Mapping the Holocaust in
Croatia

Though scholarly attention to the subject has only started to emerge, forced singing was an integral part of the Holocaust. This was also the case in the Jasenovac Camp Complex, where forced singing occurred in a multitude of situations. Prisoners were often forced to sing during forced labor, when they were transferred between camps, and when they were brought to the killing sites. Recent research suggests that while forced singing often served as a form of entertainment for the perpetrators, its deeper significance lay in its contribution to the systematic negation of the victims´ individuality. Coerced participation in musical acts not only robbed prisoners of their autonomy but also reinforced a collective identity imposed upon them by their oppressors. Through forced singing, the perpetrators sought to erase the individual voice of the victims, replacing them with an ethnically essentialized group identity.

The extract from the testimony of the Jewish survivor Albert Maestro illuminates how a group of Serb prisoners were forced to sing before they were murdered.

In the SS concentration camps in Nazi Germany, prisoners had their hair shaved upon entry and were forced to wear striped uniforms. A marking system of colored triangles sewn unto uniforms identified the reason for the prisoner’s incarceration. These measures are widely recognized as contributing to a systematic process of deindividuation and dehumanization.

In the Jasenovac camp complex, the situation was different. New prisoners were either allowed to keep the clothes they came in or were given worn-out rags instead. While what was deemed excessively long hair and beard were forbidden, most prisoners were not forcibly shaven. The use of colored emblems to mark the ethnicity of the prisoners was by all accounts confined to occasions when German officials were visiting as the Ustašas sought to convey an image of an efficient camp based on “modern” organizing principles. However, the absence of such measure does mean that Jasenovac was less brutal than concentration camps in Nazi Germany. Yet it does indicate that at least in Jasenovac, they were not a prerequisite for the heinous treatment prisoners were subjected to.

This document is an extract from an article published in the newsletter “Hrvatski Vojnik” about a reporter’s visit to the camp complex in February 1945.

In the months following the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia, the Ustaša regime introduced the policy of public marking of Jews by requiring Jewish individuals to wear “Jewish signs” when appearing in public. “Jewish signs” usually took the form of patches sown on outer articles of clothing, often as letter “Ž” for “Židov,” meaning “Jew.” As an added injury to their individual integrity, Ustaša authorities forced Croatia’s Jews to purchase these signs from the state. Reflecting Ustaša ingroup social policy—measures of social support for those deemed “Aryan”—the money collected by the sale of “Jewish signs” was meant to be used for socially useful purposes.

The Ustaša regime declared Jews the enemy of the Croat nation and state, defined them racially, and implemented a comprehensive, homegrown policy of genocide aimed at their physical annihilation. Destruction of Croatia’s Jews began with internment and murder of Jewish elites from localities across the state. Some Jews, such as medical doctors, the regime judged as temporarily useful and drafted them into the ranks of regular army. Others fled their homes in attempts to evade persecution. By 1942, therefore, Jewish communities across Ustaša Croatia had been reduced in size, prompting he regime to issue a call for a ‘Jewish census’ to its local representatives to make the forthcoming deportations to concentration and death camps more efficient. This document, connected to the two that follow, portrays the process of the Ustaša headcount of the Jews of Vukovar in February 1942.

The Ustaša regime declared Jews the enemy of the Croat nation and state, defined them racially, and implemented a comprehensive, homegrown policy of genocide aimed at their physical annihilation. Destruction of Croatia’s Jews began with internment and murder of Jewish elites from localities across the state. Some Jews, such as medical doctors, the regime judged as temporarily useful and drafted them into the ranks of regular army. Others fled their homes in attempts to evade persecution. By 1942, therefore, Jewish communities across Ustaša Croatia had been reduced in size, prompting the regime to issue a call for a ‘Jewish census’ to its local representatives to make the forthcoming deportations to concentration and death camps more efficient. This document, connected to the previous one and the one that follows, portrays the process of the Ustaša headcount of the Jews of Vukovar in February 1942.

The Ustaša regime declared Jews the enemy of the Croat nation and state, defined them racially, and implemented a comprehensive, homegrown policy of genocide aimed at their physical annihilation. Destruction of Croatia’s Jews began with internment and murder of Jewish elites from localities across the state. Some Jews, such as medical doctors, the regime judged as temporarily useful and drafted them into the ranks of regular army. Others fled their homes in attempts to evade persecution. By 1942, therefore, Jewish communities across Ustaša Croatia had been reduced in size, prompting the regime to issue a call for a ‘Jewish census’ to its local representatives to make the forthcoming deportations to concentration and death camps more efficient. This document, connected to the previous two, portrays the process of the Ustaša headcount of the Jews of Vukovar in February 1942.