Author Description

Antisemitic measures began when the Slovak People's Party came to power in October 1938, and intensified after the establishment in March 1939 of a state dependent on Germany. Discusses the anti-Jewish legislation; Aryanization of businesses; exclusion of Jews from government and professions; and drafting of Jews for forced labor. In August 1940 President Tiso appointed two radicals to key positions: Vojtěch Tuka as Prime Minister and Alexander Mach, commander of the Hlinka Guard, as Minister of the Interior. Mach consolidated antisemitic measures in a new Central Economic Office and in the Interior Ministry; he established a Jewish administrative body to enforce government orders and to organize Jewish communal services. In September 1941 the legislature enacted a Jewish Code modelled on the Nuremberg Laws. In March 1942, when the Germans demanded a quota of Slovak laborers, Mach sent Jews instead; until October, ca. 53,000 Jews were interned in camps and then deported. Suggests that among the reasons for the halt in deportations in 1942 were revulsion of the population at the brutality with which they were carried out by the Hlinka Guard and Slovak Storm Troopers, the opposition of the Churches, and a weakening of the radicals because of German military defeats. Describes Jewish reactions to the persecutions, especially the activities of the Zionists and of the Working Group, which transmitted information and smuggled Polish Jews into Slovakia and Slovak Jews into Hungary, bribing officials, including Dieter Wisliceny. Jews fought in partisan units and in the Slovak uprising. The Germans suppressed the uprising, occupied Slovakia, and deported 12,306 more Jews. Concludes that Tiso's government could have done more to obstruct the deportation in 1942, but facilitated it due to antisemitic ideology. Its policy was supported by the Slovak Catholic hierarchy and only cautiously censured by the Vatican.