Marián Mitaš as Alfréd Wetzler, Zuzana Kronerová as Eugénia Propperová and Martin Madej as president Jozef Tiso, with the boa around his hips in the Hitler's President play. (source: Ľuboš Kotlár)
In a scene set in a prison cell, Jozef Tiso, the priest who was Slovakia’s wartime leader, sits behind a table, a fur boa wrapped around his waist. He explains to Alfréd Wetzler, one of the authors of the 1944 Vrba-Wetzler Report that described the atrocities then being committed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, that his sister had given him the boa – to protect his kidneys, as he had suffered from kidney inflammation during the First World War.
Hitler’s President
The play Hitler’s President was symbolically premiered at Bratislava’s Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav Theatre (DPOH) on March 25, the day on which Slovakia remembers the departure of the first transport from its territory to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camps. It follows two other productions, Pressburger Fight Club and Pozsony Dance Club, which also form part of the DPOH repertoire dealing with the theme of the Holocaust in Slovakia.
Later in the play Hitler’s President, it is revealed that the original owner of the boa, made from polar fox fur, was in fact a Jewish teacher, Eugénia Propperová. She was forced to hand over the boa to the district directorate of the Hlinka Guard militia after Tiso’s Nazi-allied Slovak State brought into effect its so-called Jewish Code. Among other restrictions, the legislation prohibited Jews from owning furs or fur products. Propperová, a 78-year-old French teacher wrote a letter to President Tiso, pleading for the return of her boa as it was the only thing enabling to keep her sore throat warm, as she had no money for coal. An official response advised her to contact the Hlinka Guard in Bratislava. She did not follow the advice, considering such an action to be futile. More pressing matters soon arose – she was deported to a concentration camp, where she perished.
Propperová was just one of about 20,000 of Slovak Jews who wrote to Tiso. They pleaded for the return of confiscated items, for permission to marry someone they loved or not to wear a yellow Star of David, and for exemptions from deportation, individual fates taking place against the wider backdrop of Slovakia’s tragic wartime history.
These letters inspired Madeline Vadkerty, an American historian who researched them, to write a book on the subject: Slovutný pán prezident (Most Honourable Mr President), published in 2020. This, in turn, led playwright and veteran Slovak journalist Ľuba Lesná to pen the factually-inspired Hitler’s President, which was recently premiered at the Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav Theatre (DPOH) in Bratislava. In it, Lesná incorporates a fictitious dialogue between Tiso and Wetzler.
