Rudolf Margolius
Czechoslovak politician
Died when: 39 years 94 days (471 months)Star Sign: Virgo
Rudolf Margolius (31 August 1913 – 3 December 1952) was a Czech lawyer and economist, Deputy Minister for Foreign Trade, Czechoslovakia (1949–1952), and a co-defendant in the Slánský trial in November 1952.
Imprisoned by the Nazis in the Lodz ghetto and several concentration camps, he survived the Holocaust and joined the Czechoslovak Communist Party, working as an economist.
The 1952 show trial involved the Communist Party General Secretary, Rudolf Slánský, and his thirteen co-defendants.They were arrested, unjustly accused, tried, and executed as traitors and western spies.
The trial was orchestrated by Soviet advisors, sent to Prague by Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, and assisted by Czechoslovak Secret Service interrogators and the members of Czechoslovak Communist Party Central Committee.
The destruction of the Czechoslovak Communist high-ranking party officials by their own colleagues has defied attempts to rationalize it, and our understanding of the affair remains superficial.
One of the people who were thrown into the alleged conspiracy was Dr Rudolf Margolius.The Slánský group consisted of many personalities.
On one side was Slánský, an extremist and one of those who helped to usher Czechoslovakia into the Stalinist era.
At the centre stood Vladimír Clementis (Minister of Foreign Affairs), a Communist and one of the conductors of the February 1948 communist coup, but also a man who had dared to criticize the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
On the other extreme of the scale was Margolius.Unlike others in the Slánský group, he joined the Communist Party late – in December 1945 – and acquired faith in socialism as a result of his experience in Adolf Hitler’s concentration camps and never held any Party appointments, he was purely an economist.
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