Mapping the Holocaust in
Croatia

The possibilities for prisoners in the Jasenovac camp complex to contact friends and families outside the camp were very limited. The only option sanctioned by the camp administration was through small letter cards. In Jasenovac, prisoners were first issued such cards in April 1942. However, this “privilege,” as the camp administration dubbed it, was occasionally withdrawn as a collective punishment after escape attempts. At the same time, the letter cards were censured by the camp administration. For this reason, their content does not describe true conditions in the camp complex. In most letter cards, prisoners asked relatives or friends to send food, reflecting the chronic malnutrition in the camp complex.

This letter card was written in 1944 by the prisoner Ilija Ivanović, who was sixteen years old at the time. Its brevity is explained by the fact that the letter cards were not allowed to exceed twenty words. In the letter, Ivanović wrote, “Dear mother. I am healthy. I wrote, but I did not get a reply. Send me a packet if you can. Greetings to you all, Ilija.”

In April 1945, as the advances of the Yugoslav partisans drew increasingly close, the Ustaša camp leadership prepared to disband the main camp, Jasenovac III. On April 21, camp guards brutally murdered the surviving female prisoners. The same day, they brought the male prisoners who were still alive to a large building, which until then had been the camp’s tailor and shoemaker workshop. Sensing the imminent threat, the prisoners organized an uprising the follow morning. Historians Dorđe Mihovilović and Dejan Motl estimate that ninety of the around 600 prisoners who took part in the breakout survived. Weakened by starvation and illness, around 470 prisoners lacked the strength to join the attempt. The same day, the prisoners in Jasenovac VI also broke out. Among the approximately 125 prisoners in this group, twelve survived.

In this excerpt from his testimony, survivor Jakica Finci recounts the breakout.

Throughout the existence of the Jasenovac camp complex, only around 300 prisoners succeeded in escaping the horrors of the camp, thereby eluding near certain death. Escape was extremely difficult. The camp complex was well guarded. The prisoners were physically weak and exhausted due to malnutrition. Even for prisoners who managed to cross the barbed-wire fences, the path to freedom was rife with dangers. In cases of escape, the camp administration immediately notified the central police authorities in Zagreb, which in turn alerted other authorities in the NDH asking them to assist in tracking down the escaped prisoners. This missive from the regional police branch in the town of Varaždin to the local authorities in Čakovec-Prelog in Northern Croatia is suggestive of just how widely disseminated news of prisoner breakout were within the Ustaša administrative apparatus.

During the Holocaust, adaption of a non-Jewish identity was a survival strategy fraught with perils and with slim chances of survival. In Holocaust historiography, the phenomenon of “passing as gentile” has primarily been analyzed in the context of Jewish people who sought to evade deportation to death camps. However, recent research trends suggest that passings also occurred in camp settings in spite of tremendous difficulties and severe constraints. This excerpt from a report documents how members of the Communist self-help organization in the Stara Gradiška camp managed to register some of the Jewish and Serb prisoners as Croats in a bid to protect them from deportation and impending death at Jasenovac III. While this underscores a remarkable display of interethnic solidarity, it is important to acknowledge that these efforts were limited to individuals affiliated with the organization, referred to as the “community” in the document. The dangers of such an intervention, as well as uncertainties surrounding the exact extent of the organization’s scope of agency, nevertheless warrant a cautious evaluation rather than hasty condemnation.

Rea Živković Rajs was born in 1932 in Sarajevo. In November 1941 she was arrested and eventually deported to Đakovo concentration camp in the vicinity of Osijek which was specifically designed for women and children. Rea was one of the children taken out of the camp and given for foster care with the Šmukler [Schmuckler] family in Osijek. Šmukler’s soon after joined the Partisan resistance together with Rea and survived the war.

The Jewish community of Šid was a small community of some ninety people. The majority of Šidian Jews were killed during the Holocaust; the community was never reestablished. Recorded by Šidian Jewish survivor Abram Kišicky, this testimony represents a unique and quite detailed account of the fate of the Jewish community of Šid during the last years of its existence.

During Ustaša rule (April 1941 – May 1945), the regime prohibited a number of religions and religious institutions, most notably Judaism, the Serbian Orthodox Church, and the Old Catholic Church of Croatia. This policy was both socio-political and demographic: on the one hand, it intended to extinguish primarily Jewish and Serbian socio-political influence in the Independent State of Croatia; on the other hand, it aimed to herd large segments of the Serb non-elite population into religious conversion to “approved” religions, preferably Catholicism, and, by extension, make them ethnonational Croats, hence increasing the slim Croat majority in the newly-formed state. As part of that policy, the regime placed all religious conversions under its direct control, adding “rectitude confirmations” to the list of documents required for a legally valid conversion. “Rectitude confirmations”—background checks focused on an individual’s past engagement, or lack thereof, in “anti-Croat activity”—could be issued only by local Ustaša authorities. The regime did not plan for its religious-ethnonational conversion campaign to encompass Jews. However, caught between a rock and a hard place, and hearing the promises of safety that the regime issued to Serbs it targeted for conversion, Jews across the Independent State of Croatia reached for religious conversion as a potential avenue of evading Ustaša persecution. Although the regime in Zagreb discouraged and eventually prohibited Jewish and Roma conversions—since all Jews and Roma were slated for annihilation rather than assimilation, the latter policy having been reserved only for a portion of Croatia’s Serbs—local authorities often approved Jewish requests in exchange for high fees and bribes, using the process as another way to lay hands on Jewish property. This document represents an example of a Jewish request for a “rectitude confirmation” as a prerequisite for conversion to Catholicism. Ustaša authorities in Vukovar confirmed Ljudevit Pollak’s “rectitude;” he converted on December 12, 1941, to be deported and killed in Jasenovac death camp the following year.

During Ustaša rule (April 1941 – May 1945), the regime prohibited a number of religions and religious institutions, most notably Judaism, the Serbian Orthodox Church, and the Old Catholic Church of Croatia. This policy was both socio-political and demographic: on the one hand, it intended to extinguish primarily Jewish and Serbian socio-political influence in the Independent State of Croatia; on the other hand, it aimed to herd large segments of the Serb non-elite population into religious conversion to “approved” religions, preferably Catholicism, and, by extension, make them ethnonational Croats, hence increasing the slim Croat majority in the newly-formed state. As part of that policy, the regime placed all religious conversions under its direct control, adding “rectitude confirmations” to the list of documents required for a legally valid conversion. “Rectitude confirmations”—background checks focused on an individual’s past engagement, or lack thereof, in “anti-Croat activity”—could be issued only by local Ustaša authorities. The regime did not plan for its religious-ethnonational conversion campaign to encompass Jews. However, caught between a rock and a hard place, and hearing the promises of safety that the regime issued to Serbs it targeted for conversion, Jews across the Independent State of Croatia reached for religious conversion as a potential avenue of evading Ustaša persecution. Although the regime in Zagreb discouraged and eventually prohibited Jewish and Roma conversions—since all Jews and Roma were slated for annihilation rather than assimilation, the latter policy having been reserved only for a portion of Croatia’s Serbs—local authorities often approved Jewish requests in exchange for high fees and bribes, using the process as another way to lay hands on Jewish property. This document, in tandem with the following one, represents internal Ustaša communication regarding the request of Elsa Klein, a Jewish resident of Vukovar, for conversion to Catholicism.

During Ustaša rule (April 1941 – May 1945), the regime prohibited a number of religions and religious institutions, most notably Judaism, the Serbian Orthodox Church, and the Old Catholic Church of Croatia. This policy was both socio-political and demographic: on the one hand, it intended to extinguish primarily Jewish and Serbian socio-political influence in the Independent State of Croatia; on the other hand, it aimed to herd large segments of the Serb non-elite population into religious conversion to “approved” religions, preferably Catholicism, and, by extension, make them ethnonational Croats, hence increasing the slim Croat majority in the newly-formed state. As part of that policy, the regime placed all religious conversions under its direct control, adding “rectitude confirmations” to the list of documents required for a legally valid conversion. “Rectitude confirmations”—background checks focused on an individual’s past engagement, or lack thereof, in “anti-Croat activity”—could be issued only by local Ustaša authorities. The regime did not plan for its religious-ethnonational conversion campaign to encompass Jews. However, caught between a rock and a hard place, and hearing the promises of safety that the regime issued to Serbs it targeted for conversion, Jews across the Independent State of Croatia reached for religious conversion as a potential avenue of evading Ustaša persecution. Although the regime in Zagreb discouraged and eventually prohibited Jewish and Roma conversions—since all Jews and Roma were slated for annihilation rather than assimilation, the latter policy having been reserved only for a portion of Croatia’s Serbs—local authorities often approved Jewish requests in exchange for high fees and bribes, using the process as another way to lay hands on Jewish property. This document, in tandem with the previous one, represents internal Ustaša communication regarding the request of Elsa Klein for conversion to Catholicism. Ms. Klein was a Jewish resident of Vukovar and spouse of Oton Klein, brother of a known local attorney Daniel Klein. Contrary to the Grand Parish Police District instructions, Elsa Klein’s request was eventually approved—likely due to a bribe—and she converted on April 8, 1942. In summer 1942, together with her sister-in-law Leona Lili Klein and her niece Liza Klein, who had also converted, Elsa was deported to Jasenovac death camp where all of them were killed.

During Ustaša rule (April 1941 – May 1945), the regime prohibited a number of religions and religious institutions, most notably Judaism, the Serbian Orthodox Church, and the Old Catholic Church of Croatia. This policy was both socio-political and demographic: on the one hand, it intended to extinguish primarily Jewish and Serbian socio-political influence in the Independent State of Croatia; on the other hand, it aimed to herd large segments of the Serb non-elite population into religious conversion to “approved” religions, preferably Catholicism, and, by extension, make them ethnonational Croats, hence increasing the slim Croat majority in the newly-formed state. As part of that policy, the regime placed all religious conversions under its direct control, adding “rectitude confirmations” to the list of documents required for a legally valid conversion. “Rectitude confirmations”—background checks focused on an individual’s past engagement, or lack thereof, in “anti-Croat activity”—could be issued only by local Ustaša authorities. The regime did not plan for its religious-ethnonational conversion campaign to encompass Jews. However, caught between a rock and a hard place, and hearing the promises of safety that the regime issued to Serbs it targeted for conversion, Jews across the Independent State of Croatia reached for religious conversion as a potential avenue of evading Ustaša persecution. Although the regime in Zagreb discouraged and eventually prohibited Jewish and Roma conversions—since all Jews and Roma were slated for annihilation rather than assimilation, the latter policy having been reserved only for a portion of Croatia’s Serbs—local authorities often approved Jewish requests in exchange for high fees and bribes, using the process as another way to lay hands on Jewish property. This document, a government-issued fillable form, shows the ad-hoc nature of Jewish conversions. Central authorities prepared the form for the portion of Ustaša Croatia’s Serbs slated for assimilation into Croat ethnonationality, but local officials used those forms for Jewish conversions, as well, crossing off the pre-printed references to the “Greek-Eastern faith” (denoting members of the Serbian Orthodox Church) and penciling in “Moses’.” Seventeen-year-old Vjera Herzog, who filled out this form, converted on November 28, 1942, several months after the largest deportation of Vukovarian Jews to Jasenovac death camp; it remains unclear whether Ms. Herzog survived the Holocaust.