tate legal entities, and under certain conditions by private persons. In some cases, the property was returned legally by the Government but was not vacated by the former tenant--often a school or hospital with nowhere else to go.
There also have been problems with the return of property that had been undeveloped at the time of seizure but upon which there since has been construction. Churches, synagogues, and cemeteries have been returned, albeit mostly in poor condition. The churches and religious groups often lack the funds to restore these properties to a usable condition. The main obstacles to the resolution of outstanding restitution claims are the Government's lack of financial resources, due to its austerity program, and bureaucratic resistance on the part of those entities required to vacate restitutable properties.
While the Orthodox Church reported that six of the seven properties on which it had filed claims already had been returned, the Catholic Church and the Federation of Jewish Communities reported lower rates of success. The Catholic Church reported that more than half of the property that it had claimed had been returned to it already. In another 12 percent of cases the property had been returned legally to the Church but typically was occupied by other tenants and would require court action to be returned to church hands. The Church had not received any compensation for the remaining 40 percent of claims since these properties were undeveloped at the time of nationalization but since have been developed. The Church also is not eligible to reacquire lands that originally were registered to church foundations that no longer exist or no longer operate in the country, like the Benedictines.
The Federation of Jewish Communities (FJC) has reported some successful cases of restitution and has only a few pending cases that require resolution. These include cases in which property had been restituted to the FJC but not in usable condition, cases in which the property still is occupied by previous tenants, 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 Web