Jewish cemeteries attacked by vandals in Slovakia
In Slovakia, the recent vandalism of a Jewish cemetery in the east of the country has stirred anger among members of its tiny Jewish community. Since October, two other Jewish cemeteries have been vandalized. Do these acts reflect a growth in anti-Semitism in Slovakia?
"The perpetrators in the cases when these perpetrators are known have been quite young. These people are between 15, 16 even sometimes 14 years old."
Daniel Milo says there is a link between these youngsters and established extremist groups. They are apparently under the influence of their older members who are said to take advantage of the fact that people under 15 cannot be legally prosecuted. According to police sources, there were 104 racially motivated crimes committed in Slovakia within the first ten months of this year. 69% of these cases were clarified. A National Police Corps senior official says that the number of clarified cases has increased within the past 5 years as well. What do you mean by clarified?
"It is hard to say if there were only 21 racially motivated crimes committed back in 1998. The increase of these cases is also caused by better quality of work of the Police Corps, mainly its larger co-operation with non-governmental institutions."
Despite the fact that some of the alleged culprits were brought to the court, none of them were sentenced by the Slovak judges. Do you mean that none of them were found guilty by Slovak judges? Moreover, two extremist groups have registered themselves as regular civic associations. Daniel Milo again:
"And they are trying to show themselves as political subjects. They are doing demonstrations and are basically trying to move more to the political sphere. I think the next step will be creation of a political party."
But does this reflect a rise in anti-Semitism in Slovakia? As yet - there is no right wing party with anti-Semitic tendencies in Slovakia on the contrary to Hungary. And the chairman of the Jewish Religious Community in Bratislava Peter Salner, believes anti-Semitism is much less prevalent in Slovakia compared with neighbouring countries such as Poland.
"I have never experienced any manifestation of anti-Semitic attitude in my close environment. I have seen aggressive graffiti and posters but I wouldn't say that this is some of a principle of this country."
And Daniel Milo says Slovak society per se is no anti-Semitic:
"I would say that majority of Slovak population is not anti-Semitic but there is a certain percentage of population that still has some anti-Semitic attitudes. And I think it might be also connected with the current situation in the Middle East where many people blame Israel for the things that are going on there. Sometimes it's very hard to distinguish between anti-Israel stance and anti-Semitic ones."
