The Slovak government apologized for anti-Semitic regulations that legitimized the expropriation and disenfranchisement of Jews during World War II. A puppet regime, dependent on Nazi Germany, ruled there with the Catholic priest Jozef Tiso as head of state. The four-party cabinet of the Conservative Prime Minister Eduard Heger passed a statement to this effect on Wednesday in Bratislava. It states: “The government of the Slovak Republic regards it as its moral duty to publicly regret the crimes of which the authorities of the time were guilty, in particular the adoption of those nefarious decrees of September 9, 1941, which protect basic human rights and freedoms of Jewish fellow citizens. ” These ordinances, known as the “Jewish Code”, created the basis for the deportation of Slovak Jews to German concentration camps. On March 25, 1942, the first train with around 1,000 Jewish women and girls drove from the northern Slovak city of Poprad to Auschwitz-Birkenau. By the end of the Second World War, around 70,000 Slovak Jews had been taken to German extermination camps. Few survived.