The Phenomenon of Corruption and "Jewish Question" Solution Process in Slovakia in the Years 1938–1945

Corruption in various forms was always a part of the solution of the Jewish question in Slovakia during the years 1938 – 1945. However, local circumstances eased the situation in that that even the most severe anti-Semitic state provisions made concessions to granting some exceptions, for which one had to pay. It was common, by the public gratefully acknowledged norm of social behaviour, accepted also by the persecuted Jewish community. During full-scale elimination of Jews from the public life the corruption took primarily primitive forms of individual or group threats and blackmailing. Later, it was indirectly organised and supported by the regime. First, by the means of aryanization process, that is forced transformation of all the Jewish propriety to the hands of "Aryans." Corruption flourished both in the process of assigning aryanization decrees and in the course of breakup value assessment of transformed businesses. Both processes were accompanied by bribes, intrigues, mutual denunciations, favouritism and especially by the devastation of economic values. Home as well as German intelligence services reports pointed out that aryanization process in Slovakia degraded into a wild swindle and unscrupulous enrichment of individuals, especially protégés of the regime. When deportation of Slovak Jews into Nazis extermination camps started in 1942, it gave impetus to another wave of corruption based on new goals. Apart from individual bribes, it was also the illegal Work group that emerged at the Ústredňa Židov (UZ, Jewish Central Organization), that unsuccessfully tried to stop or at least moderate the speed of transportation of both home and foreign Jews to the death camps by high sums of foreign exchanges to Slovak and German officials. More successful were the bribes of the Work group aimed at the life conditions improvement of prisoners in the Jewish work camps and centres in Slovakia.