The Czechoslovak Communist Party has stepped up its attacks on the Jewish religion after a period in which it kept a low profile on Jewish matters, says the International Council of Jews from Czechoslovakia.
It was commenting on an article in Tribuna, the party’s ideological weekly, which said, among other things, that “the Jewish faith, especially Torah and Talmud, sanctified the exploitation of man by man. Its ideal of man … is the humble slave deprived of all human dignity.”
The Council, which reproduces these quotations in its April newsletter, also quotes highlights of a demographic study of Czechoslovak Jewry carried out in London. It shows that in 1981, the approximately 5,000 members of Jewish congregations in Czechoslovakia resided in almost 200 localities: 101 in Bohemia, 52 in Moravia and 45 in Slovakia.
In Prague, the newsletter adds, Rudolf Gibian and Zdenek Taussig have been elected chairman and secretary, respectively of the Jewish community. It also reports that the community is negotiating with the authorities about repairing the roof of Prague’s ancient Jewish Town Hall.
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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.
