Some Czech Jewish leaders have been disturbed about reports that the Communist- era secret police here compiled a list of about 10,000 members of the Jewish community, according to a report in the London Jewish Chronicle.
The secret police, known as the StB, created the list under the guise of “Operation Spider,” which started in the 1970s and grew in the 1980s.
But for others, the new reports came as no surprise.
“The StB had a special department to deal with Zionism and the Jewish community,” Jiri Danicek of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Prague was quoted as saying by the Jewish Chronicle.
“Every Jew was under suspicion, at the very least because he belonged to an international community and his natural interest were deemed not to correspond with those of the socialist state,” he added.
Tomas Hornof, a spokesman for the Czech Office for the Documentation and Investigation of Communist Crimes, said his organization would be launching an investigation to learn why the files were kept.
“One theory is that anti-Zionist organizations could have consulted the files. At the time they were compiled, [the people on file] would have been in a certain amount of danger,” Hornof said.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
