Nove Veseli, South Moravia, June 24 (CTK) – President Milos Zeman will give 100,000 crowns to anybody who finds the controversial article Hitler is a Gentleman written by late Czech journalist Ferdinand Peroutka, he told during his visit to the Vysocina Region yesterday.
The dispute over Peroutka started with Zeman’s speech at a Prague conference on the Holocaust in January, where he mentioned intellectuals’ failures in face of a crisis such as the rise of Nazism, quoting the alleged article.
But experts say Peroutka never wrote such an article and called on Zeman to either prove his statement or publicly apologise. Peroutka’s granddaughter has filed a lawsuit against Zeman over his words.
Zeman keeps saying that he read this article by Peroutka but that he cannot remember where. Zeman’s assistant has been searching for the article, but has not found it. Zeman said previously he would offer a reward if his assistant failed in his search.
Zeman presented quotations about the Nazis from other Peroutka’s articles which seemed controversial to him.
Peroutka (1895-1978) was a prominent democratic journalist during the interwar period. He was imprisoned by the Nazi regime in 1939-1945. He left the country after the 1948 communist coup and later worked for Radio Free Europe. He died in the United States.
($1=24.266 crowns)
kva/dr
