ZAVACKÁ, Katarína. First Slovak Legislative Proposals of a State-Organised Robbery of the Jewish Property

The study focuses on the development of legislative frameworks necessary to practical implementation of ideas concerning „Aryanization" of property within the Slovak society. It outlines the influence of Ferdinand Ďurčanský, who was actively engaged in forming of the new ministries' apparatuses during the period following the autonomy proclamation of Slovakia in autumn 1938, as he himself held multiple ministerial posts (those of interior, public works and transport, justice, and health and social care, while becoming a Minister of foreign affairs too, after the proclamation of the Slovak State). In this paper, the author examines the very processes of creating legal norms aimed on expropriation of Jewish property, by scrutinizing them from the beginning of the draft initiation through internal comment procedures to the final revisions and eventual adoption. Furthermore, she also points out to various euphemisms in their respective wordings, used to better grasp the bedimming of both their intended purpose as well as the target group. The author reasons that the following proclamation of the Slovak State on March 14, 1939 did not bring decisive changes in those policies, but rather only accelerated the trends which had already been set since autumn 1938. Thus, in this period, when first legal norms aimed against both Jews as well as political opposition were produced by the ministerial apparatuses, they openly violated the still valid Constitution of 1920 and contradicted number of other laws.