The anti-Jewish atmosphere which dominates the Prague “purge” trial continued today unabated when Gen. Karl Svab, former chief of the secret police in Communist Czechoslovakia, who is one of the 14 defendants, told the court that he “protected a Jewish nationalist” plot to overthrow the Communist Government. His testimony was broadcast over the Prague radio.
Gen. Svab’s testimony followed the testimony yesterday of Rudolf Margolius, Even Loebl and Otto Fischl, former Deputy Ministers of Trade, export and finance, who “confessed” that they had committed the following financial crimes against Czechoslovakia:
1. In 1950, they made a trade agreement with Israel whereby Israel in effect did not have to pay for 17 percent of the goods exported by Czechoslovakia. 2. They recently repaid more than half of a $400,000,000 loan made in 1938 by Great Britain to Czechoslovakia and arranged that a large part of the repaid funds should be used to support Jews and others who emigrated from Czechoslovakia.
3. They paid compensation amounting to millions of Czech crowns for former Jewish-owned property seized or nationalized since 1938. 4. They planned to tie Czechoslovakia’s light machine industry financially to the United States through a plan whereby Zionist organizations in the United States would be encouraged to by Czech goods under the slogan “Buy Czech Goods and You Help Israel.”
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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.
