Memorial Day for Victims of Holocaust and Racial Violence

Today on 9 September, it has been 83 years since the government of the then Nazi allied Slovak State approved the so-called Jewish Code. It was inspired by the legislation of Nazi Germany and was one of the strictest ones in the whole of Europe.

Annually, a memorial reading of the names of the 70,000 Jewish citizens of the Slovak Republic that were killed in concentration camps is held in Bratislava. The first transports from the territory of the war-time Slovak State that was a Nazi Germany ally started in March 1942.

The Code was an elaborate legal document with many details that specified the various restrictions against Jews. Its drafters were openly inspired by the Nazi Nuremberg Laws of 1935. It severely restricted the personal, civil, religious and social rights of Jews. It regulated their registration, introduced public identification, and excluded them from schools.

Source: TASR