Now watch a clip of testimony of Edgar Semmel.
The arrests in the spring of 1957 took place throughout the republic and branched out into many smaller trials organized by region. The average age of those arrested was sixty years, one of those detained died in prison. The communist rulers of Czechoslovakia were most infuriated by the fact that, in addition to pensioners, social assistance was also directed to the families of arrested “Zionists”, often expelled from their original residences to completely unsuitable conditions.
The preserved fragments of the StB materials provide an insight into the scope and gradual branching of various “Zionist conspiracies”, to which the StB gave poetic code names: the Golden Goose operation, the Dana operation, the Orient operation. With each wave of arrested “Zionists” came new social assistance to their families, but also intensive surveillance of all those involved, provocations and, unfortunately, also new informants for the secret police.