National Memory Institute (Slovakia)

The National Memory Institute (Slovak: Ústav pamäti národa) is a Slovak public institution that holds the police records of the fascist Slovak State and communist Czechoslovak Socialist Republic regimes that ruled Slovakia during the twentieth century.[2] The institute also promotes research into these periods of Slovak history and educates the general public of this history.[3] It publishes a journal, Pamäť národa, which is currently edited by Róbert Letz.[4] The founder of the institute was Ján Langoš, who served as director until his death in a car crash in 2006.[2]

National Memory Institute
Ústav pamäti národa

The institute's offices at Miletičova 19 in Ružinov, Bratislava
Agency overview
Formed2003 (2003)[1]
HeadquartersBratislava, Slovakia
Websitewww.upn.gov.sk

See

The Institute had 7 sees since its establishment, currently located at Miletičova Street 19 in Bratislava. In December 2021 it was announced that the by 2026, the Institute should relocate to newly modernised and reconstructed buildings at Krížna Street in Bratislava, where a library and an exposition were to be opened to the public.[5]

Controversy

One of the institution's staff historians, Martin Lacko, was fired in 2016 for promoting the Slovak State.[6]

Academic opinion

James Mace Ward commented that the National Memory Institute "has done a brisk trade in publications on the Slovak state, much of this scholarship being of high quality. Yet the focus on the state seems disproportionate, as the institute’s archive has few relevant holdings".[7]

Political scientist Jelena Subotić states that after Langoš' death, "The Institute’s main goal became the delegitimization of Slovakia’s communist regime, achieved by grouping it together with fascism while making a case that communist dictatorship was, in fact, worse."[8]

References
  1. "O Ústave pamäti národa". Ústav pamäti národa (in Slovak).
  2. "Nation's Memory Institute evicted". The Slovak Spectator. Retrieved 14 November 2018.
  3. "Mission". Retrieved 14 November 2018.
  4. "Časopis Pamäť národa". Ústav pamäti národa (in Slovak). Retrieved 23 February 2020.
  5. Teraz.sk (14 December 2021). "Vláda: Ústav pamäti národa má získať reprezentatívne sídlo". TERAZ.sk (in Slovak). Retrieved 16 December 2021.
  6. Paulovičová, Nina (2018). "Holocaust Memory and Antisemitism in Slovakia: The Postwar Era to the Present". Antisemitism Studies. Indiana University Press. 2 (1): 12. doi:10.2979/antistud.2.1.02. S2CID 165383570.
  7. Nedelsky 2016, p. 986.
  8. Subotić, Jelena (2019). Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance After Communism. Cornell University Press. p. 210. ISBN 978-1-5017-4240-8.

Further reading
  • Nedelsky, Nadya (2016). ""The Struggle for the Memory of the Nation": Post-Communist Slovakia and its World War II Past". Human Rights Quarterly. 38 (4): 969–992. doi:10.1353/hrq.2016.0053. S2CID 151419238.
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