Jozef Tiso, born in Veľká Bytča

on 13-10-1887, from a Slovak family of seven middle-class children (his father was a butcher) in what was then the kingdom of Hungary. He graduated from the Pasmaneum college in Vienna, in 1910, as a theologian. He worked as a Catholic curate in several towns, teaching Slovak spelling, organizing theater performances, and doing cultural work. At the beginning of World War I, Tiso served as a military chaplain. In 1915, he became the director of the local minor seminary at Nitra and a teacher at the Piarist high school in the same town. From 1921 to 1924, Tiso served as the secretary of the local bishop and a teacher at the seminary of divinity at Nitra. In 1924, he became the seminary’s dean and parish priest of the town of Bánovce nad Bebravou

. Tiso was a Roman Catholic priest and a famous Nazi collaborator as president of Slovakia during World War II.

and became the president of the Independent Slovak Republic

from 1939-1945, allied with Nazi Germany. Tiso’s role in the treatment of Slovak Jews during the war has been a source of constant controversy. It is undisputed that he personally held anti-Semitic (see
Simon Wiesenthal)

views and that his government enacted harsh anti-Jewish legislation similar to that passed earlier in Nazi Germany. His administration also cooperated with the Nazi plan to deport tens of thousands of Jews to concentration camps However, his defenders point out that Tiso’s government halted the deportation of Jews to Auschwitz (see
Hans Stark)

when it became clear that Jews were being executed in large numbers there. SS Hauptsturmführer,
Josef Mengele 
infamous for performing human experiments on camp inmates in Auschwitz, including children, for which Mengele was called the “Angel of Death”. Others claim that Tiso played a major part in the extermination process and was Hitler’s willing tool.
Death and burial ground of Tiso, Mgr. Dr. Jozef..