Caught up in the rapid bid for freedom in Czechoslovakia, a leader of the Jewish community who was criticized for supporting the Communist regime has resigned his post.
Bohumil Heller, who was president of the Council of Jewish Religious Communities in Bohemia and Moravia, resigned his position Monday, partially in response to a petition circulated that day among the Jewish Community in Prague.
However, the secretary of the entire Council of Jewish Religious communities of Czechoslovakia, who was also asked to step down, did not do so.
Frantisek Kraus was re-elected to be acting secretary of the Jewish community until special elections are held in April, the World Jewish Congress reported.
Also, Arnost Neufeld was elected acting vice president. This leadership will continue until the special elections, when Heller’s position will be filled.
The moves were announced Wednesday at a special two-and-a-half-hour session of the Jewish community’s plenary council, which is the leadership of the Czech Jewish community.
The council normally meets only twice a year. Wednesday’s meeting was called to address the petition, drawn up at a time of a popular revolt for freedom in Czechoslovakia.
There will be a special meeting of the plenary council on Sunday with the youth of the Jewish community, said Elan Steinberg, WJC executive director.
VISITED TWO WEEKS AGO
The WJC visited that country two weeks ago and met with leaders of both the Jewish community and the Communist government, some of whom are now no longer in power.
“What you see in the Czech Jewish community is a mirror of what is happening in the general Czech population,” said Steinberg.
The changes come as the Communist Party is voluntarily relinquishing its 41-year monopoly on power in the country and allowing non-Communist ministers into a new Cabinet, which is to be named Sunday.
Steinberg said Heller, an elderly man, resigned in part because of poor health. He made his resignation by phone.
Kraus and Victor Feuerlicht, the cantor at the Altneuschul and president of the Prague Jewish community, will travel to Heller’s home, about 75 miles from Prague, “to accept Heller’s resignation and present him with a resolution of appreciation of his service to the Jewish community,” Steinberg said.
Kraus told the WJC that the group that requested his resignation did not provide a majority of necessary signatures. He was re-elected as provisional secretary by 19 of the 20 council members present.
Kraus said that the members of the council praised him for his service in the Hagana and subsequent imprisonment.
Kraus went to Palestine after World War II and fought in the War of Independence. In the 1950s, after he returned to Czechoslovakia, he was arrested for his Zionist activities and spent about seven years in prison.
Yet Kraus and Heller, since taking office in 1985, issued statements sharply critical of the Israeli government.
In May, a group of 25 young Jews sent a letter to Kraus, complaining that the community leadership was too subservient to the Communist regime.
They warned that Jewish life in Czechoslovakia was “in danger of extinction.”
On Wednesday, Rabbi Arthur Schneier of New York, who visited Czechoslovakia in September as president of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “I was very impressed with the youths’ concern for Jewish education, for their children and youth in general.”
Schneier said the youth, “thirsting for Jewish books,” presented him with a long request list of Jewish and Hebrew books not available in the country.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
