"Anti-Zionism" as Latent and Overt Anti-Semitism during the Communist Regime

Abstract

The Stalinist anti-Semitism of the early 1950s, which was imported to Czechoslovakia from the Soviet Union, culminated in trial of and media campaign against a "Zionist" conspiracy allegedly led by Rudolf Slánský. In contrast, one cannot find such direct anti-Jewish attacks in literature.

At the time, anti-Semitism was expressed by the absence and marginalization of Jewishness, for example, when Nazi concentration camps were involved. The campaign against "Zionism" even affected German-writing Communist authors living in Czechoslovakia who had Jewish roots, F.

C. Weiskopf and Louis Furnberg.

Keywords

• Stalinist anti-Semitism
• Slánský Trial
• literature