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Paper short abstract

This paper examines postwar legal correspondence in two Hungarian-speaking family archives in Bratislava, Slovakia, tracing efforts to recover confiscated property. Using letters, photos, camp diaries, and interviews, it reconstructs the affective climate of exclusion in postwar Slovakia.

Paper long abstract

This presentation examines legal documents preserved in the archives of two Hungarian-speaking families in Bratislava, Slovakia, focusing on their postwar efforts to reclaim real estate and personal property that had been unlawfully confiscated. Through an analysis of official correspondence with state authorities in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the paper explores how family members sought legal redress within a hostile and exclusionary political environment.

After the war, Hungarians in Slovakia who refused reslovakization were classified as enemies of the Slovak nation and held collectively responsible for the conflict. Many were imprisoned in labour camps, stripped of their citizenship, and dispossessed of their property. In Bratislava, affluent individuals of German and Hungarian background were interned in the Petržalka camp. After their release, surviving Hungarian families engaged in years of correspondence with representatives of the Slovak state in an attempt to recover confiscated property and possessions.

Drawing on official letters from two family archives, as well as photographs, labour-camp diaries, and interviews with family members, the presentation reconstructs the affective and moral atmosphere of postwar Slovakia, marked by exclusion, resentment, and institutionalized hostility. Situated within anthropological research on the Infrastructure of Forced Deportation project (2023–2025), the analysis highlights how bureaucratic procedures extended violence beyond the moment of displacement itself. By foregrounding these archival struggles, the paper also offers a lens for interpreting comparable dynamics in contemporary Eastern Europe, where processes of exclusion and authoritarianism are again intensifying.