Jewish Resistance Against the Nazis

18. Courage to Defy: Jews of the Independent State of Croatia Fight Back, 1941-45 - Esther Gitman

426 Esther Gitman 18 Courage to Defy Jews of the Independent State of Croatia Fight Back, 1941–45 I will focus on Jewish resistance against the Axis powers and their local collaborators , the Croatian Ustaše, in the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH) which, during World War II, also included Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). This essay uncovers the available evidence that Jews in NDH exhibited a strong will to resist while the Ustaše, acting under the auspices of Nazi authorities, transported approximately 30,000 Jews to local concentration camps and to German labor or death camps by 1944. Because Jews fought back, 9,500 of them in the NDH survived. From the start, Pavelić’s Ustaše regime combined in cruelty and brutality the worst of Croatian Fascism and German Nazism. Yet archival material and the stories of survivors document the prevalence of resistance. Using these sources, we discover that the annihilation of 75 percent of Jews in the NDH during World War II does not prove an absence of resistance on the part of Jews. We will also examine why most Croatian Jews initially showed a dangerous complacency about their situation at a time when their enemies had a welldeveloped plan for their annihilation. Moreover, those Jews who did decide to join the Partisans faced considerable difficulties. I begin with a brief outline of the nature of the enemy, the obstacles confronting the Jews, and the absence of strong Jewish leadership. The analysis of these issues will demonstrate why, despite their attempts to defy their enemies, so many Jews perished during the first six months of the war. 427 The Independent State of Croatia Historical Background By November 1940, Hitler was relentlessly pressuring the Kingdom of Yugoslavia to join Germany, Italy, and Japan in the recently concluded Tripartite Pact, thus aligning with its neighbors Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary. On March 25, 1941, the government of Prince Regent Pavel Karađorđević reached a decision to accept Germany’s overtures, and on March 26, Yugoslavia’s representatives in Vienna signed the agreement. The ink had not yet dried when vocal objections to the submission arose from various military, political, and social elements. The following day, Belgrade awoke to news of a coup d’état. Several pro-Western military officers and politicians opposed to the pact rallied supporters who paraded through the streets shouting: “Better grave than slave” and “Better war than pact.”1 Elated and inspired by the spirit of defiance and by the military’s revolt, the country’s Jews among many others felt admiration for their countrymen. Yet their exuberance was short-lived and their hopes quickly dashed. Hitler reacted forcefully and decisively to this insolence, aiming to destroy Yugoslavia militarily and thus reduce the threat of British air power against the southern flank of the German armies. Moreover, he decided to dismember Yugoslavia politically, using not only Axis military forces but also right-wing Croats and Yugoslavia’s other national minorities, especially the half-million Volksdeutsche (citizens of German ancestry). By making Croatia an independent state, Hitler thought he could satisfy widespread separatist feelings among Croats who chafed at what they viewed as Serb domination. Henceforth German agents intensified their subversive activities in Zagreb in preparation for the Wehrmacht’s entrance into the city.2 On April 5, 1941, the Yugoslav kingdom signed an agreement of friendship with the USSR. Its reasons for this move are not entirely clear, although Germany had signed a similar pact in 1939. Rather than being flattered, Hitler questioned the intentions behind this decision.3 On April 6, 1941, the Axis powers—Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Hungary , and Bulgaria—attacked Yugoslavia from four directions; the Luftwaffe meanwhile bombed Belgrade and other cities, killing thousands. 1. Jozo Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001), 47–48. 2. Esther Gitman, When Courage Prevailed: The Rescue and Survival of Jews in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941–1945 (St Paul, Minn.: Paragon House, 2011), 22. 3. Ante Nazor and Zoran Ladić, History of Croatians: Illustrated Chronology (Zagreb: Multigraf, 2003), 350. 428 Esther Gitman On April 10, 1941, the NDH was proclaimed and the Axis partners installed Dr. Ante Pavelić as Poglavnik (head) of this entity. Although Mussolini had groomed Pavelić for this role, Hitler readily agreed, knowing that many of his Ustaše supporters were Nazi sympathizers. Moreover...