Slovaks in New Jersey: An Overview

De Gruyter eBooks, 2023

Avisibleand stable Jewish life in Slovakia was first established in thesecond half of the nineteenth century by Jews emigrating from Bohemia, Moravia, Austria, and Poland. Jewish pluralism developed in manyEuropean countries duringthattime period, and Slovakia was no exception. Apart from traditional Orthodoxcommunities, Neolog communities werefounded -aform of modernized religiousJewry in central eastern Europe -influenced by the Neolog movement in Hungary.Traditional Jewry had been flourishingd ecades earlier,p artlyd ue to thec harismatic Rabbi Moses Schreiber (1762-1839),b etter known as Moshe Sofer (Chatam Sofer). Sofer created his own Orthodoxs chool( Yeshiva) in Pressburg( after 1918B ratislava) and became amentor for thousands of young Talmud and Torastudents. Some historians argue that Moshe Sofer'sYeshiva was the most influential Jewish space in central Europe until WorldW ar II.¹ Following Jewish emancipation in 1896,m anyJ ewsa dopted the Hungarian language and customs to advance in society.M anyJ ews moved to cities and learned professions;o thers remained in the countryside, mostlyw orkinga sa rtisans, merchants,a nd shopkeepers.² Jews graduallyc reated the middle class that the Slovaksdid not have,while antisemitism continued to grow.Jew-hatred continued to grow,e specially on the Christian side, and lined with typical stereotypes ("Jews murdered Christ"), on an economic level ("Jews exploit Slovaks"), and on the national level ("Jews are not Slovaks,they speak Yiddish, Hungarian, German"). After the First World War and unifying Czechoslovakia as an independent state, anti-Jewish riots brokeo ut in the Slovak part of the new State.H owever,t hese riots quicklye nded. The democratic and parliamentary Czechoslovak Republic gave the Jews all civil and political rights. The Jews accepted Czechoslovakia as their state. They could also applyf or Jewish nationality.

Apart from his scientific and science administrative pursuits, he served as an editor of several scientific series and authored more than thirty books and handbooks. Beyond that, he is considered an authority on immigration history, about which subject he had written extensively. He was also one of the founders of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) and for many years served as its President.

Press for Conversion!, 2021

The Slovak World Congress (SWC) was founded in Toronto in 1971 by former officials of the Nazi puppet state of "Independent" Slovakia (1939-45). Affiliated with the profascist Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN),1 the SWC was "composed of Nazi collaborationists and their progeny," said journalist Jack Anderson. The SWC, he said, was "the Slovakian chapter" of the World AntiCommunist League.2 Active in the CIA-backed "Captive Nations" movement, SWC covered up wartime Slovakia’s subservience to the Nazis and supported the Black Ribbon Day movement.3 Chief among the SWC’s Nazi collaborators was Jozef Kirschbaum who fled to Canada in 1948 after being sentenced to ten years in a Czechoslovak prison, plus ten in a labour camp.4 Kirschbaum was key to the Hlinka-Party regime of Catholic priest, Jozef Tiso. As Slovakia’s president, Tiso enforced Nazi-like laws that deprived Jews of their jobs, possessions and rights. Tiso’s regime also sent 75,000 of Slovakia’s 90,000 Jews to Nazi death camps.5 Jozef Kirschbaum, who was a key figure in Slovakia's clerico-fascist wartime regime, fled to Canada in 1948. For the next 50 years he was a leader of the Slovak World Congress and the Canadian Slovak League Sharing the Nazi’s hatred for Judeo-Bolshevism, Tiso’s regime vowed to "fight against the Marxist-Jewish ideology of disorganization and violence."6 Sheltered by Canada until his death in 2001, Kirschbaum led the SWC and its affiliate, the Canadian Slovak League (CSL). For decades they whitewashed Slovak fascism and hid their movement’s obeisance to Nazism. Forty years after WWII, the SWC finally issued a statement on the Holocaust at its 1987 assembly in Toronto (attended by PM Brian Mulroney and Ontario Premier Bill Davis). Denying the Tiso regime’s role in decimating Slovak Jewry, it pushed the myth that this genocide was the fault of "misguided individuals of the Slovak regime."7 Such myths of Nazi Slovakian innocence have long been spread by key Canadian academics. As a history professor in Montreal and Toronto, and co-founder of the University of Ottawa’s Chair in Slovak History, Kirschbaum himself led the cover up.

Nuova Storia Contemporanea, 2022

After the end of WW II, Slovakia was reincorporated into Czechoslovakia. The fact that Slovaks lost their independent country and that a “people’s democratic regime” that violated basic human rights was established in the renewed Czechoslovakia conditioned the origin of the Slovak political diaspora. Its main goals were fighting against communism and for national independence. Immediately after the end of the war, not only the first exile organizations but also the American citizens of Slovak origin in the USA and Canada demanded that a plebiscite on the future existence of Slovakia be carried out. Given the emerging Cold War, the position of Slovak exiles was strongest in the USA, the center of world politics. In the 1950s, the U.S. governments supported the anticommunist efforts of Slovaks, but not their struggle for national independence. Dealing with the Slovak political émigrés goes hand in hand with a better knowledge of the Slovak question as well as a deeper understanding of the circumstances around the nascent Cold War.

Sport i Turystyka. Środkowoeuropejskie Czasopismo Naukowe

Creation of the Czecho-Slovak Republic after the WWI, in 1918, was a milestone also in the development of physical education and sport in Slovakia. New Czecho-Slovak government tried, within the new constitutional conditions, to enforce the Czechoslovak character of the state and to withhold the Hungarian influence in individual towns. Following its multinational , multi-cultural and multi-confessional history, Slovakia had to get over long-time Hungarian wrongdoing and Hungarization also in the area of sport. Before 1918, the Hungarian and partially also German sport clubs prevailed and any efforts to establish Slovak sport clubs were more platonic than realistic. However, the conditions and circumstances changed and were adapted to the new state layout after 1918. Because of the tense military-political situation at the Czech borders and in Slovakia during 1918-1920, arrival of the Czech and also German sport organizations was postponed until 1921. The Sokol (Falcon) organization started to organize its advertising tours in Slovakia in 1921. Similarly, the German organizations DTV came to Bratislava in 1921 and to Spiš in 1922. In 1920, the Sokol organization had 93 units with 18 494 members, the RTJ organization had 31 units with 4139 members and the Orol (Eagle) organization had 149 units with 15 772 members. Nationally conscious members of Slovak intelligence were entering the Sokol organization independently of their party membership or political orientation. Bratislava was a typical example of such attitude. The long-time rival of the (originally Czech) Sokol organization was the Orol organization, which formally belonged to the Czecho-Slovak Orol but had also an autonomous management in Slovakia. Physical education in the Orol was only secondary, because the organization was mostly religiously focussed. All relevant national physical education, sport, scout or touristic organizations gradually established themselves. Particularly the physical education organizations were ideologically closely connected with political parties. Football, volleyball, basketball, tennis, swimming, wrestling, box and table tennis became the most popular sports during 1918-1924. However, Slovakia lagged behind

During the 18th and 19th Century the Slovak settlement in a form of homogenous enclaves as well as lonely villages was founded in the large areas of the Lower Land (Dolná zem/Alföld), neighbouring to and encircled by Hungarian, Romanian, German, Serbian and Croatian ethnic communities. The offspring of these Slovak migrants from former Upper Hungary (today´s Slovakia) still contributes to the multicultural character of regions of contemporary Hungary, Serbia, Romania and Croatia. The paper outlines the main Slovak migration flows within the time framework mentioned above, portrays how the Slovak enclaves and settlements were established in the Lower Land and points out the specifics and consequences of this population mixture in the southern territories of Hungarian Kingdom

Bulletin de l'Institut etnographique, 2019

The study examines migration of Slovaks to the Czech Lands since 1945 till present days. It focuses on migration waves in postwar decades according to results of population censuses, it also describes the numbers and territorial placement of Slovaks in Czechia and it characterizes their social, demographic and educational structure, as well as their activities and change of legal status after the split of Czechoslovakia in 1993. Slovaks are not original, autochthonous inhabitants of the Czech Lands, but they came there long time before the creation of the first Czechoslovak Republic in 1918. Their migration had mainly social and economic motives. Since the early 1990s qualitative changes in character of migration started to emerge, when social reasons were often replaced by familial ones. After the division of Czechoslovakia political motives appeared as well. In 1945-1992 Slovaks lived in the Czech Lands as members of the second state-forming nation of the Czechoslovak Republic. After the creation of the Czech Republic on January 1, 1993, their legal status changed and they became the most numerous minority starting to create a new identity. Thanks to activities of nationally-committed Slovak intelligentsia Slovaks in the Czech Republic started to reflect the benefits of their status of an ethnic minority in democratic society with guaranteed laws for development of their national life.

Journal of History Research, 2015

Socio-Democratic party in Slovakia. The major concentration of these unions was in Bratislava and Eastern Slovakia. Concerning their specialized field, they can be divided into tourism-practising, physical and sport ones.