Image by getty images

European Jewish groups will honor the prime minister of Slovakia for his “commitment to tolerance.”

Premier Robert Fico is expected in Brussels later this month to receive the European Jewish Prize for Tolerance at an event organized by 17 Jewish groups, including the Rabbinical Centre of Europe and the European Jewish Community Centre, according to an announcement released Wednesday by the EJCC.

In March, a delegation of rabbis from the EJCC and the Brussels-based European Jewish Association lobby group met with Fico in Bratislava and thanked him for his role in designating Sept. 9 Slovakian Jewish Holocaust Memorial day.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

“Preserving historical Jewish sites in Slovakia, including synagogues and cemeteries, is integral to the country’s heritage,” the EJCC quoted Fico as saying.

During the most recent Sept. 9 commemoration, the head of Slovakia’s Catholic Church for the first time acknowledged “wrongdoing” by church officials during the country’s main Holocaust memorial ceremony.

It is “important to deepen the consciousness of wrongdoing, which in the past [caused] sons and daughters to move away from the spirit of Jesus Christ and the message of the Word of God,” Stanislav Zvolensky, the chairman of the Conference of Bishops of Slovakia, was quoted as saying by the Slovak news site TA3.

Nearly 70,000 of Slovakia’s Jews were killed during World War II. Slovak authorities collaborated closely with Nazi Germany, concentrating Slovak Jews in labor and concentration camps, from which they were deported to extermination camps, according to Yad Vashem.

Approximately 3,000 Jews live in Slovakia today, according to the European Jewish Congress.

Read more: http://www.jta.org/2013/10/04/news-opinion/world/jewish-groups-laud-slovak-premiers-holocaust-memorial-efforts#ixzz2gqr62Hji

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount