MAKYNA, Pavol. Proposals to Define a Jew in Slovakia in the Years from 1938 to 1939

In Slovakia, the position of Jews started to change shortly after the Munich Agreement was signed in autumn 1938. German Nazi Reich reached a leading hegemonic position in the geopolitical region of the Central Europe and many Slovak politicians tried to use it to meet their political ambitions. There is no doubt that the Nuremberg Laws elaborated already in 1935 were used as an example by the authors of Slovak legislative proposals to define "the term of a Jew". Those proposals submitted in Slovakia were influenced also by laws and proposals from Hungary and Czech lands. Those proposals culminated by adopting a Governmental Regulation No. 68/1939 called "On the Definition of the Term of a Jew and Regulation the Numbers of Jews Working in Some Free-lance Professions". This was the beginning of adopting other anti-Jewish laws which culminated in deportations of Jews from the territory of the Slovak State in 1942.