Jewish leaders hope Pope Francis's visit to Slovakia this week will help further improve Catholic-Jewish relations in a country with a dark history of Holocaust collaboration where levels of anti-Semitism are still high.
Under the orders of a Nazi puppet regime headed by a Catholic priest, tens of thousands of Slovak Jews were deported and killed during World War II and the once-thriving community now numbers only around 2,000 people.
"We were positively surprised when the Vatican communicated that Pope Francis will visit Rybne Square, a place that is very symbolic and emotive for our community," he told AFP. "We expect that the pope will lay another brick in the building of Jewish-Catholic dialogue to make it more intensive," Duda said.
The republic's leader, Jozef Tiso, agreed to send tens of thousands of Jews to Germany's World War II death camps.Under Communism, Jews were prosecuted and jailed for alleged Zionist crimes, and the regime banned practising their religion.
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