Tomšic, Tone

Born June 9, 1910, in Trieste; died May 21, 1942, in Ljubljana. Figure in the Yugoslav workers’ movement. People’s Hero of Yugoslavia (1943, posthumously).

Tomšič joined the Communist Youth League in 1928 and became a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) in 1930. He was arrested several times for his revolutionary activity. In 1937 he was elected a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Slovenia and soon afterward became the organizational secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Slovenia. In 1940, Tomšič was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPY. In 1941 he headed the organization of a network of underground combat detachments in Ljubljana and was the editor of Slovenski Poročevalec, the newspaper of the Liberation Front of Slovenia. In December 1941, Tomšič was arrested and executed by Italian occupying forces.