Presidential exemption (Slovak State)

Presidential exemptions (Slovak: prezidentské výnimky, singular prezidentská výnimka) were granted by President of the Slovak State Jozef Tiso to individual Jews, exempting them from systematic persecution through anti-Jewish legislation introduced by Tiso's Jewish Code, (patterned on the Nazi Nuremberg Laws), during the Holocaust. The exemptions were exchanged for arbitrary monetary fees. From an estimated 20,000 requests, 600 documented exemptions covering 1,000 people were granted, but only after 1942, when deportations to Auschwitz death camp had already stopped. Following the German invasion of 1944, when deportations resumed, all exemptions were nullified.

Assessing the true humanitarian value of the exemptions is difficult. They could be revoked at any moment, and some were overlooked by the Slovak authorities after being paid for. A vast majority of them were granted to pre-1939 Christian converts only defined as racially Jewish, with only 6% granted to people actively practising the Jewish faith. 40% were in married relationships with "Aryans". Many were granted to highly trained professionals such as doctors who were valuable to the Slovak war effort.

Meanwhile, there is clear documentation that between 68,000 and 71,000 of Slovak Jews, about 80% of the pre-war population, were murdered. Only 19,000 Jews were even left alive in Slovakia when the exemptions started. The exemptions are at the center of a historical and political debate in modern Slovakia. Some groups, in particular the fringes of Slovak nationalism, wish to put the exemptions forward as evidence that Tiso and his regime wished to protect Jews, and have claimed that up to 35,000 Jews were saved. Their claims have been challenged by Holocaust historians, who note the lack of documented evidence for more than 600 exemptions, or 1% of the Jewish population, pointing to a seeming reliance on exaggerated estimates.