To the Editor: Prof. Thaddeus V. Gromada (letter, Sept. 1) took exception to your description of Karol Sidor, the Catholic Slovak Nationalist leader, as a Nazi collaborator. I was born in Czechoslovakia and lived in Bardejov, Slovakia, until the deportations of 1942. I am the sole survivor of the more than 100 members of my family deported by the Slovak Government to the Auschwitz and Treblinka camps.
The parliament of this Slovak Government was the only parliament in Europe that voted for the expulsion of the Jews and paid the Germans 500 marks for each Jew deported, providing they never be returned. Karol Sidor was a founder of this regime and also served and represented it.
He was as well the representative of the Slovakian People's Party - whose aims were to separate Slovakia from Czech lands, to liquidate political opposition and to get rid of Czechs and Jews in Slovakia. The only wish of Hitler that Mr. Sidor took a stand against was whether Slovakia should be allied with the Czech protectorate or be independent. He favored alliance.
In philosophy and action, Mr. Sidor tried to outdo the Nazis. As early as 1938, he recommended that the Jews of Slovakia be sent to Madagascar. ''With Sidor, against the Jews'' was how the Slovak People's Party began its daily radio broadcasts from Vienna in 1938 and early 1939.
In a note from the Vatican, to the Slovak Government on March 14, 1942, the Vatican Secretariat of State demanded an explanation of the fate of Jewish families. On May 8, 1942, the Bratislavia Ministry of Foreign Affairs instructed the Slovak minister to the Vatican, Karol Sidor, to supply the Vatican with untrue information about the fate of the deported Jews (Lettrich's ''History of Modern Slovakia,'' page 187). Karol Sidor then gave the Holy See a Utopian description of Jewish resettlement. On Oct. 18, 1947, the democratic government of Czechoslovakia under President Eduard Benes sentenced Mr. Sidor to 20 years in prison as a collaborator. He escaped to Canada. Mr. Gromada's letter smacks of historical revisionism. Your description was apt and proper.
Poster Comment:
The parliament of this Slovak Government was the only parliament in Europe that voted for the expulsion of the Jews...
A little bit of history today.
