Four prominent Czechoslovak Zionists who were imprisoned in Prague in 1951 on charges of conspiring against the State, have been released from confinement, it was reported here today. Five others, convicted along with Mordechai Oren, Israeli Journalist, in the same “conspiracy” are still imprisoned.
The ten men and women were arrested in 1951 during the period of intense anti-Zionist. anti-Jewish Communist activity which culminated in the Moscow Doctors’ Trials in the Soviet Union and the trial and execution of Josef Slansky, Communist Party boss in Czechoslovakia.
Oren served in Czechoslovak prisons from 1951-56 when he was finally released. He said today, on his return from a visit to Europe, that he had learned that four of the other defendants had been released recently.
Oren named the four as Ernst Verna, a leader in Czechoslovakia of the Hashomer Hatzair, a Zionist group; Mme, M. Brzeinitzova, an official of the Palestine Office in Bratislava; Mordechai Stern, leader of the Jewish National Fund and of the Mizrachi Workers Party, and Adolf Reich, an official of the Hebrew education organization.
Oren said that he had raised the fate of the nine people who were his fellow-prisoners during discussion with European socialist leaders. He expressed belief that the release of the four now might have been the result of their intervention. He said he would continue efforts to secure the release of the remaining five prisoners.
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