The Slovakian parliament has approved a bill stipulating that all Jews in the country, with few exceptions, are to be deported and their property confiscated, the Bratislava radio announced today.
Adoption of this law by the parliament merely legalizes the large-scale deportations that have been carried out during the past few months. During discussion on the bill in parliament several government spokesmen confirmed the report that 32,000 Jews have already been deported to German-occupied territories in Poland and white Russia, while another 30,000 are confined in internment camps from which they will be deported as soon as transportation facilities are available.
The remaining Jews, of Slovakia’s estimated 90,000 Jewish population, are concentrated in small “ghetto villages,” and will likewise be expelled as soon as the Slovak authorities deem it feasible, it was stated. The Bratislava broadcast also disclosed that in the past two years 34,000 jochs (there are 36 sq. ft. to a joch) of land have been confiscated from Jews. Some of this land was distributed among sixty-four Slovak settlers while the bulk of it was “Aryanized.”
The Bratislava radio indicated that the exceptions from deportation mentioned in the law refer to baptized Jews, who, as a result of intervention by the Slovak church, will be allowed to settle in a segregated area where they will be “educated in Christian morals,” Jewish doctors, engineers or members of other essential professions and Jews married to non-Jews.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
