Mapping Jewish Loyalties in Interwar Slovakia

“Well researched . . . A major contribution to our understanding of the dilemmas and challenges faced by Czechoslovak Jewry in the interwar period.” —Michael Miller, Central European University

In the aftermath of World War I, the largely Hungarian-speaking Jews in Slovakia faced the challenge of reorienting their political loyalties from defeated Hungary to newly established Czechoslovakia. Rebekah Klein-Pejšová examines the challenges Slovak Jews faced as government officials, demographers, and police investigators continuously tested their loyalty. Focusing on “Jewish nationality” as a category of national identity, Klein-Pejšová shows how Jews recast themselves as loyal citizens of Czechoslovakia. Mapping Jewish Loyalties in Interwar Slovakia traces how the interwar state saw and understood minority loyalty and underscores how loyalty preceded identity in the redrawn map of east central Europe.

“This book makes a crucial contribution to the question of minority loyalties in Central Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. It points to a dramatic divergence of the constructions of loyalties between the majority and minority populations.” —Slovakia

“After WW I, former Hungarian territory became part of the newly established state of Czechoslovakia. Jews who had lived under Hungarian rule faced the problem of status and identity in a new state . . . The overall picture the author presents is skillfully balanced by effective individualized treatments of individuals and events . . . Recommended.” —Choice

“Klein-Pejšová has contributed a succinct and sophisticated profile of an understudied community, one that can help us understand the impossible dynamic faced by all Jews who lived among multiple nationalities with competing national claims.” —Slavic Review