01—The Holocaust

Between 1939-45, approximately 6 million people were murdered in Europe. This genocide affected almost 70 000 Slovak citizens, as the government of the wartime Slovak Republic actively participated in the Holocaust. The genocide mainly affected the Jewish population, but the racial laws in Nazi Germany, its satellites and the occupied countries of Europe also persecuted and led to the murder of Roma, Sinti, LGBT people, as well as political opponents.

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Jewish Menorah

The Holocaust, or Shoah in Hebrew, refers to the state-organised persecution and mass murder of Jews during the Second World War (1939-45) in Europe, including Slovakia. Why were Jews killed? We have to start from ancient times, because anti-Semitism (hatred of Jews) is a very old phenomenon. Who are the Jews, anyway? Jews are one of the so-called Semitic peoples originating from the Middle East. Thus, the word Jew does not only refer to a person of the Jewish religion (Judaism), but it is also a nation. We use the word Jews to refer to a nation; if the word has a lower case initial letter, it refers to persons of the Jewish faith. 

Judaism originated in the 2nd millennium B.C. and is considered to be the oldest monotheistic religion in the world, that is, its members believe in a single God. The other two most widespread monotheistic religions, Christianity and Islam, are also based on it. Therefore, these religions are very similar in many ways. For example, the holy book for both Christians and Jews is the Old Testament (part of the Bible), while Islam and Judaism do not recognise the representation of God.

The differences between these religions lie, for example, in a different religious calendar, different rituals and customs such as infant circumcision (of boys), dietary rituals, as well as the choice of ingredients and the way food is prepared. These customs and restrictions are drawn by Jews from the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible). Another difference is, for example, the expectation of the coming of the messiah, which for Christians is symbolized by the person of Jesus Christ, but whom the Jews did not accept as the messiah. In Judaism, unlike Christianity, it is not the afterlife that is important, but life on earth. Jews were therefore very particular about observing the various religious laws and commandments.

 It is important to be aware of these differences, because the Holocaust took place in a predominantly Christian environment and the prejudices stemming from these differences were often used for persecution.

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Jewish Synagogue in Pilsen

For example, the holy day for Jews is Saturday, which later gave rise to the stereotype of their laziness because they did nothing on that day. Further, Christianity and Judaism have a different view of lending money, because of which they began to be seen as usurers during the Middle Ages. The non-recognition of the messiah Jesus Christ in turn led to the widespread superstition from the Middle Ages onwards that the Jews killed Christ, for which Christians collectively blamed the Jews during the Middle Ages.

You can read more about Jewish customs here.

Religious wars were a common part of European history and did not escape the Jews. As a new religion with different customs, it faced hatred and persecution from its inception; this continued into the Middle Ages, when Jewish ghettos were established. Jews were accused of ritual murders, spreading contagious diseases or plague epidemics. For example, they were not allowed to own land under many restrictions, and were often then only allowed to engage in those activities that they were permitted to do. For example, since money trading was forbidden to Christians at the time, Jews began to focus on it - trading and lending money at interest.

While by anti-Judaism we understand opposition to the religion of Judaism, by anti-Semitism we understand opposition and hostility to the Jews as a "race." This racial theory was first formulated in the middle of the 19th century (Joseph Arthur de Gobineau: 'Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races'). It was an unfounded and erroneous theory which we would now call racism and has nothing to do with science. According to this theory, the strongest component of the white population is the "Nordic blue-eyed, blue-haired, dolichocephalic sub-race" and, in particular, its Germanic tribe. In the late 19th century, other elements were added to the growing distrust of the Jewish population - Jews supported capitalism or were, on the other hand, 'too' liberal or left-wing. Jews were blamed for many features of the then modernising society and especially for its negative consequences. The idea of a world Jewish conspiracy also emerges in this period.

In 1933, Adolf Hitler and his NSDAP party came to power in Germany, and Nazi Germany was formed.

Hitler also believed that an international Jewish conspiracy was driving the world and that Germany, as the representative of the "advanced, superior Aryan race," was the only state capable of saving European civilization. After the First World War there was an economic crisis, which also hit Germany hard. Hitler claimed that the Jews were to blame for the economic decline.

In addition to presenting the Jews as parasitic capitalists, the anti-Semites of the time presented them as something degenerate that needed to be got rid of. Based on these beliefs, Hitler originally wanted to expel Jews only from Germany, but with the expansionist policies of the Third Reich, new territories came under German control.

Slovakia was among them. However, it was not only those of Jewish nationality who suffered a tragic fate. The Roma population and LGBT people were already criminalised and persecuted in interwar Czechoslovakia. Even the environment of a democratic and liberal republic was not ready to fully accept and integrate these minorities. However, the Jewish population became a well-integrated part of Czechoslovak cultural, social, economic and political life. However, changes in the political and social climate after the autumn of 1938 interrupted this positive development. Regime of the Slovak State (1939-1945) harshly and aggressively persecuted members of the Jewish, Roma and LGBT minorities in Slovakia, first verbally and gradually through brutal persecution.

The Nuremberg Laws, known as the “Laws for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor", applied equally to Jews and Roma. The murder of the Roma population was part of the racial policy of Nazi Germany and its allies that was to follow the so-called Final Solution of the Jewish Question. The Slovak state, as an ally of Germany, actively participated in the implementation of the discriminatory regulations. However, the Roma living in the then Slovak territory were not affected by the genocide and were not deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. Nazi Germany probably offered its experience with the so-called solution to the Gypsy question, but regime of the Slovak State did not take advantage of this proposal, or simply did not manage to use it to its full extent (as the Roma say about Dei lenge na šegentinďa - God did not help them). Regardless, the Roma faced brutal oppression throughout the entire duration of the Slovak State, many were worked to death in labour camps or succumbed to catastrophic living conditions. Those who lived in the south or east of Slovakia, in the territory that fell to Hungary in 1938, were eventually deported to a concentration camp.

In the Romani language, the Romani Holocaust is referred to as Porajmos, which can be translated as 'devouring' or 'destruction'.

Between 1936 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies murdered more than half of Europe's Roma. Yet the genocide of the Roma has never achieved wider public atention.This is due to several factors - from the impossibility of determining the number of victims, to the murder of the Roma middle class who would actively commemorate the genocide, to the unwillingness of post-war states to put the Roma on an equal footing with other persecuted people. West Germany, for example, did not officially recognise the Roma genocide until 1982, and the European Parliament only in 2015, when it also designated 2 August as Roma Holocaust Memorial Day. The official calendar in Slovakia still does not include a commemorative day for the suffering of the Roma during the Second World War.