SLOVAKS IN YUGOSLAVIA AND IN ITS TERRITORIES UNDER FOREIGN OCCUPATION DURING WORLD WAR II

Abstract

Slovak minority has been co-creating a multicultural character of contemporary Serbia since the first half of the 18th century. The Slovaks living in former Yugoslavia as an integral part of the Yugoslav society also had to experience the turbulent events at the turn of the 1930s and 1940s. After the Axis invasion and destruction of Yugoslavia in April 1941 the Slovak community, historically settled in Bačka, Banat and Srem, was divided into three countries/occupational zones. Slovaks living in Srem became the citizens of independent Croatia, Slovaks living in Bačka became the citizens of the Hungarian Kingdom and Slovaks from Banat lived in territories under direct German occupation. The paper portrays main features of this minority’s political and cultural life in wartime Yugoslavia and its territories under foreign occupation, core problems of existence within changing regimes and the attitude of the Slovak minority towards the Slovak State (Slovak Republic) established on 14 March 1939 with an emphasis on religiously motivated conflicts between the mostly Lutheran Slovak minority in Yugoslavia and the Catholic regime of Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party (the ruling and only allowed political party in the Slovak State/Republic).