Fact Czech

Regarding “‘Punch to face’”: Czechs mark half-century since Soviet invasion” (August 22), after the brutal Soviet entry on August 21, 1968, demonstrations against that invasion took place in many cities of the free world. The largest demonstration was in Tel Aviv, where an Israeli trade union leader spoke who had spent several years in Czechoslovak prisons, having been sentenced in relation to the famous Slánský affair.

An Israeli politician noted, “We have lost the sympathy of the world’s public opinion, but we have conserved our independence. The Czechoslovaks have conserved the sympathy of the world’s public opinion, but they have lost their independence.”

No demonstration against the Soviet invasion occurred in any Muslim country. On the contrary, Yasser Arafat and other Arab leaders praised that invasion. They designated the democratization process, called “Prague Spring,” as a “Zionist conspiracy.”

The fact is that already in June 1967, at the Congress of the Union of the Czechoslovak writers, several members protested against the break of diplomatic relations with Israel following the Six Day War. Slovak author Ladislav Mnacko, a non-Jew, left Czechoslovakia for Israel to protest that decision.

After August 21, one Soviet leader declared: “The crawling counter-revolution in Czechoslovakia started with the rehabilitation of the work of Franz Kafka.” This rehabilitation was managed mainly by the professor Eduard Goldstucker, who was jailed in the 1950s after having been, from 1948 to 1951, the first Czechoslovak ambassador in Israel. As for Franz Kafka (18831924), that Jewish author of Prague had, even before the development of the modern totalitarian systems, understood how they function.

Our shared history explains why the Czech Republic may be Israel’s best friend of all 28 European Union nations. DR. MARTIN JANEČEK Ashkelon