Holocaust and collaboration in Slovakia in the postwar discourse GILA FATRAN

During World War II Slovakia was governed by the fascist Hlinka1 People’s Party (Hlinková slovenská I’udová strana – HSL´S). From its founding as a political movement toward the end of the nineteenth century its supporters were openly antisemitic. In fact, “the Jewish question,” referring to the supposed Jewish threat to Christian civilization, as described in Slovak publications at the end of the nineteenth century, was incorporated into its earliest political activities. Thus, leaders of the movement blamed the Jews for the country’s many misfortunes and the wretched poverty from which the Slovak people suffered.2