Home
There’s a new documentary film making the rounds on Czechoslovakia’s tragic 1952 communist show trial that led to 11 executions, including the deaths of some of the country’s then-highest ranking communist leaders. The film, “Le Procès, Prague 1952,” directed by French filmmaker Ruth Zylberman, incorporates original footage and audio from the trial that were thought to have been lost forever but were discovered by chance in 2018 at a warehouse outside of Prague. (The recovered footage, which is mind-blowing, is available for public viewing at the Czech national archives website by clicking this link).
I had the opportunity to see the film this past week and it’s gripping. By incorporating original trial footage as well as interviews with family members of three of the defendants, the film exposes the cruelty and artificiality of the process more effectively than either Costa-Gavras’s fictional treatment of the same trial, “The Confession” (starring Yves Montand and Simone Signoret, no less), or even Arthur Koestler’s very good book on the Moscow show trials, “Darkness at Noon,” could do.
For this story, I’ll write about the trial, what I think makes the film so special, and more in detail about one of the defendants (victims) in the process, Rudolf Margolius. And there’s a literary twist to this tale that I never saw coming. I’ll save that for later in the story, but it’s left me shaking my head in disbelief. In Central Europe, every piece of ground tells a story, and you’re never far removed from history (particularly the tragic events of the 20th century). The ironies can overlay in ways that are impossible to untangle.