New Book Examines Post-Holocaust Jewish Experience in Košice After 1945

A new scholarly monograph explores the largely untold story of Holocaust survivors who returned to Košice after World War II, revealing the challenges they faced in rebuilding their lives in postwar Slovakia. Historian Patrícia Fogelová's book "Return of the Unreliable? Loyalty, Bureaucracy and Post-War Holocaust Survival in Košice, 1945-1948" examines how Jewish survivors encountered bureaucratic obstacles and language restrictions, including prohibitions on speaking Hungarian at home. The work uses a microhistorical approach to provide a ground-level perspective on major political events of the era, focusing on previously marginalized aspects of post-Holocaust recovery. Košice, Slovakia's second-largest city located in the eastern part of the country, had a significant Jewish population before the war and serves as a case study for understanding the broader challenges faced by Holocaust survivors across Central Europe during the immediate postwar period.