In 1952, 14 leading Communists, including Rudolf Slánský, the second most powerful man in the country, were tried on charges of high treason and espionage.
Among the people who appear in the film are Lise London, whose late husband Artur London was one of the defendants and wrote about the trial in a widely published memoir "The Confession;" Eduard Goldstucker, a Kafka scholar and the first Czech ambassador to Israel who was jailed and forced to testify at the trial; and Jan Kavan, the former Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs, whose father, also a trial witness, died shortly after his release from prison.
What led these men to their passionate belief in Communism and why did they publicly confess to crimes they did not commit?
The film explores the questions, as well as the role of Moscow, the motives for the trial and its anti-Semitic thrust.
"Sensitive, intelligent & moving … shows the human face of both communism and its victims" - New York Times [1] "Harrowing and enlightening, a tale that even Kafka would find hard to imagine" (Boston Phoenix).
[3] “The film is as compelling for these painful details as for the tough-minded analysis that ties them together.” ( The Village Voice)[4] “Powerful, important and refreshingly straightforward documentary.” (New York Post) [5] Slánská, Josefa (1969).