János Esterházy

Count János Esterházy (Nyitraújlak, Nyitra County, Kingdom of Hungary (today Veľké Zálužie, Slovakia), March 14, 1901 – Mírov, Czechoslovakia, March 8, 1957) (Slovak rarely: gróf Ján Esterházi) was a prominent ethnic Hungarian politician in mid-war Czechoslovakia and later in the First Slovak Republic. Member of the Czechoslovak Parliament and of the Slovak Assembly. After the Second World War he was illegally deported to the Soviet Union, sentenced on trumped-up charges at a show-trial, and imprisoned. In the meantime he was sentenced, in absentia, to death by the National Court in Bratislava on the charges of High Treason to the State, collaboration with enemy, the breaking-up of Czechoslovakia, and his participation in an anti-democratic regime as a deputy of the Slovak Assembly. The sentence was not executed as a consequence of a Presidential pardon, following his return to Czechoslovakia from Soviet Union. He died in prison in 1957.

The Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities named him as hero for saving Jews during World War II, on the other hand, the Federation of the Jewish Communities in Slovakia published official attitude about János Esterházy and rejected efforts to present him as “democratic, antifascist fighter and fearless savior of Jews”.