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Our detailed Cookie Policy can be found here By continuing to use this website you accept our use of cookies Mandatory cookies help make this website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the website Our website cannot function properly without these cookies Statistic cookies help us understand how visitors interact with this website for example seeing which pages are most popular This information is collected anonymously and helps us improve the site by making the most sought after information easy to find Marketing cookies are used to track visitors across websites allowing the display of ads that are relevant and engaging for the visitor Whilst we do not display any advertising on the WJC website allowing marketing cooking may allow other sites to see that you have visited our site NEW YORK - The World Jewish Congress stands with the Jewish community of Slovakia in condemning the desecration of 60 tombstones in a Jewish cemetery in the northern town of Namestovo “The Jews of Slovakia have in recent years been fortunately spared of overtly aggressive expressions of antisemitism but it has become sadly clear that in the climate of xenophobia and hatred spiraling across Europe every minority community is indeed a potential target for malicious attack,” the WJC said following the incident “We are incredibly grateful to the Christian NGO for taking it upon itself to invest in the maintenance and upkeep of the Jewish cemetery in the absence of an active Jewish community in the town of Namestovo and we sincerely hope that this example of interfaith support will continue to triumph over any and all manifestations of hatred.” “We thank the local police authorities for treating this attack with the severity that it deserves and hope that the perpetrators will be located and brought to justice at once,” the WJC said “This was an inexcusable and direct attack against the Jewish community which must be condemned at the highest levels must make it clear that such expressions of disrespect and hatred will not be tolerated.” Slovakia (AP) — Unknown vandals have damaged dozens of gravestones at a Jewish cemetery in northern Slovakia police and a group that worked to preserve the site said Tuesday The Remember group said 59 gravestones were knocked down and damaged at the cemetery in the town of Namestovo Slovakia's Jewish community called it “an unprecedented barbaric act.” The cemetery that dates to the second half of the 18th century had been badly neglected for decades before the organization started its renovation in 2010 Police said they were investigating the attack Remember chairman Karol Kurtulik said his group will persist with its effort to preserve the site The "Diablo Tour" event was to take place in northern Slovakia was to host a techno tour on the last day of April had to cancel Tuesday’s event scheduled at the local club Imperia-M at the last minute The club succumbed to the pressure of the local parish and believers who considered the event to be a public celebration of the devil we are only trying to bring techno culture to young people It was never our intention to offend any ethnic national or religious group," Redroom Label explained on social networks The rest of this article is premium content at Spectator.skSubscribe now for full access Immediate access to all locked articles (premium content) on Spectator.sk Special weekly news summary + an audio recording with a weekly news summary to listen to at your convenience (received on a weekly basis directly to your e-mail) PDF version of the latest issue of our newspaper Access to all premium content on Sme.sk and Korzar.sk Michael Pinto-Duschinsky I was struck on my recent visit by philosemitism 5 min readMy recent JC piece described the hope special enjoyment of my firstvisit to Slovakia and especially to a small town in the mountainous Tatra countryside on the route between Vienna and Krakow I was literally stepping into the valley of the shadow of death of Jewish communities which are no more or which have a minute fraction of their pre-Holocaust populations it made a deep impression to witness what I can only characterise as loving care for the Jewish past demonstrated by most of those non-Jews I was lucky enough to meet Now I feel obliged to present reservations so as to put into context the great kindnesses I received what now is called Namestovo bore the Hungarian name of Nameszto It was a developing place but still just a large village it apparently suffered from the then common tendency of the younger generation to desert rural regions for a variety of capital cities – Budapest My great grandfather was the Orthodox rabbi gave birth there to thirteen children of whom ten lived to adulthood his golden jubilee as rabbi reportedly was marked with notable civic honour Yet Rabbi Dov Ber Duschinsky’s and his rebbetzin’s lives were to be brutally affected just a year later In the chaos of defeat in the First World War a pogrom drove them and other Jews out of their homes Jews in what suddenly had become the former Austro-Hungarian ‘dual monarchy’ of Emperor Franz Joseph were to be the target of the antisemitic White Terror which brought Admiral Miklos Horthy to power as ‘Regent’ in Hungary while Nameszto had in the meantime become part of a new sovereign state named Czechoslovakia Namestovo was to be part of an independent ‘Slovakia’ in 1939-45 a reunified Czechoslovakia again from 1945-93 and since then part of an independent Slovakia once more nor one of my great uncles lived long enough to witness the Holocaust survived until January 1945 when Hungarian Arrow Cross Nazis murdered him and others working at the Maros Utca Jewish hospital in Buda just days before Soviet troops fully occupied the Hungarian capital A period of less than thirty years after Rabbi Dov Ber’s happy jubilee of 1917 produced such violence saw such extreme political changes that Jewish Nameszto was no more Nor did the Communist takeover during the late 1940s benefit the surviving remnant in a handful of Slovak places such as Bratislava and Kosice following Britain’s and France’s unwise betrayal of Czechoslovakia in the Munich Agreement of 1938 and after Hitler’s not unexpected further aggression against the rump Czechoslovak state in 1939 broke away to form an independent Slovakia It then functioned as a clerico-fascist enterprise led by mostly extreme anti-Semitic Catholic priests under the presidency of Father Jozef Tiso Slovakia had the dubious distinction of being one of only two Nazi client states [Croatia was the other] which paid Hitler to deport Jewish families Czechoslovakia again became a single state One of its courts tried Tiso and hanged him for treason At times the Slovak President had partly relaxed his calculated cruelty Slovakia was heavily dependent on Jewish doctors These essential workers were given special exemptions from the murder transports of 1942 The Pope and his representatives in Slovakia had made strong representations against Tiso’s persecution of the approximately 135,000 strong Slovak-Jewish community Hundreds of individual Slovaks secretly aided Jews This is seen in the lists of Slovak ‘Righteous Gentiles’ commemorated at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem As we approach the 80th anniversary of Hitler’s defeat and death the situation of Jews both in Slovakia and the rest of central and eastern Europe is both better and seemingly as bad as in western Europe I was told by an authoritative figure in Bratislava as another equally qualified personality pointed out this does not mean that below-the-surface anti-Semitism has disappeared A first cause of uncertainty is the continuing defence by some traditionalist Slovak Catholic clerics and others of the reputation of Father Jozef Tiso Slovakia’s most senior perpetrator during the Second World War Tiso was responsible for extreme anti-Jewish laws for widespread Jewish impoverishment followed by expulsion of most of the country’s Jews to Nazi death camps Yet there has emerged a whole literature of excuses for him One notable act of his rehabilitation was the discovery of the secret grave where Tiso had been buried in Bratislava following his trial and execution in 1947 A DNA test showed that the cadaver in the grave was his He was then reburied in a place of greater honour and in keeping with Canon Law in the Cathedral in the town of Nitra The man who arguably is Slovakia’s most prominent Holocaust historian has found himself having to defend his work from the criticism that his historical judgement of Tiso has been warped and because I met enough people to be able to protect individuals from being damaged as likely sources I heard another figure criticise on condition of anonymity school texts on the Holocaust Coverage of the era is compulsory in Slovak schools but a secondary school history significantly diverts blame from the ‘moderate’ President Third I heard references to examples of a ‘slightly beneath the surface’ acceptance of traditional anti-Jewish propositions Though the liberal billionaire philanthropist George Soros is of Hungarian not Slovak origin it was suggested to me that his name crops up in Slovakian political discourse as the age-old prototype of the powerful it is worth consulting some of the comparative international ratings of aspects of internal politics and civil rights produced annually by agencies such as the New York based Freedom House as well as survey analysis by the Bratislava-based DEKK Institute and CulturePulse the 2024 reports of Freedom House places Slovakia only slightly behind the Czech Republic and far ahead of its other neighbours Hungary Controversies in Hungary and Poland about ‘memory politics’ of the Holocaust have been more serious than those in Slovakia several recent events have raised concern within Slovakia too They include the attempted assassination of Prime Minister Fico in May 2024 an investigative reporter who was working on corruption and tax fraud cases and the election as a regional governor in 2013 of a politician with reportedly extreme neo-Nazi and despite the country’s increasing economic prosperity its membership of the EU and its hosting of NATO facilities there are signs in a recent survey of widespread nostalgia for the greater certainties of the Communist rule which Slovakia sacrificed in the late 1980s A considerably higher minority within Slovakia than even in Hungary rates itself basically as belonging to Putin’s east of Europe anti-British) rhetoric has seeped into parts of Slovakian political life is a leftover from both Nazi and Communist periods of mistrust in public institutions in general by a surprising and highly gratifying degree of philo-Semitism A heartening number of groups in Slovakia have a strong sense of responsibility to preserve and celebrate the memory of the country’s lost Jewish life It is not open to any of us to bring back the tens of thousands of brutally murdered Jews Nor is it realistic to turn a blind eye to surviving antisemitism in the lands now almost stripped of their former treasured Jewish communities In association with younger generations of Slovaks and of other Central and Eastern Europeans we must build our friendships with our sympathisers among them Slovakia Boat is the first thing seen by visitors to Námestovo Once a popular bar in a boat-turned-land dwelling establishment has become a dilapidated ruin welcoming visitors to the town of Námestovo Its owner is not interested in repairing the bar the ship called Roháče used to sail in nearby Orava reservoir but was probably decommissioned due to poor technical condition it was sold to a private individual who turned the ship into a restaurant and later a bar Some of the menu items its patrons could have ordered are still visibly written on the hull According to some residents of Námestovo the ship and its basement is in ruin and falling apart The only people the ship now attracts are the homeless and youth who want to hide inside attempts have been made to contact the owner When My Orava newspaper tried to contact him as well he dropped the call after the first question but that did not amount to anything as well but at this moment we don't want to specify them in order not to spoil something our goal is to make the entrance to the town more cultural," the town hall says According to the local construction office it is not easy to remove structures like this It could only be done if a structural engineer assesses that a structure is life-threatening Since the boat is legally built and approved everything rests on the owner's approval Author: Dorota Mikulášová O jeho obnovu sa už dlhodobo usiluje občianske združenie Pamätaj ktorého obsah je chránený autorským zákonom fotografií a záznamov zo zdrojov TASR je bez predchádzajúceho písomného súhlasu TASR porušením autorského zákona © 2023 The Associated Press (AP) - všetky práva vyhradené Vandalizmus je na tomto pietnom mieste bežný skoro som spadol z nôh,“ povedal Karol Kurtulík ktorý má na starosti židovský cintorín na brehu Oravskej priehrady a koordináciu správy majetku Na zemi ležalo takmer 60 poškodených pomníkov ktoré predtým desaťročia stáli nad hrobmi Židov bývajúcich nielen v Námestove Podľa odhadu tam bolo pochovaných približne tritisíc ľudí z pomníkov ostalo torzo,“ povedal Kurtulík Darina Vlčáková prestúpila od kvalitnejšej federácie Vďaka zdieľanému paušálu teraz platia za mobil menej až o tretinu IVAN Uhliarik from Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) will serve as Health Minister in the government 1968 in Námestovo and studied at the medical school of Charles University in Prague He began working at the hospital in Skalica in 1993 1968 in Námestovo and studied at the medical school of Charles University in Prague From 1996 to 2003 Uhliarik served as the marketing manager of Pfizer pharmaceutical company and from 2003 to 2005 he was the general director of the Ozone Laboratories for the Czech Republic and Slovakia In 2006 Uhliarik joined KDH and since 2008 he worked as the party’s expert on health care In 2009 he was elected the party’s deputy chairman for health care and consumer protection Uhliarik was elected MP in the 2010 election but has left the post to serve as health minister Ivan Uhliarik is married with five children