A museum dedicated to WWII history and Banská Bystrica's role as the beating heart of the country's anti-fascist resistance is harboured in a looming concrete ark 500m southeast of the main square. The SNP Museum's architecture instantly intrigues: resembling a flying saucer split in two, its halves frame a monument depicting bodies piled high. Inside, exhibits detail the build-up to WWII through to resistance and the brutal reprisals that followed. Some explanation is given in both Slovak and English.
Banská Bystrica became Slovakia’s nucleus of anti-fascist resistance during WWII, a place where revolutionary committees secretly organised armed resistance. The museum displays military documents, weapons and disturbing accounts of Nazi reprisals against the revolutionaries: there were mass executions, including a notorious killing of 747 people at Kremni'cka, and 90 villages and settlements were burned down.
In 1942, 58,000 Jews were deported from Slovakia to concentration camps and ghettos. A second wave of deportations followed in 1944. The museum has moving displays of deportees’ belongings, such as handmade dolls and chess sets.