The Story of Andrej Horn

A Case Study in the Microhistory of the Holocaust

Abstract

This article examines the fate of Andrej Horn, a thirty-seven-year-old Jewish businessman from Veľká Bytča, Slovakia, who on 21 February 1942 petitioned Slovakia’s President Jozef Tiso for an exemption from antisemitic legislation. It discusses how entreaties reflect Jewish victimisation during the Holocaust and some of the complex social dynamics and governmental processes that contributed to the deportation of nearly 58,000 Jews under the auspices of the Slovak authorities in 1942. Using a victim-centric, microhistorical approach, the communications about Andrej Horn in all of the known files in Slovak archives were placed in chronological order in order to trace his experiences during the Holocaust within their historical context. This method displays how some Jews in Slovakia attempted to navigate their precarious predicament, various aspects of minority (Jewish)-majority (Christian) interactions, and some of the local-level persecutory dynamics that contributed to the tragic denouement of the Holocaust in Slovakia.