The Holocaust and European Societies by Frank Bajohr & Andrea Löw

Author:Frank Bajohr & Andrea Löw
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK, London

Perpetrators and Beneficiaries

In this escalating persecution several perpetrators and beneficiaries stand out: the state, its protagonists, the Slovak majority population and ethnic Germans.

The HSĽS had called for the expropriation of the Jews even before 1938 and, in February 1939, Mach was already saying: ‘The Jews, who have gold, jewellery and wealth, they have got rid of everywhere, and we will do so, too. … People, who have stolen wealth here, will have it taken from them. That’s the practical solution to the entire Jewish question!’ 35 Contrary to Aly’s thesis of governments creating loyal populations by providing them with Jewish property, 36 most of the Jewish property did not go to the ‘poor Slovak’ but rather to the state and its institutions, even when there were other intentions—since Tiso understood the expropriations ‘as a way to build a Slovak middle class’. 37 The state, for example, seized all the assets of the deportees by enacting a Constitutional Law in May 1942, which legalized the deportation and de-naturalization of the deportees retrospectively. 38 The Ministry of Finance finished the main expropriation process in the autumn of 1942 with the transfer of capital, shares, precious metals and diamonds to the Slovak banks. The distribution of looted property among the population was not finished till 1945. 39

The Central Economic Office (CEO) decided whether an enterprise had to be liquidated or be given to a Christian Slovak. Its whole activity was characterized by lack of state control, biased decisions, the growing influence of the party in power and chaotic management. 40 Corruption was rife amongst politicians, a notable example being Augustín Morávek, who added to his wealth enormously. The Jewish underground movement ‘Working Group’ was able to bribe Anton Vašek, head of the Fourteenth Department, though its bid to get him to slow down the deportations ultimately failed. The Catholic bishopric of Spiš, represented by its bishop Ján Vojtaššák, applied for the Baldovce Spa, expropriated from its Jewish owner, Ladislav Fried, and obtained it. 41 Tiso himself supplied his family with looted wealth from Jews. 42

Some examples may serve to illustrate how ministries and government institutions cooperated with the CEO. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs contacted it on how to expropriate Slovak Jews abroad. The Central Employment Bureau initiated protests against the employment of Jews. The secret police and the police departments, as well as their community offices, sent in notifications on Jews who had not registered valuables, or who were working without work permits. And people in government authorities and ministries wrote in to request that confiscated Jewish properties (often apartments and houses) should be personally assigned to them. 43

Propaganda had raised a lot of expectations within Slovak society. Up to the end of 1941, 10,000 of the 12,000 enterprises belonging to Jews were liquidated, and the Jews’ exclusion from economic life was to a large extent achieved. In addition, some ‘inconvenient competition’ for non-Jews was removed. About 2,000 of the enterprises seized from Jews were given to non-Jewish applicants. 44 There were

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