Czech Jewish Leader Views Millennium Cancellation As Sign of Pressure

A Czech Jewish leader here expressed belief today that the Jewish community in Czechoslovakia was being subjected to “increasing outside pressure” and seemed “well on its way” to the “isolation” experienced by Jewish communities in other countries in the Soviet orbit.

Karl Baum, chairman of the Council of Jews from Czechoslovakia, commented on the news reaching here yesterday that celebrations marking the 1,000th anniversary of Jewish settlement in Czechoslovakia have been cancelled. The celebrations were to have been held in Prague July 9-14. Mr. Baum said that a Czech Jewish millennium exhibition which his Council had planned to hold in Britain under an arrangement with the Jewish State Museum in Prague will have to be cancelled. So will a special supplement that was to have been published in the London Jewish Chronicle June 6.

The millennium celebrations, originally scheduled to take place in the summer of 1968, were cancelled when the Czech Government withdrew its sponsorship in the aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. It was subsequently re-scheduled for the summer of 1969, apparently with Government sanction. The decision to cancel it again was reportedly taken at a meeting of Jewish community leaders in Prague April 20.

Mr. Baum said that “Jews of Czechoslovak origin in the Western world will be dismayed and disappointed at this decision which deprives them of an opportunity to identify themselves with this unique occasion and to revisit the Jewish community of Czechoslovakia and the country of their birth.” He said that whether the decision was prompted by the Czechoslovak Government of its own accord or under Soviet pressure, “it is clear that neither cultural nor economic relations can be kept apart from the over-all pattern of the state controlled system.”