The El Shatt was a complex of World War II refugee camps in the desert of the Sinai peninsula in Egypt, established in early 1944. [1] [2] [3] The region of Dalmatia (in today's modern Croatia, then Yugoslavia) was evacuated by the Allies, following the September 1943 Italian surrender and ahead of a German invasion. The camp was disbanded after the war ended, in March 1946.
Fleeing the German offensive in the fall and winter of 1943–1944 and in fear of reprisals, nearly 40,000 civilians escaped to the remote island of Vis. [2] Vis already hosted the allied British forces and had been established as the Headquarters for the Partisan army. Scarce of food and unable to ensure their protection, the allies decided to send the evacuated refugees and non-combatant population of the island to southern Italy, first to Bari and then to Taranto. The refugees were mostly from Makarska (around 5800), Korčula (4500), Brač and Šolta (4300), Vodice (4000), Vis (3800), Hvar (3,000) and many other places in Dalmatia. [4] Because of heavy fighting in Italy between the Allied forces and the Germans, it was decided to transfer the refugees to Egypt. [5] As the German threat receded after the battle of El Alamein, some former British army camps became available for European refugees. [2] El Shatt near Suez, along with the camps at Tolumbat and Khatatba, was chosen to become the new home for the Dalmatians, and only a few thousand remained in Italy. [2]
The camp was located near the Suez Canal, and was divided into five smaller bases. [2] Refugees were housed in tents, one to two families per tent. Although far from home and living in poor conditions, they tried to preserve the illusion of normal life. They established schools, various workshops, a shared laundry, and issued a newspaper (Our Paper/Naš List). One tent was designated as a church. Josip Hatze, a famous Split-born composer and conductor, who was in his later years, spent his time organizing choirs. People from Dalmatia had difficulty adjusting to desert conditions, especially children who suffered from intestinal diseases. Many of them died, especially at Khatatba camp during an outbreak of measles. The British government kept a strict regime, allowing exit from the complex only with passes. In the vicinity of the camp there was a Royal Yugoslav Army aviation range, and their airplanes dropped bombs onto the camp on five occasions, killing several people. [3]
More than 30,000 people, mostly women and children, lived in the camp for nearly two years. During their time in the camp, there were 300 marriages, and 475 children were born. [3]
As the war was nearing its end, a repatriation commission was formed to organize the return. Due to sometimes strained relations between Tito's Yugoslavia and the British allies, it took many months, from May 1945 to March 1946 for them to return. Some never did, and at the place of their exile now rests a graveyard with 715 graves. [3]
John Corsellis, a British aid worker at the camp later wrote "People [aid workers] mysteriously appeared and disappeared with a frequency reminiscent of a popular transit hotel". [6] He also added, "I must not give the impression that these people [refugees] created a little paradise here on the desert with their resourcefulness. Their extreme lack of everything only makes what they do more impressive, standing as it does against such a background."
The cemetery at El Shatt was seriously damaged in the Six-Day War in 1967, [7] then restored in 1985. [4] With the support of the Croatian government, in 2003 a memorial site was established honoring all 856 [3] victims of the exile. [8]
Images from the Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information collection (Library of Congress), dated September 1944. [9]
Dalmatia is one of the four historical regions of Croatia, alongside Central Croatia, Slavonia and Istria, located on the east shore of the Adriatic Sea in Croatia.
The Bleiburg repatriations were a series of forced repatriations from Allied-occupied Austria of Axis-affiliated individuals to Yugoslavia in May 1945 after the end of World War II in Europe. During World War II, Yugoslavian territory was either annexed or occupied by Axis forces, and as the war came to end, thousands of Axis soldiers and civilian collaborators fled Yugoslavia for Austria as the Yugoslav Army (JA) gradually retook control. When they reached Austria, in accordance with Allied policy, British forces refused to take them into custody and directed them to surrender to the JA instead. The JA subsequently subjected them to death marches back to Yugoslavia, where those who survived were either subject to summary executions or interned in labor camps, where many died due to harsh conditions. The repatriations are named for the Carinthian town of Bleiburg, where the initial British refusal to accept the surrenders occurred, and from which some repatriations were carried out.
Ranko Marinković was a Croatian novelist and dramatist.
Maksimilijan "Maks" Baće, also known as Milić, was a Yugoslav and Croatian revolutionary.
Lorković–Vokić plot was a mid-1944 attempt initiated by Interior Minister Mladen Lorković and Armed Forces Minister Ante Vokić to form a coalition government with the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS), abandon the Axis powers and align the Independent State of Croatia with the Allies with the help of the Croatian Home Guard. The plot originated from the HSS, which was also involved in the negotiations with the Allies. The plot ended with mass arrests and the execution of the major plotters, including Lorković and Vokić.
The Istrian–Dalmatian exodus was the post-World War II exodus and departure of local ethnic Italians as well as ethnic Slovenes and Croats from Yugoslavia. The emigrants, who had lived in the now Yugoslav territories of the Julian March, Kvarner and Dalmatia, largely went to Italy, but some joined the Italian diaspora in the Americas, Australia and South Africa. These regions were ethnically mixed, with long-established historic Croatian, Italian, and Slovene communities. After World War I, the Kingdom of Italy annexed Istria, Kvarner, the Julian March and parts of Dalmatia including the city of Zadar. At the end of World War II, under the Allies' Treaty of Peace with Italy, the former Italian territories in Istria, Kvarner, the Julian March and Dalmatia were assigned to now Communist-helmed Federal Yugoslavia, except for the Province of Trieste. The former territories absorbed into Yugoslavia are part of present-day Croatia and Slovenia.
World War II in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia began on 6 April 1941, when the country was invaded and swiftly conquered by Axis forces and partitioned among Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and their client regimes. Shortly after Germany attacked the USSR on 22 June 1941, the communist-led republican Yugoslav Partisans, on orders from Moscow, launched a guerrilla liberation war fighting against the Axis forces and their locally established puppet regimes, including the Axis-allied Independent State of Croatia (NDH) and the Government of National Salvation in the German-occupied territory of Serbia. This was dubbed the National Liberation War and Socialist Revolution in post-war Yugoslav communist historiography. Simultaneously, a multi-side civil war was waged between the Yugoslav communist Partisans, the Serbian royalist Chetniks, the Axis-allied Croatian Ustaše and Home Guard, Serbian Volunteer Corps and State Guard, Slovene Home Guard, as well as Nazi-allied Russian Protective Corps troops.
Dalmatian Italians are the historical Italian national minority living in the region of Dalmatia, now part of Croatia and Montenegro.
Ivan Hlevnjak was a Croatian midfielder who played for Yugoslavia.
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Italy–Yugoslavia relations are the cultural and political relations between Italy and Yugoslavia in the 20th century, since the creation of Yugoslavia in 1918 until its dissolution in 1992. Relations during the interwar years were hostile because of Italian irredentist demands to Yugoslav territory, leading to Fascist Italy and the Axis Powers invading Yugoslavia during World War II. After lingering tensions after the war over the status of the Free Territory of Trieste, relations improved during the Cold War.
The Adriatic campaign of World War II was a minor naval campaign fought during World War II between the Greek, Yugoslavian and Italian navies, the Kriegsmarine, and the Mediterranean squadrons of the United Kingdom, France, and the Yugoslav Partisan naval forces. Considered a somewhat insignificant part of the naval warfare in World War II, it nonetheless saw interesting developments, given the specificity of the Dalmatian coastline.
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Italian irredentism in Dalmatia was the political movement supporting the unification to Italy, during the 19th and 20th centuries, of Adriatic Dalmatia.
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Vicko Krstulović was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary, the most prominent Partisan military commander from Dalmatia during World War II, and a post-war communist politician. He was an illegal communist activist during the 1920s and 1930s in Split at a time when communist sympathizers were brutally persecuted by the Yugoslav monarchy. As an officer in the Partisans during World War II, he was in charge of creating and organising the resistance movement in Dalmatia. In Socialist Yugoslavia, he worked in various government offices and was remembered for his work and contribution to his native Split.
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