Arthur Berger
Recently, educators from across Slovakia gathered in Bratislava for a five-day seminar about the Holocaust, its impact throughout Europe and Slovakia, and an examination of American policies during the 1930’s and 40’s. While some of the 21 teachers knew Holocaust history, they joined this seminar because they wanted to study the full picture and be armed to counter the rising trends of Holocaust denial, distortion and antisemitism. The seminar empowered them with lessons on how to make Holocaust education relevant for their students so that they recognize the dignity of everyone and embrace human rights.
The seminar included sessions on Jewish life before, during and after the Holocaust. Not only did the Jewish population suffer tremendously under a Nazi-allied, fascist regime, but well before the deportation and murder of over 100,000 Jews in Slovakia, their property was Aryanized, taken over by non-Jews. The teachers were surprised to learn that Slovaks helped build concentration camps and that the Slovak wartime government paid Nazi Germany 500 Reichsmarks for each Jewish person it deported, while Slovak authorities and collaborators actively participated in identifying, arresting, and deporting Jews and confiscating their property.
In the post-war period, the small remnants of survivors were subjected to Soviet antisemitism until Czechoslovakia became independent in 1989, and Slovakia separated and became an independent country in 1993. Today, less than 3,000 Jews remain in a community that had over 135,000 Jews in the pre-war period and which was proud of its vibrant religious and cultural life. Synagogues and yeshivot flourished, and Hatam Sofer, the renowned 19th-century scholar, had created an incredible legacy of Jewish learning. Between the horrors of the Holocaust and Soviet repression, Jewish life in Slovakia almost disappeared, and the old Jewish cemetery was destroyed in 1943. Today, the only remains are a memorial of the gravestones of Hatam Sofer and several of his descendants. There is a genuine resurgence of Jewish life, though few Jews remain.
Unfortunately, antisemitism also persists.
For many of the teachers, the seminar gave them their first opportunity to visit a synagogue, speak with a Holocaust survivor, and visit the new Jewish cemetery and the memorial to Hatam Sofer. During the 1949-89 period, the communist government destroyed many of the remaining synagogues or converted them into warehouses or theaters and paved over many cemeteries. Afraid to admit they were Jews in public, a few families continued their religious rituals and traditions at home, while appearing as non-Jews outside. Antisemitism was widespread in that period, although the 1968 Prague Spring gave them hope that life would change. That brief taste of freedom was crushed by Soviet tanks in August 1968, and once again the Jewish community practically disappeared.
To give the teachers a broader historical perspective of the World War II period, I gave a presentation on American policies and the Holocaust. The teachers were not aware of the widespread antisemitism in the senior levels of the U.S. government and the widespread isolationism among members of Congress, some of whom gave pro-Nazi speeches on the floors of Congress. Several lonely voices, notably Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins and former League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees James Grover McDonald, tried to increase Jewish admissions to the United States beyond the highly restrictive quotas in the 1924 Immigration and Nationality Act, but the Roosevelt administration refused to increase immigration quotas.
Only in January 1944 did President Franklin Delano Roosevelt create by executive order the War Refugee Board which sought to save the remaining Jews of Hungary; and he only did so because of increasing Senate pressure to do something and a stark memo written by two mid-level Treasury Department officials, John Pehle and Josiah DuBois. The memo, “On the Complicity of the United States Government in the Murder of Europe’s Jews,” exposed the refusal of State Department officials to assist Treasury in getting needed funds to NGOs in neutral countries in Europe. The obstruction by State Department officials and their open antisemitism may have resulted in many deaths of people who could have been saved. That shameful period in American history teaches us that we must confront antisemitism and other forms of bigotry whenever we can. These Slovak teachers are now armed with the facts to help younger Slovaks be forces for human rights and democracy.
The seminar was organized by the New York-based Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights (TOLI) in partnership with the Holocaust Documentation Center in Slovakia, the Zachor Foundation for Social Remembrance and the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative. The seminar was supported, in part, by the Claims Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and the German Ministry of Finance; and the Visegrad Fund. TOLI organizes similar seminars for educators in 16 European countries and Mexico, as well as across the United States.
Arthur Berger is a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer and a former senior official at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He has been a member of the TOLI Board of Directors since 2017 and has participated in several TOLI seminars including in Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland, Spain and Portugal, as well as in the U.S.
