Writing for Their Lives: Ordinary People Petition Slovak President Jozef Tiso During the Holocaust

Between 1939 and 1944, thousands of Slovak Jews and non-Jews petitioned the most powerful person in the land, President Jozef Tiso, about the "Jewish question." Whether the petitioner was a desperate Jew seeking mercy from antisemitic legislation, priests and pastors advocating on behalf of individual Jews, an aryanizer coveting Jewish property, or a non-Jewish spouse in a mixed marriage, this riveting and emotional correspondence testifies to an impending genocide.However, petitions have only recently received the attention they deserve.Studying this correspondence opens a unique window into the world of ordinary individuals during the Holocaust and how they coped with official antisemitism.The petitioners were unaware of the looming tragedy, but hindsight allows us to see signs of an impending genocide in the correspondence, learn how people spoke about Jews, and observe how local actors and communities responded to antisemitic persecution. What did people request and how did they tr