The Antisemitic Exhibition in Zagreb took place in the Art Pavilion in Zagreb, the capital city of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), in May 1942. [1]
The Antisemitic Exhibition in Zagreb took place in the Art Pavilion in Zagreb, the capital city of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), in May 1942. [1]
According to its organizers, the exhibition sought to expose the "destructive and exploitative work of Croatia's Jews prior to 1941." Its promotional brochure, produced by Ustaše authorities from the State Investigative and Propaganda Bureau of the NDH (Državni izvještajni i promičbeni ured or DIPU), claimed that most of the displays had been created by "racial experts, demographers, scientists, and ordinary citizens as well as the bureau's investigators." These brochures featured supposed scientific illustrations depicting the alleged Jewish "colonization" of Croatia and the population growth rate of the Jewish community in the country. The brochures also purported that Jews "dominated Croatian commerce in comparison to their share of the population." Although the figures presented lacked serious credibility, the authors reiterated that "rigorous science [was] behind their analysis." [2]
The racist promotional poster used to promote the exhibition featured a nude Aryan warrior fighting a large serpent adorned with Jewish symbols as he carried a sword and shield depicting the Croatian coat of arms. The image sought to portray "the new Ustaša man ... purifying Croatia's body politic of the racially degenerate Jews." The organizers of the exhibition also sought to expose the supposed "economic injustices" and "abuse" suffered by "honest Croatian workers" at the hands of Jews in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The exhibition also claimed that Croatian women and girls were being sexually mistreated by Jews. Its promotional film went so far as to suggest that "Jewish pimps [had] picked up vulnerable Croatian women, seducing them and selling them into a sordid life of brothels, prostitution, and white slavery." [2]
The exhibition opened on 1 May 1942. According to Zagreb newspaper Nova Hrvatska report, various state officials attended the opening, including NDH interior minister Andrija Artuković and representatives of the German, Italian and Slovak embassies in Zagreb, as well as the then mayor of Zagreb Ivan Werner. Head of the DIPU Vilko Rieger opened the exhibition with a speech in which he described Jews as detrimental to "the customs and society of Aryan peoples" by being "at the forefront of both exploitative capitalism and marxism" and that history has showed that "healthy nations always fought the Jewish danger". [3] According to the same newspaper's report on 5 May, the exhibition was seen by 8,000 visitors in the first four days. [4] In addition, all visitors received free tickets for cinema screenings of German antisemitic propaganda films Jew Süss , The Rothschilds and The Eternal Jew . [4]
One of the exhibition authors hired by DIPU was a comic book artist Walter Neugebauer who also appears in an 11-minute documentary film commissioned by DIPU titled How Exhibitions are Created (Kako se stvaraju izložbe) which purports to document the pseudo-scientific and creative efforts in putting together the exhibition. In the film, itself described as "one of the darkest chapters in the history of Croatian cinema", Neugebauer is shown drawing a caricature of a "typical Jew". [5] The exhibition featured displays with text panels showing translated quotes from the Talmud, illustrated art caricatures of Jews, a sculpture of a stereotypical "Jewish" head and maps chronicling Jewish expansion in Croatia and neighbouring countries. The exhibition also featured photographs of the various stages of the demolition of the Zagreb Synagogue (which had been located in the city centre and was destroyed in stages from October 1941 to April 1942). [6]
The exhibition was open to public until 1 June 1942. Afterwards, its displays were exhibited to audiences in Karlovac, Dubrovnik and Sarajevo (6–20 September 1942). [1] Historian Ivo Goldstein and author Rory Yeomans have described it as being the pinnacle of the propaganda campaign spread by the Ustaše against Croatia's Jewish community during World War II. [1] [2]
The Ustaše, also known by anglicised versions Ustasha or Ustashe, was a Croatian, fascist and ultranationalist organization active, as one organization, between 1929 and 1945, formally known as the Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Movement. From its inception and before the Second World War, the organization engaged in a series of terrorist activities against the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, including collaborating with IMRO to assassinate King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in 1934. During World War II in Yugoslavia, the Ustaše went on to perpetrate the Holocaust and genocide against its Jewish, Serb and Roma populations, killing hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma, as well as Bosniak Muslim and Croat political dissidents.
Ante Pavelić was a Croatian politician who founded and headed the fascist ultranationalist organization known as the Ustaše in 1929 and was dictator of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), a fascist puppet state built out of parts of occupied Yugoslavia by the authorities of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, from 1941 to 1945. Pavelić and the Ustaše persecuted many racial minorities and political opponents in the NDH during the war, including Serbs, Jews, Romani, and anti-fascists, becoming one of the key figures of the genocide of Serbs, the Porajmos and the Holocaust in the NDH.
The Independent State of Croatia was a World War II–era puppet state of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. It was established in parts of occupied Yugoslavia on 10 April 1941, after the invasion by the Axis powers. Its territory consisted mostly of modern-day Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as some parts of modern-day Serbia and Slovenia, but also excluded many Croat-populated areas in Dalmatia, Istria, and Međimurje regions.
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Ljubomir "Ljubo" Miloš was a Croatian public official who was a member of the Ustaše of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during World War II. He served as commandant of the Jasenovac concentration camp on several occasions and was responsible for various atrocities committed there during the war. He was responsible for the deaths of thousands.
Vjekoslav Luburić was a Croatian Ustaše official who headed the system of concentration camps in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during much of World War II. Luburić also personally oversaw and spearheaded the contemporaneous genocides of Serbs, Jews and Roma in the NDH.
Ivan "Ivo" Herenčić was a general in the armed forces of the Independent State of Croatia, a fascist puppet state. In 1941, he commanded a battalion of Ustaše Militia that committed many war crimes and atrocities on civilians during the Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia. Born in Bjelovar in Austria-Hungary, he completed his secondary and tertiary education in Zagreb and Sarajevo in what was by then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In 1933, he left Yugoslavia to join the fascist and ultranationalist Croatian Ustaše movement in Italy. Late that year, Herenčić participated in an unsuccessful assassination attempt on the King of Yugoslavia, Alexander.
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The history of the Jews in Croatia dates back to at least the 3rd century, although little is known of the community until the 10th and 15th centuries. According to the 1931 census, the community numbered 21,505 members, and it is estimated that on the eve of the Second World War the population was around 25,000 people. Most of the population was murdered during the Holocaust that took place on the territory of the Nazi puppet state called the Independent State of Croatia. After the war, half of the survivors chose to settle in Israel, while an estimated 2,500 members continued to live in Croatia. According to the 2011 census, there were 509 Jews living in Croatia, but that number is believed to exclude those born of mixed marriages or those married to non-Jews. More than 80 percent of the Zagreb Jewish Community were thought to fall in those two categories.
The Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia was the systematic persecution and extermination of Serbs committed during World War II by the fascist Ustaše regime in the Nazi German puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia between 1941 and 1945. It was carried out through executions in death camps, as well as through mass murder, ethnic cleansing, deportations, forced conversions, and war rape. This genocide was simultaneously carried out with the Holocaust in the NDH as well as the genocide of Roma, by combining Nazi racial policies with the ultimate goal of creating an ethnically pure Greater Croatia.
The Glina massacres were killings of Serb peasants in the town of Glina in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) that occurred between May and August 1941, during World War II. The first wave of massacres in the town began on 11 or 12 May 1941, when a band of Ustaše led by Mirko Puk murdered a group of Serb men and boys in a Serbian Orthodox church before setting it on fire. The following day, approximately 100 Serb males were murdered by the Ustaše in the nearby village of Prekopi. Estimates of the overall number of Serbs killed from 11 to 13 May range from 260 to 417. Further killings in Glina occurred between 30 July and 3 August of that same year, when 700–2,000 Serbs were massacred by a group of Ustaše led by Vjekoslav Luburić.
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Samuel "Sami" David Alexander was a Croatian Jewish industrialist, doyen of Croatian industrialists, a philanthropist and a member of the Zagreb prominent Alexander family.
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