Ivo Goldstein

Restoring jewish life in communist Yugoslavia, 1945–1967

Larticle relate la situation des Juifs en Yougoslavie pendant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, leur participation dans la resitance yougoslave et les obstacles que les Juifs de Yougoslavie rencontraient dans la periode apres-guerre lors de leur integration dans la vie publique sous le regime communiste

The catholic church in Croatia and the ‘Jewish problem’, 1918–1941

There were two basic causes of anti-Jewish invective in interwar Croatia. At the end of the First World War and shortly after the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia), the Jewish population was accused of harbouring sympathies contrary to those of the Slav majority. Some ecclesiastical circles took part in the ensuing anti-Jewish campaign. At the same time, the crisis in the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of the war led to a number of anti-Semitic incidents. In August 1918, for instance, a demonstration incited by a Catholic priest by the name of Dr Legin took place in Daruvar, western Slavonia, supposedly on the grounds that a Jewish entertainer was singing in the German language. The daily paper Narodna politika expressed the views of the Croatian Popular Party, which in the 1920s adhered to a Catholic Yugoslav orientation. Its editor-in-chief, the Greek Catholic priest Janko Simrak, was for a time the secretary-general of the Croatian Popular Party. The paper frequently adopted a strongly anti-Semitic tone, claiming on one occasion that the Jew Trotsky had introduced Bolshevism in Russia. Narodna politika frequently contained articles on the Jewish problem, for instance: There are many more Jews in our country today than before the war. Croatia and Slavonia are an Eldorado for Jews. As for the Jewish danger, this not only has our economic life in thrall, but is also threatening our cultural institutions, into which Jews are introducing a Jewish element. Jews were also accused of changing their surnames and controlling political parties. Even Jews who had converted to Christianity were condemned as spies ... disguised in different clothing. Jews in Economic and Cultural Life, a feuilleton which appeared in the paper in three instalments, claimed that the causes of anti-Jewish hostility were to be found in Jewish usury and that in Jewish theology money is nothing but another means of fulfilling God-given duties. It would be best if the Zionist programme were fulfilled and all Jews moved to Palestine, concluded the author, a certain R. §. Medicus.