BEFORE taking off to participate in the opening ceremony of the new Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, Slovak President Ivan Gašparovič said he regarded it as his duty - given the darker side of Slovak history, the TASR news agency wrote.
He also noted that there were many Slovaks who helped save Jews from persecution during World War II, when Slovakia was an independent Nazi puppet state. Despite the efforts of some to help the Jews, an estimated 70,000 were sent to death camps from Slovakia during that time.
The president also pointed out that, through a declaration adopted by the Slovak Parliament in 1990, Slovakia apologized to the country's Jews for events from the period of the wartime Slovak state.
