ts, and lands upon which buildings had been constructed after the seizure of the property.
Following 2 years of negotiations, the Deputy Prime Minister's office drafted a proposal of compensation for heirless property owned by families before the Holocaust. Negotiations continued at the end of the period covered by this report; a provisional agreement is expected to be reached prior to the 2002 elections and the Cabinet change.
In February 2002, Parliament passed an amendment to Law 206, which allows the compensation to Jewish holocaust victims, who lived in the country's territory when it was occupied by Hungary; Law 305 compensates the victims or direct heirs of Nazi persecution during World War II in the war-time Slovak State. The deadline for applications under the amendment is November 2002. The Union of Jewish Communities in Slovakia filed a lawsuit against Germany to reclaim compensation of $425,000 (200 million sk) that the war-time Slovak government paid to Germany to cover the cost to deport 57,000 Slovak Jews. The lawsuit was postponed until 2003.
Forced Religious Conversion
There were no reports of forced religious conversion, including of minor U.S. citizens who had been abducted or illegally removed from the United States, or of the refusal to allow such citizens to be returned to the United States.
Section III. Societal Attitudes
The generally amicable relationship among religions in society contributed to religious freedom. However, anti-Semitism persists among some elements of the population.
Despite protests by the Federation of Jewish Communities and Slovak National Party members, the official Slovak cultural organization Matica Slovenska continued their efforts to rehabilitate the historical reputation of Jozef Tiso, the leader of the Nazi-collaborationist wartime Slovak state. The chairman of the SNU, Stanislav Panis, in his tribute to Tiso appealed to the Government to make March 14 an official national holiday.
A musical skinhead group called Judenmord (Murder of Jews) has established a Webpage and participated in several concerts in the country as well as in the neighboring Czech Republic. The Jewish community has called on the Government to ban this openly anti-Semitic band, which the Government had not done by the end of the period covered by this report.
In late April 2002, the Jewish cemetery in the eastern Slovak town of Kosice was desecrated for the second time in the past 5 years. The police identified three children between the ages of 11 and 13 as the perpetrators; however, as minors, they were not prosecuted. In late May 2001, unknown culprits desecrated the Jewish cemetery in the central town of Levice for the fourth time in the past 3 years. The Jewish community has appealed to the mayor of Levice to properly investigate this incident; the police investigation did not lead to the location of any suspects.
There was no progress in the Catholic Church's plans to canonize the late Bishop Vojtasak, who was imprisoned after World War II and died as a consequence. Vojtasak was a member of the National Council of the wartime pro-Nazi Slovak state and was aware of the deportations of Slovak Jews to Nazi concentration camps.
The Jewish community continued to complain that a lawsuit against Martin Savel, a former editor of the publishing house Agres who published anti-Semitic literature and the anti-Jewish magazine Voice of Slovakia in the early 1990's, never has been resolved due to the slowness of the courts.
Section IV. U.S. Government Policy
The U.S. Government discusses religious freedom issues with the Government in the context of its overall dialog and policy of promoting human rights. The U.S. Embassy maintains contacts with a broad spectrum of religious groups. The Embassy encourages tolerance for minority religions.
Embassy officers meet with officials of the major religious groups on a regular basis to discuss property restitution issues as well as human rights conditions. Relations with religious groups are friendly and open. The Embassy continued its dialog with the Conference of Bi