Czech President Says Prague Trial Was Not Anti-jewish

Klement Gottwald, President of Czechoslovakia, last night denied that the recent Prague trial and execution of Jewish Communist Party officials on charges of treason and espionage was an anti-Semitic act, according to a broadcast by the Prague radio.

Addressing the opening session of a two-day conference of the Czechoslovak Communist Party in Prague, President Gottwald said that because a man was a Jew did not make him a Zionist. He asserted that anti-Semitism was an offshoot of barbaric racialism, but that anti-Zionism was a defense against United States espionage.”

The President also blamed most of Czechoslovakia’s economic, ills on the “Slansky gang,” the members of which were convicted at the Prague trial. He attacked Israel and Zionism and said they were “ruled by American Imperialists.”