by Zivko GRUDEN
This moving story about a fate of one Jewish family from Zagreb concludes the voluminous book (725 pages) "Holocaust in Zagreb" by Dr. Ivo Goldstein and Slavko Goldstein (published jointly by the Jewish commune in Zagreb and Novi Liber). The book was written after several years of research in the archives, consultation of voluminous literature and other sources, including a few still living survivors of the Holocaust. Although tons of literature about certain aspects of criminal anti-Semitism in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) have been published so far - for example, more than a thousand books about Jasenovac concentration camp - "Holocaust in Zagreb" is an impressive work and definitively breaks new ground, both in its attempt to systematically treat the subject (including the history of Jews in Zagreb, characteristics of anti-Semitism in the thirties and Ustashe anti-Semitism, Holocaust in the countries of Hitler's "New Europe" and detailed description of all three phases of persecution of Jews in Zagreb - ostracism, concentration, and extermination - in which the authors describe hundreds of individual fates as evidence), and in its openness regarding the sources on "both sides" and their meticulous analysis.
The introductory chapter gives a short overview of the outcome and characteristics of the Holocaust in the countries under Nazi dominance, which draws attention by some of the facts that are not widely known in Croatia. Those who during the nineties had a chance to frequently read in the newspapers that proportionally the largest number of Jews survived in the NDH, will definitely find it interesting that the Nazi collaborator authorities in Bulgaria managed to save all of 50,000 Bulgarian Jews, decisively rejecting, also prompted by forceful public appearances by the Orthodox Mitropolit Stefan, all pressures from Berlin to deport Bulgarian Jews to the Nazi death camps. Antonescu's regime in Romania, also a Nazi ally, also refused to deport Romanian Jews, although the regime, until the war luck in the battlefield did not change, managed to kill half of 800,000 Romanian Jews. The remaining 400,000 managed to survive until the end of the war. Horthy's authorities in Hungary, also Nazi allies, refused to carry out deportations, so that they only started in the spring of 1944, after the Nazi troops occupied Hungary. One third of 450,000 Hungarian Jews survived the war. In many other countries of Hitler's "New Europe" the implementation of the Holocaust definitely did not go as smoothly as suggested by those who claim that Jews in the NDH had it (pretty) good.
Until August 1942, the Third Reich left the "solution of the Jewish question" in the NDH fully to the Ustashe authorities. 29,000 out of 39,000 Jews who lived in the NDH territory before the war perished in camps and other killing fields in the NDH. Another 7,000 Jews were deported to Nazi death camps in the August of 1942 and the spring of 1943 by the SS-troops, with Ustashe assistance. The authorities in the NDH were the only government in Europe that accepted the German demand regarding the deportation of Jews to the death camps in Poland and Germany. Furthermore, they offered the German Nazis a payment of 30 Reichsmarks per deported Jew.
Approximately between 8,000 and 9,000 Jews living in the territory covered by the NDH survived the Holocaust, most of them in the territories under Italian control and by joining the Partisans [Communist resistance movement]. Out of all resistance movements in Europe, Yugoslav Partisans saved proportionally the largest number of Jews, and the Jews from the territory covered by the NDH were proportionally most represented in the anti-fascist struggle.
Nevertheless, only a few Jews in the NDH, including those from Zagreb, about 12,000 of them before the war, had a chance to join the Partisans, simply because the authorities in the NDH were extremely swift in enacting anti-Jewish measures and in the transition from the first phase, excommunication and ostracism, to the last phase, extermination, i.e. "final solution". Within a few weeks after the establishment of the NDH, several laws were adopted, according to which Jews, as a non-Arian race, first became second-class citizens, and soon afterwards were outlawed [sic]. Confiscation of Jewish property followed, Jews were banned from restaurants, movie theaters, theaters, they were evicted from apartments in the center and northern parts of Zagreb, they were not allowed to move in the center of the city and in parks, and were obliged to wear a yellow David's star.
The first phase, that of excommunication, was followed by a strong anti-Semitic propaganda in the media and by appropriate public appearances of the Ustashe officials. Poglavnik [the leader] Ante Pavelic stated in early may that "Jewish question will get a radical solution", while the minister of internal affairs Andrija Artukovic added that the NDH government "will solve that question in the way it was solved by the German government."
The threats quickly became true. The book gives a minute description of the swift escalation towards the "final solution" of the Jewish question in the NDH, starting with first arrests and murders, all the way to mass arrests and deportations which started in late May 1941. By the end of September [1941], when Jasenovac death camp was opened (authors mention that Jasenovac was the largest concentration camp complex in Europe during WWII where the mass murder was conducted without the direct participation of German Nazis) more than 3,000 Jews from Zagreb were murdered, deported, or only arrested. All concentration camps in the NDH, as the authors of the book write, were not death camps, camps to which prisoners were sent to be exterminated, as for example Jasenovac and Lika complex of camps (the latter including camps Gospic, Jadovno and Pag). Some, such as Loborgrad and Djakovo, were merely waiting rooms for transport to death camps. Women prisoners in Loborgrad and their children were sent with a one way ticket to Auschwitz and those from Djakovo to Jasenovac.
Referring to the hitherto obtained research results and estimates of the number of Holocaust victims in Zagreb, Dr. Ivo Goldstein believes that, until more specific research is conducted, the estimate that out of 12,200 Jewish residents of prewar Zagreb, about 9,000 of them died in WWII must be accepted. The ratio between the number of slain and surviving Jews elsewhere in the NDH is roughly the same. The authors of the book are convinced that Poglavnik Dr. Ante Pavelic was the main instigator of the persecution of Jews in the NDH. Pavelic made all the important political and personnel decisions personally. However, the authors add that the whole Ustashe leadership was united regarding the adoption of racial laws and implementation of anti-Jewish actions, so that claims and excuses that this or that Ustashe official saved or protected Jews are totally irrelevant. The book emphasizes that "the truth is that almost every one of them had 'his' Jew whom he protected and who managed to survive until 1945, but totally failed to react or willingly participated in the murder of thousands of other Jews".
Attitude of the population in Croatia with respect to persecution and killing of Jews was, according to Dr. Ivo Goldstein, much more sharply differentiated than in most other countries under the influence or occupation of Nazi Germany. In Croatia, there were "proportionally more local participants in the crimes and proportionally even more local opposition to the crimes". Although many Croats in the territory under Ustashe rule were indifferent to the suffering of the Jews, some did hide and save Jews risking in the process their own lives. The author dedicates a whole chapter to the attitude of the Catholic Church in Croatia and, specifically, archbishop Stepinac, with respect to the suffering of the Jews in the NDH. Among other, the authors quote a whole series of Stepinac's public appearances and letters addressed to the Poglavnik. Based on those statements, and comparing them with the intervention of high religious officials in other countries, Dr. Ivo Goldstein concludes that Stepinac held for too long to the illusion that crimes of the Ustashe regime were only excesses of irresponsible individuals, and he never fully condemned Ustashe ideology and Ustashe regime, nor did he distance himself from the NDH. True, he gradually became increasingly critical of the Ustashe authorities, so that in the February of 1943, when seven Catholic priests (Slovenians) were killed in Jasenovac, he wrote to Pavelic that "the whole Jasenovac is a shameful blot on the NDH".
Numerous books and newspaper articles published in Croatia in the nineties claimed that the Ustashe movement did not exhibit anti-Semitism and that the Holocaust against the Jews in the NDH was carried out solely because of strong pressure from Berlin; or alternatively that it was the product of willful individuals in the Ustashe movement; or that the Jews were accomplices in the tragedy that struck them because the top officials of the Ustashe regime were, if not Jews, then at least half-Jews, quarter-Jews and had (half)Jewish wives; and also because they were allegedly privileged in the Jasenovac concentration camp; that the number of Jewish genocide victims in the NDH was exaggerated; that Jews were taken to concentration camps not because they were Jews but because they were the enemies of the Croatian state; all the way to the claims that there was no genocide of Jews in the NDH. Although the book "Holocaust in Zagreb" in its totality denies such and similar claims, the authors specifically addressed those among them that deserve so in separate chapters, which undoubtedly gives this book seminal value and a specific currency.