The Soviet construction of the Jewish enemy, imposed after 1949 on all colonies of the Russian Empire, including Czechoslovakia, supplemented the spectrum of constructions of the regime's enemies - kulaks, Vatican agents, fascists, Titoists, Banderaists and Trotskyists - with Zionists. After 1952, these Zionists even replaced Vatican agents in the role of "the most loyal minions of imperialism."
In the Soviet concept, definition of Zionism equated Hitler's definition of Jews; anyone who had Jewish ancestors or relatives, or who had been in contact with Jews, could be labeled a Zionist. After the failure of the plan to create the state of Israel as an outpost of communist expansion in the Middle East, there was also a need to explain the key Soviet support for the establishment of Israel in propaganda terms, so that the Arabs could be approached this time.
One did not have to go far for inspiration. Bolshevik ideologues used the basic text of modern anti-Jewish hatred, with which Russia enriched the world at the end of the nineteenth century. A pamphlet called "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" formulated a conspiracy theory about a Jewish world government, established in the old Jewish cemetery in Prague. The mysterious Zionists were said to have created the concept of citizenship and human rights in order to destroy the good old world of serfdom and autocracy. And so the support for Israel, in fact directed from Moscow, was labeled as another part of the eternal Jewish conspiracy - with its center in Prague.
Watch an excerpt from Eduard Goldstücker's testimony, in which he explains a lot:
Brief biography of the witness
Eduard Goldstücker was born in 1913 in the village of Podbiel in eastern Slovakia. He studied German and German literature at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, where he joined the communist movement in the early 1930s.
After the German occupation, he fled the country and worked for the Czechoslovak government in exile in London, and continued to engage in communist politics after liberation. In 1948, he was appointed Czechoslovak ambassador to Israel, was arrested in December 1951, and was sentenced to life imprisonment in May 1953. He spent two and a half years in prison, was rehabilitated in 1955, and became a professor of the history of German literature at the Faculty of Arts, University of Prague. After the Soviet occupation in 1968, he had to flee the country for the second time, settling again in England. He returned to Prague in 1990, died in the fall of 2000.
The interview was recorded on February 26, 1996 in Prague.