CONTRIBUTION TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE HEALTH SITUATION WITHIN THE POPULATION IN SLAVONIA AND SRIJEM DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR WITH AN EMPHASIS ON INFECTIOUS DISEASES

Abstract

During World War II, the population of agricultural areas of Slavonia and Srijem lived in privation, but there was no famine. A more serious threat was infectious diseases, such as malaria, typhoid fever, and dysentery, which were also present within the population in the post-war period. Major epidemics broke out mostly in areas under partisan control, especially in the areas of western and central Slavonia, where major epidemic typhus contagious broke out. Venereal diseases, less common in the Slavonian area before the war, were also on the rise. Two factors had an impact on the health situation within the population – state medical institutions and partisan medical corps. Health care and measures to combat infectious diseases were provided by state authorities, and that is still an insufficiently explored area in historiography. During the first years of the war, the partisan medical corps personnel, initially mostly semiskilled and lacking necessary medical equipment and medications, relied on the support from the population to a greater extent than they were able to provide medical care to them. With the arrival of professional staff and the acquisition of medicines and medical equipment, mainly sourced from medical institutions in areas under partisan control, they assumed a more active role in supporting civilian authorities under the “people’s rule”—specifically, the people’s liberation committees. Their focus shifted to healthcare for the civilian population, primarily aimed at suppressing and preventing infectious diseases. Further research on this topic will contribute to a more realistic perception of the civilian population’s everyday life during the war, which was presented in memoir literature and historiography of the socialist period as a heroic act of resistance rather than a struggle for survival in the conditions of privation and diseases; it will also complete the picture of the human losses of the civilian population caused by infectious diseases.