Pin from Czechoslovakia made in 1959. It is made to commemorate the Slovak National Uprising in 1944.
The Slovak National Uprising was a military uprising in Slovakia in the year 1944. Parts of the Slovakian army in central Slovakia revolted against the authoritarian Slovak regime and the Slovak People’s Party under the command of a secret Slovak National Council. The uprising lasted from August 29 to October 28, 1944 when the insurgents had to give up the fight against the German Wehrmacht. Locally, partisans managed to continue the fight until the Red Army occupied all of Slovakia in April 1945.
The aim of the Slovak uprising was to clear the Red Army’s advance route via Slovakia to Vienna. At the start of the uprising, Slovakia as Germany’s ally was not yet occupied.
The total number of victims on the Slovak side is estimated at over 10,000. The leaders of the revolt, Rudolf Viest and Ján Golian, were rounded up by the Germans and killed in the Flossenbürg concentration camp in early 1945.