Holocaust in Slovak Film: From Amnesia to Memory. The Forgotten, Invisible Fates of the “Others”

Abstract Dealing with the past and accepting responsibility for the Holocaust has a long and difficult trajectory in Slovakia. Critical self-reflection was prevented first by the communist regime, after the fall of the Iron Curtain by the rise of nationalism and the cult of the war criminal, President Jozef Tiso. Despite the fact that the first compilation film dealing with the Holocaust was made immediately after the war, the right time for other films came only during the period of liberalization of the 1960s. Causing this deficit was not a lack of interest in researching one’s own history, but instead politics and communist anti-Zionism. There was plenty of material, for example the testimony of the escape of Alfréd Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba from Auschwitz. My paper aims to present little-known Slovak documentary films and contribute to the discussion about the media representation of the Holocaust in East Central Europe. It follows on from several years of research on the reflection of World War II and the Slovak National Uprising in Slovak documentary films after 1945 (Filová, Eva, and Eva Vženteková. 2020. Slovenský štát vo filme: dokumentárna a hraná tvorba po roku 1945 . Bratislava: Vlna, Drewo a srd.).