Trials which were hushed up: The Israeli Embassy in Prague and the distibution of the income support in 1953-1957
Abstract
The study deals with the activities of the Israeli Embassy in Czechoslovakia from 1953 to 1957. Further on it examines the persecution of a part of Jewish inhabitants in the Czechoslovak Republic.
The change of the focus in the Czechoslovak foreign policy with relation to the State of Israel at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s had a significant effect on the lives of the Jewish minority in the Czechoslovakia itself. The growing surge of anti-Semitism did not end with the show trials with the so called conspirational centre of Rudolf Slánský in 1952.
The worsening living conditions of the Jews lead the Israeli Embassy in Prague to a secret distribution of the income support. At the same time an employee of the Israeli Embassy Jacob Gazit, who supervised the income support, participated in the smuggling of shortage luxurious goods, watches in particular.
He was selling these valuables at the black market using Jewish middlemen. Some of these wholesalers participated in the distribution of the income support as well, together with Gazit.
The State Security uncovered the black market network and while investigating the traffickers they obtained information about the group distributing the income support as well. In a short number of years they broke the networks up, they arrested and consequently sentenced their members.
The trials show a characteristic way in which the regime dealt with the Jewish minority. Most of the convicted in the trials described in this study saw themselves as Jews and they really participated in criminal activities.
Because of this fact the described trials differ from the preceding anti-Semitic trials, where the victims did not always see themselves as Jews and did not participate in any real criminal activity.