The International Council of Jews from Czechoslovakia today denounced as a “contemptible invention” a recent series of broadcasts by Prague radio alleging Jewish collaboration with Nazis in occupied Czechoslovakia during World War II. A statement by the Council said it would be “beneath contempt” to respond to such allegations except that they “will once more stir up anti-Semitic sentiments in the guise of anti-Zionism.”
The Prague broadcasts claimed that Jews in the Czech capital collaborated with the Nazis “in organizing the emigration of Zionist elite and persons in whom both parties were interested” to Palestine during the war. They claimed that the Nazis used this method to infiltrate their agents into Palestine, and when British intelligence got wind of the ruse, Britain “took action by sinking the ships in which thousands of innocent Jewish refugees perished together with the Nazi agents.” A spokesman for the Council urged the British Foreign and Commonwealth office to “repudiate this slander.”
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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.