The J.T. A. learns from Bratislava that the Jewish pogrom there lasted through the whole of Friday. Saturday and Sunday Aug. 11. 13. Many Jews were injured by the pogromists and many more arrested by the police.
The two large synagogues in the city were completely demolished. All the Jewish cafes houses and shops in the Klarissengasse. Schlossenstrasse, Kapucinergasse and Judengasse were wrecked.
Many Nazis brought specially from Vienna took part in the pogrom.
The “Times” gave the following account of the Bratislava pogrom:
A large mob composed chiefly of Germans with a smattering of Slovaks and led by a group of German youth, poured in the crowded streets of Bratislava’s ancient Jewish quarter in the small hours of Saturday morning looting and demolishing Jewish homes, shops, and synagogues. Windows were smashed, furniture destroyed, goods scattered in the streets, and many of the occupants of the quarter were badly injured. In the synagogue the furnishings were broken up the rolls of the Scripture soiled and torn, and many gold and silver ornaments stolen. Rioters entered one synagogue and turned on all the water hydrants, flooding the entire structure.
The police who were called the instant the trouble started did not arrive at the scene of the riots until the disturbance was over nearly four hours later. No arrests were made but on Saturday and Sunday the entire district was surrounded by police patrols. It is generally suspected that the pogrom was inspired by Herr Karmasin, leader of the German minority in Slovakia on the pretext that members of the Freiwillige Schutzcorps, the Storm Trnopers of the Germans in Slovakia, had been attacked and beaten by Jews in the streets of the ghetto. The true purpose of the riot seems to have been to intimidate Jewry in Slovakia, to hasten emigration and to prevent Jews and Hungarians from spending their summer vacation in the Slovakian mountain resorts.
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