Eleven of the fourteen accused were sentenced to death and executed, three were condemned to life imprisonment. Addressing the National Conference of the Czechoslovak Communist Party a month later, Gottwald had this to say about his former comrades: ‘Normally bankers, industrialists, former kulaks don’t get into our Party. But if they were of Jewish origin and Zionist orientation, little attention among us was paid to their class origins. This state of affairs arose from our repulsion at anti-Semitism and our respect for the suffering of the Jews.’
