There is a chance that Mordecai Oren Mapam member of the Israel Parliament who has been held in a Czech prison on charges of “espionage and treason” since the end of 1951, will be released within a few days according to word received here from Prague. The official reason for his release will be the tenth anniversary of the liberation of Prague from Nazi occupation.
Mr. Oren went to Prague from an East Berlin meeting of the Communist-dominated World Federation of Trade Unions to investigate the anti-Semitic purge then in progress there. It was this purge which resulted a year later in the hanging of Rudolf Slansky and eight other leading Jewish Communists. Mr. Oren himself was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment in 1953.
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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.