Posted on Yom HaShoa nyc 2011
As I have stated in previous blog entries, two mainstream-published works of York University professor of international relations, Stanislav Kirschbaum (the son of Jozef Marian Kirschbaum, an indicted, sentenced (in abstentia), and fugitive Slovak Nazi war criminal who was still alive at the times of the books’ writing) serve to whitewash the Nazi puppet regime of Jozef Tiso, and in so doing encourage the growth of violent and dangerous far-right and neo-Nazi movements in current-day Slovakia.
This situation is made all the more outrageous by the fact that Jozef Kirschbaum, then a Toronto resident in his 80s, actually helped write these books, as we can see by his son’s own printed acknowledgements. In effect, Jozef Kirschbaum had simply extended his pro-fascist, pro-Axis propaganda from the 1930s into the 1990s, through the medium of his son and their publishing houses, Scarecrow Press and St. Martin’s Press, and in 2005, PalgraveMacMillan.
In A History of Slovakia: The Struggle for Survival (1st Edition St. Martin’s Press: 1995; 2nd Edition PalgraveMacMillan 2005) and Historical Dictionary of Slovakia (1st Edition Scarecrow Press: 1999; 2nd Edition Scarecrow Press 2007) the 1939-45 “Slovak Republic” as a legitimate, even laudable state. An array of Slovak Holocaust perpetrators —Nazi collaborators and co-conspirators—friends of the author Stanislav Kirschbaum and the author’s father, are portrayed by the author as decent men and beneficent Slovak patriots.
The author admits in the pages of both books that the author’s father (Jozef Marian Kirschbaum) contributed to the texts, and tellingly does not state his father’s name in these acknowledgements (see below for an excerpt from this text).
Dedication Page (2007 edition, Historical Dictionary of Slovakia):
“To my mother,
to my daughters Olga, Sophia, and Alexandra
and to the memory of my father”
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And in the Acknowledgements of the 1999 edition of the book (barely different from the 2007 edition) we find the eightysomething Holocaust fugitive and Toronto resident Jozef Marian Kirschbaum himself had a hand in writing this volume:
“To Walter Beringer of Nelson, British Columbia…. and my father I owe a debt of gratitude for their thoughtful comments on various aspects of the manuscript. They are absolved of all errors and omissions; the responsibility is entirely mine.”
Toronto, Ontario
January 1998
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Some further, specific comparisons are in order. First, the revisionist text presented in Stanislav Kirschbaum’s Historical Dictionary of Slovakia, the title for Slovakia in Scarecrow Press’ authoritative Historical Dictionary of…. series that are standard reference works in university libraries—
“1942 On 25 March the first deportation of Slovak Jews to Germany and Poland begins; the deportations end in October when the Slovak government learns of the fate that awaits them. President Jozef Tiso makes use of his power to extend presidential exemptions to save tens of thousands of Slovak Jews and their families. Slovak officials prevent any further deportations until September 1944.”
—”Chronology of Slovak History,” page xlv, Historical Dictionary of Slovakia by Stanislav Jozef Kirschbaum (1999, 2007)
And, on page 154 of Kirschbaum’s book, we read in entry titled “Slovak Republic (First)”:
“…Slovak officials halted the deportations in October 1942 when they learned of the fate that awaited Slovak Jews, and until the outbreak of the uprising (q.v.) in August 1944, no further deportations took place.
“Despite German political pressure, the Slovak economy [under the 1939-45 "Slovak Republic" state led by Tiso, pere Jozef Kirschbaum et al.], society, and intellectual life flourished, and the Slovak nation moved far down the road of modernization and national development during the six years of independence. Nevertheless, there was opposition to Slovakia’s first modern state, and a resistance (q.v.) movement soon developed….”
As for the personal politics of Jozef Tiso, we read in the book’s entry titled “Jozef Tiso” (page 174) of the man whom historians left, right, center agree was the Nazi puppet dictator of Axis Slovakia (tried and executed as a top Nazi collaborator in Czechoslovakia in 1947), who bore criminal responsibility for the Holocaust slaughter of over 70,000 Slovak Jews:
“During the six years of the existence of the Slovak Republic, Tiso was the leader of the moderates in the party and sought to minimize German interference in Slovak politics as well as the attempts by radicals, led by Vojtech Tuka (q.v.), to introduce National Socialism into Slovakia….”
An accuate rendering of the above-cited history, as can be found in virtually all other mainstream history books that cover dictator Tiso (for whom Jozef Kirschbaum was a friend, speechwriter and aide-de-camp) and Slovakia’s fascist period, is exemplified by the writing of Stanford historian James Mace Ward. The following (url link provided) is a summary of a research presentation given by Ward in 2006:
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=1422&fuseaction=topics.event_summary&event_id=161773
February 08 2006, 12:00 noon-1:00 p.m.
Event Summary
[snip...]
“Although Tiso was less radical in his fascism than some of his contemporaries, he whole-heartedly sanctioned the expropriation and deportation of Jews and had full knowledge that they were being sent to their deaths….
[James Mace] Ward attributed the sources of Tiso’s anti-Semitism to four influences
“[snip...]Germany first approached Slovakia with an order to begin deporting Jews in 1940. President Tiso resisted pressure from the Vatican and Jewish groups to end deportations, since he was essentially sending Jews to slaughterhouses. Ward’s sources show that Tiso had full knowledge that deported Jews would be murdered. Moreover, although there is evidence that Tiso [who as a Catholic priest himself, was acting under heavy public pressure from the Vatican and also leading Catholic and Protestant bishops in Slovakia who cried out for him to stop deporting Slovak Jews] saved the lives of a number of Jews (though far below the 40,000 purported by his defenders) Ward cited a conversation in which Tiso regretted exempting 18,000 Jews from expropriation and deportation, since he was convinced that the remaining Jews were sabotaging the economy.
“After the 1944 civic anti-Fascist uprising in Slovakia, Tiso lost domestic support and truly became a puppet of the Nazis. At that time he continued to support deportations, since he saw the Jews as the leaders of the revolt. In 1947 Tiso’s trial ended with his execution by hanging.”
The tangible, real-world results of the historical falsification dished out by the Kirschbaums and others in the far-right camp of the Tiso regime exiles (headquartered in Canada) have been tragically manifesting since the break-up of Czechoslovakia in 1993, in the form of resurgent anti-Semitism and anti-Roma violence, and the growth of skinhead and neo-nazi groups inside Slovakia.
Surveying the scene in 2003, one organization that monitors anti-Semitic activity in Europe noted:
“Rehabilitation of the wartime Tiso regime continued to be the main theme of the struggle in 2002/3, between neo-fascist, antisemitic and populist elements, and liberal forces. The views of the former are expressed forcefully in public discourse and in various publications. [Boldface added by blog author]
“Right-wing extremists maintained their high level of activity, begun in 1999 largely in connection with the 60th anniversary of the founding of the wartime Slovak fascist state (14 March 1939). In 2002 they marked the 63rd anniversary of the wartime state with a meeting at Tiso’s grave in the Martin cemetery in Bratislava, and with an authorized demonstration attended by neo-fascists and skinheads (Pravda, 15 March 2002). Several Slovak papers, such as the daily SME, printed articles recalling the commencement of the first deportations in 1942. The attempts to rewrite history and rehabilitate the wartime ideological line continued in a variety of forums, such as “scientific” meetings and numerous publications. A typical example was the claim that Tiso’s regime was not to blame for the Holocaust in Slovakia. Thus, based on the memoirs of Hans Keller, Switzerland’s ambassador to wartime Slovakia, the nationalist weekly Kultura (13/2002) wrote that ‘Tiso opposed Hitler’ …..”
From http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2002-3/slovakia.htm
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Facebook group page on “Jozef Marian Kirschbaum”—
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/home.php?sk=group_188633741183926&ap=1
