POSTAVENIE VOJAKOV Z POVOLANIA S MANŽELKAMI ŽIDOVSKÉHO PÔVODU V SLOVENSKEJ ARMÁDE V ROKOCH 1939 – 1944

• Authors: Baka Igor

Title variants

EN

The position of professional soldiers with wives of Jewish origin in the Slovak army in the years 1939–1944

• Languages of publication: SK

Abstracts

EN

The issue of the Slovak army‘s participation in the persecution of Jews during World War II has already been the subject of several studies. The greatest attention has understandably been devoted to their forced service in militarily organized labour units. However, several aspects of this issue (such as the army’s role in Aryanization) have not yet attracted the interest of historians. Until recently, little attention was also paid to the status of individuals who, even after 1939, served in the army as career soldiers or worked as civilian employees at the Ministry of National Defence and were directly or indirectly affected by the consequences of anti-Jewish legal norms. A significant milestone in this regard was Government Decree No. 198/41 of the Slovak Code on the Legal Status of Jews, dated September 9, 1941 (the so-called Jewish Code), which impacted the lives of many military personnel. This particularly inhumane anti-Jewish legislation not only affected those defined as Jews or Jewish mixed-race individuals, who were, with some exceptions, discharged from the army. It also impacted several “Aryan” military personnel due to the Jewish origin of their wives. Their status was, to a greater or lesser extent, already determined by earlier anti-Jewish legal norms. In this context, the author examines the impact of anti-Jewish legislation on the professional status of these individuals, their efforts to obtain exemptions from these measures for themselves and their family members, and, last but not least, the procedures of the competent authorities (the Ministry of National Defence, the Office of the President of the Republic) in individually assessing these requests.

Keywords

EN

MILITARY HISTORY; SLOVAK ARMY; JEWISH MINORITIES; HOLOCAUST; JEWISH CODE

• Publisher: Institute of History of the Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Historický časopis (Historical Journal)
• Year: 2025
• Volume: 73
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 351 - 375

Contributors

author

Baka Igor

• Vojenský historický ústav, Krajná 27, 821 04 Bratislava, Slovak Republic

• https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9870-1232

Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31577/histcaso.2025.73.2.6