Esterhazy (Esterhazy) Janos

In 1931 he was elected head of the National Christian Socialist Party of Czechoslovakia. In 1935 he became a deputy from the Slovakian Kosice and the leader of the Hungarian ethnic minority. From the parliamentary rostrum he spoke out against the official ideology of Czechoslovakism. He enjoyed the support of Admiral Horthy.
03/14/1939 spoke in support of the creation of an independent Slovakia. In Bratislava he organized a cultural organization of ethnic Hungarians, which was banned in 1942. One of the few abstained when in 1942 the Slovak parliament spoke in favor of the deportation of Jews to Nazi death camps. “I am ashamed that the country’s leadership, who consider themselves pious Catholics, is ready to send Slovak Jews to Hitler’s death camps,” Esterhazy said at the time.
In 1944 he saved hundreds of Jews, Czechs, Slovaks and Poles. After Soviet troops entered Bratislava, he was arrested, but released after 12 days. Subsequently, following a denunciation, he was again arrested and handed over to the NKVD. After a year spent in prison in the internal prison of the NKVD of the USSR on Lubyanka, he was sentenced to 10 years in the camps.
09/16/1947 The Slovak Supreme Court found him guilty of collaborating with the Nazis and sentenced him to death. Two years later, the USSR extradited Esterhazy to Czechoslovakia. The death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by order of the president.
Died in Mirova prison on March 8, 1957. In the Slovak city of Kosice, a monument was erected to Janos Esterházy.