Gustav Just (16 June 1921 – 23 February 2011) was the first Secretary of the German Writers' Association (DSV) () and editor-in-chief of the East German weekly Sonntag until 1957. That year, he was arrested and sentenced to four years imprisonment after a show trial in which he was accused of having engaged in anti-constitutional activities ("inciting to boycott") along with Walter Janka, Heinz Zöger, and Richard Wolf. He was born in Reinowitz, Bohemia.
After his release, Just became a prolific translator of primarily Czech but also Slovak works into German and was "rehabilitated" in 1990.
Just served in the Brandenburg State Parliament (as its Alterspräsident, or "chairman by seniority") in the newly unified Germany until he was forced to resign in 1992, after confirming allegations from Stasi archives that he'd participated in wartime atrocities on the Eastern Front during World War II. In July 1941, Just, then 20, participated in the firing squad of six Jews rounded up from a village in Ukraine. He was promoted after the killings. Just claimed that he'd been forced to participate in the executions under the threat of death. However, testimony and documents in his files showed that he and the other soldier had volunteered to carry out the executions. Initially, nobody had stepped forward, after which the commander threatened to appoint the firing squad himself. Heinz Galinski, the chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, demanded further investigation and a criminal prosecution against Just. However, no charges were filed.
In 1998 he received the Johann-Heinrich-Voß-Preis für Übersetzung.
Publications
Zeuge in eigener Sache: Die fünfziger Jahre in der DDR, Berlin: Luchterhand, Morgenbuch, 1990. Witness in His Own Cause: The Fifties in the German Democratic Republic, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1995. Deutsch, Jahrgang 1921: Ein Lebensbericht, Potsdam: Verlag für Berlin und Brandenburg, 2001.