Slovak President Peter Pellegrini honored the victims of the so-called Bloody Sunday in the villages of Ostrý Grúň and Kľak in the Žarnovica district on Sunday, during which the Nazis murdered 148 people in both villages in January 1945 and burned down both villages. He described the event 80 years ago as the most brutal war crime committed on the territory of Slovakia.
“Bloody Sunday, January 21, 1945 is a tragic entry in our national history, all the more so because unfortunately their Slovak compatriots also participated in the unimaginable suffering of the inhabitants of Ostrý Grúň and nearby Kľak,” stated Pellegrini, saying that the tragedy in Kľakovská dolina was a cold-blooded premeditated mass murder.
64 people lost their lives in Ostro Grún during the Nazi reprisals. 84 residents died in Kľak, including 16 women and 36 children. “They murdered a woman with all of her six children and a three-month-old granddaughter or a mother-to-be shortly before giving birth. What is especially terrifying about these events is that it was not the action of a deranged individual, but a cleverly prepared act of revenge.” said Pellegrini.
The President pointed out that this year we will commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War and the liberation of Slovakia. “Unfortunately, we will remember him at a time when the war rages again on our eastern borders and when our society is once again saturated with hatred. I warn from this place all those who have understood the incitement of hatred as a tool for their own political power, you are playing with the fire that it won’t even stop at such places as Ostrý Grúň or Kľak,” said Pellegrini.
The tragic events in Kľakovská dolina took place on January 21, 1945, the reason for which was the help of local residents to the partisan groups of the Slovak National Uprising. The village of Kľak was attacked in the morning by the Edelweiss anti-partisan unit led by the SS, whose members included Slovaks. They killed 84 people in the village, including women, children and the elderly, many of them were burned alive in burning houses.
Members of the Edelweiss unit, in cooperation with a special SS unit and a Heimatschutz unit, also attacked the village of Ostrý Grúň on the same day. In one of the houses, they gradually killed 64 citizens, then set the house on fire. The remaining inhabitants were driven out and the village was looted. Three days later, they returned to the site and burned down the remaining 112 houses. Civilians were prohibited from entering the valley until liberation.
