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  • The Smell of Human Flesh: A Witness of the Holocaust. Memories of Jasenovac by Cadik I. Danon ("Braco")
  • Mirjana N. Radovanov Matarić
Cadik I. Danon (Braco). The Smell of Human Flesh: A Witness of the Holocaust. Memories of Jasenovac. Trans. revised by Vidosava Janković. Belgrade: Dosije, 2006. 181 pp. Photos. ISBN 9788677380434. Title of the original: Sasečeno stablo Danonovih. Sećanje na Jasenovac.

The cover illustration of this book is of a little Jewish girl wearing a yellow patch with the letter Ž (Židov) and the Star of David. The title is in red, the color of blood. There are 36 chapters, a foreword, and the author’s curriculum vitae, which appears at the end.

The original manuscript was awarded first place at the 43rd competition for works with Jewish themes held by the Association of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia in 1999, in the field of historical and memoir writing. The book is a detailed account of the happenings inside the notorious Ustasha concentration camp, “the most terrible slaughter house of Serbs, Romas, and Jews,” as Aca Singer, the President of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia, states in the foreword.1 He begins with the information that six million European Jews perished during the Holocaust. Of that number, 82,000 lived in the prewar Kingdom of Yugoslavia. During WWII and the German occupation from 1941–45, eighty-two percent, i.e., 67,000, perished. The Independent State of Croatia, an ally of the Nazi German regime, and its volunteer troops, the Ustasha, helped in the cleansing of the territory of Jews, Serbs, and Roma. Unlike the Nazi death camps in Germany, Austria, and Poland, Jasenovac in Croatia had no Germans, only Ustasha, as the sole administrators and executioners. Aca Singer, like the author Cadik I. Danon (1923–2009), is one of the Holocaust survivors with extensive personal experience in camps like Auschwitz and Flossenbürg.

All of the liquidations in Jasenovac were cleverly and by hand, in contrast to liquidations in other camps, which were carried out by firing squads, and later by gas chambers. Moreover, there was minimal contact between victim and executioner in other camps. This book about Jasenovac, however, describes detailed personal, sadistic, and perverse methods of prolonged [End Page 167] and passionate torture of the victims. The tools used included: knives, clubs, daggers, and bullets. The victims were innocent citizens, including babies, toddlers, and children, condemned to death by the Nazi high command, both in Germany and occupied countries.

In the foreword Singer notes that the award was not presented on the basis of literary merit, but for the book’s documentary and educational value. The content is touching and compelling. Danon is a graduate of the University of Belgrade, an architect and designer of tourist buildings in post-war Yugoslavia, born in Sarajevo to a merchant Sephardic-Jewish family whose ancestors came to the Balkans after their expulsion from Spain by the Spanish Inquisition and Queen Isabella’s decree requiring all Jews in Spain (some 300,000) convert to Catholicism within three months. Danon’s father, Isidor, was one of thirteen children of a merchant in Bijeljina. His mother, Dona, one of nine children, was from Gračanica, near Tuzla. Danon had two older sisters. When the 1932 economic crisis led to the failure of his father’s business and ultimately bankruptcy, the family moved from Sarajevo to Belgrade in 1934. They lived there until the German occupation and then moved to the smaller Bosnian city of Tuzla.

With 130 Jewish men, including his father, the eighteen-year-old Cadik was imprisoned and transported to the Ustasha concentration camp in Jasenovac. He was the only survivor from that group. After three attempts, he escaped, and on his way met and joined the Partisans. Later, he was severely wounded in battle. After the war, he completed his education and worked until his retirement.

In the fall of 1961, he was given a questionnaire to complete. Diplomatic relations with West Germany were being established, but were discontinued when Yugoslavia recognized East Germany. Compensation for the Fascists atrocities was to be requested and data were to be collected from surviving family members. He had...

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