engleski

The persecution and suffering of Roma in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941 – 1945

In the chaos that ensued after the outbreak of World War II, the Roma were one of the undesirable parts of a society whose leaders strove to create a racially pure nation. The Roma being the last “freemen”, as Croatian writer Ivan Goran Kovačić called them on the eve of the war, were prosecuted because of their freedom, way of life, culture, tradition, language and history. In conducting their violent-repressive policy towards the Roma, the government relied on the support of a part of the ISC’s population, which participated in the prosecution of Roma, looting of their property, and their deportation and murder. At the same time, a part of the population of the ISC strove to help the Roma. That aid mostly concerned saving the Roma from deportation to the camps, where most of them were killed and/or tortured. That part of the population claimed that the Roma were “good and useful members of society”, but this went against the racial policy of the Ustaše government and the dominant, very negative perception of the Roma as hardened criminals and asocial people. The Bosnian-Herzegovian Muslim secular and religious representatives went the furthest in their efforts, and managed to prove that Muslim Roma were, as evidenced by their behaviour and other actions, no longer Roma, but “good Croats of Muslim faith”. The case of the Roman Catholic priest Medven suggests a complex relationship between the church and local authorities towards the Roma, which should be further investigated. Thankfully the attempt to exterminate the Roma in Croatia was not successful, and it is possible that this was in part due to the humane examples of their saving by non-Romani people during the war.

Roma, Independent State of Croatia, the Second World War, suffering.

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