50 years ago, that is in November 20-27, 1952, a trial over a group of outstanding party leaders was held in Prague. This trial is known in the country's history as "Slansky's trial". 14 people were accused: former General Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia Rudolf Slansky, Minister of Foreign Affairs Vlado Klementis, Head of the Central Party Committee department for foreign affairs Bedrzhikh Geminder, Editor-in-Chief of the "Rude Pravo" newspaper Andre Simon, Deputy Defense Minister Bedrzhikh Raitsin and other top government officials and party leaders. Among all those who were convicted only three were non-Jews.

WHAT LOYALTY TO STALIN TURNED TO BE

The main man at the trial was Rudolf Slansky (Zaltsman), who was proclaimed the organizer and leader of the anti-government conspiracy. Having shown himself a talented publicist and organizer, Slansky became the editor-in-chief of the central Communist newspaper "Rude Pravo" already in 1925, when he was a little over 20. Soon, in 1929, he was elected at the V Party Congress a member of the Central Party Committee. It was the congress that swept away all those who opposed unconditional subordination to Moscow. In 1935 Slansky was elected a deputy to the National Assembly of Czechoslovakia. After the Munich agreement of 1938, which handed over the country to Nazi Germany, he and others together with Klement Gotwald at the head got political asylum in Moscow. There he was noticed by Stalin who praised his loyalty and super-ordinary abilities.

In 1944 Slansky was sent from Moscow to Slovakia to organize the anti-Nazi uprising, which he used for the party interests. Slansky was one of the leaders of the 1948 February revolt, which brought up communist dictatorship in Czechoslovakia. When he was at the height of his party career he was unexpectedly shifted from the post of the Deputy Premier (September 1951) and then arrested on October 23.

Slansky was accused of high treason, subversive activities, sabotage, attempt to assassinate President of Czechoslovakia Klement Gotwald and other party leaders, etc.

All Jews involved in "Slansky's case" were accused of Zionism though many of them had been fighting against it not long before. The trial was held under sharply risen anti-Jewish tendencies in the Stalin leadership policy.

At interrogations the judges and prosecutors demanded that the accused should "confess" that they were "Jewish conspirators" and were guilty of all mischiefs of Czechoslovakian people. At the trial the words "Zionist" and "Jew" were used as synonyms that made it possible to declare the whole Jewish community of Czechoslovakia to be Zionist. Judge Novak and prosecutor attorney Urvalek demanded from the accused to confess that the interests of Czechoslovakian people were alien to them, first of all, because they were Jews.

The court sentenced 11 people to capital punishment and 3 people to life imprisonment. Those sentenced to death were executed on December 2, 1952.

All accusations were flamed up to pattern trials of the late 1930's in the Soviet Union. Special emissaries from the USSR security service were sent from Moscow to control the trial. Stalin, on whose personal instruction the flame-up was organized, personally supervised the investigation and the trial.

STAKE ON JEWS-COMMUNISTS

The trial was held when in Czechoslovakia and other countries of Eastern Europe people were increasingly dissatisfied with the USSR-imposed communist regimes, in which many leaders were Jews who lived in Moscow during the war years. Among them were Rudolf Slansky and Bedrzhikh Geminder (Czechoslovakia), Matiash Rakoshi and Erne Gere (Hungary), Yakub Berman and Hilyari Mints (Poland), Anna Pauker and Josef Kishinevsky (Romania).

In the first post-war years Stalin used to rely namely upon them, not on national communists.

He premised that communist Jew leaders would not incarnate nationalistic ideas of Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians and others because they had no deep roots with local population. However, with the rise of discontent with communist regimes the Soviet agents craftily tried to make this discontent anti-Semitic through putting blame on party leaders of Jewish origin.

In the early 1950's they were more often removed from key positions. For example, Anna Pauker, a Politburo member and secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Romania and Minister of Foreign Affairs since 1947, was chucked out from the Central Committee and arrested in July of the same year.

ATTACK ON ISRAEL

At the trial, the chief prosecutor Urvalek said, " any co-partnership with Zionism should be considered as one of the gravest crimes against mankind". Israel became a subject of vigorous attacks. It was said to be the main bastion and tool of warmongers, an international spy center. It was repeatedly underlined that Jews were organizers and leaders of the most spy and anti-Soviet centers and by their instructions the accused were waging the adversary activity against Czechoslovakia. It was also said that Israeli agents established as far as in 1948 "criminal contacts with Slansky and the other accused. They systematically interfered in domestic affairs of Czechoslovakia through making profitable for Israel and burglarious for Czechoslovakia trade contracts and organized a clandestine and harmful to Czechoslovakia's interests export of arms for Israeli army". Needless to say and it is well known that arms supplies from Czechoslovakia to Israel were made by direct orders from Moscow to establish the latter's influence in the newly proclaimed Jewish state. On November 25, 1952, Israel sent a decisive protest against the anti-Semitic nature of the trial in Czechoslovakia.

However, on December 6, 1952, all slanderous accusations said at the trial were repeated in Czechoslovakian memorandum to Israel and the Israeli diplomat A. Kubovy was declared persona non-grata. In response, December 19 the Israeli memorandum decisively rejected all slanderous accusations against Israel, Jews and Zionism and called such actions a new edition of "Protocols of Zionist sages."

On January 9, 1953, Prime-Minister of Israel Ben-Gurion said that, in his opinion, the Kremlin organized the trial and we should expect radical changes in the Soviet policy towards Jews and Israel. Ben-Gurion appeared a man of vision. Four days later, the Soviet Information Agency announced that a group of doctors (saboteurs) was arrested in Moscow. Most of them were Jews.

WHY WAS THE TRIAL NEEDED?

Slansky's case was a shock for Czechoslovakian Jews. They still remembered the crimes committed by Nazi fascists who killed about 200 thousand people. After the formation of Czechoslovakian Republic in 1918 it was the only country in Eastern Europe where anti-Semitism was not known. It was owing to a great extent to the first President of Czechoslovakia Tomash Masarik who said that one couldn't be a Christian and anti-Semite at the same time. It was in the early 1920's when he began sympathizing with Zionism because he understood that this movement would bring spiritual and moral revival of the Jewish people. Being in emigration during World War I, he got acquainted with Khaim Beitsman and other Jewish leaders. Masarik was the first head of the state who visited Palestine under English mandate where he expressed his sympathy to the emigrant movement and was present at the opening of the Jewish University in Jerusalem on April 1, 1925.

The successor of Masarik, President Eduard Benesh, most of Czechoslovakian intelligentsia, say, Karel Chapek and the highest ranks of Catholic Church held philo-Semitic positions. The son of Tomash Masarik, Yan Masarik, was an outstanding state leader. Being the Ambassador to London (1925-1938) he got acquainted with Beitsman. He ardently sympathized with Jews in their struggle to establish their own state, considering it to be one of the greatest political events of the era. Yan Masarik was an implacable fighter against anti-Semitism, especially during Nazism and after the war. He used to say that each anti-Semite is a potential killer whose place is in prison. Being a Czechoslovakian Minister of Foreign Affairs in exile (London, 1940-1943) and then in Prague (1945-1948), he promoted the transportation of refugees from Czechoslovakia to Palestine. On March 10, 1948, Yan Masarik was found dead. One of the versions was that Czechoslovakian secret service did this in close collaboration with Soviet colleagues.

When communists seized the power in Czechoslovakia (February, 1948) and the State of Israel was established (May, 1948), Czechoslovakian Jews began leaving the country in big numbers. However, in 1950 the emigration was forbidden. At that time the Jewish population in Czechoslovakia was 18 thousand people.

It is worth mentioning that a year before the trial (September 10, 1951) the Czechoslovakian Minister of Defense and Klement Gotwald's brother-in-law Aleksei Chepichka said to P.Krekoten, an adviser of the USSR Embassy in Prague, " the Jewish community in Czechoslovakia gives much trouble. There are many facts that it is closely connected with Zionists, Yugoslavian and American secret services".

After the trial the Jewish population was shocked and in panic. The arrests of Jews were in full swing. Many lawyers, physicians, professors and engineers were arrested. Jews were afraid of being deported to special camps. They thought it would be "a new Teresin" in which Nazis organized "a demonstration ghetto" during the war and from which many thousand people were sent to death camps in Poland.

The trial in Prague was a prelude to the future anti-Semitic "doctors' case" in Moscow. It was said in the accusatory statement that Rudolf Slansky" was undertaking active measures to shorten the life of President Klement Gotwald. For this purpose he chose " doctors from adversary environment and with the obscure past". It looks as if the "version" to shorten the life of Gotwald was developed beforehand, along with the "doctors' case" in Moscow. Doctors whom Slansky allegedly "chose" to treat Gotwald were well-known experts in Czechoslovakia. Many of them were Jews. Some of them were repressed.

The rehabilitation of those who were unlawfully arrested in 1952-53 came only in 1963. It was the Prague Spring of 1968 that made it possible to rehabilitate and radically revise the case of Slansky and other anti-Semitic trials. The Soviet leaders did their best not to let this go, not to let expose "their advisers", who participated in framing up the trial.