Description

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-Pejsová 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-Pejsová 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.