Jozef Tiso

Born in 1887 in what was then Hungary, Tiso studied for the priesthood and worked against local poverty before entering politics with the Slovak People's Party in 1918. He became party leader in 1938, and when Slovakia declared independence in March 1939 - two days before Nazi Germany seized the rest of the Czech lands - Tiso moved from prime minister to president by October. From March to October 1942, his government deported Slovak Jews to German extermination and concentration camps; after the Slovak National Uprising was crushed in summer 1944, another 13,500 were deported that September. When Soviet forces took western Slovakia in April 1945, Tiso fled to Austria and Germany, where American troops arrested him and sent him back to Czechoslovakia. He was convicted of high treason, betrayal of the uprising, and Nazi collaboration, then executed by hanging in Bratislava in 1947.