On November 20, 1952, a shudder of horror and apprehension ran through the civilized world such as it had not felt since the night of another November, in 1938, when the synagogues of Germany were put to the torch.
On that day fourteen leading Communists of Czechoslovakia, eleven of whom were “of Jewish origin”—as the official indictment puts it—were openly charged in a Prague courtroom with participating in a worldwide “Jewish nationalist-Zionist-imperialist” conspiracy to overthrow the “People’s Democracy” of Czechoslovakia. Once again the Big Lie of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was being exploited as an advance justification for aggression and genocide.
On November 27, eleven of the accused were sentenced to the gallows; the remaining three were sentenced to life imprisonment.
On December 3, the eleven were hanged.
Part I below is a selection from the official accounts of the trial proceedings. In Part II, following, I offer an analysis of the Prague trial’s significance.—P. M.
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I. The Prague Trial: Text
This text, except for that of the indictment, is from the official Prague radio broadcast of the testimony of the defendants and witnesses, interspersed with summaries and comment by the government’s radio commentator; no Western correspondent was allowed to enter Czechoslovakia. (Words in brackets are mine; doubtful words are given in parentheses.)
From the Indictment
[As printed in the Czech Communist Daily Rude Pravo, November 20, 1952.]
. . . For the reasons cited above,
Rudolf Slansky, born in 1901, of Jewish origin, from a merchant’s family . . . former Secretary General of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, at the time of his arrest Deputy Premier of the Czechoslovak government;
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Bedrich Geminder, born November 19, 1901, of Jewish origin, son of a merchant and tavern-keeper . . . former chief of the International Department in the Secretariat of the CPCz;
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Ludvik Frejka, born January 15, 1904, of Jewish origin, son of a physician . . . former head of the Economic Department in the office of the President of the Republic;
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Josef Frank, born February 1909, Czech, from a worker’s family . . . former Deputy Secretary General of the CPCz;
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Vladimir Clementis, born September 20, 1902, Slovak, from a bourgeois family . . . former Minister of Foreign Affairs;
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Bedrich Reicin, born September 29, 1911, of Jewish origin, from a bourgeois family . . . former Deputy Minister of National Defense; 1
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Karel Svab, born May 13, 1904, Czech, from a worker’s family . . . former Deputy Minister of National Security;
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Artur London, born February 1, 1915, of Jewish origin, son of a businessman . . . former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs;
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Vavro Hajdu, born August 18, 1913, of Jewish origin, son of the owner of the Smrdaky Spa . . . former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs;
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Evzen Loebl, born May 14, 1907, of Jewish origin, son of a big merchant . . . former Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade;
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Rudolf Margolius, born August 31, 1913, of Jewish origin, son of a big merchant. . . former Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade;
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Otto Fischl, born August 17, 1902, of Jewish origin, son of a merchant . . . former Deputy Minister of Finance;
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Otto Sling, born August 24, 1912, of Jewish origin, son of a manufacturer . . . former Secretary of the District Committee of the CPCz in Brno; [and]
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André Simone, born May 27, 1895, of Jewish origin, son of a manufacturer, former editor of Rude Pravo,
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are hereby charged:
1. Each and every one with having participated in a conspiracy, among themselves and with other persons, to subvert the independence of the Republic and its people’s democratic state form guaranteed by the constitution, and with having gravely imperiled the existence of the Republic. . . .
[Here follow charges of espionage, treason, sabotage, etc. The indictment continues at some length, but we give below only a brief excerpt touching Rudolf Slansky.]
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In the early 30’s, Slansky became an agent of the American espionage service and collaborated with a leading American spy, Geiringer-Granville, a representative of international Zionism. An outstanding British spy, Josef Vondracek, testified about the espionage link between Slansky and Granville as follows: “‘I have,’ said Granville, ‘a close espionage liaison, among others, with Rudla Slansky, the Secretary of the Communist party of Czechoslovakia. This is our most solid asset because he is the most intelligent Jew I know, and an exceedingly talented and patient man. He knows how to wait, therefore he is very useful for the realization of our long-term plans. And our plans are not for today or tomorrow.’ ”
What the imperialists hoped to achieve through their agent inside the Communist party of Czechoslovakia was well expressed by the Czechoslovak capitalist Alfred Pachner, in a conversation with Vondracek. According to Vondracek, Pachner said: “‘Rudla’ [Slansky] is in the Communist party and in the right place. He comes from an old Jewish family, has a great many connections in the Czech party, and extensive knowledge. He is the great hope of the Jews in the Communist party.” . . .
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Defendant Rudolf Slansky
Former Secretary General of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
Presiding Judge: “Accused Slansky, step before the microphone. Are you guilty of the four described criminal acts?”
Slansky: “Yes.”
Presiding Judge: “The first crime is espionage.”
Slansky: “Yes.”
Presiding Judge : “High treason.”
Slansky: “Yes.”
Presiding Judge: “Sabotage.”
Slansky: “Yes.”
Presiding Judge: “Military treason.”
Slansky: “Yes.”
Presiding Judge: “Will you please tell us in what respect you admit your guilt?”
Slansky: “First of all I wish to confess my guilt that, as the enemy of the Communist party and the People’s Democratic regime, I formed the anti-state conspiratorial center at the head of which I stood for several years.” . . .
Presiding Judge: “How is it that you, who have been a member of the Czechoslovak Communist party for thirty years, could become a servant of the imperialists and the organizer and leader of a conspiracy against the Czechoslovak People’s Democratic Republic?”
In reply to this question Slansky gave an outline of his origins and political past. He said he came from a bourgeois family of a rich village merchant and this had influenced his “personal traits and character.” In 1921 he joined the Communist party still burdened with “petty bourgeois opinions, which I never abandoned. This prevented me from becoming a real Communist. Therefore I did not act as a Communist, and I did not fulfill honorably the duties arising from my membership in the Communist party.” . . .
The Prosecutor . . . asked Slansky to explain how his center of conspiracy “was linked with the Western imperialist powers or imperialist circles and in what manner these circles directed the activities of the center.” Slansky said one link had been the various people who at different times had become agents of the imperialist intelligence service of Great Britain, the United States, France, and Yugoslavia. Another link had been diverse organizations such as the Zionists and Freemasons—all interconnected and ruled by the Anglo-U.S. imperialists. . . .
The Prosecutor then asked Slansky to elaborate his admission that he had placed Zionists in important posts. Slansky explained that he did so “because the Zionists were conducting hostile activity aimed at the liquidation of the popular democratic regime in Czechoslovakia. I collaborated with them and I placed various Zionist elements into important posts in the administrative, economic, and party apparatus.” . . .
The significance of this, he said, lay in the fact that Zionist organizations in Czechoslovakia were in turn connected with similar Zionist organizations in the capitalist countries. “The whole worldwide Zionist movement was, in fact, led and ruled by the imperialists—in particular the U.S. imperialists through the American Zionists. For American Zionists, who as in other countries are the financially most powerful and politically most influential Zionists, form part of the ruling imperialist circles of America.”
The Zionist organization, moreover, was a channel through which the imperialists carried out extensive espionage and subversive work in Czechoslovakia. The “Joint” organization [American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee] in Prague was “a branch of the American Zionists” and played an important part in various hostile machinations. One of these was “the abuse of the emigration scheme under which Jewish citizens left for the capitalist countries, thereby removing from Czechoslovakia unjustifiably large property values and causing grave economic damage.”
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Slansky admitted that he [tolerated] the legal existence in Czechoslovakia, both before and after February 1948, of these nationalist bourgeois Zionist organizations. Though his attention was drawn to the hostile work conducted by them he protected them: “I deliberately shielded them by perverting the campaign against so-called anti-Semitism. By proposing that a big campaign be waged against anti-Semitism, by magnifying the danger of anti-Semitism, and by proposing various measures against anti-Semitism—such as the writing of articles, the publication of pamphlets, the holding of lectures, and so forth—I criminally prevented the waging of a campaign against Zionism and the revelation of the hostile character of Zionist ideology, and the unmasking of the hostile activity of Zionists and Zionist organizations.”
Slansky said he had discussed these matters with Geminder, Svermova, Frank, and others. In addition to the campaign against anti-Semitism there had also been a press publicity drive for the State of Israel without its being pointed out that Israel was a bourgeois state and in fact represented the most advanced outpost of the American imperialists in the Near East. “I deliberately shielded Zionism by publicly speaking out against the people who pointed to the hostile activities of Zionists and by describing these people as anti-Semites—just as did my collaborators—so that these people were in the end prosecuted and persecuted and sometimes even excluded from the party, as happened to certain members of the Central Secretariat. I thus created an atmosphere in which people were afraid—even prominent officials in the state apparatus—to oppose Zionism and Zionist organizations.”
With regard to the emigration scheme—in which Geminder as [well as] Fischl played important parts—he had condoned the exportation from Czechoslovakia of excessive quantities of valuable property. In this he and his group collaborated with members of the Israeli delegation, such as the Israeli Minister Ueberall, “who is in fact an agent of the U.S. imperialists.”
Another field in which his conspiratorial group worked through the Zionists was foreign trade. Here Loebl and Margolius played important parts. Czechoslovak foreign trade was misused to the advantage of Zionist organizations at home and abroad, thereby supporting the bourgeois State of Israel. Czechoslovakia suffered economic damage as a result of her goods being sold at unfavorable prices, lower than in the capitalist market, while manufactures from capitalist countries were imported at high prices. Huge profits went to Zionist organizations and benefited Israel. . . .
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Prosecutor: “In your subversive activities have you also made use of other organizations?”
Slansky: “Yes.”
Prosecutor: “Which were they?”
Slansky: “Freemasons. The anti-state conspiratorial center made use in their activities of Zionist organizations as well as Freemasons and their lodges. I myself had connections with Freemasons, for example with Ing. Machon and Dr. Vancura, who were outstanding officials of Freemason lodges.” . . .
In the field of foreign trade Slansky and his associates also had done their utmost to organize sabotage and cause damage. . . . Owing to their Zionist convictions, these associates cooperated with various American agents and endeavored to link the Czechoslovak economy to the capitalist West; machinery and equipment was bought in the capitalist West although it could have been supplied at more favorable prices by the USSR. . . .
In reply to the Prosecutor’s questions about his anti-state activities other than those mentioned in his evidence today, Slansky said: “In my hostile activities I relied on the support of various hostile organizations such as the Zionists and Freemasons and on hostile elements among partisans, false trade unionists, and so forth.” . . .
Prosecutor: “Further, it is clear from the evidence you have given that you formed an anti-state conspiratorial center which was preparing the overthrow of the People’s Democratic regime and the restoration of capitalism, and that you carried on these activities in the service of the Western imperialists and primarily in the service of the U.S. aspirants to world domination—”
Slansky: “I admit this.”
Prosecutor: “—in order to become a Czechoslovak Tito. Is this so?”
Slansky: “Yes.”
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Defendant Vlado Clementis
Former Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia
Prosecutor: “I put it to you that you became a traitor to the Czechoslovak people just like your friends who held these same opinions.”
Clementis: “I admit that.”
Prosecutor: “Who were these people who joined forces with English reactionaries?”
Clementis: “Above all, the Jewish bourgeois nationalists such as Otto Sling, Evzen Loebl, Ervin Polak, Richard Slansky, Vilem Novy and others who later, thanks to their hostile connections, attained important positions in Czechoslovakia. Also the cosmopolite Koloman Mosko, who acted as liaison between our Jewish bourgeois nationalists and similar groups in the Hungarian Communist party which were exposed in connection with the Rajk trial. The Jewish bourgeois nationalists in London also rallied round Ludvik Frejka. Of this group I know Josef Goldmann and Dr. Jancik-Jung, and others. . . .
“Following the instructions and example of Benes and Masaryk, I established espionage links with Nichols [the British Ambassador] and Steinhardt immediately after my return to Prague in 1945. On his first visit Nichols assured me of his confidence and later repeated this when he brought me a personal letter from Bevin thanking me for a telegram of congratulations which I had sent him on his appointment as Foreign Secretary. . . .
“I want to emphasize that while the French and English showed interest in political questions, Steinhardt concerned himself mainly with economic problems and with questions affecting international organizations under U.S. influence, such as the ILO, the International Fund, the World Bank, and others. I passed on espionage information to Steinhardt through Loebl. With his aid I strengthened Steinhardt’s position in Czechoslovakia. Steinhardt also paid attention to his private affairs in Czechoslovakia as partner of a New York law firm. In 1948 Steinhardt approached me several times on behalf of the notorious warmonger, John Foster Dulles, and tried to make me take steps to insure the payment of compensation for the nationalized property of the well-known Petschek banking family. John Foster Dulles, who became notorious through his advocacy of German bankers during World War I and who is also known for his dirty bargains with Nazi bankers during World War II, was the lawyer entrusted with representing the Petschek interests.” . . .
The State Prosecutor then proceeded to accuse Clementis of having established hostile contacts with the agent of Western espionage services Andre Simone, of whose close relations with Slansky Clementis had been aware.
Asked to describe Simone, Clementis said: “I became personally acquainted with Simone in Paris in 1938. Already at that time while having conversations with him, I learned about his vast connections with the representatives of the world capitalist press and of his connections with the West. After the war, his entire orientation can be described as typically cosmopolitan.” . . .
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Witness Eduard Goldstuecker
Former Czech Minister to Israel
The third witness was Dr. Eduard Goldstuecker, who described his role of go-between [for] Slansky and “the agent of the British Intelligence Service, Konni Zilliacus.” His relations with Slansky, he explained, went back to 1946 when Slansky’s attention had been drawn to Goldstuecker’s “Jewish bourgeois origin” and his “connections with various enemy elements in the West.” Slansky advised him to change his name to Zlatisty. . . .
Regarding his appointment as Minister to Israel, Goldstuecker said Slansky told him that he had been given this post because “I have proved myself in England and because I had worked well in accordance with his instructions.” On his arrival in Israel at the beginning of 1950, Goldstuecker had established contact with leading Zionists and he had sent reports to Slansky through Geminder about his relations with these Zionist leaders.
In the summer of 1949, he had contacted Ehud Avriel Ueberall, the Israeli Minister in Prague, and “later this relationship culminated in an espionage link under the influence of Slansky.” Goldstuecker, who described himself as of bourgeois Jewish origin, then told of his aid to Jewish nationalists whom he had helped to return from Israel to Czechoslovakia to enable them to hold responsible positions in our economic affairs. . . .
Witness Mordecai Oren
After Kavan, there appeared before the State Court a small man—an international apache type—Mordecai Oren. [Also known as Orenstein, an Israeli citizen and a leader of the Mapam party. He was arrested in Czechoslovakia at the beginning of 1952.] He was described as a Zionist, British, and Titoite agent. . . .
The witness was then asked how he had come into possession of papers concerning Slansky’s views, which were found on Oren when he was arrested. Oren explained that he secured those papers in Prague in 1951 when, apart from working for the British Intelligence Service, he got these papers at the express orders of the Israeli Foreign Minister through the Israeli Minister in Prague. Evidently the Israeli government had been perturbed at Slansky’s arrest. The witness was glad to accept these instructions but failed to procure the required information before he was arrested. . . .
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Witness Oskar Langer
Former Employee of the Secretariat of the Slovak Communist Party.
The next witness was Oskar Langer, who had been employed in various functions, first at the Regional Directorate of Building in Bratislava, then at the Commissariat of Food and later in the Slovak Communist party secretariat. He told the court that he returned to Czechoslovakia in 1946 from the United States where he had been living with his family since 1938. He returned because he had been sent to Czechoslovakia by the U.S. Zionists to work against the Peoples Democratic regime. On his return, he visited the leading Czechoslovak Zionist, Winterstein, who had close connections with the Embassy in Prague.
Winterstein told the witness he had been working on drafting the Czechoslovak Restitution Law and that Slansky had promised to support this law. Its purpose was to concentrate the property of the Jews who had returned from the concentration camps, as well as those who had not returned, in Zionist hands, and in this way the Zionists intended, with Slansky’s help, to strengthen and extend their economic power in Czecholovakia.
The Zionist activities had been directed toward weakening the Czechoslovak economy by sending important machinery abroad. The witness himself had been directed to authorize the export of certain machinery on behalf of two Zionist manufacturers. He knew of a Zionist who intended to emigrate to Israel and who had been permitted, on Slansky’s intervention, to take with him important machinery and tools. . . .
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Defendant Bedrich Geminder
Former Chief of the International Department of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
Prosecutor: “You never learned to speak decent Czech?”
Geminder: “That’s right.”
Prosecutor: “Which language do you speak usually?”
Geminder: “German.”
Prosecutor: “Can you really speak a decent German?”
Geminder: “I didn’t speak German for a long time, but I know the German language.”
Prosecutor: “As well as you know Czech?”
Geminder: “Yes.”
Prosecutor: “That means that you speak no language decently. A typical cosmopolitan!”
Geminder: “Yes.” . . .
Asked to tell the Court about his association with Slansky, Geminder began by speaking of his “cosmopolitan, bourgeois, Zionist background,” his “family connections with the West,” and his early education which fostered in him “petty bourgeois and cosmopolitan views.” His parents were merchants, his youth was carefree, and there was nothing in his personal experience that would have provided any ties with the revolutionary working class. While still at school he joined the “Blau Weiss” Zionist youth organization. . . .
Although the interests of the working class had been alien to him, he had, like many other careerist elements, joined the Communist party for selfish reasons. . . . Between 1926-35 he was in touch with various Jewish nationalist and cosmopolitan elements such as Reicin, Polak, Frejka, London, and others. With them he masqueraded as a loyal Communist while they were actually working against the party. . . .
Asked by the Court to go back to how Slansky had won him over for his conspiratorial activity, Geminder explained that in 1946 Slansky had met him again and asked him to work with him. Geminder hesitated because of his inadequate command of the Czech language and also because he did not have Czechoslovak citizenship. Slansky assured him that this could be remedied and suggested that he could change his name “as so many cosmopolitans have done.” He suggested Vltavsky.
Geminder explained that for their conspiracy they had relied largely on people who had spent the war in Britain and who had come back after the liberation as supporters of British imperialist policy and often as downright agents of Western imperialism. . . .
In the diplomatic service, bourgeois nationalist-cosmopolitan-Zionist elements were appointed to foreign legations. . . . “Many people whom we sent to the USSR and the People’s Democracies . . . had to be recalled for unreliability or incompetence.” One of these was the Zionist, Josef Goldmann, who was recalled from the USSR.
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Witness Pavel Reimann
Former official of the History Institute of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
Reimann showed how the conspiratorial center’s leaders used the Zionist organizations of Czechoslovakia for their ends. Reimann told of the far-flung network of Zionist organizations and of Zionist groups of a fascist type, set up under the direct patronage of Slansky. These organizations had at their disposal funds to be used primarily for espionage and subversive activities. They served the imperialists and, consequently, carried out large-scale financial transactions, enabling some Czechoslovak capitalists to get their money out of the country.
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Defendant André Simone
Former Editor of “Rude Pravo”
The commentator said that Simone was a former editor of the Communist daily Rude Pravo, and described him as a cunning globetrotter, a spy without backbone, who as a son of a wealthy manufacturer obstinately hated the working class. . . .
Presiding Judge: “What led you to actively fight the People’s Democratic regime in Czechoslovakia?”
Simone: “I shall tell the truth. I am the son of a manufacturer and educated in the spirit of the bourgeois ideology. The working class was alien to me. This was why my surroundings were formed of people spiritually akin to me, from the ranks of traitors against the working people, Trotskyites, right-wing socialists, and bourgeois elements. For thirty years I defended the bourgeois ideology, disrupted the unity of the working class and the workers’ movement in various capitalist countries, and I carried on similar activities in Czechoslovakia as a participant in Slansky’s conspiracy.” . . .
State Prosecutor: “When and how did you become associated with the French espionage service?”
Simone: “In September 1939, I pledged myself to the French Minister Mandel in Paris.”
Continuing, Simone said that Mandel had maintained his own espionage service with the help of Jewish and some French capitalist magnates. In 1939 Mandel had discussed with the accused the Daladier plan and had told him about his belief that a second world war would break out. Mandel had expected Germany’s defeat and had stressed the point that after the war matters would have to be settled with the Soviet Union.
The accused had agreed with Mandel’s views and had told him that he, Mandel, could always rely on his cooperation. . . .
State Prosecutor: “In 1939 you pledged your cooperation to the British Intelligence Service. Tell us about it.”
Simone: “I pledged my collaboration with the British Intelligence Service in Paris in 1939 in the office of the agent Paul Willert.” . . .
In February 1946, before his departure for Czechoslovakia, he had been asked by the British Vice Consul to report in London to Willert, which he did. He met Willert twice in London in April. Simone told the court that he informed Willert on the first occasion that in New York he, Simone, had agreed with the Jewish nationalist and U. S. intelligence agent Schoenbrunn to cooperate on behalf of the U. S. Intelligence Service. . . .
They met at a restaurant and Schoenbrunn informed him that he was instructed by the U. S. Secret Service to negotiate with him. Schoenbrunn emphasized that the United States was conducting the same policy as Mandel, who, if he were still alive, would wholeheartedly back Washington. Mandel had rendered splendid service to capitalist Jewry.
Schoenbrunn said: “It is the duty of every Jew to support the Americans even if he does not agree with every detail of their policy.” Simone’s best way of showing his support was by providing “information” which the prosecutor interpreted as “espionage information.”
Simone then explained what he knew of the background of Schoenbrunn. He was the son of a Jewish capitalist who migrated to the United States before the First World War. In 1946-47 Schoenbrunn was in the service of the U. S. Overseas News Agency, “which is an organ of the U. S. Jewish capitalists,” financed among others by Bernard Baruch. This agency “is one of the important links among the U. S. Zionists and Jewish nationalists in the United States and cooperates closely with the State Department.” Through this agency the U. S. Psychological Warfare Board was spreading “outrageous lies and slander against the Peace Camp.” Simone knew all this when he agreed to work for Schoenbrunn.
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He was then asked to say something more about the U. S. Psychological Warfare Board. He said that the members were officials of the State Department, War Department, the Catholic and Protestant churches, and Jewish organizations.
The Board “organizes murder, sabotage, and diversionary activities in China, and so forth. It had at its disposal hundreds of millions of dollars of the Mutual Security Act with which to achieve the same purposes in the USSR and the People’s Democracies, as well as for the recruitment of exile emigrés for the U. S. Forces. The correct name for the Board ought to be the ‘U. S. Board for a Shooting War and for the Liquidation of Progressive People, for Murderous Atomic Aggression on the USSR and the People’s Democracies, and for the Elimination of Anything in the Way of the U. S. Imperialists.’” . . .
Simone . . . had given Slansky a full report about his close connections with Jewish nationalists and Zionist circles in Mexico and as editor of the paper [one word missing] Israelite.
Slansky had accepted this news as a matter of course. Slansky had shown particular interest in the activities of Browder, former Secretary General of the U. S. Communists, “unmasked in 1944 as an enemy of the working people. His interest in details of Browder’s technique as a liquidator” became understandable to Simone only later when he realized that Slansky wanted to “emulate Browder and Tito in usurping power and liquidating the Marx-Lenin Communist party of Czechoslovakia,” whereby he would have tried to destroy the popular democratic regime. . . .
In 1946 Slansky told him [Simone] of the need to “popularize Tito and Yugoslavia’s specific roads to Socialism.” At that time he had not known that Slansky had talked with Tito. Slansky had also shown great interest in cooperation with the Zionists and [Jewish] nationalists in Mexico.
The Presiding Judge asked Simone why he thought Slansky had confided to him his “hostile intentions.”
Simone replied: “He wanted to ensnare me in his conspiratorial center in Czechoslovakia.” Due to Simone’s background, Slansky had found it easy to win him over. . . .
Simone had renewed his contacts with the intelligence service agent Willert, in August 1946 at the Paris Peace Conference, when he supplied him with a detailed report of his activities in Czechoslovakia and when “I told him that Slansky had his own notions and plans for future development in Czechoslovakia.” Willert had asked many questions about Slansky. . . .
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Prosecutor: “Who contacted you and gave you the password agreed upon with Willert after your return from the Peace Conference?”
Simone: “In 1947 the British spy Alexander Werth called me up and asked me to meet him. We met in the National Club where Werth immediately identified himself with Willert’s password. From 1947 on I had espionage contacts with the British spy Alexander Werth on the occasion of his trips to Czechoslovakia right up to the autumn of 1949. I met him four times, always after telephone conversations.
“I used to meet Werth either in the Hotel Alcron, in the National Club, or in the Restaurant Lippert. With every important report which I gave to Werth, I quoted its source. Werth always asked me about my work and my position and always showed interest in the development of my relations with Slansky and Clementis.” . . .
Simone stated that information for his espionage reports had been given to him by Slansky, Geminder, Loebl, Frejka, Clementis, and Hajdu.
“When I was unable to supply these Western agents with the information they required, I put them in touch with other members of the espionage center, above all, Slansky. In March 1948 I arranged a meeting between Slansky and two hostile Labor Members of Parliament, Crossman and Wigg. I arranged this meeting by telephone and it was to be held in the Communist party secretariat. Slansky wanted me to act as interpreter at this meeting, but as I could not do this he used Vilem Novy as an interpreter. After his return to Britain, Crossman wrote a number of hostile articles against People’s Democratic Czechoslovakia.
“During the Paris Peace Conference I put Clementis in touch with the U. S. Agents Schoenbrunn, Howard Smith, and Edgar Allan Mowrer. Later I arranged meetings of Schoenbrunn and Hindus with Clementis.” . . .
“As a conspirator I am responsible for every action and crime of each Jewish member of the conspiratorial center.
“Which are the countries where fierce anti-Semitism is on the increase? The United States and Great Britain. I have joined the spies of those states. Which country has a law against racialism and anti-Semitism? The USSR. I have joined U. S., British, and French anti-Semites against the Soviet Union. Therein lies my crime.
“I am a writer, supposedly an architect of the soul. What sort of architect have I been—I who have poisoned people’s souls? Such an architect of the soul belongs to the gallows. The only service I can still render is to warn all who by origin or character are in danger of following the same path to hell. The sterner the punishment . . . [unintelligible].”
[The commentator wound up by saying that the evidence of this “cynical enemy of the working people,” like that of all the other defendants, had once again revealed the depths to which that “scum of society,” that “gang of adventurers and lickspittles in the service of U. S. armament kings,” had sunk. The people “will mete out rigorous and just punishment.”]
Defendant Rudolf Margolius
Former Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade
“I was recruited for my subversive work by Evzen Loebl in October 1948, when I became a member of the anti-state group,” Margolius said. On the instructions of this group he had conducted “extensive espionage and sabotage activities in the Foreign Trade Ministry aiming at the disintegration of Czechoslovak economy.” He had deliberately negotiated unfavorable trade agreements and had enforced payments to foreign capitalists as compensation for nationalized property. . . .
He also pleaded guilty to having maintained espionage contacts with representatives of imperialist states, right up to the time of his arrest. These were Vera Micheles Dean, representative of the American Foreign Policy Association; the agent of the British imperialists Konni Zilliacus; the Jewish international businessman and Czechoslovak emigre, [the] Zionist Brenner; and the representative of Swedish capitalists and former Minister to Czechoslovakia, Otto Wilhelm Winther. . . .
“. . . I plead guilty that I placed hostile Zionist elements as Czechoslovak trade representatives abroad.” By means of exorbitant commissions and other tricks, he had enabled the “treacherous emigrés in the capitalist West” to acquire funds for their hostile activities against Czechoslovakia. He had granted various advantages to these emigrés and he had also helped many enemies of the Czechoslovak popular democratic regime to emigrate to capitalist countries.
Margolius was the son of a partner in the “Margolius Brothers” wholesale textile company and a member of a Jewish Freemason lodge. Many of his relatives were active Zionists and the defendant, too, was cited in this connection, since he had been a member of various Zionist societies. He had succeeded in infiltrating into the Communist party after 1945 by making untrue statements about his past. . . .
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Margolius became aware of Slansky’s sabotage intentions by the fact that leading positions in the country’s economic machinery were given to hostile elements, particularly Jewish bourgeois nationalists and Zionists. . . .
The defendant . . . mentioned another espionage link, that is, with the Zionist Leo Brenner, whom he had met in 1948 through Loebl. . . . Before Margolius left for London he received instructions from Loebl to visit Brenner in London and to tell him that the real aims being pursued in the Czechoslovak-British talks were the interests of the British capitalists. These were to be provided with fresh profits, to receive compensation for nationalized property in Czechoslovakia, and so forth. After his arrival in London, Margolius had contacted Brenner and also arranged for the Roths-childs to be informed that under the proposed agreement they might receive compensation for the nationalized Vitkovice Foundries. . . .
The prosecutor asked Margolius for details about the so-called “Ueberall Campaign.”
Margolius said that the campaign was initiated by former Israeli Minister to Czechoslovakia Avriel, at the beginning of 1948. Avriel had appeared in Czechoslovakia in 1947 under the name of Ueberall. He “organized and directed Zionist organizations in Czechoslovakia.”
Margolius admitted to having been in constant touch with Ueberall. . . . One of [the Ueberall campaign’s] specific aims was to hamper the transition to heavy industrial production in Czechoslovakia. It was for that purpose that Loebl tried to secure credits from Jewish capitalists in the United States in order to create financial and economic dependence on the United States. The industry was to become dependent on raw-material and important equipment imports. It was planned to repay with light-industry exports to the United States. If that had been achieved, the transition to heavy industry would have to be sabotaged.
The profit was to go to Jewish capitalists in the United States and especially to Czechoslovak emigrés who were to become the key exporters, importers, and middlemen in trade with Czechoslovakia. It was intended to help them to amass wealth while at the same time damaging the Czechoslovak economy. . . .
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Margolius then continued to specify machinery exports to Palestine in 1948 and 1949 when “Jewish bourgeois elements” emigrated to Palestine; in those years exports were made with the agreement and knowledge of the Commission for Foreign Trade attached to the secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist party, consisting of Loebl, Fischl, Margolius and (Planer).
Ostensibly old but in fact very well-preserved and usable machinery, mostly taken from factories formerly owned by Czechoslovak capitalists who had already emigrated or who intended to emigrate to Palestine, was exported. Those people were thus enabled to re-acquire production equipment the export of which was not permitted. Those transactions caused Czechoslovakia damage running into many millions, not only because important equipment was lost to the country but because the machinery was taken out of the country at very low prices.
The Presiding Judge then questioned Margolius on the 1950 trade agreement between Czechoslovakia and Israel.
The defendant, who was instrumental in the conclusion of that agreement, described it as yet another act of sabotage of the Czechoslovak economy. Its harmfulness lay in the fact that 17 per cent of the exports to Israel remained, in effect, unpaid for, while at the same time the transfer of property which the government did not allow to be exported was thus made possible. . . .
Margolius further pleaded guilty to having allowed exports of food whereby the provisioning of the Czechoslovak people was endangered. He explained that in 1950 and at the beginning of 1951 there had been a critical meat-supply situation in Czechoslovakia. “With a view to creating dissatisfaction among the public with the Communist party and the government and to interfering with the nation’s food supply, I gave instructions to continue meat exports to the capitalist countries.” . . .
The Prosecutor extracted from the defendant a confession that his sabotage had virtually forced the government to reintroduce bread and flour rationing in February 1951. . . .
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Margolius was then asked whether “the treacherous emigrés” were financed “with the money of the working people.” He admitted that, saying: “The treacherous Czechoslovak emigrés in the capitalist countries had basically the hostile aims of our conspiratorial center, that is, the restoration of capitalism. For this reason we directly supported them—former Czechoslovak capitalists, many Zionists and Jewish capitalists, and other hostile elements.”
They did this by allowing these elements to engage in Czechoslovak foreign trade and enabling them to make tremendous profits at the expense of Czechoslovakia. “In this connection it was not only a matter of supplying the emigrés with a private income, but also of enabling them to finance their treacherous activities against the People’s Democratic Czechoslovakia.” Margolius himself engaged such emigrés and paid out such funds through excessive commissions and other machinations.
Margolius then gave a number of concrete examples. The representative of the Czechoslovak export firm, Ligna, in Britain was “the Jewish capitalist, Czechoslovak emigre and Zionist (Schnitzer).” The representative of Centrotex in the United States was the Jewish capitalist Lindt family, Zionists from Czechoslovakia. Other representatives of the firm in the United States were the former Czechoslovak capitalists Jerie and Korda.
The representative of Kovo in Argentine was the Jewish capitalist Becher, from Roudnice. The representative of Kovo in Brazil was the Jewish manufacturer Singer, from Plzen. The representative of the machine factories in the United States was a former director of the Skoda Works, Fried. The representative of “Exico” in Venezuela was the Czechoslovak refugee Odehnal. The representative of the Czechoslovak mines in Italy was the Jewish capitalist and former coal baron Guttmann.
Asked to give details about Guttmann, Margolius said he was the owner of a Trieste firm with which the Czechoslovak mines concluded an agreement damaging to Czechoslovakia. “The damaging character of this agreement resulted from the fact that Guttmann was not only given a very high commission, but was also enabled to appropriate any additional profit margin resulting from the sale of coal in Italy.” . . .
There were other methods for supplying the treacherous emigré with funds. Margolius mentioned the export of a distillery to Argentina, of power plants and a sugar refinery to Iran, of electric motors to Sweden, and so forth. In all these cases, the representatives of Czechoslovak foreign trade abroad, mostly emigrés, Zionists and other hostile elements, received huge sums amounting to tens of millions of koruny. . . .
Defendant Otto Fischl
Former Deputy Minister of Finance
The next accused to be questioned was Otto Fischl. . . . “A bourgeois nationalist, the son of a rich merchant and a collaborator of the Nazis.”
Fischl pleaded guilty of having been a member of the anti-state hostile center led by Rudolf Slansky. “An accomplice of Slansky and a Jewish bourgeois nationalist, I took part in the center’s hostile actions, which were organized by the Anglo-U.S. imperialists and their agents in Israel, headed by Ben Gurion. These actions sought to (enrich) the Jewish bourgeoisie.” Fischl’s tasks were set by Slansky. He also collaborated with Geminder and was in direct contact “with the U.S.-British agents sent to Czechoslovakia by Ben Gurion.”
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Question: “Who were these agents?”
Fischl: “They were the Israeli Minister Ehud Avriel, Dr. Felix, and Ben Shalom.”
Presiding Judge: “Explain why you had such a hostile attitude toward the People’s Democratic Czechoslovakia.”
Fischl : “Your honor, I could not possibly have any attitude but a hostile one.”
Presiding Judge: “Why?”
Fischl: “I am a Jewish bourgeois nationalist.”
Fischl said he was a partner in the lawyers’ firm of Mautner, which catered mainly to the Jewish upper class. He received large sums for his work and in this way his interests became identical with this class. He was a member of “the Jewish bourgeois nationalist organization Kapr and the League of Czech Jews.” . . .
Asked about his collaboration with the Nazis, Fischl said that after Munich, he joined “the fascist organization called National Unity.” With his friends the industrialists (Pachl) and Pick-Petrovsky he was in contact with the high Nazi judge Dr. (Zechner), with the Nazi officer (Petrezel), and with Libuse (Rozdilova), an estate owner, who told him herself that she worked for the Gestapo.
After the liberation, he hid them in his apartment and shielded them from punishment; later they emigrated to South America.
At this point, the prosecution submitted a document, from which it appeared that the abovementioned Dr. (Zechner) was on the list of those guilty of the massacres of Lidice and Lezaky. . . .
Fischl was then asked about the sabotage he carried out in the economic and financial sphere. He began this sabotage while working at the Central Committee of the Communist party by “supporting the endeavors of the Zionists and of the Jewish-bourgeois-nationalistic elements to get hold of the national administration of property.”
Together with Dr. (Eckstein), (Ales), and (Svabik), he successfully delayed the merging of the National Administration of Property with the Resettlement Office and the National Reconstruction Fund from 1946 until 1948. The National Administration of Property fell into the hands of Jewish reactionaries, who used it for “strengthening the bourgeois nationalist and Zionist position in the state by allocating the property mainly to Jewish bourgeois nationalists and Zionist elements.” . . .
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The Prosecutor . . . asked Fischl how he damaged the national economy when working in the Ministry of Finance. Fischl said he had been appointed to the Ministry by Slansky.
“At that time, when there was large-scale emigration to Israel and to the big capitalist countries by the Jewish bourgeoisie, it was my task to help this bourgeoisie to transfer the property of our workers.” Slansky gave Fischl a free hand in all this.
This emigration was organized by “the Zionist organizations, such as the Central Federation of Zionists, the Keren Hayesod and Keren Kayemet, and the fascist organization Irgun Zvai Leumi. The U. S. Joint Zionist organization financed in part the emigration of these reactionaries and procured the means for this by large-scale foreign currency machinations and other tricks.” . . .
The Prosecutor then asked him why the Jewish religious communities were interested in this transfer of property. He replied that this was so “because they were dominated by Jewish reactionaries, Zionists, cosmopolitans, and other hostile elements. These elements in the end went so far as to misuse the cloak of the Jewish religion for carrying on Zionist, hostile activities.” . . .
Continuing his evidence, Fischl said that through illegal export of property, the Czechoslovak people suffered losses amounting to billions of Czechoslovak koruny. Asked by the Prosecutor to explain why he allowed Jewish capitalists to export huge fortunes while he was very strict with applications submitted by poor people, the accused said he covered up by his strict attitude toward the poor his allowances to the rich.
The accused set aside a report submitted by the controlling organs of his Ministry which drew his attention to the heavy losses owing to the export of vast fortunes. He went on to describe “action under which the illegal transfer of Jewish reactionary elements as well as their property, took place, not only from Czechoslovakia, but also from the neighboring People’s Democratic Poland, Hungary, and Rumania.”
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Transport from Slovakia was directed to Vienna; from there it left for Israel and other capitalist states. People who were sent in this way also included individuals wanted by state security organs. They were sent under false names, and their documents were forged by the Central Zionist Organization, which affixed false stamps of the District Court in Bratislava. . . .
Asked by the Prosecutor how he was connected with the Prague branch of the Joint Zionist organization, Fischl stated that he was in contact with its general secretary, Henry Levy, and with Dr. Gregor. He promised them the duty-free import of various necessities from the United States for the benefit of the Zionist organizations in Czechoslovakia, and Fischl also arranged this. He also covered the large-scale currency machinations of the Joint Zionist organization, which consisted of payments made by emigrants, who gave money to this organization at the unofficial rate of exchange, while the “Joint” paid him the equivalent in dollars in the country to which these people were proceeding.
Fischl cited the following example. The “Joint” received from a person 500 koruny, for which he received one dollar. The central office of the “Joint” in the United States thus saved $9.00 because if an official transaction were conducted, the organization would have had to provide $10 in exchange for 500 koruny. Money thus gained was used by the Joint Zionist organization for the financing of hostile and disruptive activities against Czechoslovakia, and also for organizing financial transfers of the emigrants to foreign countries.
In order to protect the “Joint” the accused spread false information about its charitable activities in Czechoslovakia.
The commentator stated that the losses caused by Fischl had amounted to hundreds of millions of koruny. . . .
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The accused then began to describe how he sabotaged the Penal Department of the Finance Ministry for the benefit of U. S. agencies. When a group of Israeli citizens, who had been sent to Czechoslovakia to carry out fraudulent business deals and currency machinations, were arrested, it transpired that business deals were organized from Israel all over the world. Use was made of differences in currency and prices caused by postwar conditions. These transactions were used so as to cause considerable damage in the countries where they took place.
These deals were organized by the Israeli company Solel Boneh, which worked in collaboration with and under the direct supervision of the Israeli semi-fascist trade union league Histadrut. The political representative of Histadrut, Gruenbaum, was in direct contact with Dr. Felix who organized these frauds in Czechoslovakia.
Fischl then described the case of the Anders family, who owned numerous stores in Czechoslovakia’s leading cities, as well as abroad. This family caused the country damage amounting to 70,000,000 koruny through tax and currency frauds. Further intrigues by this family caused the state losses of another 16,000,000 koruny. The accused intervened in the trial which then took place. He stopped this trial on condition that the Anders family gave up their business interests.
This took place at a time when the Anders stores had already been nationalized and, therefore, were not owned by them. In this way the accused saved the Anders family their vast private fortunes. . . .
Defendant Evzen Loebl
Former Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade
Loebl declared: “I am guilty.” Asked in what his guilt consisted, he said: “I am guilty principally in that, as a member of the subversive espionage conspiracy built up and headed by Slansky, I carried out extensive hostile, subversive, and harmful work in the Czechoslovak economy.” . . .
Elaborating on his offenses, Loebl explained that in collaboration with Slansky, and in particular with Frejka and Margolius, he had pursued the object of “tying the Czechoslovak economy to the capitalist West and making it dependent on the West.” . . .
One aspect of this scheme was the Ueberall scheme. The idea of this was to increase the production and exportation of manufactures of the light industry to the West “in such a way that the profits of the work of Czechoslovak industry should accrue to Israel.”
A “similar fraudulent scheme” was the so-called dollar offensive, the purpose of which was to retard the building of socialism in Czechoslovakia. This plan had been agreed on between Loebl and “the U. S. agent and Israeli Minister Ueberall.” It was to have been put into effect with the help of U. S. capitalist Zionists.
Asked when he had pursued his avowed aim of tying Czechoslovakia to the capitalist countries, Loebl said: “I began to work along these lines during my London exile with the direct support of the Economic Commission, whose members were also Jewish bourgeois nationalists, under Frejka’s leadership. At our last meeting before returning to the liberated homeland, I agreed with Frejka that under the pretext of needing persons with a knowledge of the West, we would continue to keep up the circle around the Economic Commission, and in fact, enlarge it with further ‘Londoners’ whom we would place in key economic positions with a view to realizing our concept of shackling Czechoslovak economy to the capitalist West. . . .
“. . . I agreed with Frejka that we would set up a special consultative body in this economic department, to be named, according to the London model, the Economic Commission. We also agreed that we would take into this economic commission only enemies of the party, cosmopolitans, Zionists, bourgeois nationalists, and people nurtured on capitalism.”
Loebl was then questioned about his sabotage in the field of foreign trade. In this sphere, too, he admitted, he had “carried out a whole string of sabotage acts,” of which one had been the Ueberall scheme. Ueberall had come to Prague even before he was appointed Israeli Minister, as “an American agent and representative of Zionist organizations.” Loebl worked with him and with other members of the conspiracy “in favor of that American outpost in the Middle East—the State of Israel.”
Asked about the details of his work with Ueberall, Loebl said: “On one occasion Ueberall came to me with a concrete proposal. He said it was possible to get dollar credits from American Zionists on the condition that Zionist emigrés would be allowed to transfer their property.”
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Prosecutor: “How did you react to this?”
Loebl: “I reacted favorably because this proposal was in line with Slansky’s instructions to use Zionist organizations for tying the country to the United States. That is why I agreed on the scheme Ueberall proposed.”
Asked to explain the “sabotage character” of the proposal, Loebl said the dollar credits were to have made Czechoslovakia economically dependent on America. . . .
Prosecutor: “What further considerations were you guided by?”
Loebl: “Considerations for the Zionist emigrés and the transfer of their property, since this affected many of my friends and relations.”
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Defendant Otto Sling
Former Regional Party Secretary in Brno
Judge: “We are now continuing in the trial with the examination of the defendant, Otto Sling. Do you know the indictment?”
Sling: “Yes.”
Judge: “You know with which crimes you are being charged?”
Sling: “Yes.”
Judge: “Do you plead guilty?”
Sling: “Yes, I plead guilty to all counts of the indictment. I admit to having been a member of the anti-state conspiratorial group headed by Rudolf Slansky. This group consisted of elements hostile to the Popular Democratic Czechoslovakia coming from the ranks of bourgeois nationalists, Trotskyists, collaborators, and similar enemies. We conducted our disruptive activities in all sectors of political, economic, and public life, in the national security corps and in the army.” . . .
From the outset, said Sling, the conspiracy aimed at filling key positions in heavy engineering with its own men, knowing the importance of that sector of the economy in Czechoslovakia’s socialist transformation. That was why Slansky, Frank, and Frejka appointed “exponents of capitalism” and “former capitalist directors” to key posts in the heavy engineering industry, such as “the Jewish bourgeois nationalist engineer, Fabinger,” who held a high post in the Ostrava heavy engineering industry during the First Republic and who was appointed Director General of Heavy Engineering after the war on Frejka’s proposal with the approval of Frank and Slansky. Fabinger had worked under Slansky’s and Frank’s directives and, in pursuance of their subversive cadres policy, had appointed “capitalist directors and hostile elements.” . . .
The Prosecutor then turned his questions to the conspirators’ intentions with regard to the armed forces. Sling stated that late in 1945 “the Jewish bourgeois nationalist, Bedrich Kopold,” then an Education Officer, called on him at the regional secretariat and told him that it might be possible to win over a number of influential senior officers. Kopold named Generals Novak, Kouril, and others. In reply to Sling’s questions, Kopold had told him that they were “reactionary bourgeois officers, and participants of the counter-revolutionary putsch in Russia and had even at that time fought actively against the Red Army in the ranks of the Czechoslovak Legion.” . . .
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Defendant Karel Svab
Former Deputy Minister of National Security
Judge: “Are you guilty in the sense of the indictment?”
Svab: “I am guilty of having protected from exposure the hostile group concentrated round Slansky.”
Judge: “This is one part of your guilt. What else?”
Svab: “I am further guilty of having made possible the activities of Anglo-U.S., Yugoslav, and other hostile espionage agencies in Czechoslovakia. I have covered the wrecking activities of the Trotskyists, Zionists, bourgeois nationalists, and other hostile groups. I have undermined the security apparatus by placing, either directly or with the help of others, unreliable and hostile persons in leading positions of our security, also persons who were incapable of dealing with the enemies of the Republic. I have further undermined the security apparatus by hampering party political work in our security system.”
Asked how he and Slansky shielded the U. S. spy Noel Field, Svab said: “Field, the U. S. spy who was unmasked at the Rajk trial, said in his evidence that he maintained a widespread espionage network in Czechoslovakia. As his collaborators he named the Jewish bourgeois nationalists Frejka, Goldmann, Loebl, and Namek-Karpeles, and in Slovakia Holdos, Pavlik-Pollitzer and others who, on his instructions, supplied him with important espionage information from all spheres of their activities.” . . .
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Question: “When did you learn that Noel Field was a spy?”
Svab: “I learned that in 1947 from a document submitted to me by the Zionist Stepan Placek. This letter, written by the imperialist agent Allen Dulles himself to Field, requested Field to cooperate in espionage. This important document we kept secret even when Field in 1949 was unmasked as a spy.” . . .
The Prosecutor Kolaja asked Svab what other hostile groups he shielded. Svab said he and the center had supported “Zionist organizations and their terrorist gangs.” These Zionist organizations maintained continuous contact “with the imperialist agents who worked at the Israeli legation in Prague and also with the U. S. Zionist and espionage organization, the Joint Zionist organization. I knew from numerous reports that I received that this whole conspiratorial movement was financed by U. S. agencies, which used the Zionist organizations as one of their channels for spreading imperialist influence in the People’s Democracies.”
Kolaja then asked why these Zionist organizations were supported. Svab said one of the reasons for this was that “Slansky, who led the conspiratorial center, is himself a Jewish bourgeois nationalist, and a whole number of other members of our center are also Jewish bourgeois nationalists, or even straight Zionists. The main reason for our support, however, was that the Zionists were the most reliable imperialist agency, which gave Slansky the best opportunity for maintaining his link with the imperialist West.”
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From the Prosecutor’s Summation
Mordecai Oren has corroborated Slansky’s close connections with Zionist organizations and with the Israeli legation. Oren also confirmed that all Zionist campaigns were conducted under Slansky’s protection. The witness Oskar Langer, an international Zionist agent, also confirmed that Slansky was the patron of all Jewish bourgeois nationalists and that he expressly said that it was necessary to fill important positions in economic, political, and public life with Zionists and Jewish bourgeois nationalists. According to Slansky, their bourgeois class background could be disregarded. His closest associates from the days of his youth were Geminder, Frejka, Reicin, and Sling—gall Titoist agents.
Slansky cannot deny his Jewish bourgeois nationalist character. If we realize the true meaning of Jewish bourgeois nationalism, from which the international Zionist organizations, the most important agencies of American imperialism, are descended, we understand why Rudolf Slansky finds himself today a prisoner in court, charged with the gravest crimes in our penal code. . . .
It will be necessary for me to go into details of this so-called Zionist movement. One of the reasons for this is that eleven of the defendants have been trained by Zionist organizations. Another reason is that the trial shows to all Communist and workers’ parties the danger of Zionism as an agency of U. S. imperialism. The Zionist organizations have always had close links with world capitalism. . . .
The dangerous character of the international Zionist organizations increased after the setting up of a Ü. S. satellite, the so-called State of Israel. Even after the setting up of the State of Israel the main seat of Zionist organizations remained in the United States, where the Zionists are strongly represented among the U. S. monopolists, who are laying down the whole aggressive policy of the United States. The Ben Gurion government, which has sold out to its U. S. providers, is transforming Israel into a military base for U. S. aggression.
The Zionist agents in Slansky’s conspiratorial center served mainly the U. S. aims of world domination and aggression, not the working people of Israel, by their criminal activities. Cosmopolitanism and Jewish bourgeois nationalism are in fact only two sides of the same coin, and a bad coin at that.
The building of socialism is contrary to their class interests. The Zionist movement is not some kind of an idea, some sort of an ideology. It is—and this trial has shown it clearly—identical with the Zionist organizations in the United States plus the ruling clique of the State of Israel plus the Zionist capitalists throughout the world, bound by close links with capitalist imperialists.
The evidence of the U. S. spy, the Zionist Orenstein, has shown that this link is directly based on a secret agreement between Truman, Acheson, and Ben Gurion, that the consequence of this agreement is the Morgenthau-Acheson plan which laid down the conditions for U. S. support for the setting up of the State of Israel.
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In September 1948, Moscow’s Pravda published an article by Ilya Ehrenburg violently attacking Zionism, Israel, and any thought of a common bond uniting the Jews of different countries. Ehrenburg minced no words. But conventional liberal opinion nervously pooh-poohed any suggestion that Ehrenburg’s diatribe was anti-Semitic in intent. Wasn’t Communism traditionally the sworn enemy of anti-Semitism? Didn’t the Soviet and satellite constitutions guarantee racial and religious equality? Weren’t Communist governments well disposed toward Israel? Weren’t there Jews in high office in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, and Poland? And wasn’t Ehrenburg himself a Jew?
All non-Communist movements and ideologies are outlawed by the Soviet government, so the argument ran; why then should Zionism be an exception? Don’t take a newspaper article too seriously: Moscow is simply “wooing the Arabs.” The campaign against Zionism is a propaganda move on the international chessboard and holds no threat for the two and a half million Jews inside the Soviet orbit.
But those who reasoned in this way overlooked several important facts. The Zionist movement, as well as other expressions of Jewish national feeling and culture, had been outlawed in the Soviet Union as far back as the 20’s; its leaders had long ago perished in Russian jails and camps. The last remaining Soviet Jewish publication, which was closed down immediately after the appearance of Ehrenburg’s pronouncement,- was no Zionist organ but the Communist Einikeit. The Yiddish writers and poets who vanished into Siberian slave labor camps following Einikeit’s dissolution were not Zionists but old and faithful Communists. In 1948 already, Moscow said “Zionists” but hit Jews.
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There is a method in the totalitarian madness. A totalitarian regime has an insatiable need for “public enemies,” for new scapegoats on whom to load the burden of its failures. Victims are jailed, denounced, and “liquidated” not as individuals but as members of “suspect” and “alien” groups. To be suspect is already to be guilty, a “dangerous” state of mind is manifest treason, and guilt is always collective. Potential “treachery” must be extirpated at its roots—and these roots are to be found in social and ethnic groups. The ultimate purpose of a purge is the extermination of an entire class of people.
This needs time. The rule is: No liquidation without ideological preparation. A group must be isolated morally, discredited, and denounced as the breeding ground of traitors and saboteurs before it can be sent to perish in concentration camps. First, a single faction of the suspect group is attacked openly: in the case of Communist heretics, the “Trotskyites”; in the case of satellite malcontents, the “Titoists”; in the case of Jews, the “Zionists.” This faction is accused of harboring “dangerous deviations”; later, its members are charged with being “objective” agents of the foreign imperialist class enemy; finally, the secret police “discovers” that they spied, sabotaged, and betrayed in actual fact. Meanwhile, Leninist-Stalinist science, analyzing the causes of their betrayal, finds them in the group’s collective characteristics. The identification of an entire class of people with one proscribed faction is now complete.1
Up to this point, certain distinctions are made between active “criminals” and those members of the group who are merely suspected of “criminal” tendencies. But as the campaign mounts in intensity, all such fine discriminations are forgotten. All Communists who might ever have thought to oppose Stalin become Trotskyites; all people with a residue of loyalty to their country are proscribed as Titoists; and all Jews turn out to be agents of a gigantic Zionist conspiracy.
It is characteristic of Stalin’s purges that members of a suspect group are used to denounce and destroy their fellows; later, broken and demoralized, they are liquidated themselves. Bukharin and Radek were forced to shout for Zinoviev’s and Kamenev’s execution before following them to the Lubianka cellars. Marshals of the Red Army tried and convicted Marshal Tukhachevsky. There is nothing untoward in Stalin’s world about a Jew being chosen to start the Soviet campaign against the Jews. Always the victims, loyal accomplices in their own frame-up, serve as the chief agents of the group frame-up. How else can the Big Lie be made to stand up?
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For those who have some understanding of the dynamics of totalitarianism, Ehrenburg’s article had an ominous ring right from the beginning. Such “alarmists” were soon provided with more concrete evidence.
Immediately following publication of the Pravda article, Zionist organizations in the satellite countries were disbanded and thousands of their members arrested. At first, individual Zionists were charged with embezzlement, economic sabotage, and disseminating reactionary propaganda. But soon Zionism per se became a crime. Israel, called a bourgeois state by Ehrenburg, after a few short months was denounced as a pawn of the imperialists and a center of hostile and disruptive activities.
But the persecution was by no means confined to Zionists. Other Jewish organizations were dissolved as well. Jewish welfare agencies were banned from the satellite countries; the cultural and charitable institutions which they had built up were summarily expropriated. In two years’ time there was scarcely a vestige of Jewish cultural and communal life remaining in the satellite countries. The few religious communities that had been permitted to survive were commandeered by the Communists and set to turning out Communist, anti-Zionist, and anti-Israel propaganda. The rabbis whose servile statements were published in the Communist press were either of secret police manufacture, or real rabbis terrorized into docility.
In the Soviet Union itself there was nothing Jewish left to liquidate except the Jews. Judaism as a religion had been virtually harried out of existence with the help of Jewish Communists long ago. Jews had had to renounce all ties with Judaism or Jewishness; many were now Communists. But this didn’t help them very much. A Jew who was not a Zionist could still be denounced as a “Jewish bourgeois nationalist,” or “cosmopolitan,” or both. It was shown that, “dialectically,” cosmopolitanism and bourgeois nationalism (especially the Jewish kind) are the same thing. Hitler had elucidated this “unity of contradictions” without the help of dialectics: for him, too, the “international Jew” was a racist Jewish nationalist who wished to impose the yoke of Jewry upon the world.
A purge of “cosmopolitans” began in every sphere of public life; most of its victims were Jews.2 Although the word Jew was rarely used at this stage, nobody mistook what was meant. Expressions like “men without a country,” “homeless wanderers,” “alien elements,” etc. deliberately evoked old anti-Semitic stereotypes. To make the purpose of the operation perfectly clear, Jews who had adopted Russian names were now cited with their original Jewish names in parentheses. Denunciation abroad of this practice caused it to be discontinued. But it had already served its turn: the identification of “cosmopolitan” with “Jew” was firmly fixed in the public mind. A series of “true stories” and works of fiction appeared in the Soviet press and literature depicting people with Jewish names as cowardly villains, black-marketeers, grasping individuals, parasites living off other people’s work. Incitement to hatred became more and more open. The time was ripe for mass deportations.
In the Soviet Union proper, mass deportations of Jews from border territories had already been going forward for some time. Behind the double Iron Curtain, however, in territories no foreigner is allowed to see, the operations of the secret police were only dimly visible. There were reports of midnight transports, of slave labor camps filled with Jews, of the final dissolution of the Jewish Autonomous Region in Biro-Bidjan, and the area’s transformation into a site for “corrective labor” camps. There was no official confirmation of these reports. But neither were there official denials—only imperturbable silence; let the servile Communists and fellow-travelers in the West do the denying.
Then, in 1951, mass deportations began in earnest in Central Europe, Hungary, and Rumania.3 Jews made up a large percentage of the deportees. A wave of Jewish suicides swept Budapest and Bucharest. There were frantic calls for help. And then there was silence.
And yet there were still those in the West who consoled themselves with the thought that nothing anti-Semitic was present in all these horrors. Weren’t there non-Jewish as well as Jewish victims of the deportations and purges? Granted that thousands upon thousands of Jews were being killed, starved, or worked to death in camps and prisons. Yet were they simply being killed, or killed as Jews? They refused to see as anti-Semitism the most savage persecution of the Jews so long as Jews were not called “Jews,” however much insulted otherwise, and so long as they were provided with equal accommodations—in Buchenwald or Karaganda.
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Lingering doubts, if there were any, have now been dispelled by the terrifying evidence of the Prague trial. Its victims were men with no trace of Jewishness except what the Nazis used to call “racial origin.” They were not Zionists—they had fought Zionism all their life. They were not capitalists—they had in fact played a leading part in the expropriation of Jewish as well as non-Jewish capital. They were not Jewish nationalists—they had renounced nationalism in all its forms when they first joined the Communist party. When they mouthed nationalist phrases following a change in the party line, it was Czech nationalism that they professed; a nationalism, however, that went on and off at Moscow’s bidding, and that extolled Soviet Russia as mankind’s only true fatherland. These men had but one loyalty—to Moscow.
And yet they were tried and hanged as Jews. They were forced to confess their participation in a worldwide Jewish plot. And what a plot! The infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion are cast into the shade. Every prominent Jew you could think of was made to figure in the conspiracy. The French cabinet minister Georges Mandel—whom the Nazis killed during the war—was described as having hired one of the defendants to spy against Russia as far back as 1939. Several defendants confessed that Jewish capitalists in France, England, and the United States had built up, during the war, an organization directed against the yet unborn people’s democracies. After the war, Ben Gurion and Henry Morgenthau, in a secret conference with Truman and Acheson, were supposed to have worked out a scheme for a Zionist espionage network. Israeli diplomats were messenger boys for the Jewish conspirators in different countries. The conspiratorial network embraced Ana Pauker in Rumania, Moshe Pijade in Yugoslavia, Rudolf Slansky and Bedrich Geminder in Prague, and Mordecai Oren in Israel. According to the confessions, not only Zionist and pro-Zionist groups, but also the Joint Distribution Committee, the B’nai B’rith, and such assimilationist groups as the League of Czech Jews took a hand in the conspiracy. The plot was financed by Bernard Baruch and, of course, the Rothschilds. The script writers didn’t even forget to mention the Freemasons as having leagued together with the Jews. Dr. Goebbels and Julius Streicher couldn’t have done better.
Every word spoken at the show was calculated to arouse hatred against the Jews. Nobody could be deceived by the fact that the defendants were sometimes called Zionists, sometimes Jewish bourgeois nationalists, sometimes agents of the Jewish capitalists, and sometimes cosmopolitans. To make doubly sure, after the name of each Jewish defendant the indictment added these words: “of Jewish origin”; whereas two of the three non-Jewish defendants were described simply as “Czechs,” and former Foreign Minister Vlado clementis as “a Slovak.” Each defendant was first questioned about his family background. Each duly called attention to his “bourgeois Jewish” or “Jewish nationalist” origins; given such origins he could not have become anything else but an opportunist, careerist, traitor, and criminal. Each was forced to confess that he had placed other “Zionists,” “Jewish nationalists,” or simply Jews in positions of trust so that they might betray the country and the working class. Even the three non-Jewish defendants had to confess to the capital offense of having surrounded themselves with Jews. Two of these were depicted as war criminals who had tortured fellow prisoners in Nazi camps; the diabolical Jew Slansky, knowing of these crimes, had blackmailed them into taking part in the Zionist conspiracy.
No crime was too dastardly for these Jewish plotters to commit. They betrayed their country’s military secrets; sabotaged deliveries to Russia; tried to murder Gottwald; wished to bring Czechoslovakia over into the “imperialist camp.” Many Czechs might have been inclined to sympathize with such anti-Soviet “crimes.” So the defendants were made to confess to things that touched the mass of the people more nearly. They had sabotaged production and starved the population; sold out Czechoslovakia in foreign trade agreements, especially with Israel; traded Czechoslovak goods abroad in such a way as to enrich Jewish middlemen in foreign countries; bought foreign equipment in order to undermine the currency; imported food so as to make Czechoslovakia dependent on foreign imperialists; exported food so as to starve the workers. If there was no bread, meat, or electricity; if wages were low and prices high; if working hours were long and breakdowns in production frequent—it was all the fault of the Jewish conspirators. Time and again the question was asked during the trial: who is guilty? Time and again the answer was given: Jewish plotters.
The purpose in all this is unmistakable. The Jews are being held responsible for all the failures of the regime, for the misery and state of semi-starvation in which the Czech people are forced to live.
This was no mere trial of Slansky. Slansky and his accomplices were simple puppets, forced to serve Stalin in death as in life. They were certainly guilty of many crimes. But of those which they “confessed” to, of their participation in a Jewish plot, they were certainly innocent.
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What really matters is that the trial gives the signal for a mass “liquidation.” No public trial of the Moscow kind has ever had any other purpose.
In 1928, a few engineers and scientists were tried in Moscow on charges of sabotage and treason. Some were executed, some got off. But a mass purge of “bourgeois technicians” followed. Another trial, of Menshevik leaders, was staged. The liquidation of former Social Democrats followed. In 1936-1937, several dozen old Bolsheviks were tried as “Trotskyites” and “Bukharinists.” The ensuing purge engulfed several million people. Trials of “Titoists” in the postwar satellite countries started a slaughter of people suspected of wanting a measure of independence for their countries.
It is true that a few members of the outlawed classes are sometimes allowed to live on. The former Menshevik Vishinsky is still the Soviet Russian Foreign Minister. As far as we know, the old Bolshevik Litvinov died a natural death. Ilya Ehrenburg is—as of this writing—still alive and kicking. So is Stalin’s brother-in-law, Lazar Kaganovich. A few Jews will escape the carnage, if only to show the world that Soviet anti-Semitism is “an invention of American warmongers.” Stalin is certainly more flexible than Hitler. He follows the maxim of that notorious anti-Semitic Mayor of Vienna, Lueger: “1 decide who is a Jew.” Saving a few of his Jewish creatures has the advantage that Stalin can get them to defend crimes against Jews.
Behind the Iron Curtain no one mistakes the meaning of the trial. A day after it started, Jewish homes in Bratislava bore such chalked inscriptions as “Down with capitalist Jews!” “Jews live here!” or, simply, “Jews.” The police refused to do anything. The secretary of the Prague Jewish community and his wife committed suicide. The official explanation of this, telegraphed to the Daily Worker, was that he had discovered he had cancer. But a wave of Jewish suicides swept several of the satellite countries—the cancer was epidemic. Survivors of Nazism remember how Hitler prepared his “solution of the Jewish question” by accusing “international Jewry” of plotting with “American plutocracy.” Over the Prague radio they hear the familiar voice of destruction.
Anti-Semites everywhere can now rejoice: “Hitler is dead-long live Stalin!” Old Nazis and Arab reactionaries have one more reason to rally round the Communist flag.4 But it would be a mistake to think the Kremlin started its anti-Jewish drive only to please old Nazis and Arab effendis. It was inevitable that totalitarian Communism, with it inexhaustible need for new scapegoats, should follow in Hitler’s footsteps.
Immediately at stake is the fate of two and a half million Jews. But the totalitarian Moloch is never sated. When the transports were rolling to Auschwitz and Maidanek, Nazi party offices were already laying plans for the extermination of Czechs, Poles, and Russians. The Soviet rulers today are far advanced along the road of genocide. The Volga Germans, Crimean Tartars, several Caucasian groups, and Baits preceded the Jews as collective victims of “social engineering.” The Poles, Czechs, Rumanians, and Hungarians may be next.
The attack now launched against the Jews is unique in one important respect. Stalin did not attempt to make the Volga Germans, Tartars, Baits, or Caucasians scapegoats for the failures of the regime, nor did he exploit the attack on them for foreign political purposes. But the Jews are a traditional scapegoat; to attack them just for being Jews, as was done, in so many words, at the Prague trial, to impute an innate and inevitable depravity to them, is to practice political anti-Semitism of the rankest kind, the anti-Semitism of gas chambers and world wars.
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There is still a slim possibility of making Stalin think twice about the organized assault he has now launched against the Jews—if the free world shows, by word and deed, its impassioned determination to oppose and frustrate Soviet genocidal intentions. International protests recently put a stop—only temporarily, it is true—to the deportations of Jews of Hungary. If such a demonstration fails to stay Stalin’s hand, it will at least make him pay a price in terms of lost influence: the Soviet world’s last pretension to being liberal (“say what you will, at least there is no racial discrimination in the Soviet Union”) will have been blasted.
Just before launching his campaign of world conquest, Hitler declared that Nazi Germany wanted nothing if not peace; it was the Jewish-dominated American and British plutocracy that was driving the world to war. But if war came, the “Fuehrer” went on to say, world Jewry would be held responsible and the Jews of Europe had better watch out. Totalitarian Communism, though having a different ideological provenance, has now arrived at about the same point. Again the United States is the main enemy; again Jewish capitalists are the arch villains; again Washington and Jerusalem are conspiring to rule the world.
Stalin is mobilizing anti-Jewish hatred and wooing anti-Semitic allies with the same purpose in mind that Hitler had: to prepare for an attack on the United States and the entire free world.
The world once badly erred in thinking Hitler’s genocidal intentions concerned only the Jews; it did not even think these intentions were entirely serious. The free peoples should have learned their lesson by now: we are all in the same boat.
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1 For a brilliant analysis of this common process of Nazi and Communist regimes, see Paul Kecskemeti's “How Totalitarians Gain Absolute Power,” in the December 1952 COMMENTARY.
2 See Solomon M. Schwarz, “The New Anti-Semitism of the Soviet Union,” in COMMENTARY, June 1949.
3 See Béla Fabian, “Hungary's Jewry Faces Liquidation,” in COMMENTARY, October 1951.
4 In the last three years or so, Stalin has been trying, more and more openly, to ally international Communism, in a so-called “national front” against “American imperialism,” with nationalist, chauvinist, fascist, and Nazi groups throughout the world. For a detailed documentation of this new line, see the following COMMENTARY articles: “Stalin Builds a Trojan Horse Against America” (November 1952), by Maurice J. Goldbloom; “Storm Clouds Over the Bolivian Refuge” (August 1952), by Sherry Mangan; “The Near East's Communist-Fascist Front” (May 1952), by Mark Alexander; “Hungary's and Rumania's Nazis-in-Red” (May 1951), by Béla Fabian; and “The New Nazis of Germany” (January 1951), by Norbert Muhlen.
