Learning about Slovakia's past

By B.C. | BRATISLAVA

PRESSURED by Nazi Germany, Slovakia seceded from Czechoslovakia in March 1939. A puppet government was formed and led by Father Jozef Tiso (pictured on the right shaking hands with Hitler), a Roman Catholic priest. This was the darkest period of Slovakia's recent history. Yet a new study shows that few Slovaks know much about it.

Just under 60% of survey respondents named Father Tiso when asked to name an official who worked with the collaborationist government. Hardly anyone could name another official and about one-third of those surveyed said they could not name a single state official from that era. Younger people knew much less. "Particularly striking is the level of ignorance and lack of information in the youngest age group," said Monika Vrzgulováof the Holocaust Documentation Centre, which organises education programs. She spoke during the mid-March unveiling of this privately-financed study, staged in a palace that served as the German embassy between 1939 and 1945.

Father Tiso was hanged for treason in 1947. His body was buried in secret so as to not attract mourners. Still, his place in history has remained contentious as fringe elements have revived his name as a symbol of Slovak nationalist pride and sought to cast him as man who had little choice but to cooperate with Nazi Germany. Asked what she recalled of the image presented of Father Tiso during her school education, Natália Semianová, a 19-year old from the western Slovak town of Šaštín-Stráže said: "I was confused. We didn't go deep into it."

Among the survey’s bright spots were signs that Tiso-apologism is on the decline. The number of people who perceive Father Tiso positively is nearly half what it was 20 years ago, with just 14% of respondents saying they viewed him in a good light. Results were less rosy among those aged 17-24. Six in ten were unable to utter even Father Tiso when asked to name a collaborationist official. Three-quarters answered "I don't know" when asked to define the word "Aryanisation”. Few were able to give any estimate of how many Jews had lived in Slovakia before the war. There was no sign that youth doubted the occurrence of the Holocaust, they just had not learned much about it.

Slovakia was home to labour camps at Nováky, Sereď and Vyhne, which were also used as transit points for deporting Jews and Roma to extermination camps, like Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland. Temporary camps also existed at one time or another in Žilina, Poprad and the capital’s Patrónka district. About 70,000 Slovak Jews were deported during the war, and an estimated 60,000 of them perished. Slovakia has only five million residents even today.

Historical research on the Vyhne camp in particular is scarce and the picture is complicated by the so-called Vienna Award of 1938, a Nazi-brokered deal that gave a third of Slovakia's territory back to Hungary, its former ruler. In the postwar years both Slovakia and Hungary have avoided responsibility for what happened on that territory, which includes Slovakia's second largest city, Košice.

An admittedly unscientific survey of students at Comenius University in Bratislava by our correspondent found that most had some knowledge of this unfortunate chapter of Slovak history. “We are educated enough to know that it was not made up,” said Miroslava Germanová, 23, of Trebišov, who noted that her parents had taken her to the Terezín concentration in the Czech Republic so that “we saw it with our own eyes. Still there was a notable concern that racism and racists were increasingly common among their contemporaries. "I can call some of them my friends," said Roman Cuprik, 22, a native of Košice. "When we meet we aren't discussing these topics because it can spark a bad mood. What worries me is that racism is more sophisticated, that it is hiding behind certain words."

Ms Semianová contends that racism is a problem within her generation, a group of people only now reaching an age where they will enter the work force. Eventually, they will become political leaders of the country. "I hadn't thought about it, but that is kind of terrifying," she said.