Slovak PM apologizes for WWII Jewish persecution

Slovakia Prime Minister Robert Fico apologized for his country’s persecution of the Jews during World War II, including the implementation of anti-Jewish laws and mass deportations to the concentration camps, the Prague Post reported.

At a commemoration Tuesday marking 73 years from the initial adoption of restrictions on the country’s Jewish residents, Fico said: “I am not able to tell you anything stronger or anything more personal, but that I express a sincere apology for all those who were such a failure. Only the descendants of those who suffered and died may forgive them.

“The Holocaust that victimized so many people in the name of the mad ideals of fascism brings an everlasting shame on those who participated in them. At the same time, it is a strong warning against it ever being repeated,” Fico said.

Some 70,000 Jews were deported to concentration camps from the then-autonomous Slovak Republic, in coordination with the Nazis, of which some 60,000 were killed, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Meanwhile, Stanislav Zvolenský, chairman of the Slovak Confederation of Bishops, denounced Catholic priest Emil Floris’s anti-Jewish statements last month in an address that charged that the Jews were responsible for the hatred leveled at them during the war.

“From all over Europe, they took the Jews to concentration camps. And do you know why? Because there was hatred toward them, but those who are hated often do it to themselves,” Floris said, according to the news website zpravy.e15.cz.

Zvolenský said the remarks “are not appropriate for a priest.”

“It is not right that they go unnoticed; it is necessary to dissociate oneself from them,” he said.

JTA contributed to this report.