CZECHOSLOVAKIA: In Hitler's Steps

Ousted Czech Vice Premier Rudolf Slansky is still awaiting trial in Prague for crimes vaguely described as "activities against the state." Last week a clearer picture of the crimes, and of a growing Communist crusade, emerged from a speech made by Communist Premier Antonin Zapotocky. The speech, an appeal to national pride which might have stemmed from Adolf Hitler, was a bitter attack on "Jewish capitalism" and "interference from Jerusalem." Slansky, like several of the victims of Czechoslovakia's current party purge, is a Jew. Therefore, he is, in the favorite word the Commies use to denounce Jews, a "cosmopolite." The Communist organ Rude Pravo explained further: "Traitors of the type of Slansky . . . are indifferent to the past and present of the people among whom they live because they have nothing in common with them."