Bishop Buzalka of Bratislava, appearing as a witness in the two-month-old war crimes trial of Josef Tiso, former head of the pro-Nazi puppet government of Slovakia, has testified that at an audience he had with Pope Pius XII in 1939, the latter rejected Tiso’s persecution of the Jews.
The Bishop declared that several Slovak officials carried communications from the Vatican to Tiso expressing the Pope’s “abhorrence” for the Slovak Government’s anti-Jewish laws. At the conclusion of his testimony, the Bishop strode toward Tiso and offered to shake hands with him, but the court halted him.
A Peoples Court at Brno today sentenced Dr. M.L. Jemelik, a former physician at a Nazi concentration camp, to 15 years imprisonment for torturing and murdering three Jews. The prosecutor had demanded the death sentence, but the court mitigated the sentence because witnesses had testified that Jemelik assisted Czech prisoners at the camp.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
