HLAVIENKA, Lubomír – KOLÁŘ, Ondřej. Arnošt Krpec – inter-brigadist, partisan and officer of the National Security Corps

Arnošt Krpec (1913-1975), born into a working-class family from Ostrava, was involved in the left-wing movement from a young age but was not significantly politically engaged. Thanks to his participation in the Spanish Civil War, where he fought as a volunteer on the Republican side, he gained contacts in the international communist movement. These allowed him to travel from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to the Soviet Union at the beginning of the Nazi occupation. There, he established contacts with the exiled leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and with the NKVD authorities and underwent intelligence training. As a political commissar of the Jan Žižka partisan brigade, he participated in combat operations in Slovakia in 1944 and 1945.

Shortly after the war, he joined the National Security Corps in Ostrava, where his fellow fighters from the partisan brigade also held leading positions. Despite his connections to influential party figures, he did not prove himself in a leadership role, so after a brief stint as head of the Ostrava State Security, he served as a regular investigator in western Silesia. After returning to Ostrava in 1948, he continued his "routine" career and gradual service progression. In the first half of the 1950s, he was threatened with prosecution in the trials following the liquidation of the alleged "conspiratorial centre" around Rudolf Slánský. In the end, Krpec retired from service in 1964 with the rank of colonel, without any punishment.