A Slovak Catholic bishop reportedly held a mass in honor of the fascist president of Slovakia during World War II.
The Slovak newspaper Sme published a video showing Jan Sokol, head of the diocese in the city of Trnava, memorializing Jozef Tiso 61 years after he was executed by a Czechoslovak court for war crimes. Tiso, a Catholic priest, led the fascist puppet state that was the only nation to pay for its Jews to be deported to Nazi concentration camps.
A representative of the umbrella group for the Catholic Church in Slovakia said Sokol’s mass for Tiso was his own private initiative, according to Sme.
In 2006 Sokol told a Slovak TV station that life under Tiso had been ”propserous.”
More than 70,000 Slovak Jews died in the Holocaust.
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