Slovak village refuses to rename sign honouring fascist leader

German Foreign Minister Joachim Von Ribbentrop greeting Jozef Tiso (R) as Adolf Hitler looks on

Local council members in the Slovak village of Varin have rejected a request from state prosecutors to rename the country's sole street sign honouring Slovakia's wartime fascist leader, Monsignor Jozef Tiso.

Only one councillor voted in favour of the proposal - the rest abstained.

The matter could now go to court, while the council wants to put the matter to local residents in a referendum.

The village - in the Zilina region - bears a street named "Dr Jozef Tiso Street".

Earlier this year, activists tore down the street sign in what was the latest instalment in a long-running saga.

• Slovakia's Nazi history returns to the fore

Last year council members were charged under the country's anti-extremism laws after refusing to rename the street but the charges were later quashed by a special prosecutor.

Tiso led the clero-fascist Slovak State, a client state of Nazi Germany, between 1939 and 1945.

He was arrested in 1945 and hanged by the Czechoslovak authorities as a war criminal in 1947. He is venerated as a hero by the far right and some Catholic clerics.

Under his rule, some 70,000 of 90,000 Jews living in the territory of Slovakia - including all 25 of Varin's Jewish families - were deported and murdered in the Holocaust.

Slovakia was the only country in wartime Europe that paid Nazi Germany to take its Jewish citizens.