The Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia

The Holocaust saw the genocide of Jews, Serbs and Romani within the Independent State of Croatia (Croatian: Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH), a fascist puppet state that existed during World War II, led by the Ustaše regime, which ruled an occupied area of Yugoslavia including most of the territory of modern-day Croatia, the whole of modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and the eastern part of Syrmia (Serbia).

The Ustaše were the only quisling forces in Yugoslavia who operated their own extermination camps for the purpose of murdering Jews and members of other ethnic groups.

[6] During the 1930's antisemitism grew among the Croatian extreme right, including the fascist, separatist Ustaše, nationalist students and radical Catholic organizations.

[8] On the territory of Yugoslavia the Ustaše were the only local quisling force which implemented its own Race Laws and carried out the mass-murder of Jews in their own concentration camps.

Thus nearly all 450 Jews in the city of Ruma were killed in the Ustaše Jasenovac and Nazi Sajmište concentration camps, with the Independent State of Croatia confiscating all their property.

In 1936, the Ustaše leader, Ante Pavelić, wrote in "The Croat Question": ″Today, practically all finance and nearly all commerce in Croatia is in Jewish hands.

In fact, as the Jews had foreseen, Yugoslavia became, in consequence of the corruption of official life in Serbia, a true Eldorado of Jewry...The entire press in Croatia is also in Jewish-masonic hands…" [18] The main Race Laws in the Independent State of Croatia, patterned after Nazi Race Laws, were adopted and signed by the Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić on 30 April 1941: the "Legal Decree on Racial Origins", the "Legal Decree on the Protection of Aryan Blood and the Honor of the Croatian People",[19] and the "Legal Provision on Citizenship".

By the end of April 1941, months before the Nazis implemented similar measures in Germany, the Ustaše required all Jews to wear insignia, typically a yellow Star of David.

[21] On June 26, 1941 Ante Pavelić issued the Extraordinary Legal Decree and Order, stating: "Since Jews are spreading false reports with the purpose of disturbing the population, and using their well-known speculations to hinder and obstruct supplying the population, we consider them collectively responsible and shall therefore treat them accordingly and place them, in addition to implementing penal and correctional measures, in open-air prison camps".

[24] Two days later, the newspaper Novi list concluded that Croatians must "be more alert than any other ethnic group to protect their racial purity, ... We need to keep our blood clean of the Jews".

[24] Nova Hrvatska (New Croatia) added that according to the Talmud, "this toxic, hot well-spring of Jewish wickedness and malice, the Jew is even free to kill Gentiles".

In April 1941 the newspaper Hrvatski narod accused Jews of being responsible for the "many failures and misfortunes of so many Croatian people", which led the Poglavnik [the Ustaše leader Ante Pavelic] to "eradicate these evils".

[25] And in July 1941, the Franciscan priest, Dionysius Juričev, in Novi list wrote that "it is no longer a sin to kill a seven year-old child".

[citation needed] On 8 July 1941 the Ustaše ordered that all arrested Jews be sent to Gospić, from where they took the victims to death camps Jadovno on Velebit, and Slana and Metajna on the island of Pag,[30] where they carried out mass executions.

In a report in the newspaper Hrvatski narod (Croatian People) the Ustaše proclaimed Varaždin the first Judenfrei city, i.e. "cleansed" of Jews.

[31] The historian Paul Mojzes lists 1,998 Jews, 38,010 Serbs, and 88 Croats killed at Jadovno and related execution grounds,[32] among them 1,000 children.

[36] The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, D.C. presently estimates that the Ustaša regime murdered between 77,000 and 99,000 people in Jasenovac system of camps between 1941 and 1945.

The Jasenovac Memorial site lists the individual names of 83,145 victims, including 13,116 Jews, 16,173 Roma, 47,627 Serbs, 4,255 Croats, 1,128 Bosnian Muslims,[39] etc.

As a result, at a meeting in Ukraine in September 1942, the Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić told Adolf Hitler that the "Jewish question is practically solved in a large part of Croatia.

"[51] The destruction of the Sephardi Il Kal Grande synagogue in Sarajevo was carried out by Nazi German soldiers and their local Ustaše allies soon after their arrival in the city on 15 April.

[19] In February 1942 the Ustaše Interior Minister, Andrija Artuković, in a speech to the Croatian Parliament declared that: On 5 May 1943, Nazi SS leader Heinrich Himmler paid a short visit to Zagreb in which he held talks with Ante Pavelić.

[56] During this period, Archbishop Stepinac offered the head rabbi in Zagreb Miroslav Šalom Freiberger help to escape the roundup, which he ultimately declined.

[58] After the capitulation of Italy on 8 September 1943, Nazi Germany annexed the Croat-populated Italian provinces of Pula and Rijeka into its Operational Zone Adriatic Coast.

On 5 May 1945, only 3 days before the Partisans liberated Zagreb and just days after they finished mass-murdering the last 3,000 prisoners at Jasenovac, among them 700 Jews,[65] the fleeing Ustaše declared the Legal Decree on the Equalization of Members of the NDH Based on Racial Origin (Zakonska odredba o izjednačavanju pripadnika NDH s obzirom na rasnu pripadnost) which repealed the racial laws under which the Ustaše exterminated the vast majority of Jews and Roma and many Serbs during the course of the war.

Of the 3,500 Jews in the Italian Rab Island camp, 3,151 joined the Partisans (1,339 as combatants, 1,812 as noncombatants), of whom 2,874 survived the war, the rest were killed in Ustaše and Nazi attacks.

As of 1 February 2019[update], 118 Croatians have been honored with this title by Yad Vashem for saving Jews during World War II.

Pavlović was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 2008; Croatian president Stjepan Mesić attended the ceremony.

[133] Representatives of Serbian and Jewish communities along with anti-fascist organisations have boycotted state commemoration services for Jasenovac victims in protest at what they see as government leniency towards Ustaša sympathisers.

"[136] One of Croatian Radiotelevision's programme editors Karolina Vidović Krišto covered the book's release in a talk show, in which the historian Hrvoje Klasić was supposed to be present, but he had explicitly rejected the invitation because of Jasenovac denialism, and the institution subsequently published a disclaimer, saying they do not advocate any such views and that all their employees are supposed to do their work objectively and legally.

[137] Krišto was reportedly subsequently removed from her post, and later entered politics as a candidate of the Miroslav Škoro Homeland Movement.