Slovakia urged Germany on December 1 to pay compensation to Slovak victims of the Holocaust, saying it hoped a coming conference in London would speed up the process.
"[Slovakia] draws attention to the fact that [Germany] has so far not compensated either Slovak victims of the Holocaust or other forms of Nazi persecution," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The ministry said it welcomed an international conference organized by the British government in London in December on gold stolen by the Nazi German regime during World War II.
"The ministry believes the London conference... will contribute to speeding up the [process of] compensating victims of Nazism who have so far been overlooked," the statement said.
The London conference will try to uncover the fate of gold looted by the Nazis, and also consider whether looted stocks in Western hands could be used to compensate the estimated 300,000 surviving Holocaust victims.
Between 1939 and 1945, a pro-Nazi Slovak puppet state persecuted most of its then 80,000-strong Jewish community and other groups unpopular with the Nazis. However, after the war Slovakia was officially recognized as an integral part of the Czechoslovak Republic following the 1944 anti-Nazi Slovak National Uprising, a turn of events which put the country among the victors rather than the defeated fascist powers.
"Germany recently resolved the question of compensation in bilateral talks with the Czech Republic. It is regrettable that Germany is refusing even to talk about compensation with Slovakia which is the second equal successor of the former Czech-Slovak state," the ministry said.
