The Eastern European Nazi collaborators are tarnished by the association. In Slovakia’s case, for good and ill, these leaders were practicing Catholic Priests. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
Todays stamp was issued by a semi independent Slovakia, under the “protection” of the Third Reich. Yet here you have a Priest, who called Hitler a cultural beast, being honored as a recently passed founding father. It points to the strange situation the nation found itself.
Todays stamp is issue A20, a I.3 Koruna stamp issued by Slovakia on March 20th 1942. The stamp was a single issue that honored Father Andrej Hlinka, a priest and politician who had died in 1938. Father Hlinka has been honored by other stamp issues of modern Slovakia and the 1939-45 entity. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.
Up until 1918, Slovakia was ruled by the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire under the Hapsburg Emperor. Father Andrej Hlinka was a parish priest who moved in conservative political circles to try to gain more self determination for the Slovak people. In doing so he angered both the Hungarian authorities and his Bishop. He was suspended as a priest and sentenced to jail for his political activism. While in jail a new church finished construction in Cernova that Hlinka had been the force behind. The local parishioners wanted to wait to consecrate the church until Father Hlinka could do it. Instead the bishop sent a Hungarian speaking priest to do it guarded by 15 military police men. The local protest turned to rock throwing and the soldiers then fired on the crowd killing and wounding many. Father Hlinka’s story was now out and a appeal to the Pope got him released from prison and his priestly duties restored. As the post Austro-Hungary breakup Slovak future was being decided in Versailles in 1919, Father Hlinka traveled to Paris to try to get a better deal for the Slovak people. At this point he was in favor of a united Czechoslovakia, but only with rights of autonomy for Slovakia. His presence was not welcome and he was again jailed in Paris for allegedly traveling to France on a fake passport. This again raised his status with the Slovak people. Czechoslovakia became independent but with perhaps too much power in the hands of the Czechs. In 1920, Father Hlinka was again released from jail and elected to parliament as a member of the right wing Slovak People’s Party.
He was a leader of the party and when he died in 1938, leadership passed to another Priest, Father Josef Tiso. The troubles with Germany and Czechoslovakia were then coming to the fore. Hitler suggested to Tiso that Slovakia declare itself independent and that would be recognized by Germany. This was done and Father Tiso was named Prime Minister. The collaboration with Germany lead to the expulsion of many Jews to labor camps that became death camps. This crime was protested by the Vatican and temporarily stopped in 1942. There was also a lot of bribery of lower officials from Jews of the Bratislava Working Group. In late 1944 there was an uprising that was violently put down by the Nazis and now Father Tiso was just a figurehead. The Germans restarted the rounding up of Jews. With the Red Army approaching, Father Tiso fled to a monastery in Bavaria where he was arrested by the Americans and sent back to Bratislava to face a war crime trial at the hands of the new again united Czechoslovakia communist regime. He was found guilty and hung while still in his priests garb.
Well, my drink is empty and I may have a few more while I ponder the Slovaks then plight. First association with Hungary, then Chechia, then Germany, then Chechia again, when the desire was just to stand alone, with God. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.