Jihlava, South Moravia, Oct 20 (CTK) – The District Court in Jihlava upheld a one-year sentence with a two-year probation for Adam B. Bartos, National Democracy chairman, for an anti-Jew text and acquitted former party deputy head Ladislav Zemanek on Thursday.
The verdict is not yet valid since the defence lawyer did not rule out filing an appeal.
The two men were sentenced to 12 months in prison with a probation of two years in March. They appealed the verdict.
Brno assembly town councillor Michal Dolezel filed a complaint against the two men for the sentence reading “the Jewish question has not been resolved in a satisfactory manner yet,” which they left at the grave of Anezka Hruzova, a young Christian woman murdered in Polna, south Moravia, in 1899.
Local Jew Leopold Hilsner was found guilty of the murder and sentenced to death. The punishment was later commuted to life imprisonment. Speculations about a ritual murder stirred up a wave of anti-Semitism in the country. Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, who later became Czechoslovak president, joined the fight against the anti-Semitism wave. Hilsner was only pardoned in 1918.
