Why Slovakia?

Why Slovakia?
 

 It has been called the Vatican’s “battle for the soul of Europe” [1]: the plan to re-evangelise a secular continent from the east. In this campaign concordats play a major role. But why, among all the new EU members, was Slovakia the country chosen for the most far-reaching concordat to date?

Two decades after the end to Communism in Czechoslovakia, many Slovak democrats have begun to wonder if their country is still being steered from abroad – not from Moscow, as before – but from the Vatican.

It was just a few months after the “Velvet Revolution”, the bloodless liberation from Communism, that Pope John Paul II made his first trip to Czechoslovakia. He visited Prague, the capital of the Czech part of the federation and then he flew on to Bratislava, the capital of the Slovak part. There the Pope kissed the ground, as if he had arrived in a different country. The message was understood. Three years later, after the “Velvet Divorce”, the president of the new Slovak Republic thanked the pope for encouraging the breakup of Czechoslovakia or – to put it more diplomatically – for the “anticipated recognition of Slovak independence”. [2]

More decisive than this symbolic gesture was the position taken by the Catholic bishops in this crucial period. The chairman of the Czechoslovak bishops’ conference, as well as the Slovak bishops, accentuated the abstract right to self-determination and did not call for the referendum which “would have prevented the splitting up of Czechoslovakia”. [3]

A third type of Vatican involvement is its constant attempts to link Catholicism with Slovak nationalism. After the Velvet Revolution at the end of 1989, Slovakia, like other East European countries looked back to its pre-Communist past, to the last time when it had been an independent nation. This was the fascist Slovak State of 1939-1945. There was no other model available, since the Slovaks’ pre-war participation in a democratic Czechoslovakia was widely regarded as a time when they were overshadowed by the Czechs.

Today the Church, the Christian political parties and a group of revisionist historians are all promoting the wartime Slovak state as a golden era, “an ideal society, where the Roman Catholic social doctrine prevailed”. [4] They laud it, even though it was a German “protectorate” with a Nazi puppet regime, because it was so tightly controlled by the Catholic Church. It was known as “the parish republic”. [5]

The close alliance of Catholicism and Fascism was not unique to Slovakia, of course. It was found in many other European countries, as well: in pre-war Austria under Dollfuss, in Salazar's Portugal, in Romania under the Iron Guard, in Pavelic’s Croatia, in Horthy’s Hungary, in Vichy France and, of course, under Generalissimo Franco, who called himself “Leader of Spain by the grace of God”.

All of these, to varying degrees, exemplified “clerical fascism”, that is to say, “fascist regimes in which clergy played a leading role”. [6] And wartime Slovakia certainly fits this definition, since it was run by Catholic clerics. The President, Monsignor Josef Tiso, was a Catholic priest and he led a clerical political party which had been founded by Father Andrej Hlinka, another Catholic priest. Sixteen of the 63 Members of Parliament were also Catholic priests. [7]

“We acted according to the law of God: Slovakia, dispose of your enemies!”

Not only was wartime Slovakia thoroughly clerical, it was also unequivocally fascist and even racist.

The totalitarian regime persecuted not only political dissidents, but also those who did not stem from the same “tribal clan” (genus). The notion of “genus” in the People’s Party’s (HSLS) understanding was extremely close to the notion of “race”. [8]

As in Germany, the affinity between the Church and the Nazis was based on their shared anti-Semitism and their common belief in authority. [9] And, indeed, the clerics who ran Slovakia proved to be eager henchmen of the Nazis, exhibiting few twinges of conscience over the Holocaust. This sanctified republic rounded up and shipped some 70,000 Slovak Jews off to Germany.

In a speech on 8 August 1942 the President, Monsignor Tiso, directly addressed the question as to whether this was compatible with Christian principles:

I think that no one has to be convinced that the Jewish element posed a threat to the life of the Slovak State […] We acted according to the law of God: Slovakia, dispose of your enemies! In this sense we establish order and will continue to do so” [10]

Today, however, the Church is busily whitewashing Slovakia’s pious fascist past. Cardinal Korec has stated that Tiso opposed the establishment of a Nazi-dominated Slovak state and never signed a single death sentence. [11] What he fails to mention is that Monsignor Tiso simply let the Germans do the job. In fact, he even paid Germany for the deportations making his government the only one in World War II to do so: 500 Reichmark for every Jew shipped off in the cattle cars.

A young Slovak Jew describes his moment of truth on the journey to the Auschwitz extermination camp:

…Up and down the train the officers began to shout: ‘All men between sixteen and forty-five out!’ At first nobody moved because they could not believe their ears. This was against the rules, contrary to the principles which Monsignor Tiso, President of Slovakia, had expounded over and over again. In the newspapers, on the radio, he had never tired of saying: ‘It is a basic principle of the Christian faith that families should not be separated. That principle will be observed when the Jews are sent to their new settlements’.

The men were herded out of the car and as their mothers, wives and daughters stretched their arms through the narrow barred windows, the men tried to spring forward for one last touch. But the guards beat them back and they beat the women's hands, too. As the train slowly moved away and the young man heard the anguished cries of women and children, whose wrists were bruised and broken, he finally realised that they had been betrayed. [12]

In Germany, even if the churches had a sorry record of endorsing the Nazi government, at least they did not form it. Therefore, at war’s end they quickly realigned themselves with the victors – and did so retroactively, as well. In Slovakia however, the Church cannot even attempt to dissociate itself from the Fascist wartime state since priests were in firm control of the country at all levels. The clear record of this clero-fascist state means that the Church must fall back on the excuse that, although they wielded power, they still managed to be helpless and that therefore their hands are not stained with the blood of all those whom they were – so sadly – obliged to hand over. [13] In fact, a revisionist Slovakian historian has gone so far as to declare that Tiso dared to do something the like of which “no other statesman in Europe dared – he saved Jews, not liquidated them”. [14] Even Tiso’s execution at the war’s end as a traitor and war criminal has been given a nationalistic and religious gloss. He is increasingly being portrayed “as the saviour of the Slovak nation during World War II and a martyr for Slovak independence”. [15]

 

The landscape, too, is now being “rewritten” to remove discordant evidence of massacres on Slovak soil, of resistance to Tiso’s state and of the final liberation by the Red Army. Thus streets have been renamed, statues taken down and monuments destroyed. [16]

The Church wants to rewrite Slovak history and even edit the landscape because it has a mission for this country. In 1995 on his second trip to Slovakia – now an independent land – John Paul II hinted to the Prime Minister about his plans: “A new model can be instituted in Slovakia with establishment of a society respectful of Christian values. This model could considerably influence the future of the world.” [17] Five years later the Slovak bishops recruited "more than fifty professionals" to help them draw up a plan for this “new model”. The result turns out to be a blueprint for a Church-saturated society. And eight years after that the next pope, Benedict XVI, repeated the message claiming that “Slovakia holds great potential for revitalizing the soul of the European continent”. [18]

In 1997, on the eve of elections, the Vatican judged that the Slovak government would be most vulnerable to political pressure from the Church. Accordingly, the Vatican Foreign Minister, Tauran, an expert on concordats was sent to instruct the Slovakian bishops on their negotiations with the government. [19] This resulted in three concordats since then, and two additional ones that the Vatican is now pressing for. [20] One of these is the concordat about Catholic conscientious objection, which was temporarily halted due to criticism by EU legal experts. The other is the finance concordat whose original aim was to introduce a “church tax”; however, the Catholic Church is now pressing to maintain the status quo: an annual subsidy according to “present needs”, which tend to be ever higher. [21]

 

References

1. John L. Allen Jr.,“Pope's health status competes with message: In Slovakia, he honors martyrs under communism, stresses right to life”, National Catholic Reporter, 26 September 2003.
2.  Frans Hoppenbrouwers, “Nationalistic Tendencies In The Slovak Roman Catholic Church”. Religion in Eastern Europe, Volume XVIII, Number 6, December 1998. The author is a Roman Catholic Church historian and secretary of studies of the Dutch Roman Catholic relief organization, Communicantes.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Pavol Mestan, “New interpretations and deliberate misinterpretations of the Jewish question in Slovakia: some remarks”, South-East Europe Review 2/2000, 173-179, p. 179. This is the translated title of Dominik Tatarka’s famous 1948 Farská Republika, about the country's wartime totalitarian regime.
6. “Clerical fascism”, Wikipedia.
7. “Transports from Slovakia”, Aktion Reinhard Camps, last update 18 July 2005.8.  Prof. Pavol Mešťan and Prof. Alexander Rehák, “Catholic Church of Slovakia involved in attempts to exculpate Fascism”, unpublished ms., 2004. 
9. Johann Neumann, “The churches in Germany before and after 1945”, lecture at the University of Tübingen, 1995.
10. Hoppenbrouwers, ibid.
11. Matt Kantz, “Slovak cardinal defends record of president”, National Catholic Reporter, 22 October 1999.
12. Rudolf Vrba, I cannot forgive, London, 1963. pp. 56-57.
13. Hoppenbrouwers, ibid. See the section, “President Josef Tiso: an innocent bystander?”
14. Quoted by Mestan, p.177. 
15. U.S. Department of State, “Slovak Republic Human Rights Practices, 1995”, March 1966. This is a description of the exhibit in April 1995 sponsored by Matica Slovenska, and attended by Education Minister Slavkoska attended on opening day.
16. These include the monument marking the mass graves in Kremnička of over 700 Slovaks murdered by the Germans on suspicion of aiding the resistance and the one marking the graves in Zvolen of the Red Army troops who finally liberated Slovakia in 1945. Further monuments have disappeared from Prešov and from Banská Bystrica, two towns that were central to the Slovak National Uprising and the final liberations. [See in:Bojovník of May 8, 1994 and Bojovník 40:8 of April 6,1995 ] From a manuscript by Dr. Alexander Rehák of the Prometheus Society of Slovakia, October 2005.
17. Prime Minister Vladimer Meciar quoted by Ladislav Hubenak, “Secular Humanism in Slovakia”, International Humanist News, 4 December 1995.
18. “Society Should Aid Young Families, Says Pontiff”, Zenit, 14 September 2007. http://www.zenit.org/article-20505?l=english
19. Hoppenbrouwers, ibid.
20. “Society Should Aid Young Families, Says Pontiff”, Zenit, 14 September 2007. http://www.zenit.org/article-20505?l=english
21. Hoppenbrouwers, ibid.
 

(Last updated 26 April 2009)