Monument in Nová Lehota, Slovakia

This monument is in the small rural village of Nová Lehota in western Slovakia. It is dedicated to the Slovak partisan soldiers who fought the Nazis in 1944 as part of the Slovak National Uprising. The red star affixed to the top makes it clear that the soldiers were fighting for the establishment of communism in Slovakia, though this was not entirely the case. Some partisans were connected to communist organizations, but certainly not all of them. The communist leaders of Czechoslovakia sought to portray the Slovak partisans as fighting solely for the reunification of Czechoslovakia in a socialist state and any issue of Slovak independence aspirations or political systems other than communism were not represented publicly.