Press for Conversion! Issue # 70 Spring 2021 40 While Tiso was executed for war crimes, two of his worst cronies, Jozef Kirschbaum and Ferdinand Dur- cansky, escaped their trials. Given safe haven by Canada’s Liberal government, they helped to found and lead both the SWC and CSL. T he Slovak World Congress (SWC) was founded in Toronto in 1971 by former officials of the Nazi puppet state of “Independent” Slovakia (1939-45). Affiliated with the profascist Anti-Bolshe- vik Bloc of Nations (ABN), 1 the SWC was “composed of Nazi collaborationists and their progeny,” said journalist Jack Ander- son. The SWC, he said, was “the Slovakian chapter” of the World AntiCommunist League. 2 Active in the CIA-backed “Captive Nations” cause, SWC whitewashed wartime Slovakia’s allegiance to the Nazis, and sup- ported the Black Ribbon Day movement. 3 Chief among the SWC’s Nazi collab- orators was Jozef Kirschbaum who fled to Canada in 1948 after being sentenced to ten years in a Czechoslovak prison, plus ten in a labour camp. 4 Kirschbaum was key to the Hlinka-Party regime of Catholic priest, Jozef Tiso. As Slovakia’s president, Tiso enforced Nazi-like laws that deprived Jews of their jobs, possessions and rights. Tiso’s regime also sent 75,000 of Slovakia’s 90,000 Jews to Nazi death camps. 5 Sharing the Nazi’s ha- tred for Judeo-Bolshevism, Tiso’s regime vowed to “fight against the Marxist-Jewish ideology of disorganization and violence.” 6 Sheltered by Canada til his death in 2001, Kirschbaum led the SWC and its af- filiate, the Canadian Slovak League (CSL). For decades they whitewashed Slovak fas- cism and hid their movement’s obeisance to Nazism. Forty years after WWII, the SWC finally issued a statement on the Holocaust at its 1987 assembly in Toronto (attended by PM Brian Mulroney and Ontario Premier Bill Davis). Denying the Tiso regime’s role in decimating Slovak Jewry, it pushed the myth that this genocide was the fault of “mis- guided individuals of the Slovak regime.” 7 journalists finally exposed his Nazi past. 14 While Tiso was executed for war crimes in 1947 by Czechoslovakia’s elect- ed communist government, the SWC and CSL hailed him as a national hero. On the 50th anniversary of his death, CSL Toronto held a Sunday church event to honour him. Jozef Kirschbaum gave the commemorative speech. The CSL raised funds to help buy Tiso’s home for use as a museum to exalt his memory. Involved in that project were various leaders including CSL president Ste- phen Kovacic, 15 who represented the CSL at ABN-Canada’s 1986 conference. At that event featuring CIA-backed Nicaraguan and Afghan terror groups, as well as many oth- ers created and led by Nazi collaborators, the CSL’s Kovacic said: It is my honour, by this presentation to join the common fight of the enslaved nations in Northern, Central and Eastern Europe and to give any possible support to achieve our common goal... 16 War crimes of SWC leaders In the late 1930s, as a law student and Hlin- ka Party organizer at Bratislava University, Kirschbaum edited its antisemitic/antiMa- rxist publications. He also led the Hlinka Guard’s “elite detachment” of thugs on cam- pus, the “Academic Guard” (1938-40). . Af- ter leading attacks on Jews by this band of SS-like “Brown Shirts,” Kirschbaum met Adolph Eichmann. Hitler had sent Eichmann to Slovakia in late 1938 to help orchestrate the Tiso regime’s role in the Holocaust. 17 In 1938-39, Kirschbaum met the Nazi elite, including: Hitler, Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Werner Göttsche and Edmund Vessemeyer. 18 Kirschbaum was the Hlinka Party Sec. Gen. (1939-40), a Slovak diplo- mat in Rome (1941-42) and its Charge d’Affairs in Switzerland (1942-45). 19 He served the American Slovak League and the CSL in Bern where the UN International Refugee Organization “was convinced ... to accept as refugees [to the US and Canada] Slovak exiles linked to the wartime Slovak state, who fled the communists in 1945.” 20 Kirschbaum’s career was aided by his friend and law prof, Ferdinand Durcan- sky, who led the Slovak delegations to meet Hitler that created Nazi Slovakia. The UN listed Durcansky as a Category A war crim- inal in 1946 and, in 1947, he was sentenced to death in absentia by Czechoslovakia’s elected communist government. 21 Like Kir- schbaum, Durcansky was key to creating the SWC and was “one of its main members.” 22 “Secret” US government files, de- The day after he met Hitler, Jozef Tiso declared a “free” Slovakia. President Tiso’s Nazi regime deported about 75,000 Jews to death camps. Such myths of Nazi Slovakian inno- cence have long been spread by key Cana- dian academics. As a history professor in Montreal and Toronto, and co-founder of the University of Ottawa’s Chair in Slovak His- tory, Kirschbaum himself led the cover up. His effort to shape Slovak historical memory is continued by his son Stanislav, a prof. at York University. A graduate of Can- ada’s National Defense College, Stanislav is highly respected in some circles as an ex- pert on communism and Central European “security issues.” 8 Since the 1960s, his work has cleansed Slovakia’s role in genocide and honoured his father’s collaboration with Ti- so’s fascist regime. His 1983 book, Slovak Politics, was subtitled Essays on Slovak His- tory in Honour of Joseph M. Kirschbaum. Both father and son had Slovak his- tory texts published by the SWC. And both worked with its Canadian affiliate, the CSL. In 1962, when Jozef edited CSL’s pro-Tiso organ, Kanadsky Slovak, Canadian Jewish groups urged the RCMP to investigate his Nazi past and extradite him. 9 His son has chaired Kanadsky Slovak’s editorial com- mittee since 2010 10 when it ran an article by his father. Recalling Jozef’s “pleasant mem- ories” of the 1930s, it used a photo of him with Father Andrej Hlinka, the priest/bank- er who founded the Hlinka Party. “We were a tolerant, friendly generation,” Jozef wrote, “many [were] nationally conscious and will- ing to put their knowledge and strength into the service of the nation and the church.” 11 In a Slovak history text dedicated to his father, Stanislav said Jozef Kirschbaum cofounded SWC and gave it “intellectual and organizational leadership.” 12 In 1970, at its preparatory meeting in New York, the elder Kirschbaum became SWC’s executive vice president. Once affirmed at the SWC’s first assembly in Toronto (1971), he kept this position until 1988 13 when two Canadian Slovak World Congress (SWC) and Canadian Slovak League (CSL) Created and led by Nazi collaborators and their allies—the Toronto- based SWC and CSL— enjoyed many decades of Cold-War support from the Canadian government and corporate media, which shared their toxic, anti-Red social psychosis bit.ly/HitlerTiso