By Peter Casper

This weeks supplement of the Prague Post invites people to the amazing world of human kind's oldest flying machine. Yes indeed, "The Moon's a Balloon" was the title of the memoirs of British actor David Niven, but this week's Prague Post confirms that even an average old fashioned balloon is still.... a balloon. As the weekly writes: Something peculiar happens to grown men and women in the presence of propane, big straw baskets and large volumes of bright nylon fabric. Like what, I hear you hear you ask. Well, it's like written in Prague Post's supplement: They develop strange habits - like waking up at four a.m. n weekends in order to play with expensive toys that are generally known as balloons. And for every habit there is a festival. The balloons? Well, they're no exception. The Open Skies Balloon Festival in Hradec Kralove is the greatest national gathering of hot air balloonist of them all. It is of course important to check the power of the wind and watch out for showers, but some balloonist seem to care very little about risky conditions. Ottmar Muller from Germany says that some are crazy enough to fly regardless of the rain and wind. Muller takes his lighter-than-air flying machine all across Europe. It's fun and you meet a lot of people, but as Muller told the prague post correspondent, it also costs a lot of money. Like up to 30,000 US dollars, equal to a million Czech Crowns. The weekly's reporter took off in a balloon captained by Jan Smrcka. When they reached the hight of 425 mts, some 1,400 feet, they encountered another balloon - one that was designed as a monumental white onion. The skies are full of unusual flying objects on days like that, on the days when the balloons gather to fill the air. Jan Smrcka makes around 120 flights a year. And he also explained why: It's important for the balloon to be up as much as possible. It keeps the sponsors happy, claims the proud balloon owner. Well, who are we to disagree. After all, sponsorship is what makes the ballooning world go round. Here's Jan Smrcka again: The balloon is a mobile billboard,it's very memorable, which makes it a good advertising tool. And balloons only fly when the weather is nice, so you can associate the advertised product with good weather. Well, why not, it sounds like a good idea and it was also a good idea for this week's Prague Post to remind its readers that the plane is not the only thing flying around. There's more to the flying objects than meets the eye and Prague Post is recently spreading this information to all its readers.

This week's Respekt looks back at one very special film festival organized by those who want to be of benefit to political refugees. It was officially "The Betrayed Film" and it featured two infamous antisemitic pictures, made in Nazi Germany during World War II. Both pictures were to launch a wave of anti-Jewish feelings and initiate pogroms all over Germany. Directed by Fritz Hippler in 1939, The Eternal Jew was made under the direct supervision of Adolf Hitler. In this film, the Nazi propaganda showed the worst of racial hatred and pathological hate that was to justify the extermination of the Jews. But as Jiri Penas writes in his article for this week's Respekt, the film was a fiasco. In a matter of months, this really disgusting film was only seen by the most loyal of Nazi party members as a majority of the audience left the cinemas in terror and disgust. As Respekt concludes, one man alone inside the Third Reich knew that this was no way to make propaganda. The man was Joseph Goebbels and he was one of the very few intellectuals among top Nazi officials. As the German Minister of Propaganda and a film fan, Goebbels knew well that it takes more than brutal scenes to get viewers interested. He preferred a good film with a plot and popular actors to be the spearhead of his propaganda machine. As Jiri Penas writes in his article, Goebbles found the ideal subject in the story of the tragic fate of Josef Suss Oppenheimer. The film "Jew Suss" told the story of the rise and fall of a rich Jewish banker.

Born in 1692, Oppenheimer was a rich Jew who loaned money to the Duke of Wurttemberg in eighteenth century Germany. The hungry-for-money duke invites the Jew to his court and grants him the right to collect taxes, which was about the best way to earn the hate of common people some three centuries ago. And so, when the Duke dies of a stroke, the Jewish banker is blamed, charged and sentenced to death. Oppenheimer was executed in 1737 and all Jews were expelled from Wurttemberg. This was the right story for the Nazi propaganda machine. Goebbels was however expecting too much from the film and that's why he needed a truly professional director for the job. He found his man in the personality of Veit Harlan, who was then one of the most popular German directors. It seems that Harlan was trying to avoid the assignment, but there was no way out of it. It is the ultimate irony that Harlan's first wife was Jewish and he was the one asked to make the film that was fully contaminated with antisemitism. There was very little art in the production. The camera was pretty good, and so were some of the crowd scenes. Actor Ferdinand Marian who played Jew Suss was convincing despite using his talent in the wrong place. He served the forces of evil and followed the example of many a Nazi leader at the end of the war, when he committed suicide. Harlan also worshipped the dark side of life when he made more films for Goebbles and his Propaganda Ministry. The picture "The Golden Prague" took place in the ancient Czech capital and the Jew was replaced by another potential enemy of the Third Reich - the Czech. The interesting study of pictures that were to served political purposes in this week's Respekt ends with a letter written in 1948. Director Veit Harlan was just about to stand trial for his wartime work and he asked help from German rabbi Joachim Prinz. The rabbi replied: "Actors, directors, films, why all of the arts is nothing face to face to millions of Jews who were murdered." A line reminding the terrors of holocaust ends the article in this week's Respekt and I can only add that this is also all from the weeklies.