Slovak Jewish Holocaust survivors charge that a group of Slovak emigres are trying to persuade an estimated two million Slovak immigrants in the United States and Canada to join their campaign to glorify the memory of Josef Tiso, the wartime “puppet president” of the Slovak “republic.”
That campaign, it is also charged, involves dissemination of the anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi philosophy of Tiso, a Catholic priest, who was installed by Hitler after the Nazi dictator dismembered Czechoslovakia.
The charge was made in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency by John Ranz, executive secretary of the Holocaust Survivors Association; and Mark Neuman, president of the Slovak Survivors branch of the national association.
The two New York City residents produced a reproduction of the text of a prayer, in the Slovak language, to be recited in memory of Tiso in Slovak Catholic churches throughout the United States and Canada. Tiso was arrested as a war criminal by the Allies, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, and hanged on April 17, 1949, after a trial by the Czechoslovak National Court.
A photocopy of a blowup of the memorial prayer printed in a Slovak-language newspaper, shows the phrase “cum approbatione ecclesiastica” (with ecclesiastical approval), and, under the word “imprimatur,” the name of Msgr. Joseph T. O’Keefe, identified in the prayer text, in Slovakian, as the Vicar General of the New York Archdiocese.
CHARGE AMERICAN SLOVAKS MISLED
Ranz pointed out that, according to an English translation of the prayer, Catholic Slovak worshippers pray that Tiso, “this tireless defender of the faith,” be given “to our faithful Slovak nation as a heavenly saint. ” One sentence in the prayer appeals to the Catholic church specifically that Tiso “be canonized as a saint. ” The prayer is meant for recitation on April 19, Tiso’s birthday.
Ranz said the majority of the two million American Slovak immigrants are being “misled” by the “fascist-minded immigrants ” who conceived the campaign. He said the survivors also feared the campaign might “poison” the American-born children of the Slovak immigrants with “unimaginable” consequences for the future.
The Slovak Jewish survivor leaders first sent a letter July 12, 1982, to Terence Cardinal Cooke at the New York Archdiocese, asserting that Tiso “guilty of sending to death 56,000 Jewish men, women and children in Auschwitz,” is being “honored with a special prayer in the Catholic churches, approved by you. “
Accompanying the letter was a memorandum, documenting Tiso’s role as the puppet president of Slovakia installed by Hitler after the Nazi dictator dismembered the Czechoslovak nation, and Tiso’s collaboration with Nazi Germany. The letter was signed by Ranz; Neuman; Tibor Capla, Survivors association vice president; and Martin Zapletal, founder of the Brooklyn branch.
Bishop O’Keefe, to whom the Cardinal apparently turned over the letter, replied on October 12, declaring “there is no trend on the part of the Catholic Church or Cardinal Cooke to honor Dr. Josef Tiso.”
SEVERAL MEETINGS WITH BISHOP
Ranz said that, after several more communications with Bishop O’Keefe, a meeting was held at the Archdiocese office on October 18. At the meeting, Ranz said, the delegation presented documentation on Tiso’s “enthusiastic” participation in the roundup and deportation to Nazi death camps of Slovak Jews.
In another letter to Bishop O’Keefe, dated December 14, the survivors asserted that the Bishop had promised them, at the October 18 meeting, that the Archdiocese would “distance” the church from Tiso and arrange to withdraw O’Keefe’s approval of the Tiso memorial prayer, which the Bishop said had been done with neither his knowledge nor approval. In the December 14 letter, the survivors wrote that “we have not heard from you or received any letter from you rectifying this incredible situation.”
Bishop O’Keefe, replying January 25, declared he had written to Josef Kovac in Paris, asking that “my name be removed from the (prayer) card honoring Dr. Tiso. As I explained to you in October, I was not aware that my name had been used until you sent a photocopy of the card to me. Further, I have no knowledge of any movement in the Catholic church to honor Dr. Tiso.”
He reiterated “categorically” that his name was used without his knowledge on the memorial prayer. In reference to the criminal record of Tiso, Bishop O’Keefe made the ambiguous comment that “even in our own day there are those who are regarded as criminals and terrorists by some, who are honored as heroes by others.”
Ranz told the JTA that the “Josef Kovac, “to whom the Bishop asserted he wrote, asking removal of his name from the Tiso memorial prayer, is a Paris priest, who prepared the memorial prayer and whose name appears at the end of the prayer brochure — which Bishop O’Keefe refers to as a “card. ” Ranz said the prayer was approved in January, 1981.
Ranz said the survivors group has no information as to whether Kovac – who uses the letters S.J. after his name, on the prayer, meaning he is a Jesuit-acted for any group in preparing the prayer or acted on his own, as a Slovak emigrant.
In a November 1981 article in “Slovak, ” a Slovak language weekly published in Middletown, Pa. by “Jednota, ” an organization of Slovak immigrants organized for mutual aid, Kovac wrote that the memorial prayer was supported by Bishop O’Keefe and that it would be published in five languages — French, German, English, Slovak and Spanish –for distribution in the United States, Canada, Argentina, Australia and other countries, with an initial printing of 25,000 to 30,000 copies in each language.
Ranz cited, as an example of the effectiveness of the pro-Tiso propaganda campaign in this country, the issuance by American public officials of proclamations for “Slovak Independence Day,” notably one by Gov. Dick Thornburgh of Pennsylvania.
That proclamation lists Slovak Independence Day as March 14. Ranz said this was the day, during the Nazi period, when Hitler made Tiso his puppet head of state for Slovakia. Ranz said he had been informed of other similar proclamations, including one by the Mayor of Cleveland. He cited such proclamations as evidence that public officials were being misled by “fascist Slovak immigrants” in North America.
Eight faculty members of various colleges and universities sent a letter of protest to Thornburgh April 25. They said “the fascist regime in Slovakia” was “one of the very few regimes in Europe that took the initiative in the Jewish question,” introduced “far-reaching anti-Semitic legislation” and, in 1940, “became the first European state that agreed to the deportation of its Jewish citizens.”
Dr. Mikulas Ferjencik, president of the Czechoslovak National Council of America, declared in a letter to Gov. Thornburgh, published in the English-language Sokol Times, on April 21, that Slovaks in the United States “decidedly deserve the honor you are ready to bestow on them for their contributions to the building of this country” but “to associate Slovak Day with March 14, however, would not only indicate anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism but besmirch the Slovak name by linking it in the minds of every knowledgeable person with crimes against humanity and emnity to the United States. “
JEWISH GROUP WANTS PUBLIC RENUNCIATION
Ranz said the Holocaust Survivors Association was not satisfied with the positions taken by Bishop O’Keefe. He said the survivors group was preparing another letter to the bishop insisting that the Archdiocese publicly and openly distance itself from Tiso and his government. He said “we want a document, a public statement. We want the Archdiocese to repudiate publicly the activities of a man who was a close and willing collaborator with Hitler” in the murder of Slovak Jews.
“We want the Archdiocese to publicly condemn Tiso and his record as a Nazi collaborator and to condemn the actions of fascist Slovak immigrants who now seek to perpetuate the memory of Tiso as a liberator and a hero of the Slovak ‘republic’,” Ranz added.
He said the association had yet to see “anything in this direction. On the contrary, the glorification of Tiso and his Nazi government is penetrating among the Slovak immigrants living in the United States,” as well as deluding public officials, he said.
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