Mapping Jewish Loyalties in Interwar Slovakia [Hardcover]

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-Pejaov? 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-Pejaov? 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.

Rebekah Klein-Pejaov?s well-researched volume focuses on Slovakia between the two world wars, critically examining the position of Jews between the demise of Austria-Hungary and the proclamation of formally independentbut in reality, collaborationistSlovakia.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.

Rebekah Klein-Pejaov? is Jewish Studies Assistant Professor of History at Purdue University.

Czechs, Germans, Jews? National Identity and the Jews of Bohemia by Katerina Capkova (Berghahn Books, 2012). ISBN 9780857454744.

Acknowledgments
Note on Place-Names and List of Place-Name Equivalents
Introduction: Seek the Right Path : The Jews of Slovakia in Remapped Post-World War One East Central Europe
1. From Hungary to Czechoslovakia: Jewish Transition to the Consolidating Czechoslovak State
2. Nationality is an Internal Conviction: Jewish Nationality and Czechoslovak Statebuilding
3. Contested Loyalty: Proving Slovak Jewish Loyalty to Czechoslovakia
4. Between the Nationalities: Statist Slovak Jews, Separatist Slovaks,lÓ3