Jan Šverma

Jan Šverma statue

Jan Šverma (March 23, 1901, Mnichovo Hradiště, Austria-Hungary – November 10, 1944, Chabenec, Low Tatras, Slovakia) was a Czechoslovak journalist, communist activist and resistance fighter against the Nazi-backed Slovak State, considered a national hero in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.

Šverma joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) in 1921. He contributed to Rudé právo, the official publication of the KSČ and was its editor-in-chief from 1936 to 1938. From 1929 he was a member of the KSČ Central Committee and Politburo. Šverma spent time in exile in Paris and Moscow during the existence of the Nazi-backed Slovak State and was close to Klement Gottwald, the Chairman of the KSČ, who later would become the first Communist president of Czechoslovakia.

Šverma assumed the political leadership of Czechoslovak military units formed in the Soviet Union during the Nazi invasion of the USSR. He died of exhaustion on the mountain Chabenec in the Low Tatras mountain range during a snowstorm on November 10, 1944, while leading an insurrection of Slovak communists against the Slovak State.

A bridge in Prague at the former location of the Franz Joseph Bridge was named after Šverma in 1951. The village Telgárt in Slovakia was called Švermovo in 1948-1990.