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FRIDAY, MARCH 27, 1992
Neo-Fascist Rally
Staged In Slovakia
Prague (JTA) — Bratislava
was the scene of a neo- fas-
cist rally marking the 53rd
anniversary of Adolf Hitler's
creation of the Nazi puppet
state of Slovakia, which
deported its Jews to death
camps.
The meeting in the Slovak
capital attracted several
thousand devotees of the fas-
cist state, which lasted from
March 14, 1939, when
Czechoslovakia was oc-
cupied by the German army,
until the fall of the Third
Reich in 1945.
It was the only time in his-
tory that Slovakia was nom-
inally independent, though,
in fact, it was controlled by
Nazi Germany. That brief
era exerts a nostalgic attrac-
tion for present-day Slovak
separatists, many of whom
were born after World War
II.
The key speaker at the
Bratislava rally was
Stanislav Paths, a Holocaust
denier who is a member of
Czechoslovakia's federal
Parliament and a former pop
music drummer.
Mr. Panis claimed in a
Feb. 26 interview on
Norwegian television that
the Nazis could not possibly
have killed 6 million Jews
with the technology
available at the time.
"The ovens could simply
not manage to burn all of
them," he was quoted as say-
ing.
Newspaper columnist
Karel Kovanda of the
Prague daily Lidove Noviny
called on the wavering forces
in the Slovak political arena
to say "enough is enough" to
people like Stanislav Paths.
Mr. Kovanda noted that
"such remarks are
punishable by law in France,
Canada and Germany" and
urged the Immunity and
Mandate Committee of the
federal assembly to declare
that a person like Paths, who
openly preaches racial in-
tolerance, has no place in the
supreme legislative body of
the country.
Mr. Kovanda said Mr.
Paths insulted the memory
of the 6 million dead in an
apparent attempt to ex-
culpate the wartime Slovak
regime, which even paid the
Germans to liquidate 70,000
Jews.
Slovakia was headed by
Father Jozef Tiso, an anti-
Semitic Roman Catholic
priest handpicked by Hitler,
who was subsequently
hanged as a war criminal.
.
Most of Slovakia's political
parties and movements, in-
cluding the separatist
Slovak national party, did
not take part in the neo-
fascist event, which featured
symbols and paraphernalia
of the Nazi era and anti-
Jewish, anti-Czech slogans.
Some of them openly con-
demned the organizers for
sullying Slovakia's image in
the world.
But the attitude of several
Slovak politicians and polit-
ical parties is ambiguous as
they prepare for the elec-
tions in June.
While condemning the
deportation of Jews by the
Tiso regime, Slovak Prime
Minister Jan Carnogursky
defended Tiso's declaration
of Slovakia's independence
on Hitler's order, as the only
alternative to the country's
occupation by the
Hungarians.
The Christian Democratic
movement, headed by the
prime minister; split recent-
ly when its radically
separatist wing defected to
form a new party.
The chairman of the
Slovak National Council,
who was elected in 1990 as a
member of the Slovak bran-
ch of President Vaclav
Havel's Public Forum, has
now joined Carnogursky's
Christian Democratic
movement.
Court Rules
On Satire
Madrid (JTA) — A Spanish
court has ruled that a
Barcelona publishing house
did not violate the law when
it published a cartoon book
satirizing the Holocaust.
But the plaintiffs, who in-
clude the local B'nai B'rith
chapter and an organization
of Holocaust survivors, plan
to appeal the lower court's
decision, which absolves
Editorial Makoki and its di-
rector, Damia Carulla.
The court dismissed re-
quests by B'nai B'rith and
Amicale Mauthausen, a
Holocaust survivors collec-
tive in Barcelona, to
penalize Mr. Carulla, who
might have faced one to six
months in jail.
B'nai B'rith lawyer Dalia
Levinson said he got off on
grounds of freedom of ex-
pression and because the
court decided that no offense
had been intended.
The book, titled
Hitler=SS, treats the Holo-
caust sarcastically.