Storyline

The documentary film "A Trial in Prague" is about the Slansky trials which took place in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1952. During the last five years of Stalin's rule, as Israel turned more and more to the West, the Communist Party became virulently anti-Semitic. Furthermore, Stalin needed to demonstrate to the rest of Eastern Europe that he would not tolerate another Yugoslavia, where Tito had succeeded in achieving a measure of autonomy. So Stalin, in his obsession for total power, created an "enemy within" and orchestrated the infamous show trials, The Slansky trials, in Prague. Thirteen high-ranking Czech Communists, including the powerful Rudolph Slansky, who was the party's general secretary, were arrested on trumped up charges and tortured, physically and mentally, until they confessed to high treason and espionage. They were forced to memorize their testimony for the eight-day trial, which had been carefully scripted by Stalin's apparatchiks. Eleven of the accused were Jews whose loyalty to the Communist Party was sincere and intense. They had lived through the Holocaust and hoped that Communism would provide solutions to post-World War II social, economic and political problems. But their loyalty to the Communist Party stood them in no good stead. Eleven of the accused were hung; the other three were sent to hard labor camps and were released only when Stalin died.