged from "continuing military rebellion" to arson, torture and execution of anti-Republicans by the Chekas 25 years ago. The maximum penalty was death. Did he care to say something before sentence was passed? "Only this," replied Grimau. "Since 1936, I have lived the life of a Communist. I will die a Communist."

Then he took his seat and listened in tently as the court pronounced the sentence everyone expected--death.

This was the cue for Communist dem onstrations in half a dozen West Eu ropean cities; Nikita Khrushchev, no stranger to executions, had the gall to send a personal appeal for clemency to Franco. Grimau's wife vainly urged President Kennedy to intervene. The international pressure only stiffened the regime's determination to carry out the penalty. At a meeting with his Cabinet, Franco upheld the sentence.

Next day at dawn, Grimau, pale but composed, was led into the courtyard of Carabanchel Prison just outside Madrid. He walked alone to the wall, refused a blindfold, shouted "Viva el Comunismo!", and then collapsed under a volley of shots fired by Spanish Moroccan troops.

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