c. 1999 Religion News Service

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia _ When researchers interviewed Slovak teachers about how they teach Jewish themes to children, one dilemma kept arising: how to teach about Slovakia’s role in World War II, when the Nazi puppet regime, led by Catholic priest Jozef Tiso, sent tens of thousands of Jews to their deaths.

Students, said one teacher, ask her”to tell them the truth”about Tiso.

That debate is by far the most dramatic issue related to education on Jewish themes in this newly independent Central European country, according to a new study released by the American Jewish Committee. But the study found other problems as well.

Students learn little of the Jewish role in Slovak history prior to the Holocaust, and the legacy of the force-fed Communist educational system is only gradually changing to a method that encourages critical thinking, the report said.”Since the overthrow of the Communist regime (of the former Czechoslovakia) in 1989, Jewish-related themes have begun to appear in Slovak textbooks,”said the report, released Tuesday (Jan. 26). But”most students continue to be largely ignorant of Jewish history, religion and culture.” A major shift has also followed the election of a new liberal coalition government last year, replacing a right-wing government, said David Singer, director of research for the American Jewish Committee.

The new government has shelved a controversial textbook, published by the former Education Ministry, that defended Tiso, blamed the deportation of Jews on his deputies, and cited the positive aspects of the fascist regime.”It’s a difference between night and day”in the government, he said.”Not only is there a new openness, but we’re dealing with people who have a strong liberal orientation. They understand what pluralism is.” The AJC report was written by ethnologist Peter Salner and political scientist Eva Salnerova, both officers of the Jewish Religious Community in Bratislava, the Slovak capital. The report is the third in the AJC’s series on education in formerly Communist European countries.

In Slovakia, the role of the wartime Tiso government remains controversial because it was the closest taste the country had to independence for a thousand years before 1993, when it separated from the former Czechoslovakia.

In 1939, as German leader Adolf Hitler was carving up the Czech part of Czechoslovakia, Tiso led a Slovak government that declared independence and served as a puppet regime. Slovakia passed anti-Jewish laws based on Germany’s.

Even Hitler expressed surprise at how willing Tiso was to deport some 58,000 Jews to Nazi concentration camps. Slovakia bears the distinction of being the only client state to pay Germany to take its Jews, at 500 German marks per person.

Some of Tiso’s defenders note that he saved individual lives. Others claim that the priest-president thought he was sending Jews to labor camps, not death camps, though the deportations prompted a Vatican protest.

Germany crushed a citizens’ uprising and occupied Slovakia directly in 1944, after which it deported about 13,000 more Jews to their deaths. Tiso was executed as a war criminal in 1947, but some Slovak Catholic priests continue to celebrate Masses in his honor. “If nothing else, the clash of opinion surrounding the wartime Slovak state has made students aware of a Jewish dimension to Slovak history,”the AJC report said.”This awareness needs to be expanded upon in the future to take in the full sweep of Jewish history, Judaism as a living faith, and the modern state of Israel.” Among the other findings of the report:

_ History books give only occasional mention to the Jewish role in Slovak history.”For most students, Jewish historical experience prior to the Holocaust remains largely a blank,”the report said.

_ Famous Jewish personalities, such as physicist Albert Einstein and writer Franz Kafka, are often not identified by their ethnicity.

_ Slovaks’ strong identification of ethnicity with nationhood causes them to downplay the contributions of other groups, though the report acknowledged that the Jewish influence on Slovak culture was less than on neighboring countries.

_ Newer textbooks have sections with titles like,”Let’s Think and Discuss,”marking a break from the rote learning of the Communist era. But, the report noted, this also provides a forum for defenders of the Tiso regime. Only a few thousand Jews now live in Slovakia. Racial tensions are more common with Gypsies and the nation’s Hungarian minority, which has fought to educate their children in their native language.

The AJC, in its first two reports issued last year, gave a mixed critique to education on the Holocaust in Poland, and it said textbooks used in the Czech Republic give scattered and sometimes hostile treatment to Jewish themes.

DEA END SMITH