Slovakia Emigration and Immigration

'''Slovakia became an independent state on 1 January 1993 after the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia. Prior to then, record collections for Czechoslovakia cover Slovakia also.'''

Online Records

 * 1847-1869 Czech Immigration Passenger Lists, Volume IV, e-book. New York 1847-1869.
 * 1878-1960 UK and Ireland, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960, at Ancestry.com, index and images. ($)
 * 1890-1960 Passenger Lists Leaving UK 1890-1960 at FindMyPast; index & images ($). Search with locations Czechoslovakia, Bohemia, and Moravia.
 * 1892-1924 New York Passenger Arrival Lists (Ellis Island), 1892-1924 Search results for Czechoslovakia
 * 1939-1941 Czechoslovakia, Selected Jewish Holocaust Records, 1939-1941 - at Ancestry, index. ($)
 * Czechoslovakia, Jewish Applications for Social Welfare After World War II - at Ancestry, index.($)
 * 1939-1946 Czechoslovakia, Social Welfare and Repatriation Records of Holocaust Survivors, 1939-1946 - at Ancestry, index.($)
 * 1943-1945 Czechoslovakia, Jews Deported to Terezin and Poland, 1943-1945 - at Ancestry, index.($)
 * 1946-1971 Free Access: Africa, Asia and Europe, Passenger Lists of Displaced Persons, 1946-1971 Ancestry, free. Index and images. Passenger lists of immigrants leaving Germany and other European ports and airports between 1946-1971. The majority of the immigrants listed in this collection are displaced persons - Holocaust survivors, former concentration camp inmates and Nazi forced laborers, as well as refugees from Central and Eastern European countries and some non-European countries.

Czech Immigration Passenger Lists (not online)
and at (FHL book 973 W3bL) can be a useful source of genealogical information. There are 9 volumes:
 * Czech Immigration Passenger Lists, Volume I Galveston 1848-1861, 1865-1871 New Orleans 1848-1879
 * Czech Immigration Passenger Lists, Volume II Galveston 1896-1906 New Orleans 1879-1899
 * Czech Immigration Passenger Lists, Volume III Galveston 1907-1914
 * Czech Immigration Passenger Lists, Volume IV, e-book. New York 1847-1869.
 * Czech Immigration Passenger Lists, Volume V New York 1870-1880
 * Czech Immigration Passenger Lists, Volume VI New York 1881-1886, Galveston 1880-1886
 * Czech Immigration Passenger Lists, Volume VII New York 1887-1896
 * Czech Immigration Passenger Lists, Volume VIII Baltimore 1834-1879
 * Czech Immigration Passenger Lists, Volume IX Baltimore 1880-1899

Finding the Town of Origin in Slovakia
If you are using emigration/immigration records to find the name of your ancestors' town in Slovakia, see Slovakia Finding Town of Origin for additional research strategies.

Slovakia Emigration and Immigration
"Emigration" means moving out of a country. "Immigration" means moving into a country. Emigration and immigration sources list the names of people leaving (emigrating) or arriving (immigrating) in the country. These sources may be passenger lists, permissions to emigrate, or records of passports issued. The information in these records may include the emigrants’ names, ages, occupations, destinations, and places of origin or birthplaces. Sometimes they also show family groups.

Historical Background

 * From the 11th century, when the territory inhabited by the Slavic-speaking population of Danubian Basin was incorporated into the Kingdom of Hungary, until 1918, when the Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed, the territory of modern Slovakia was an integral part of the Hungarian state. The ethnic composition became more diverse with the arrival of the Carpathian Germans in the 13th century and the Jews in the 14th century.
 * Owing to the Ottoman Empire's expansion into Hungarian territory, Bratislava was designated the new capital of Hungary in 1536, ahead of the fall of the old Hungarian capital of Buda in 1541. It became part of the Austrian Habsburg monarchy, marking the beginning of a new era. The territory comprising modern Slovakia, then known as Upper Hungary, became the place of settlement for nearly two-thirds of the Magyar nobility fleeing the Turks and became far more linguistically and culturally Hungarian than it was before.
 * Partly thanks to old Hussite families and Slovaks studying under Martin Luther, the region then experienced a growth in Protestantism. For a short period in the 17th century, most Slovaks were Lutherans.
 * By 1648, Slovakia was not spared the Counter-Reformation, which brought the majority of its population from Lutheranism back to Roman Catholicism.
 * On 18 October 1918, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Milan Rastislav Štefánik and Edvard Beneš declared in Washington, D.C. the independence for the territories of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Upper Hungary and Carpathian Ruthenia from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and proclaimed a common state, Czechoslovakia. In 1919, during the chaos following the break-up of Austria-Hungary, Czechoslovakia was formed with numerous Germans, Slovaks, Hungarians and Ruthenians within the newly set borders.
 * Parts of southern and eastern Slovakia were reclaimed by Hungary at the First Vienna Award of November 1938.
 * Slovakia seceded from Czecho-Slovakia in March 1939 and allied itself, as demanded by Germany, with Hitler's coalition.
 * After World War II, Czechoslovakia was reconstituted.
 * As a result of the Yalta Conference, Czechoslovakia came under the influence and later under direct occupation of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact, after a coup in 1948. Eight thousand two hundred and forty people went to forced labour camps in 1948–1953.
 * The end of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia in 1989, during the peaceful Velvet Revolution, was followed once again by the country's dissolution, this time into two successor states.
 * The population of modern Slovakia is over 5.4 million and according to the 2011 census, the majority of the inhabitants are Slovaks (80.7%). Hungarians are the largest ethnic minority (8.5%). Other ethnic groups include Roma (2%), Czechs (0.6%), Rusyns (0.6%) and others or unspecified (7.6%).

Emigration From Slovakia

 * As part of the Holocaust in Slovakia, 75,000 Jews out of 80,000 who remained on Slovak territory after Hungary had seized southern regions were deported and taken to German death camps. Thousands of Jews, Gypsies and other politically undesirable people remained in Slovak forced labor camps in Sereď, Vyhne, and Nováky.
 * After World War II, as Czechoslovakia was reconstituted, more than 80,000 Hungarians and 32,000 Germans were forced to leave Slovakia, in a series of population transfers initiated by the Allies at the Potsdam Conference'''. Out of about 130,000 Carpathian Germans in Slovakia in 1938, by 1947 only some 20,000 remained. The NKVD arrested and deported over 20,000 people to Siberia.
 * The largest waves of Slovak emigration occurred in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the 1990 US census, 1.8 million people self-identified as having Slovak ancestry.
 * There are Slovak minorities in many neighboring countries including Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine and sizable populations of immigrants and their descendants in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, United Kingdom and the United States among others, which are collectively referred to as the "Slovak diaspora".

Regions with significant populations:

For Further Reading
There are additional sources listed in the FamilySearch Catalog: