Mapping the Holocaust in Croatia

Đuro Oberson, son of Rosa Oberson, was a physician in interwar Vukovar and one of the town’s well-known and well-connected citizens. Like other Jews, Oberson was subjected to Ustaša persecution, but was fortunate that the regime was in desperate need of medical doctors. Drafted into Croatian Home Guard as a military physician, Oberson and his family members—mother Rosa, née Gottlieb, and grandmother Berta, née Weil—were spared from deportation. Note that Oberson’s prewar connections with Croat notables such as Dr. Pušić and highly-placed Franciscan friars helped him evade Ustaša attempts to incriminate him as an enemy of the Croat nation, which speaks to the continuation of prewar intergroup ties into the wartime; such connections, however, represented an advantage that most Jews unfortunately did not have. In 1943, Oberson defected from Home Guard to the Partisans and contributed to the antifascist resistance as military physician in Partisan ranks. He survived military service and the Holocaust, but never made Vukovar his home again.

Rosa Oberson, née Gottlieb, like her son Đuro Oberson, was a well-known citizen of Vukovar before the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia. Involved in local charities and intergroup initiatives aiming for social welfare and improvement of the town’s common spaces, Oberson left a felt presence in pre-1941 material record of Vukovar’s public life. Together with her mother-in-law Berta, née Weil, she received a stay of deportation due to her son Đuro serving as an army doctor in the Croatian Home Guard. In 1943, after Đuro defected from Home Guard to the Partisans, Oberson and her mother-in-law fled Vukovar and joined him in “the forest”—swaths of countryside liberated by the Partisans—where they remained until the end of the war.

Antun Velić was an industrialist hailing from a prominent Vukovarian Jewish family. His father Lavoslav was a known local attorney who was active in the political life of the city, Vukovar’s Red Cross, and the Jewish community. Baptized on July 11, 1941, Antun Velić was among the earliest converts to Catholicism after the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia. Ha was married to Vera, a Catholic Croat woman, which allowed him to receive a stay of deportation. This privilege did not extend to Antun’s mother, Matilda Velić, née Weiss, who was deported to Jasenovac death camp in summer 1942 and killed there. Antun and Vera had two children during the Second World War: Ljerka, born in 1941, and Ratko, born in 1943. It appears that Velić family remained in Vukovar until the liberation in April 1945; shortly thereafter, they emigrated to Israel.

Nada Feuereisen, a Jewish woman from Zagreb, was one of the few to survive the concentration camps on Pag. In this postwar testimony, she recounts the harrowing ordeal, chronicling her experiences first in Metajna, then in Slana. Her testimony elucidates the depravations, the starvation, and the sexual violence the Ustaša guard personnel inflicted on many of the incarcerated women.

In this testimony, survivor Bela Hochsteter, a Jewish medical doctor from Zagreb, recounts his incarceration in the Jadovno camp. The testimony sheds light on the inmate population, the meager food provisions, and the killing of prisoners. Hochsteter was one of the very few Jewish inmates to survive the camp; his wife, a gentile Croat, successfully pleaded for his release in a fateful intervention. An interesting aspect of Hochsteter's testimony is that he highlights the presence of Italians at the Gospić camp. This tendency may be attributed to the political objectives of the State Commission for Investigating the Crimes of the Occupiers and Their Collaborators, which sought to present the Germans and Italians as the principal enemies during the war.

Testimony of Drenka Polimac sheds important light on arrests, interrogation, beating, sexualized torture of fellow inmates, and deportation illustrating the broader machinery of terror operated by the Ustaša regime in the Independent State of Croatia during the Second World War. Even though Polimac was not Jewish, her testimony illuminates the role of district authorities and police agents, the use of solitary confinement, and the transfer of prisoners to camps within the NDH and to camps in Germany.

This testimony of Drago Auslender sheds light on the persecution, displacement, and survival strategies of Jews in and around Vinkovci during the Second World War. Auslender, among other things, problematises the lack of reliable information to Jews at the time, as well as the hesitation to flee which was in part guided by hope that the established community ties would offer protection from the fascist Ustaša regime.

The testimony of Holocaust srvivor, Makso Pšerhof, from Križevci, recounts the measures taken by Ustaša authorities against the Jewish population of the city in 1941, including confiscation of property, forced labor, restrictions of movement, arrests, and deportations. Like other statements recorded by Yugoslav postwar investigative commissions, the document illustrates both the rapid implementation of anti-Jewish policies in the Independent State of Croatia and the local dynamics of persecution in smaller towns. It stands as a rare first-person account of the destruction of the Jewish community of Križevci and the dispossession and violence that accompanied it.

The joint testimony of Robert and Vera Švarc reveals that they were among the first in the city of Križevci to experience antisemitic persecution. Their testimony about the rapid seizure of their business and household belongings, forced labor, daily harassment by Ustaša officials, and the tightening restrictions on movement demonstrates how quickly the life of the members of Jewish community in Križevci deteriorated. Importantly, their testimony highlights how marital partners could experience persecution according to different timelines and modalities shaped by gender. Robert Švarc was arrested and deported during the summer of 1941, while Vera Švarc remained in Križevci under forced labor, dispossession, and eviction before later fleeing. This divergence underscored the way the Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia unfolded through differentiated patterns of arrest, deportation, and survival.