MARK KURLANSKY
Letter from Slovakia
One
path that is likely to be amo ng the most traveled in the new Slovak
republic is the o ne between the dining room table and the coffee table in
the Bratislava living room o f Zuzan a Stern. This is the path she paces ev–
ery Thursday aftern oon after she has read th e w eek 's editi o n of
Z mena.
"Zmena" mea ns change, an d it is t he titl e of o ne of th e many new
newspapers that h ave com e out in the post- C ommunist liberty of
Slovakia in recent yea rs. Wh en Juraj Stern comes home o n Thursdays, his
wife has already read the wee kl y
Z IIICll a
and is pac in g, ready to repo rt the
week's assortment o f nebul o us anti-Semiti c innuendo.
Zmell a
is no t one
of those fl agrant neo-Naz i, printed-in-the-U .S.A. hate tablo ids. It is re–
spectable in appearance and to ne , with a staff o f recogni zed journalists
who write Slovak, a lingui sti c cousin o f Czech , in a well- craft ed style that
appears to be targeting edu ca ted readers.
The Stern s are possibl y th e handsomest couple in Bratislava. They
both crackle with energy. She has obsidi an eyes th at glow a w o ndrous
anger as she tells sto ri es o f life in fas t-changing Bratislava . Juraj is small , fit,
fine-featured , and so charged that it seems he cann o t b ear to be mo tion–
less. Their home is in an unin spired block o f apartment buildings sur–
rounded by similar blocks o n th e edge o f town , wh ere there w as room
for new constructi o n and no co stl y old buildings in the way. But it is
pleasant , full o f paintings and books. Th e T hursday I was visiting th e
Sterns,
Zmell a
published th e seco nd part o f a se ri es ca ll ed "Vynuten e
Klamstvo" whi ch m eans something like " Li e Under Duress. " It does not
say that the Holocaust did no t happen . It simply quo tes o thers saying so .
There were, according to some people ,
ZlII ella
repo rts, no gas chambers at
Auschwitz, only refri ge rati o n units.
Z l1l ell a
could just be reporting on the
phenomenon of rev isio ni sm . And it could be just because Slovaki an ac–
tivist Peter Ga ll has a very classica ll y J ewi sh tlce that the
Z/Hen.a
cartoonist
portrays him in a ca ri ca ture th at could belo ng o n a poster for the Nazi
propaganda film
Ocr ElVige Jude.
And what is to be made o f an edito ri al
complaining that such a fu ss w as made o ver a J ewi sh cem etery recently
vandalized in Slova ki a, ye t w he n the Israe lis commit vi o le nce against
Palestinians, nothing is said ? Is it signifi cant that when a foreign rabbi set–
tled in the small J ewi sh community in Ko si ce,
Z l1l ell a
referred to
