Czechoslovakia, however, where the biggest show trial of them all was to be staged in Prague in November 1952. A major Czech show trial had been planned from 1950, in the immediate wake of the Rajk and Kostov purges. But by the time it was finally mounted, the emphasis had shifted. Tito was still the enemy and accusations of espionage for the West still figured prominently in the indictments. But of the fourteen defendants at the ‘Trial of the Leadership of the Anti-State Conspiracy Centre’, eleven were Jews. On the very first page of the charge sheet it was made abundantly clear that this was
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