document count: 11

 

The anti-Semitism of the Ustase was expressed early in the writings of their leader Ante Pavelic, who held Jews in contempt as despicable agents of the Serbian regime in Yugoslavia, controllers of the press and an anti-national element which would have to be dealt with should Croatia attain true independence - despite being married to a scion of the Lovrencices, a prominent Jewish family from Vienna. In the 1930s he wrote: "Today, practically all finance and nearly all commerce in Croatia is in Jewish hands. This became possible only through the support of the state, which thereby seeks, on one hand, to strengthen the pro-Serbian Jews, and on the other, to weaken Croat national strength... As the Jews had foreseen, Yugoslavia became, in consequence of the corruption of official life in Serbia, a true Eldorado of Jewry." Among the first decrees issued by the Independent State of Croatia were those dealing with racism, aimed primarily at Jews and the Roma.

Despite the influence of the Italians in the NDH, Pavelic immediately oriented his racial policies to those of Nazi Germany, calling for extermination as compared to legal discrimination. On September 5, 1941, Italian troops discovered the bodies of some 4,500 Serbs and 2,500 Jews on the Island of Pag during their redeployment. Two days later, Italian General - later Chief of Staff - Vittorio Ambrosio gave his "word of honour" to protect Jews in areas under his control. The Italian military command in Dalmatia and Croatia often intervened to protect the lives of Serbian and Jewish civilians, and even went so far as to arrest an Ustase detachment which had undertaken a massacre. Another prominent commander, General Mario Roatta refused all German and Croatian requests to surrender Jews and Serbs under his protection because, as he wrote in his memoirs, "they would be interned in Jasenovac with well-known consequences."

Pamphlet: "The Victorious Axis"
March 1941: Excerpt from an Ustase propaganda leaflet denouncing the Croatian Peasant Party

Decree: NDH Decree No. 76
April 30, 1941: English Translation of the Ustase Law "On Racial Affiliation"

Decree: NDH Decree No. 77
April 30, 1941: English Translation of the Ustase Law "On the Protection of Aryan Blood..."

Comparison Between Nazi and Ustase Racial Decrees
1941: Comparison between the decrees passed in Germany and the NDH giving precise definition to who was and was not Jewish

Decree: Ustase Command-Dubrovnik Order No. 188:44
June 25, 1941: Prohibition on radios and forbidding Jews and Serbs from congregating at night, signed by Dubrovnik prefect Ivo Rojnica

Article: Jews as the "Insatiable Parasites"
February 26, 1942: Transcript of Artukovic's speech to parliament denouncing "Judeo-Communists" as ""poisonous and insatiable parasites" later published in the official Ustase gazette

Judicial Testimony: Measures Taken Against the Jews
Testimony by Alexander Arnon on anti-Jewish laws passed immediately after the founding of the Independent State of Croatia

Article: Ivo Goldstein at the Sakic War Crimes Trial
June 1, 1999: Historian Ivo Goldstein on Jasenovac and the Jewish Problem

Book Excerpt: Eichmann in Jerusalem
Hannah Arendt on the Destruction of Croatian Jewry

Article: Under the Government of the Ustashi Monster
November 11, 1993: Review of the History of the Yugoslav Jews by Yosef Algazi, Haaretz

Article: As the Surviving Jews Remember Artukovic
March 9, 1958: Transcript of an article from the Yugoslav Press on Jews' memories of Andrija Artukovic

 

Crimes in the Jasenovac Camp
A new translation of the official state report on the largest concentration camp in Southeast Europe, including statements from the handful of inmates who survived Jasenovac

 

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