page_title: The Holocaust in Slovakia
section_title: Initial actions
hierarchical_section_title: The Holocaust in Slovakia / Anti-Jewish measures (1938–1941) / Initial actions
caption_attribution_description: English: Antisemitic propaganda with the title "Marš zo Slovenska!", Slovak state, 1941-1942. Published by the Propaganda Ministry. “ "Get out of Slovakia!"Slovaks, read and disseminate the educational publication "Slovakia in Transition" issued by the Propaganda Bureau.The first issue will introduce you to JEWRY. ” Slovenčina: “ "Marš zo Slovenska!"Slováci, čítajte a rozširujte osvetové spisy: "Slovensko na prelome" ktoré vydava Úrad propagandyPrvé číslo vám predstaví ŽIDOVSTVO. ”
context_page_description: The Holocaust in Slovakia was the systematic dispossession, deportation, and murder of Jews in the Slovak State, a client state of Nazi Germany, during World War II. Out of 89,000 Jews in the country in 1940, around 69,000 were murdered in the Holocaust.
  After the September 1938 Munich Agreement, Slovakia unilaterally declared its autonomy within Czechoslovakia, but lost significant territory to Hungary in the First Vienna Award, signed in November. The following year, with German encouragement, the ruling ethnonationalist Slovak People's Party declared independence from Czechoslovakia. State propaganda blamed the Jews for the territorial losses. Jews were targeted for discrimination and harassment, including the confiscation of property and businesses. The exclusion of Jews from the economy impoverished the community, which encouraged the government to conscript them for forced labor. On 9 September 1941, the government passed the Jewish Code, which it claimed to be the strictest anti-Jewish law in Europe.
  In 1941, the Slovak government negotiated with Nazi Germany for the mass deportation of Jews to German-occupied Poland.
context_section_description: Immediately after it came to power in 1938, the autonomous government began firing Jewish government employees. The Committee for the Solution of the Jewish Question  was founded on 23 January 1939 to discuss anti-Jewish legislation. The state-sponsored media demonized Jews as "enemies of the state" and of the Slovak nation. Jewish businesses were robbed, and physical attacks on Jews occurred both spontaneously and at the instigation of the Hlinka Guard and Freiwillige Schutzstaffel. In his first radio address following the establishment of the Slovak State in 1939, Tiso emphasized his desire to "solve the Jewish Question"; anti-Jewish legislation was the only concrete measure that he promised.  The persecution of Jews was a key element of the state's domestic policy. Discriminatory measures affected all aspects of life, serving to isolate and dispossess Jews before they were deported.
  In the days after the announcement of the First Vienna Award, antisemitic rioting broke out in Bratislava; newspapers justified the riots with Jews' alleged support for Hungary during the partition negotiations. Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi official who had been sent to Bratislava, coauthored a plan with Tiso and other HSĽS politicians to deport impoverished and foreign Jews to the territory ceded to Hungary. Meanwhile, Jews with a net worth of over 500,000 Czechoslovak koruna (Kčs) were arrested in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent capital flight.  Between 4 and 7 November,  4,000 or 7,600 Jews were deported, in a chaotic, pogrom-like operation in which the Hlinka Guard, the Freiwillige Schutzstaffel, and the German Party participated. The deportees included young children, the elderly, and pregnant women. A few days later, Tiso canceled the operation; most of the Jews were allowed to return home in December. More than 800 were confined to makeshift tent camps at Veľký Kýr, Miloslavov, and Šamorín on the new Slovak–Hungarian border during the winter. The Slovak deportations occurred just after Germany's deportation of thousands of Polish Jews, attracted international criticism, reduced British investment, increased dependence on German capital, and were a rehearsal for the 1942 deportations.
  Initially, many Jews believed that the measures taken against them would be temporary. Nevertheless, some attempted to emigrate and take their property with them. Between December 1938 and February 1939, more than 2.25 million Kčs were transferred illegally to the Czech lands, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom; further amounts were transferred legally. Slovak government officials took advantage of the circumstances to purchase the property of wealthy Jewish emigrants at a significant discount, a precursor to the state-sponsored transfer of Jewish property as part of Aryanization. Interest in emigration among  Jews surged after the invasion of Poland, as Jewish refugees from Poland told of atrocities there. Although  the Slovak government  encouraged Jews to emigrate, it refused to allow the export of foreign currency, ensuring that  most attempts remained unsuccessful. No country was eager to accept Jewish refugees, and the tight limits imposed by the United Kingdom on legal emigration to Mandatory Palestine prevented Jews from seeking refuge there. In 1940, Bratislava became a hub for Aliyah Bet operatives organizing illegal immigration to Palestine, one of whom, Aron Grünhut, helped 1,365 Slovak, Czech, Hungarian, and Austrian Jews emigrate. By early 1941, further emigration was impossible; even Jews who received valid United States visas were not allowed transit visas through Germany. The total number of Slovak Jewish emigrants has been estimated at 5,000 to 6,000. As 45,000 lived in the areas ceded to Hungary, the 1940 census found that 89,000 Jews lived in the Slovak State, 3.4 percent of the population.
caption: Government propaganda ordering Jews to "Get out of Slovakia!"
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