The first transports were made up of young, able-bodied people who were told that they were going to the Third Reich to find work and to provide a working environment for other Jews. They were given 24 hours' notice and were allowed to take 50 kg of luggage with them to the concentration centre from which the deportation was organised. The Ministry of the Interior set up these concentration centres in five locations, namely Bratislava-Patrónka, Sereď, Nováky, Žilina and Poprad. Later, transports were also dispatched directly from the district towns.
These transports were followed by so-called family transports, which also included children and the elderly and those who were unable to work (for example, people with disabilities). These deportations were organised and coordinated by the Slovak authorities - the People´s Party, the Hlinka Guard, the Slovak Railways and the Freiwillige Schutzstaffel. The representatives of the Slovak state organised them voluntarily and on their own initiative. The Slovak government agreed to pay 500 Reichsmarks for each Jew and to deprive him of his citizenship. The Jew was not to return to Slovakia and his property thus became the property of the Slovak State.
From 1941 onwards, Slovak soldiers from the Eastern Front brought information that German troops were murdering Jews in the occupied territories. Although not yet in gas chambers, as was later the case, there were indications that Jews across the border might be in danger of death. This was testified, for example, by the evangelical military clergyman Kováč in a letter from prison addressed to President Tiso.
he Slovak government agreed to pay 500 Reichsmarks for each Jew and to deprive him of his citizenship.
I have heard that executions of Jews are taking place in the Ukraine. I did not want to believe it. But in 1942, when I was at the Ministry of National Defense from January 18 to February 15 and saw the photographs of the executions of Jews, I, being of a soft nature, could not resist the pleas and weeping (through friends and acquaintances) of the Jews fleeing to me, and I chose, when I could not obtain through interventions a work permit for various reasons, to register these Jews in the Evangelical Church. (...) But I looked at the fact that I was a priest and that the consciousness and conscience from the pictures shown to me of the executions of Jewish women, children and old men might haunt me if, seeing those condemned to death, I did not lend a helping hand. I also thought that the blood of these would call down from the earth divine judgment and vengeance even on those whom they had allowed to perish.
Even the Vatican itself interceded for the fate of Slovak Jews. After all, the head of state was a Catholic priest. But this did not change the attitude of Slovak government officials. Of the first wave of deportations in 1942, during which almost 58,000 people were deported, not even 300 live to see the end of the war. Of the 58 transports, most were sent to camps near Lublin, the rest to the Auschwitz camp complex. During the deportations, members of the Hlinka Guard also robbed the Jews of the last personal belongings they had.
But how could such a thing have happened without the population protesting? The Church and faith once played a much greater role in people's lives than it does today, and the priest was one of the most respected persons in society at the time. Jozef Tiso justified the cruel treatment of the Jewish population not only during the deportations, but also years before, with Christian morality.
I would still like to mention one issue that has been mentioned, and that is the Jewish issue. They say whether it is a Christian thing to do. Is it human? Isn't it looting? But I ask myself: Is it Christian if the Slovak nation wants to get rid of its eternal enemy, the Jew? Is it Christian? Self-love is a divine command, and that self-love commands me to remove from myself everything that harms me, that threatens my life. And that the Jewish element threatened the Slovak's life, I think, no one needs to be convinced of that. Recently our masters got hold of an old book in which the towns of Hungary and the Upper Hungary were described. There it was written how many Jews there were in the towns of Slovakia at that time in 1840. In large towns such as Žilina, Nitra and others, there were 30-40 Jews at that time. And in 100 years it has increased tenfold! There were more and more of them, and what kind of Jews! Not in the fields, but in the offices, in the banks and in all sorts of high places there were Jews. These were draining the pension of the Slovak land, of Slovak work for themselves. We had found that 38% of the national income was held by the Jews. Back then, when three million of the nation had 62%, then 5% of the Jews had 38% of the national pension! And that ratio between the nation and Jewry was still expanding. It would have looked even worse if we hadn't risen up in time, if we hadn't purged ourselves of them. And we did so according to God's command: Slovak, throw down, get rid of your pest!
During the first wave of deportations, President Tiso could grant exceptions. If he considered that a person was useful for the economic and public life of the Slovak state, he could obtain the designation "economic Jew" and was (temporarily) saved from deportation. In some parts of Slovakia, for example, only Jews were doctors, and the government was aware that if they were deported, the health service would collapse. Simply, Jozef Tiso created the institute to protect Jews from his own anti-Jewish regulations.
If he considered that a person was useful for the economic and public life of the Slovak state, he could obtain the designation "economic Jew" and was (temporarily) saved from deportation.
Approximately 1,000 exemptions were granted, which meant 4 to 5 thousand people, because the exemption also applied to the immediate family of its holder. In Slovakia, after the first wave of deportations in 1942, there remained about 22 thousand Jews of economic importance to the state, who lived here until the autumn of 1944, mostly under the protection of these exemptions or in local labour camps and centres, but also illegally with false documents. In this way, the leadership of the Slovak state pragmatically determined who was worthy of life and who was not.
But it began to appear that Jews were also in danger of something more serious, like being expelled from school or the regulations of the Jewish Code. It was therefore better to get a job somewhere. At that time they were looking for people to do organized part-time work in Svätý Jur, so I went there too. I hoped that this might save me. And I was right - when in March 1942 they came for me in Nitra to join the transports, I was in Jur. That was the first wave of transports, when they took the freedmen. I avoided them. After the freedmen, they also took whole families, somehow there was no escape then. I still remember that it was September 1, because we were led by two gendarmes who were talking about how their children were going to school after the holidays. We had been waiting in Žilina for two months when suddenly the transports stopped temporarily. We found out when an ordinary passenger train was brought for us instead of the cattle trains. Instead of being taken to Auschwitz, we were taken to the labour camp in Vyhne. There I got to work in the satchel-making workshop, making wallets and pouches for the guardsmen. Although it was possible to escape, nobody escaped from there. There was nowhere to go. But after a while my father got a departmental exemption. The Minister of Justice, Gejza Fritz, who belonged to the moderate wing of the People's Party, knew my father as a judge. As a result, he was transferred to Trstená, where he was put in charge of the land register. Together with him, we got out too. For a while I lived in Nitra, where I worked as a bookbinder, but since I was afraid of renewed deportations, I arranged for fake Aryan papers. In the new birth certificate with my name in the box with my religion, I no longer had the abbreviation "IZR" but "RKAT". Roman Catholic. With this birth certificate I went to the workshop in Liptovský Mikuláš as a bookbinder. Everyone in Nitra knew me, and if there were transports, I would not hide.
The deportation process was legalized retroactively, only two months after the first deportations. All deportees were deprived of their Slovak citizenship and thus of their property, which was later divided among the Aryanizers. Jozef Tiso, first as prime minister and then as president and leader of the state party, was involved in the creation and application of anti-Jewish laws in the legislation of the Slovak state and was responsible for the deportation of Jews from Slovakia. As Prime Minister, Tiso signed all anti-Jewish government regulations until October 1939. As president, he signed a constitutional law by which the Slovak parliament handed over full powers to the government for one year, with the aim of completely excluding Jews from the Slovak economy and public life, and to do so as quickly as possible. He was tried for crimes against peace and humanity, which included deportations or any other inhumane acts against the civilian population. He was executed in Bratislava in 1947, and he did not feel at all guilty for his actions.
All deportees were deprived of their Slovak citizenship and thus of their property, which was later divided among the Aryanizers.
all chapters
Remembering the HolocaustHungary
Return and emigrationHungary
LMBTQHungary
History of the HolocaustHungary
Fascist ideologyHungary
The HolocaustHungary
The HolocaustSlovakia
Slovak StateSlovakia
IdeologySlovakia
PersecutionSlovakia
AntisemitismSlovakia
AryanisationSlovakia
PorajmosSlovakia
PorajmosHungary
LGBT minoritySlovakia
First transportSlovakia
DeportationsSlovakia
Life in the campSlovakia
Slovak National UprisingSlovakia
HomecomingSlovakia
EmigrationSlovakia
