Slovakia Commemorates 84th Anniversary of First Transport to Auschwitz from Poprad

Slovakia marked the 84th anniversary of the first deportation transport that left the eastern Slovak city of Poprad for the Auschwitz extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. On March 25, 1942, approximately one thousand young Jewish women and girls were forcibly deported from Poprad to Auschwitz, marking the beginning of systematic deportations from Slovakia during World War II. The transport from Poprad was among the first organized deportations of Slovak Jews under the wartime Slovak State, a Nazi puppet regime led by Jozef Tiso that collaborated with Nazi Germany's Holocaust policies. This anniversary serves as an important moment of remembrance for Slovakia's Jewish community and Holocaust victims, highlighting a dark chapter in the country's wartime history when tens of thousands of Slovak Jews were murdered in Nazi concentration camps.