Deportations of Jews from Slovakia in November 1938 and the Jewish camps in the “No Man´s Land” on the borders of the Czech lands, Slovakia and Hungary.

The deportations were a direct reaction of the Slovak autonomous government on the Vienna arbitration. A few weeks after autonomy was achieved and HSĽS established a government in Slovakia, it came to a foreign policy defeat, which questioned the policy of HSĽS. In such a moment, Tiso and his colleagues needed a “sacrificial lamb” to be made responsible for the territorial losses brought by the First Vienna Award. In this way, for propaganda reasons, the Jewish community had become an “alien, non-Slovak”, and even “hostile element”. The Jews in Slovakia at that period had become a “minority” having no protection at all, against whom the Slovak autonomous government simply dared to venture on. It is appalling in what a speed and without any protest were the regulations of Jozef Tiso executed by the subsidiary bodies of the state administration and the police. In my opinion, it demonstrates how soullessly the centralized state administration is ready to perform provisions of higher authorities in the transition period between plural democracy and a certain kind of dictatorship when the representatives of this professional group feel that their position is threatened in the state administration. When they fear that they might lose their “place”, they are ready to fulfil punctually and without any external resistance even such regulations about which they know that they are beyond the bounds of constitutionality. However, after the establishment of the autonomy they had had slowly accustomed themselves to the violation of law.

Eduard Nižňanský    94(=411.16)(437.6)“1938“

Deportations of Jews from Slovakia in November 1938 and the Jewish            323.12(=411.16)(437.6)“1938“

camps in the “No Man´s Land” on the borders of the Czech lands,        341.43(=411.16)(437.6)“1938“

Slovakia and Hungary.          343.819.5

Keywords: Deportation of Jews, the camp in Miloslavov (near Bratislava) and in Veľký Kýr (near Nitra), November–December 1938.