The Jewish Identity in Slovakia After the Shoah

Based on his own research within the Project VEGA 2/0099/11 Adaptation of the City Inhabitants in the Processes of Social Changes, Peter Salner, the researcher of the Institute of Ethnology of SASc in Bratislava looks for an answer to the question whether the processes in the past decades represented an identity transformation or a tendency toward dissappearance of the Jewish community. The Introduction contains characteristics of the applied research techniques. The first chapter deals with the community in the process of the ghetto opening at the end of the 18th century; it focuses on the Holocaust survivor's identity and their attitude to Judaism. The second chapter analyzes the „children of the Holocaust". The impact of diverse factors (religiosity, Israel, Slovakia, Holocaust, Communist society) on identity of the children of the Holocaust is studied here. The concluding chapter resumes that the processes, which have been taking place in Slovakia at the present time, represent the identity transformation, but not the disappearance of the Jewish community. Reviewers: Assoc.Prof.Alexandra Bitušíková,PhD., Monika Vrzgulova, PhD.