Anti-semitism in Slovakian Town Forces Change of Memorial Site

A wave of anti-Semitic cemetery vandalism and theft in this town in eastern Slovakia has forced the surviving Jewish community to change the location of a planned memorial to the 6,000 local Jews who perished in the Holocaust.

The present Jewish inhabitants, mostly elderly, are trying to raise $15,000 for the memorial.

Originally, they had intended to erect the memorial in the cemetery of the Neolog movement (a Central European version of Conservative Judaism) one of the two Jewish cemeteries in town.

Now community leaders say that if the money is raised, the monument will be placed in the protected downtown courtyard of the Jewish communal offices.

“There has been a lot of vandalism in both the Orthodox and Neolog cemeteries,” said Desider Landa, secretary of the Jewish community in Presov, which has about 60 members.

He said about 90 percent of the tombstones in the Orthodox cemetery and 30 percent in the Neolog have been damaged, toppled or stolen.

Landa blamed “very bad youths” in the vicinity. “They believe that Jews had gold, so they dig up the graves, but of course there is no gold,” he said.

“They also steal the black marble headstones for their value,” Landa explained. In one village near Presov, every black marble headstone has disappeared.

Landa said the latest tombstone theft in Presov occurred last month. “That is why we want the monument here, in the courtyard, because it is closed at night.”

More than 100,000 Jews lived in Slovakia before the war. Today, only about 3,000 Jews live in this republic. Of some 750 Jewish cemeteries, no more than a few dozen are maintained.

SHARP RISE IN ANTI-SEMITIC INCIDENTS

Observers point out that much of the cemetery vandalism in Presov stems from criminal rather than anti-Semitic motives.

But there has been a sharp rise of anti-Semitic attacks in Slovakia as a whole, coinciding with resurgent nationalism, Jewish leaders say.

The most serious incident occurred a few weeks ago, when the Jewish cemetery in Nitra in central Slovakia was defaced with swastikas and anti-Jewish slogans.

The local monument to Presov’s Holocaust victims was envisaged more than 40 years ago in the aftermath of World War II. But Jewish emigration and the establishment of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia postponed construction.

Now the problem is money. While the town has pledged a contribution, most of the funds will have to be raised privately. Last year the community sent out an emotionally worded appeal to former Presov Jews living abroad.

The letter quoted the proposed inscription on the monument. It reads:

“Dear descendants: Tell your children and the children of their children that this memorial tablet is a symbol for you to remember and never to forget our poor and unhappy co-believers and their families, chased to death through concentration camps by fascist murderers, who performed this work of destruction and disaster only because the persecuted belonged to the Israelite people.”