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On the Image of the Jew in Postwar Slovakia

Publication at Faculty of Social Sciences |
2015

Abstract

This article offers an analysis of the image of the Jew as "produced" or constructed in the immediate postwar years. "Image" is here understood as assigning character as well as other traits that were presented as characteristic of the Jews as a collective. The main focus of the study is the reintroduced exclusion of Slovakian Jews based on two widespread charges: their alleged failure to "linguistically adapt," and their assumed unpatriotic behavior during the Second World War.

A close reading of various interpretations of postwar anti-Jewish violence in Slovakia, especially the Topoľčany pogrom in September 1945, is used to demonstrate this exclusion.