A Tangled Tale: The Survival of Serbian Jews during World War II

Abstract

A Tangled Tale:The Survival of Serbian Jews during World War II Michele Frucht Levy Introduction Holocaust survival stories continue to amaze and move us. Whether recounted in the media through memoirs and films or first-hand by survivors or their relatives, they share common characteristics but unique details. Yet most of those we know belong to the Jews of Western, Central,1 and Northeastern Europe. For until recently Western scholars largely ignored the specific characteristics of the Holocaust as it unfolded in the Former Yugoslavia. Yet according to Milan Ristović, fully 85% of Yugoslavia’s approximately 82,500 Jews perished there,2 most of them under the regimes of Pavelić’s Ustaša, which governed the NDH (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, or Independent State of Croatia), and Nazi-occupied Serbia and its puppet governments, the first headed by Milan Aćimović (May–August 1941), the second, the Government of National Salvation (Vlada nacionalnog spasa), by General Milan Nedić (29 August 1941–October 1944). [End Page 15] Regarding the fate of Serbian Jews3 during this period, Walter Manoschek observes, “The Serbian Jews suffered one of the proportionately highest death rates of all European populations.”4 In fact, the brutal implementation of Hitler’s racial policy by the Nazi occupying forces all but destroyed Serbia’s Jewish community, approximately 16,000, of which between 13,600 and 14,000 died—close to 7/8ths of the total population.5 Given how successfully the Occupation met Hitler’s goals, we may wonder how the survivors eluded the insidious machinery so carefully constructed to destroy them. Fortunately, renewed interest in the issue has led scholars and community leaders to examine more closely the plight of Serbian Jews under Nazi occupation. Exploring both written sources for historical context and oral histories to distill a deeper sense of its human consequences, they have produced such collections as We Survived: Yugoslav Jews on the Holocaust (2005) and Jasenovac and the Holocaust in Yugoslavia: Analyses and Survivor Testimonies (2006). In 2010, Milan Ristović published “Jews in Serbia during World War II,” while museums and various interest groups have utilized new technologies to establish websites such as: http://www.ushmmm.org, sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which features a section on Jasenovac; http://www.jasenovac.org/; http://www.semlin.info; http://www.un.org/en/holocaustremembrance,html; and http://www.serbianholocaust.org. All of these serve as resource centers for written and oral eyewitness accounts from Jews and non-Jews, as well as photographs of family members and relevant persons, places, and memorabilia. And while scholars have begun to explore individual aspects of this phenomenon,6 I intend here a brief overview of the relevant history interwoven with selected synopses of survivor experiences. [End Page 16] An Overview of the German Occupation The occupation imposed a grim reality on the Jews of Serbia. Unlike Bulgaria and Hungary, Serbia forfeited its standing as a member of the Axis after pro-British Yugoslav officers, with great public support, overthrew Prince Paul’s government on 27 March 1941, two days after it had signed, under pressure, the Tripartite Treaty with Germany, Italy, and Japan. Hitler retaliated on 6 April by bombing Belgrade as part of Operation Marita. German military forces then acquired direct control over Serbia. As Paul Hehn states when comparing the different geo-political realities of Serbia and Croatia, this meant that “Serbia was a conquered province, Croatia a sovereign ally.”7 After seizing power, the Nazis instituted severe measures against all Serbs, but especially Jews. On 19 April legislation forced Jews to register. On 30 April the “Legal Decree on Racial Origin” established the legal basis for the rounding up and execution of Serbia’s Jews. Beginning on 30 May, Jews had to wear the infamous yellow arm bands, many lost their positions, and most had to move to specific living areas. All Jewish men between sixteen and sixty were rounded up into forced labor units, and the German forces established labor camps. Finally, aid to Jews in any form was criminalized. When by early July nationalist Serbs began to resist by sabotaging German facilities and killing German soldiers, the occupation responded by burning...