Anti-Semitism in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia: The Case of Croatia

Abstract

This essay will analyze the genesis of the anti-Semitic tendencies in the territory of Croatia in the period between two world wars, as well as its culmination in the Independent State of Croatia during the Second World War. The emphasis will be on various theoretical explanations of a virulent Jew-hat- red that emerged in Croatia. Some of these explanatory units are religious an- tisemitism, cultural code, and group conflict theories. Moreover, the Holocaust perpetrated here has its specificity. Namely, nowhere in the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia did the native population massively participate in the annihilation of domestic “threats” as in this country. Serbians, Jews, Roma, and Croatian oppo- nents of the regime perished in the exterminations camps of the infamous pu- ppet creation, which are considered the only death camps in Europe that were not conducted by the Nazis. Memory of these monstrous times still haunts re- gional inter-ethnic relations and will continue until the proper examination of these tragic events.