Topoľčany pogrom

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The Topoľčany pogrom were riots on September 24, 1945 in the Slovak city ​​of Topoľčany ; Slovakia was then part of Czechoslovakia . According to the official report of the district chairman of the police of September 26, 1945 there were 47 injured, 15 of them seriously. The Topoľčany pogrom accelerated the wave of Jewish emigration from Slovakia.

prehistory

Before the Second World War , about 3,200 Jews lived in Topoľčany . In 1945 around 550 Jews were still living in the city, some of whom were Holocaust survivors who had returned from Auschwitz . The former First Slovak Republic carried out its own deportations of the Jewish population in 1942 , and after the occupation of the country by the Wehrmacht , Jews were murdered en masse directly in Slovakia from August 1944. Members of the Hlinka Guard in particular had enriched themselves from the property of Jews. In the autumn of 1945 the population was still insufficiently supplied, and the anti-Semitic propaganda of the fallen First Slovak Republic was still having a strong impact.

The pogrom

On Sunday, September 23, 1945, it was rumored that the local monastery school would soon be taken over by Jews. The next morning, many demonstrators (most of them women) gathered in the city center and protested loudly against the takeover. The next anti-Semitic rumor soon spread, namely that a Jewish doctor had poisoned the children at the local elementary school; in fact there was a vaccination in this school at that time. The mob then beat up the Jewish doctor who carried it out. The police protected some Jews on their premises and called the army stationed there to help. Some soldiers initially sided with the violent demonstrators. Many Jews were subsequently physically attacked by these soldiers, and the demonstrators were looking for more Jews in the streets and houses. In the early hours of the afternoon, the local army chief came with another 150 soldiers, so the situation slowly calmed down. In the late afternoon, other police officers from Bratislava also arrived.

Post-history

There were judicial convictions after the pogrom, but all sentences were overturned as part of an amnesty in 1950. Most of the city's Jews emigrated to Israel . Today no Jew should live in the city anymore. Sixty years later, the city issued a statement regretting the events.

Work-up

The events were dealt with in the documentary Miluj blížneho svojho (German: Love your neighbor ; Slovakia / Israel 2004). This was supposed to be broadcast on Slovak television on May 17, 2004, and broadcasting was banned by the director of the STV TV station, Richard Rybníček, because of racist statements. After violent protests, the documentary was shown on television a week later and repeated two days later.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Protižidovský pogrom na Slovensku v létě 1945 published on January 28, 2010.
  2. ↑ Očitý svedok "Topoľčianskeho pogromu" published on September 14, 2005.
  3. ↑ The Topolcany Pogrom ( memento of the original from October 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. published on March 22, 2010. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.fighthatred.com
  4. ↑ Topoľčany: ospravednenie last change on August 23, 2011.
  5. ↑ Miluj blížneho svojho last change on August 7, 2011.

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