Post-WWII Purge and the Changes in the City Administration in the Territory of Southern Slovakia: A Case Study of Košice

Abstract

The paper addresses the changes in the city administration after the Second World War related to the process of purge in the territory of southern Slovakia, which between 1938 and 1945 was ceded to Hungary. I intend to examine the changes in the city administration of Košice, a city located on the Hungarian–Slovak ethnic border. Its inhabitants were confronted with anti-Hungarian policies after the war, handled by the local authorities – the members of the Administrative Commission and the National Committee. These members possessed extensive competences concerning the confi scation of the property of “Germans, Hungarians, traitors and collaborators”, land reform, the purge of public and political life, the establishment of national administrations, the restoration and reconstruction of the national economy and tasks in the social and health spheres. This also included legal measures against public and civil servants of Hungarian and German nationality, adopted by the Slovak National Council. In my research, I intend to answer a number of questions: How did the local authorities deal with the civil servants? Which civil servants were dismissed and which remained in place? What criteria were important for them to remain in their posts? Why did some of them continue to work for the city? In addition, how did the loyalty of these civil servants to the restored Czechoslovakia change?