Jozef Lettrich, 64, Slovak Foe Of Nazis and Communists, Dies
Dr. Jozef Lettrich, a Czechoslovak democratic political leader in exile here, died Saturday of a heart attack in St. Johns Hospital, Elmhurst, Queens. He was 64 years old and lived in Washington. Dr. Lettrich, a moving spirit in organizations to free Central European nations from Soviet domination, had been in New York to fill lecturing engagements. He was born in Diviaky, Czechoslovakia, on June 17, 1905. The late Dr. Milan Hodza, Czechoslovak agrarian leader and Prime Minister of prewar Czechoslovakia, chose Dr. Lettrich, then a young lawyer, as secretary general of the Agrarian Students' and countryside youth cultural organizations. In the early years of the Czechoslovak Republic after World War I, Dr. Lettrich became a successful organizer of Slovak youth. In the economic field he served as president of the Farmers Mutual Savings Bank. He strove to bring Slovak youth up to the cultural level of their Czech peers, and advocated the political partnership of Czechs and Slovaks as equal nations in a common state. He became president of the Czechoslovak Society and a member of the Czechoslovak Agricultural Academy. When Czechoslovakia was dismembered by the Nazis in 1939, and a pro-Nazi Slovak state was created, Dr. Lettrich was held in a concentration camp of the Slovak state at Illava, and later released under police surveillance. He continued to organize the underground resistance of young democratic forces, and cooperated with the Czechoslovak exile government in London. In 1941 he was again imprisoned this time in a Slovak forced labor camp. After his release he intensified his underground resistance work. Dr. Lettrich was a leader in the 1944 Slovak uprising against the Nazis. When the revolt was suppressed, he escaped, was condemned to death and lived in hiding.
Active for Freedom
After the war, when Czechoslovakia was reunited, he was elected president of the Slovak National Council and was leader in Slovak politics. He was a co-founder of the Democratic party of Slovakia and was elected its president and delegate to the post-war provisional Parliament. After the 1948 Communist putsch in Czechoslovakia, Dr. Lettrich escaped to the West and settled in Washington. He became chairman of the central Committee of the Council for a Free Czechoslovakia and later of the Committee for a Free Czechoslovakia, chairman of the Czechoslovak delegation to the Assembly of Captive European Nations, and last year was chairman of the assembly. He also was vice chairman of the International Peasant Union. He published various studies in the Slovak language. His "History of Modern Slovakia," in English, was published in 1955 by Praeger. He was a member of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences in Philadelphia. Surviving are two brothers, Julius and Pavel, and two sisters, Irene and Marie. A funeral service will be held at 11:30 A.M. today at Frank E. Campbell's, Madison Avenue and 81st Street.
