Evening star., 1952-11-28
The Sinister Proque Trial

The Sinister Prague Trial
The Czech Communist trial" has come to
the grim end expected of it. Eleven of the II
defendants have been sentenced to die on the
galloWs. The three others have been shown
mercy They will be allowed to spend thAe rest
OF their lives in the spiritual and physical
WretchedneSS, corroSion and degradation Of some
dark Red jail or slave-labor camp.
Only relatively short time ago, all of these
doomed individuals former Vice Pre-
mier Slansky and former Foreign Minister Vlado
Clements, both of whom are to die-were
counted among the Understanding Communists
OF Czechoslovakia, with Slansky himself gener-
ally regarded as the Kremlin's chief favorite
and its toughest and most faithful agent, a pup
pet superior even to Premier Klement Gottwald
Certainly, by word and deed, every one of them
until their sudden downfall, seemed to have rem
dered splendid service to the Soviet Union, par
tlcularly in helping to drag their country behind
the Iron Curtain and in thereafter depressing
and terrorzing their people for the greater honor
and glory of Stain.
Considering this past of theirs these men
hardly deserve any sympathy from the free
world. The fate that has befallen them is not
more severe than the fate that they themselves
wholly apart from assisting in the destruction of
Czech liberty, have been instrumental in impos-
Ing upon many others among their countrymen
To that extent, therefore, their punishment may
be viewed as form of poetic justice. Yesterday
they were ardent members of the Red totalitar-
ian wolf pack; today, all of sudden, they are
the victims of their fellow wolves. What has
happened to them, of course, has happened often
enough before behind the Iron Curtain For
there has long been kind of cannibalism in
communism-a sort of pathological compulson
C1rst strikingly demonstrated in the Soviet
trials" of the 1930s) that requires the
comrades" to engage in periodic blood purges
of their own ranks
But the Prague trial." though thus con-
forming to a familiar Red phenomenon typified
by such things as groveling and self-debasing
confessions, has deviated from the norm in one
significant respect. It has been strongly anti
Semitic in tone. OF the IA who have been SEN
fenced, II are Jews, and Slansky and seven
others of these have been condemned to death
by hanging. Their crime, according to the propa-
ganda line emphasized in the court" has been
treason not only through "Trotskyism" and
"Tltolsm" but also-and chiefly-through "Zion-
ISM" Their "Zionism," as both they and their
prosecutors have presented it, has taken the
form of vast Jewish conspiracy" in which es-
pionage, sabotage and murder have been used in
an effort to overthrow the Gottwald regime
wreck the Czech economy, make the country
cdp1tdIlSuc TOOL OF the western tmpertaliStS," )"
develop Israel as similar tool, and bring about
Anglo-American domination of the whole world
The big question is why the Kremlin, acting
through its Prague puppets, has thus come out
openly for the first time with an anti-Semitic
show comparable to Hitler's. It is a question that
mas more than one answer. To begin with, in
addition to keeping alive the fires of the hate
America campaign, the cline" of the trial" prob
ably is designed to spread poison in the Arab
states. Moreover, there can be little doubt that
1t is calculated to do the following things among
others: Cd To make the Jews scapegoats for
CzechoSlovakia's economic ills-an objective be-
Ing supported at the moment by ominous public
slogans against them; (2) to promote anti Zionist
and anti-Israeh feelings elsewhere behind the
Iron Curtain, and (3)-quite possibly-to pave
the way for similar prosecuting action against
Jewish Communist leaders in other satellite
countries, beginning perhaps with the deposed
Ana Pauker of Romania and winding up with
somebody like Premier Rakosi of Hungary
In any event. whatever it may portend, the
Prague trial" is obviously sinister in its mpli-
cations. The danger is that its end may prove
to be but the beginning of an ordeal for the
thousands and thousands of Communist
Jews who are eager to emigrate to Israel but
who are prevented from doing so by their Red
masters The special anxiety and sense of out
rage in Tel-Aviv are altogether understandable
and justified.