Accident of Fate: A Personal Account, 1938–1945

9. Kraljevica

FI 96 9 KRALJEVICA My first look at the Italian Camp for Civil Internees in Kraljevica brought back sinister recent memories. There were four large wooden barracks and eight smaller ones clustered together in a sloping ield, already turned into a muddy bog by the autumn rains. Powerful searchlights beamed down on us from the ramparts of the ancient castle that loomed over the camp. Whenourlittleconvoydroveinon1November1942,therewerealready hundreds of people milling around. As we climbed down from the trucks, Italian soldiers divided the men from the women. Men were assigned to the four large barracks (which, I later learned, had previously served as stables for the Yugoslav cavalry), while the smaller barracks were designated to house the women and children. As I carried my luggage to my barracks, I noticed that a tall barbed-wire fence, patrolled by sentries, surrounded the entire camp, and that a fence also ran between the barracks, dividing the men’s from the women’s quarters. But the resemblance to Jasenovac ended there. It quickly became obviousthatthiswasaconcentrationcampwheretheinmatesweremeant tosurvive.ThecampguardswereordinaryItaliansoldiers,notmembersof theFascist militia, and their outlook on the world patently did not include hating Jews. Their hatred, if they harboured any, was directed against the war and the havoc it was wreaking on their lives. After a very brief period of caution, I came to take their civility for granted. This was still a concentration camp, however, and there were hardships to be faced. The primary discomfort was overcrowding. As every inmate was entitled to an individual bunk and straw mattress, to accommodate all of us the Italians had crammed row upon row of double-decker bunks into every available space in the barracks, leaving practically no room to move. 81118 001-226.pdf_out 6/17/114:15 PM K 96 7A 97 9 KRALJEVICA Another diiculty was the shortage of food. We were provided only with reduced Italian army rations, consisting of a cup of black liquid (bearing some resemblance to cofee) in the morning and a minestrone-like broth containing a lump of pasta, beans, or other vegetables at noon and in the evening. We also received a small daily ration of bread and 100 grams a week of either salami or Parmesan cheese, which we tried to stretch out over two or three days. I would try to make the Parmesan cheese last a little longer by roasting its hard and unappetizing outer crust over a hot stove until it became soft and edible. The task of ladling out the broth from the huge, steaming cauldrons was assigned to inmates on a rotation basis. When I lined up for a meal, I was always very hungry. As my turn approached, I would concentrate all my mental energies on the person distributing the food, in an attempt to mesmerize that person into scooping down to the bottom of the cauldron, where the precious, more nourishing solids usually settled. I sometimes got the impression that this technique actually worked, although what undoubtedly worked better was beingonfriendlytermswithwhoeverwasholdingtheladle.Unfortunately this was not always possible, as these people were rotated frequently. About1,200JewishrefugeeswereinternedinKraljevica(orPortoRe,as the Italians called it) in early November 1942. Most of them were from the former Yugoslavia, but there were also Austrians, Czechs, Hungarians, and other nationalities. The camp population did not represent a normal ▴ The Italian camp in the shadow of Kraljevica Castle, where I was interned in November 1942 81118 001-226.pdf_out 6/17/114:15 PM K 97 FI 98 9 KRALJEVICA cross-section of society, Jewish or otherwise. A disproportionately high number were middle-aged and elderly (when the Ustashe took power, the irst to be murdered were young people), and the level of education as well as pre-war economic standing was well above average. Many were doctors,lawyers,teachers,industrialists,bankdirectors,orbusinessmen. Nothing had been coniscated from us on arrival—we had not even been searched—and some inmates still possessed cash or gold coins. They were able to supplement the meagre camp diet by ordering in food from the townspeople of Kraljevica. I sometimes watched enviously as wealthier inmates had delicious-looking cooked meals delivered for their private consumption. Although this commerce was technically in breach of camp regulations, the Italians found a way to tolerate it by approving it on “medical grounds.” The bellies of the rest of us were never quite full, but we never sufered from real malnutrition. Ironically, for some...