Commander of Hlinka Guard Interior Minister Alexander Mach and German Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick visit in Nazi Germany | |
Agency overview | |
---|---|
Formed | 1938 |
Preceding agency | |
Dissolved | 1945 |
Type | Paramilitary |
Jurisdiction | Slovak Republic |
Headquarters | Bratislava |
Ministers responsible |
|
Parent agency | Hlinka's Slovak People's Party (HSLS-SSNJ) |
The Hlinka Guard (Slovak : Hlinkova garda; German : Hlinka-Garde; abbreviated as HG) was the militia maintained by the Slovak People's Party in the period from 1938 to 1945; it was named after Andrej Hlinka. [1]
The Hlinka Guard was preceded by the Rodobrana (Home Defense/Nation's Defense) organization, which existed from 1923 to 1927, when the Czechoslovak authorities ordered its dissolution. During the crisis caused by Hitler's demand for the Sudetenland (in the summer of 1938), the Hlinka Guard emerged spontaneously, and on October 8 of that year, a week after Hitler's demand had been accepted at the Munich conference, the guard was officially set up, with Karol Sidor (1901–1953) as its first commander.
The Hlinka Guard was known for its participation in the Holocaust in Slovakia; its members appropriated Jewish property and rounded up Jews for deportation in 1942. In the post-war, under one of the Beneš decrees, No. 16/1945 Coll., membership of the Hlinka Guard was punishable by 5 to 20 years imprisonment.
The guard was the Hlinka party's military arm for internal security, and it continued in that role under the autonomous government of Slovakia in federated Czecho-Slovakia. The Hlinka Guard were Slovakia's state police and most willingly helped Hitler with his plans. It operated against Jews, Czechs, Hungarians, the Left, and the opposition. By a decree issued on October 29, 1938, the Hlinka Guard was designated as the only body authorized to give its members paramilitary training, and it was this decree that established its formal status in the country. Hlinka guardsmen wore black uniforms and a cap shaped like a boat, with a woolen pompom on top, and they used the raised-arm salute. The official salute was "Na stráž!" ("On guard!").
Until March 14, 1939, when Slovakia declared its independence, the Hlinka Guard attracted recruits from all walks of life. On the following day, March 15, Alexander Mach became its commander, retaining the post up to the collapse of the pro-Nazi regime in Slovakia in 1945. Its functions were laid down in a series of government decrees: it was to be a paramilitary organization attached to the party, fostering love of country, providing paramilitary training, and safeguarding internal security. By assuming these tasks, the guard was meant to counterbalance the army and the police. In 1941 Hlinka Guard shock troops were trained in SS camps in Germany, and the SS attached an adviser to the guard. At this point many of the guardsmen who were of middle-class origin quit, and thenceforth the organization consisted of peasants and unskilled laborers, together with various doubtful elements. A social message was an integral part of the radical nationalism that it sought to impart.
In November 1938, the Hlinka Guard participated in the deportation of thousands of Jews. [2] In 1942, the guard was involved in the deportation of almost 60,000 Slovak Jews to occupied Poland. [3] The victims were given only four hours' warning, to prevent them from escaping. Beatings and forcible shaving were commonplace, as was subjecting Jews to invasive searches to uncover hidden valuables. Some guards took advantage of their power to rape Jewish women. [4]
A small group called Náš Boj (Our Struggle), which operated under SS auspices, was the most radical element in the guard. Throughout its years of existence, the Hlinka Guard competed with the Hlinka party for primacy in ruling the country. After the anti-Nazi Slovak National Uprising was crushed in August 1944, the SS took over and shaped the Hlinka Guard to suit its own purposes. Special units of the guard (Hlinka Guard Emergency Divisions – POHG) were employed against partisans and Jews.
In the 2010s, the Hlinka Guard's uniforms made a reappearance in Slovakia as the preferred dress of far-right politician Marian Kotleba and his Our Slovakia party. Kotleba's group made minor alterations to the uniforms, as wearing the original uniforms remains illegal in Slovakia. [5]
Hlinka's Slovak People's Party, also known as the Slovak People's Party or the Hlinka Party, was a far-right clerico-fascist political party with a strong Catholic fundamentalist and authoritarian ideology. Its members were often called ľudáci.
The (First) Slovak Republic, otherwise known as the Slovak State, was a partially-recognized clerical fascist client state of Nazi Germany which existed between 14 March 1939 and 4 April 1945 in Central Europe. The Slovak part of Czechoslovakia declared independence with German support one day before the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia. It controlled most of the territory of present-day Slovakia, without its current southern parts, which were ceded by Czechoslovakia to Hungary in 1938. The state was the first formally independent Slovak state in history. Bratislava was declared the capital city.
Vojtech Lázar "Béla" Tuka was a Slovak politician who served as prime minister and minister of Foreign Affairs of the First Slovak Republic between 1939 and 1945. Tuka was one of the main forces behind the deportation of Slovak Jews to Nazi concentration camps in German occupied Poland. He was the leader of the radical wing of the Slovak People's Party.
The history of the Jews in Slovakia goes back to the 11th century, when the first Jews settled in the area.
The Working Group was an underground Jewish organization in the Axis-aligned Slovak State during World War II. Led by Gisi Fleischmann and Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl, the Working Group rescued Jews from the Holocaust by gathering and disseminating information on the Holocaust in Poland, bribing and negotiating with German and Slovak officials, and smuggling valuables to Jews deported to Poland.
The Holocaust in Slovakia was the systematic dispossession, deportation, and murder of Jews in the Slovak Republic, a client state of Nazi Germany, during World War II. Out of 89,000 Jews in the country in 1940, an estimated 69,000 were murdered in the Holocaust.
The Ústredňa Židov was the Judenrat in Bratislava that was imposed on the Jewish community of the Axis-aligned state of Slovakia to implement Nazi orders during the Holocaust. It was formed on the advice of SS (Schutzstaffel) official Dieter Wisliceny; the first leader, Heinrich Schwartz, was removed after refusing to cooperate with Nazi demands and replaced by the ineffectual Arpad Sebestyen. The collaborationist Department of Special Affairs run by Karol Hochberg aided the authorities in confiscating Jewish property and collecting information that was used to arrest and deport Jews. Nevertheless, most of the ÚŽ members focused on providing opportunities for emigration and improving the social welfare of Jews remaining in Slovakia, although they were hampered by the dwindling resources of the community. In addition, the ÚŽ attempted to resist deportation by bribing Slovak officials, retraining Jews who had been expelled from their previous profession, and improving and expanding labor camps for Jews in Slovakia. The underground resistance organization that ran under its auspices, the Working Group, took over the ÚŽ leadership in December 1943. Since its formation in early 1942, the Working Group had used the ÚŽ as cover for its illegal rescue activities. After the German invasion of Slovakia in August 1944, the ÚŽ was disbanded and many of its members were arrested and deported to concentration camps.
The Kremnička and Nemecká massacres were a series of massacres committed between 5 November 1944 and 19 February 1945 in Kremnička and Nemecká, Slovakia by the Hlinka Guard Emergency Divisions and Einsatzkommando 14 following the suppression of the Slovak National Uprising. During the uprising, many Jews fled to Banská Bystrica, a partisan stronghold; when the town fell, Jews, actual or suspected Slovak partisans, and Romani people captured during roundups were temporarily held in the town's jail. The victims were then trucked to the murder sites at Kremnička and Nemecká, where they were shot. The majority of the 747 people shot at Kremnička were Jewish. Exact figures are not known for the Nemecká massacres, because the bodies were burned, but historians estimate a death toll of around 900, of whom most of the known victims were Jewish or Romani.
Einsatzgruppe H was one of the Einsatzgruppen, the paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany. A special task force of more than 700 soldiers, it was created at the end of August 1944 to deport or murder the remaining Jews in Slovakia following the German suppression of the Slovak National Uprising. During its seven-month existence, Einsatzgruppe H collaborated closely with the Hlinka Guard Emergency Divisions and arrested 18,937 people, of whom at least 2,257 were murdered; thousands of others were deported to Nazi concentration camps. The victims included Jews, Romani people, actual or suspected Slovak partisans, and real or perceived political opponents. One of its component units, Einsatzkommando 14, committed the two of the largest massacres in the history of Slovakia, at Kremnička and Nemecká.
The Hlinka Guard Emergency Divisions or Flying Squads of the Hlinka Guard were Slovak paramilitary formations set up to counter the August 1944 Slovak National Uprising. They are best known for the role they played in murdering Jews, Romani people, and actual or suspected Slovak partisans in conjunction with Einsatzgruppe H, especially for their participation in the Kremnička massacre.
In August 1942, Jozef Tiso, president of the Slovak State and a Catholic priest, delivered a speech in Holíč, Slovakia, in which he defended the deportation of Jews from Slovakia. Referring to Jews as "parasites" and "the eternal enemy", Tiso claimed that their deportation was both economically necessary and congruent with Christian moral principles. The speech has been recognized as a key part of Tiso's moral legacy, emblematic of his complicity in the Holocaust.
Presidential exemptions were granted by President of the Slovak State Jozef Tiso to individual Jews, exempting them from systematic persecution through anti-Jewish legislation introduced by Tiso's Jewish Code,, during the Holocaust. The exemptions were exchanged for arbitrary monetary fees. From an estimated 20,000 requests, 600 documented exemptions covering 1,000 people were granted, but only after 1942, when deportations to Auschwitz death camp had already stopped. Following the German invasion of 1944, when deportations resumed, all exemptions were nullified.
Nástup was a semimonthly Slovak periodical, published between 1933 and 1940, that advocated Slovak autonomy, ethnonationalism, and antisemitism. Founded by Ferdinand Ďurčanský and his brother Ján, the magazine was oriented at younger Slovak Catholics, especially university students. Its readers, the most radical wing of the Slovak People's Party, were called "Nástupists" or "Nástup faction"; many of them had been previously affiliated with Rodobrana paramilitary and later with the Hlinka Guard paramilitary.
Anton Vašek (1905–1946) was the head of Department 14 in the Slovak State's Central Economic Office. He is known for accepting bribes in exchange for reducing deportation of Jews from Slovakia.
The Salzburg Conference was a conference between Nazi Germany and the Slovak State, held on 28 July 1940, in Salzburg, Reichsgau Ostmark. The Germans demanded the expulsion of the Nástup faction of the Slovak People's Party from the Slovak government because of its independent foreign policy, threatening to unilaterally revoke the protection guarantees that Slovakia had obtained in the 1939 German–Slovak treaty.
The first mass transport of Jews to Auschwitz concentration camp departed from Poprad transit camp in the Slovak Republic on 25 March 1942 and arrived at its destination on 26 March. It was the beginning of systematic deportation of Jews to Auschwitz concentration camp by the Reich Security Main Office and also the first transport of Jews from Slovakia.
Otomar Kubala was a Slovak fascist who served as the commander of the Hlinka Guard during the Slovak National Uprising. After the war, he was tried for treason, convicted, and executed.
From 4 to 7 November 1938, thousands of Jews were deported from Slovakia to the no-man's land on the Slovak−Hungarian border. Following Hungarian territorial gains in the First Vienna Award on 2 November, Slovak Jews were accused of favoring Hungary in the dispute. With the help of Adolf Eichmann, Slovak People's Party leaders planned the deportation, which was carried out by local police and the Hlinka Guard. Conflicting orders were issued to target either Jews who were poor or those who lacked Slovak citizenship, resulting in chaos.
Postwar anti-Jewish violence in Slovakia resulted in at least 36 deaths of Jews and more than 100 injuries between 1945 and 1948, according to research by the Polish historian Anna Cichopek. Overall, it was significantly less severe than in Poland. The causes of the violence included antisemitism and conflict over the restitution of property stolen from Jews during the Holocaust in Slovakia.
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