Hungary’s president urged Slovakia to rehabilitate the reputation of an ethnic Hungarian politician who opposed the deportation of Jews during World War II. Laszlo Solyom made his comments at a conference April 19 concerning Janos Esterhazy. Esterhazy was the only member of the Slovak Parliament to vote against the deportation of the Jews to concentration camps when Slovakia was a fascist state during the war. He also was a proponent of autonomy for the Hungarians living in Slovakia and for Slovak independence in 1939, and was thus viewed as a traitor by Czechoslovakia following World War II. He was sentenced to life imprisonment after World War II for helping to destroy the Czechoslovak Republic and serving fascism. Hungarian support of his rehabilitation in the past has inflamed Slovakia, which has a tense relationship with Hungary partly due to the former’s sizable Hungarian minority.
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