Vincent Škrabala

Born 3.4.1898 in Moštenica
Died 1945 in Mauthausen

Biography

Until 1938 Vincent Škrabala was employed as a labourer at an ironworks in Podbrezová. After this he worked on the construction of the Banská Bystrica–Diviaky railway line. In 1921 he joined the Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS), slowly working his way up through various roles in the Brezno nad Hronom local administration to the post of KSS regional secretary in Banská Bystrica.

After the establishment of the Slovakian State he remained the secretary of the illegal regional leadership of the KSS in Banská Bystrica. When the police intensified their search for Škrabala, he decided to flee to the Soviet Union at the end of 1940. In early 1941, the Communist centre in Moscow sent him back to Slovakia together with Viliam Široký, the leader of the Slovakian Communists in the pre-war era. He was to help Široký orientate himself in wartime Slovakia and assume the leadership of the Communist Party in Slovakia. After the destruction of the First Illegal Leadership of the KSS in a first mass wave of arrests of native Communists in July 1941, which was partly connected to the war against the Soviet Union, between September 1941 and April 1942 he was one of the three representatives of the Second Illegal Leadership of the KSS. This made him one of the top functionaries among Slovakian Communists.

During a chance arrest in Bratislava in April 1942 he fired at the policeman arresting him while trying to escape. During his interrogation he was badly beaten and offered himself to the police as a spy. He gave a comprehensive statement and also helped the police to identity other Communists, uncover their activities and he tried to undermine communication between them in jail through denunciation. For his complaisance towards the police his life sentence was reduced to 15 years. After his conviction, Škrabala was imprisoned in Leopoldov, from where the German Security Police deported him to Mauthausen on 5 February 1945. He did not live to see the end of the war.

Marek Syrný

 

Sources:

Štátny archív Bratislava, fonds ŠtZ [Štátne zastupiteľstvo, Prosecutor’s Office], file number 1163/1943.

 

References:

Jozef Jablonický: Samizdat o odboji 2 [Samizdat on the Resistance, Part 2] (Bratislava 2006), p. 496f.

Matej Medvecký: Spravodajské eso slovenského štátu: Kauza Imrich Sucký [The News Coup of the Slovakian State: The Case of Imrich Sucký] (Bratislava 2007).

Viera Vojtková: Náčrt štruktúry ilegálnej KSS v personálnom vyjadrení a malý biografický slovník vedúcich funkcionárov ilegálnej KSS v rokoch 1938–1945 [Sketch of the structure of the illegal KSS on the basis of personal statements and a short biographical dictionary of the leading functionaries of the illegal KSS from 1938–1945] (Bratislava 1985), p. 144f.

 

Dejiny SNP, V. zv. [The History of the SNP, Vol. V] (Bratislava 1984), p. 538.

Translation into English: Joanna White

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