Spatial Queries and the First Deportations from Slovakia

As part of his research (see EC-funded project Unlikely Refuge (https://www.unlikely-refuge.eu), Michal Frankl examined the deportations of Jews from Slovakia in November 1938, many of whom were subsequently trapped along the demarcation line between the Czecho-Slovak and Hungarian post. The little known and extremely chaotic deportations were ordered by the Slovak President Jozef Tiso who blamed Jewish influence for the First Vienna Award, an international arbitration which forced (Czecho-)Slovakia to cede southern Slovakia to Hungary.

Michal’s research focussed on some key questions: What kind of knowledge did the local officials apply to recognize “alien” Jews? What was the citizenship of those who were deported? For example, were they citizens of Hungary, in the new borders, or of other states? How many were stateless? And how many Czechoslovak citizens were put on trucks and sent towards the Hungarian border?

To answer these questions, Michal and his team digitised lists kept in the Slovak National Archives and compiled a database of the deportees containing information about their birth places, domicile and/or citizenship and place from which they were deported. This resource outlines the steps the team took, and demonstrates how geospatial data such as this can be used to create visualisations that can reveal patterns and connections.

#Learning outcomes

After viewing this training resource, users will be able to:

• Recognise the benefit of using gazeteers such as Geonames (or any similar resource) and spatial queries to ask new research questions
• Learn how standardisation makes the process of building of visualisations (e.g. in the form of maps) much smoother
• Use spatial visualisations to reveal connections and patterns that otherwise would remain invisible