Vojtech Tuka
Vojtech Tuka | |
---|---|
Minister of Foreign Affairs | |
In office 26 October 1939 – 2 September 1944 | |
Preceded by | Ferdinand Ďurčanský |
Deputy, Czechoslovak Parliament | |
In office 1925 –1929 | |
Personal details | |
Born | Execution by hanging | 4 July 1880
Nationality | Slovak |
Political party | Slovak People's Party |
Occupation | Politician, lawyer, professor, editor |
Profession | Law |
Vojtech Lázar "Béla" Tuka (4 July 1880 – 20 August 1946) was a Slovak politician who served as prime minister and minister of Foreign Affairs of the
Early career
Tuka, sometimes referred to by the
After the founding of Czechoslovakia in late 1918, he joined the autonomist Slovak People's Party. Growing separatist sentiment would later enable Tuka's rise to power. In 1919, he was elected to the Presidium of the Countrywide Christian Socialist Party as nominee of the Slovak section.[citation needed] In 1923, he founded the organization Rodobrana ("Home Guard"), an armed militia. Tuka was also a deputy to the Czechoslovak parliament.
Espionage allegations and first jail sentence
On 1 January 1928 Tuka published an article titled "Vacuum Juris", alleging that there had been a suppressed annex to the 30 October 1918 "Martin Declaration" (the Slovak version of the Czechoslovak declaration of independence of 18 October 1918) by which Slovak representatives officially joined the newly founded state of Czechoslovakia. This annex, according to Tuka, stated that the declaration was, by agreement, to be valid for only ten years; after 30 October 1928, he claimed, Prague's writ would no longer run in Slovakia. The Prague government charged Tuka with espionage and high treason. Tuka was found guilty and sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment; he served about ten years of that sentence.[1][2]
The Slovak Republic and Tuka's rise to political power
On 9 March 1939 Czech troops moved into Slovakia in reaction to radical calls for independence from Slovak agitators (including Tuka, who had recently been released from prison). On 13 March
The
Tuka and the persecution of Slovak Jews
On 3 September 1940 Tuka led the Slovak Assembly to enact Constitutional Law 210, a law authorizing the government to do everything necessary to exclude Jews from the economic and social life of the country.[7] Previous laws had already stripped them of political participation.[6] On 24 November that year Tuka and von Ribbentrop signed a protocol entering Slovakia into alliance with Germany, Japan, and Italy.[6] In 1940 Dieter Wisliceny, an SS Hauptsturmführer, was sent to Bratislava to act as an "adviser on Jewish affairs" to Tuka's government.[8] With Wisliceny, Tuka composed the Ordinance Judenkodex (Codex Judaicus, or Jewish Code) of the 9th of September 1941, which comprised 270 articles comprehensively denying rights to Slovak Jews.[7][8] The Code was longer than the Slovak Constitution.[8] It required that Jews wear the yellow star, annulled all debts owed to Jews, confiscated Jewish property, and expelled Jews from Bratislava, the Slovak capital.
Slovakia was the first state outside of direct German control to agree to the deportation of its Jewish citizens.[9]
In 1942, Tuka strongly advocated the deportation of Slovakia's Jewish population to the eastern
The deportation of Slovak Jews was halted in October 1942, at the order of the Slovak Council of Ministers.[12] A number of reasons for the sudden decision have been posited, including pressure from Slovak clergy.[10][13] A report by the Bratislava Sicherheitsdienst, the intelligence agency of the SS, stated that the reason for the sudden halt was a meeting called by Tuka on 11 August 1942. At that meeting, Tuka and the secretary-general of the Industrial Union told the ministers that Slovakia's economy could not withstand continued deportation of the Jews, causing the Council to order the halt.[12] Between 25 March and 20 October 1942, Slovakia sent about 57,700 Jews to Nazi concentration camps.[10] However, in September 1944, the deportation of Slovak Jews was resumed; by the end of the war in April 1945, about 13,500 additional Jews were deported.[10]
Fall from power and death
By 1943, Tuka's health had deteriorated to a point where his political activities were significantly diminished and at the beginning of 1944, he was planning his resignation. After large negotiations about his successor, he resigned on 5 September 1944, a few days after the outbreak of the Slovak National Uprising. As he was prime minister at the time, the resignation involved the whole government. Tuka was replaced by Štefan Tiso (a distant relative of president Jozef Tiso). From then on, Tuka no longer took part in Slovak political life.
At the end of the war, having already suffered a stroke which confined him to a wheelchair, he emigrated together with his wife, nursing attendants, and personal doctor to Austria, where he was arrested by Allied troops following the capitulation of Germany and handed over to the officials of the renewed Czechoslovakia. Following a brief trial, Vojtech Tuka was executed by hanging on 20 August 1946.
Swiss bank account
On 21 July 1997, after two years of lobbying, Slovak Jewish leaders persuaded the Czech cabinet to return property belonging to Slovak victims of the Holocaust.[14] That month, the Swiss Bankers Association published a list of World War II–era Swiss bank account holders with dormant accounts; the list included the name of Vojtech Tuka, according to Simon Wiesenthal, who urged that Tuka's account be turned over to the Swiss fund for victims of the Nazis.[15]
František Alexander, executive chairman of Slovakia's Central Association of Jewish Religious Communities, told The Slovak Spectator that the funds from the account should be allocated by an international council of justice. Jozef Weiss, head of the Association's office, said that the Association did not believe it had the legal or moral right to take money from Tuka's private account to repay a wrong done by the Slovak government. Instead, Weiss suggested, the money should be used to pay for the upkeep of the graves of Slovak soldiers who
Ivan Kamenec, a Slovak historian of the war, said that Tuka's multiple posts "were all very well paid"; the offices of Foreign Minister and central committee member of HSĽS both paid over 10,000 Slovak crowns a month, he said. Although Kamenec refused to speculate on the size of Tuka's dormant account, he noted that Tuka's living requirements were modest.[14]
References
Notes
- ^ Bartl (2002) p. 132.
- ^ Ward (2013) pp. 102-105.
- ^ Evans (2009) p. 395.
- ^ Ward (2013) pp. 211-213.
- ^ Birnbaum, Eli (2006). "Jewish History 1940–1949". The History of the Jewish People. Retrieved 2011-01-31.
- ^ a b c Bartl (2002) p. 142
- ^ a b Yahil (1991) pp. 179–181
- ^ a b c Dwork (2003) pp, 168–169
- ^ Hitler's Hangman. The Life of Heydrich. Robert Gerwarth, page 261)
- ^ a b c d Frucht (2005) p. 298
- ^ Ward (2013) p. 8 and pp. 234-7.
- ^ a b Aronson (2001)
- ^ Yahil (1991), p. 401
- ^ a b c Borský, Daniel (14 August 1997). "Jewish leaders decide not to pursue Tuka's Swiss stash". The Slovak Spectator. Bratislava, Slovakia: The Rock. Retrieved 1 February 2011.
- ^ "Jews angry Swiss bank list includes possible Nazis". Bangor Daily News. Vol. 109, no. 34. Bangor, Maine: Bangor Publishing. Associated Press. 25 July 1997. p. A6. Retrieved 1 February 2011.
Bibliography
- Aronson, Shlomo (2001). "Europa Plan". In Laqueur, Walter; Baumel, Judith Tydor (eds.). The Holocaust Encyclopedia. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-08432-0.
- Bartl, Július (2002). Slovak History: chronology & lexicon. David Paul Daniel, trans. Wauconda, Ill.: Bolchazy-Carducci. ISBN 978-0-86516-444-4.
- Dwork, Debórah; Pelt, Robert Jan; Van Pelt, Robert Jan (2003). Holocaust: a history. W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-32524-9.
- Evans, Richard J. (2009). The Third Reich at War. New York: Penguin Press.
- Frucht, Richard C., ed. (2005). Eastern Europe: an introduction to the people, lands, and culture. Vol. 1. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-57607-800-6.
- Ward, James Mace (2013). Priest, Politician, Collaborator: Jozef Tiso and the Making of Fascist Slovakia. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-4988-8.
- Yahil, Leni (1991). The Holocaust: the fate of European Jewry, 1932–1945. Ina Friedman and Haya Galai, trans. Oxford University Press US. ISBN 978-0-19-504523-9.
- V. Tuka Trial (in Slovak). B.m.: b. v., (1929). 1847 p. - available at ULB Digital Library