Citizens and Thieves: “Aryanization” in Wartime Varaždin

Abstract

Abstract This work focuses on the so-called “Aryanization” projects of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) in the town of Varaždin during World War II. In doing so, it finds the widespread dissemination of expropriated property in the town’s private and public spaces. While confiscated valuable property constituted a fundamental component of the state’s Aryanization campaigns and in Varaždin itself, the town council’s “Jewish department” (židovski odsjek) which handled expropriated property also received many requests for basic necessities from local “Aryans.” In examining the late interwar and wartime periods, this article shows that Varaždin was not destined to become the first town “cleansed of Jews” in the NDH, but rather a small group of motivated individuals instigated the persecution of “non-Aryans,” leading to deportations and the seizure of their property. Despite the indifference expressed by many local townspeople to the new state’s ideology, property expropriated by NDH authorities nevertheless became widely redistributed throughout the town. Racialized theft, as indicated by stolen property’s omnipresence in Varaždin’s spaces, quickly became normalized under the new regime. As this work argues, the NDH’s Aryanization campaigns provided the new state the opportunity to disseminate Ustaša ideology to the populace and potentially secure the loyalty of “Aryans” by implicating them in state-led violence and genocide through their participation in property redistribution.