Where foxes say goodnight

In the first years of its existence, the Slovak state appeared as an oasis of peace and abundance in a world marked by the ravages of war. Building sidewalks and sewers, construction activity, joyful parades and full grandstands glorifying God and the nation. However, the idyllic picture can only stand if we forget the thousands of murdered Jews, the Roma pushed to the outskirts of towns and villages, the Czechs, Hungarians and Rusyns relegated to second-class citizens. If we overlook the arizations, the violence and above all the systematic effort to turn the previously multicultural country into a Slovak Christian monolith in the manner of Hitler's Germany. In this audiobook, historian Hana Kubátová explores how the formation of the nation-state during World War II was linked to collective betrayal and genocide. It shows, that the Holocaust was not just an "imported" tragedy, imposed on Slovakia by Nazi Germany, but by process, in which the Slovaks themselves - the political and religious elites - participated, local officials and ordinary citizens. The audiobook shatters the comfortable myth of Slovakia as a victim of the Nazi dictatorship and asks how a country that presented itself as Christian and national could have become an active participant in the Holocaust. Kubátová provides an answer, supported by a wealth of evidence, which shows that the Holocaust was not only the result of the decisions of those in power. It has been made possible by daily displays of loyalty, compromise and greed, even in the remotest corners of the country where foxes say goodnight. The historical analysis of events is intertwined with a warning against the power of nationalist ideologies crossing borders - both geographical and temporal.