Social status of the interwar Jewish political elite in Prešov and its influence on surviving the holocaust
Social status of the interwar Jewish political elite in Prešov and its influence on surviving the holocaust

Summary/Abstract: The paper analyses the social status of the Jewish members of the interwar municipal political elite during the Holocaust in the example of the town of Prešov. They lost their democratically elected mandate due to the dissolution of Jewish parties and opposition parties in Slovakia after Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party came to power in October 1938. The main attention is focused on the (declining) vertical social mobility of members of the former elite in order to find out whether their previous political engagement and possible social ties associated with it influenced their social status at the time of the systematic implementation of anti-Jewish policy or helped them to survive during the Holocaust. The paper intends to capture a common model of behaviour, as well as individual actions and apply the acquired knowledge to the whole group of Jewish municipal political elites in the period under review.

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