Croatia, a country in Southeast Europe, became an independent Duchy in the 9th century and was later elevated to a Kingdom, before entering a personal union with Hungary in the 12th century. From the first half of the 16th century, it was part of the Habsburg Monarchy until the monarchy’s disintegration at the end of World War I. Then it became part of the new state of the ‘Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes’ (since 1929 Kingdom of Yugoslavia). Since 1991, the Republic of Croatia has been an independent state.
During World War II, the fascist Ustaša movement established the Independent State of Croatia (ISC) [Nezavisna Država Hrvatska], which also included the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Roma were subjected to racist special laws and were victims of massacres and deportations. From 1942 onwards, Roma were systematically deported to the Jasenovac concentration camp, where at least 16,173 Roma—men, women and children—were murdered.
Roma in Croatian Territories
The presence of Roma in Croatian territories is documented since the second half of the 14th century and was part of their migration to the Balkans in connection with the advance of the Ottomans. Some Roma were probably there prior to this period, especially since one of the original Croatian groups had very few Greek influences (e.g. in their language), indicating an early departure from the Byzantine Empire. Some settled in towns like Zagreb, Dubrovnik or Pula, where they worked as traders, craftsmen and butchers. Other groups travelled seasonally, earning money through crafts and entertainment. In Habsburg times, ever more restrictive rules were introduced by the authorities, including bans on travelling and immigration. The Roma of Croatia also fell under the harsh regulations implemented by empress Maria Theresia (1717–1780) and emperor Joseph II (1741–1790) between 1761 and 1783. After the abolition of Roma enslavement in the Romanian Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia in the mid-19th century, new groups of Vlach Roma migrated to the Croatian territories.
According to the census of 1931, the last to be conducted in interwar Yugoslavia, 14,879 Roma were officially registered in the Croatian territories (Sava and Littoral [Croatian: Primorska] Banovinas; since 1939 united as Banovina of Croatia), but the real number may well have been higher, since not all Roma were registered under their ethnic category.
Those Roma who were identified in the censuses of 1921 and 1931 in the Croatian territories on the basis of their ethnicity or their use of Romanes in the category ‘Gypsies’ [‘cigani’], lived almost exclusively in rural areas, mostly in the eastern parts of Slavonia, Syrmia and Baranja, had a relatively young age structure, were mainly Roman Catholics (less than a third Orthodox), and almost completely illiterate. These Roma were a socioeconomically marginal part of the population, mostly engaged in wood and metal processing, agriculture, horse trade, collection of secondary raw materials (e.g. scrap metal), and entertaining the population (as musicians or circus animal trainers). The marginal socioeconomic position went hand in hand with a generalised criminalisation of the minority by state and local authorities. Apart from permanent police pressure, there were several cases of direct violence against Roma in the interwar period, beginning from physical assaults to expulsion and the burning of whole Roma settlements.1Vojak, “Romi u popisima,“ 449–453; id., U predvečerje rata, 159–163.
Independent State of Croatia
On 6 April 1941, World War II reached Yugoslav territory, where the armies of the Axis powers managed to defeat the army of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in a brief military conflict. With the political and military support of Germany and Italy, the fascist Ustaša movement led by Ante Pavelić (1889–1959) took power over Croatian territories and on 10 April 1941 declared the Independent State of Croatia, which also included the territory of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina. The ISC was divided into German (north-eastern) and Italian (south-western) occupation zones, which were designed to ensure control over transport infrastructure and key raw materials.
The areas of Međimurje and Baranja were occupied by Hungary, which pursued its own policy towards the comparatively small Romani population in that area, including expulsion, forced labour and (beginning from November 1944) deportation to Hungarian camps in Nagykanizsa and Komárom. Until September 1943, some areas of the Croatian Littoral [Hrvatsko primorje]—including Istria and some regions of Dalmatia—were part of the territory of Italy, after which they were under German occupation until the end of World War II.
According to estimates, more than six million inhabitants lived on the territory of the ISC. The majority of them were Croats, while a significant minority was made up of Serbs (about 1.8 million or 30 %), around 700,000 Bosnian Muslims and other minority groups (around 150,000 ethnic Germans, 36,000–39,000 Jews, about 17,000 Roma).2Matković, Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, 82. For the Ustaša authorities, one of the key elements of their ideology was the creation of a ‘racially pure’ Croatian nation, which led to a genocidal policy of expulsion and annihilation of the Serbian, Jewish and Romani population, considered as ‘undesirable’ parts of society.
‘Racial Laws’
Soon after seizing power, the Ustaša authorities began to implement a repressive policy against Serbs, Jews and Roma, as well as political and military opponents (communists, partisans, antifascists). The persecution of ‘unwanted’ minorities was partly based on the Nazi model, but the Ustaša regime pursued its own ideological objectives, with orthodox Serbs as their main enemy. It consisted of three phases: exclusion, concentration and extermination.
The first indicator of such policies towards Roma, whom Ustaša authorities viewed as a negative and ‘foreign’ (non-Croatian) social element, was the adoption of ‘racial laws’ on 30 April 1941 (‘Legal provision on racial affiliation’; ‘Legal provision on citizenship’; ‘Legal provision on the protection of Aryan blood and honour of the Croatian people’),3See Zakoni, 111, 113–114. in which Roma were directly mentioned and defined as a ‘non-Aryan’ part of the population and thus lost the rights of citizenship and other civil rights. Jews and Roma were excluded from working in the civil service and several other professions, and their rights to marry people of ‘Aryan’ origin were restricted. The Ustaša racial legislation also included the confiscation of property and the prevention of economic activities of both minorities. At the end of 1941, Roma (along with Serbs and Jews) were legally excluded from the obligation to military service.
The influence of the Nuremberg Laws is noticeable in the Ustaša legislation, especially in defining the ‘Aryan’ origin of an individual. In order to implement these legal provisions, the authorities drew up the ‘Instructions for the Writing of a Declaration on Racial Affiliation’, in which Jews and Roma were once again categorised as members of the ‘non-Aryan’ population.4Biondich, “Persecution of Roma,“ 34. The ‘racial laws’ not only deprived Jews and Roma of their rights as citizens of the ISC, but also enabled their later removal to camps.
‘Colonisation’ and Registration
The next measure of the Ustaša authorities towards Roma was to consider the issue of their ‘colonisation’, which was the euphemistic collective term for mobility bans, expulsion and removal for forced labour. In June 1941, the Prefect of the Great County of Pokupje, Ante Nikšić (1892–1962), proposed the forced ‘colonisation’ of Roma and their assignment to forced labour ‘for the benefit of the state’. In early June 1941, local authorities from the Križevci area submitted a formal petition to the Ministry of the Interior to ‘remove’ the Roma from their territory, accusing them of being a danger to the safety of citizens through alleged criminal activities and the spread of infectious diseases.5Vojak, Papo, and Tahiri, Stradanje Roma u Nezavisnoj Državi Hrvatskoj, 27; Vojak, “Počeci progona Roma,” 46.
The Ministry of the Interior turned to the ‘Department for Colonisation’, which in early July 1941 proposed to restrict the movement of Roma by issuing a provision prohibiting the issuance of travel permits [putne isprave] to them. One of the measures introduced to implement the ‘colonisation’ of Roma was a separate census which would determine their exact number in every district. The Ustaša authorities did not have accurate demographic data on Roma and had to refer to the Yugoslav census of 1931, since the new census planned for April 1941 had become impracticable because of the outbreak of the war.
On 3 July 1941, the Ministry of the Interior published instructions for the registration of Roma, stating that this was the ‘first measure in the procedure against Gypsies’. Local authorities and police were ordered to draw up lists by the end of that month. The lists should provide the name, surname, gender, occupation and lifestyle (‘sedentary or nomadic’ [‘sjedilački ili nomadski‘]) of all Roma in their territory. The Ministry of the Interior was to submit the data collected on the Roma to the ‘Department for Colonisation’, together with proposals ‘on the possibility, manner and place for a complete colonisation of Gypsies’.6Vojak, “Prva faza rješavanja ‘ciganskog pitanja’,” 251.
The implementation of the census led to reactions from some Muslim intellectuals in Bosnia and Herzegovina. With the support of Muslim religious authorities in Sarajevo, they sought to exempt ‘White Gypsies’ from the census, and the Ustaša authorities granted this. Because of the outbreak of the anti-fascist uprising of the partisans led by Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) in the summer of 1941, the institutions of the ISC gave up on their ‘colonisation’ plans.
Mass Killings and Deportations
Simultaneously with the consideration of a Roma ‘colonisation’ in the Independent State of Croatia, the Ustaša committed the first mass crimes against them in Ivanović Jarak and the regions Kordun and Banija. There is no evidence that at this early stage the authorities adopted any special plan or programme for the mass annihilation of Roma. Roma were probably collateral victims of Ustaša terror measures against the Serbian civilian population and retaliation in connection with the rise of the partisan movement.
In May 1941, the Ustaša authorities of the ISC carried out the first mass arrests and deportations of Roma to concentration camps. Thus, 15 Roma from the Glina area were deported to camps in mid-May 1941. In late July and early August 1941, there followed transports from the Koprivnica area to the Danica camp. According to witness testimonies, Roma were also among the prisoners of the Slana and Jastrebarsko camps. Most of these Roma were transferred to the Jasenovac concentration camp in August 1941.
Systematic deportations of Roma to the Jasenovac camp were prepared by a circular of the Ministry of the Interior and a provision of the Ustaša Surveillance Service, with the support of the State Directorate for Public Order and Security, from 19 May 1942. The wave of mass arrests and deportations of Roma that followed continued until the end of the summer of the same year. In some areas, organisations of local ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) assisted the ISC military and police authorities in carrying out these measures. Regime-controlled media praised the deportation of Roma to the Jasenovac camp as contributing to a ‘solution of the Gypsy question’ by ‘civilising’ Roma through ‘work’ and ‘craft training’.7Vojak, “The Relations and Attitudes,” 330–334.
In order to forestall resistance, the Ustaša authorities deceived their victims by telling them that they were taking them to other places where they would live better (such as the estates of expatriate Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo, Romania and Slovenia, or even a ‘Gypsy state’). Some Roma resisted Ustaša deportations with weapons, or by fleeing or joining the partisan movement.8Vojak, „Deportacje ludności romskiej,” 22; Vojak, “Roma Resistance in the Independent State of Croatia,” 125–131. At the end of May 1942, some Roma regarded as ‘White Gypsies’ (‘Zenica Resolution’) were exempted from the deportations to the Jasenovac camp.
The property of Roma who were deported to the Jasenovac camp was confiscated by the ‘Department for Colonisation’ and its local Colonisation Offices. Some of the Roma property was sold to the local population at public auctions, while their houses were made available to individuals loyal to Ustaša authorities and war refugees from other areas of the ISC. Other property was systematically destroyed by Ustaša authorities in order to erase the historical traces of Roma life in these areas.
The Roma who first arrived to Jasenovac were placed in the north-eastern part of the concentration camp, which was called Camp III C. The purportedly extraordinary harsh conditions of this section led to a high mortality rate. With the growing number of deportations, new groups of Roma deportees were detained in the area of the nearby village of Uštica, from where the Orthodox Serbian inhabitants had been expelled shortly before. Most of the Roma who arrived in Jasenovac from July 1942 onwards did not pass through the concentration camp, but were directly brought by ferries and boats to the camp’s main killing field in Donja Gradina, which was located on the other side of the Sava river and belonged to Bosnia and Hercegovina. Here, Ustaša guards murdered the Roma men, women and children in a particularly cruel manner, using bladed weapons and wooden hammers. Within the same period of time, the Roma of the Uštica subcamp were also murdered and buried in 21 mass graves on the outskirts of the village. With the exception of small groups of forced labourers who were murdered at a later date, all Roma deported to Jasenovac had been annihilated by the end of 1942.
Some Roma were deported from the Jasenovac camp to other camps outside the ISC, especially to various camps in the German Reich (Dachau, Lackenbach and Mauthausen), where they were mainly used for forced labour. Some Roma were also said to have been deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in this way.9HDA, sign. 421, k. 128, Testimony of Janko Udorović from 15 February 1952 before the District Court in Ogulin.
Some non-Roma in the ISC participated in the rescue of Roma by writing requests and petitions to Ustaša authorities seeking exemptions from deportations or by hiding Roma or helping them to escape. Some Roma cooperated with the Ustaša authorities as part of their survival strategy, and some of them were executed by partisans as alleged collaborators.
Chetniks also carried out isolated massacres of Roma on the territory of the ISC. In Radigojna near Vrbovsko, for example, two Roma families comprising 14 members (including six children) were tied up with wire and burned alive in their wooden house on 17 November 1942. One of the last massacres on the territory of the ISC took place in Hrastina, Zagreb County, in April 1945, when an Ustaša unit killed a circus group consisting of German Sinti refugees.10Dizdar/Sobolevski, Prešućivani četnički zločini u Hrvatskoj, 75; Šimunković/Mihovilović, Masakr nad Romima i Sintima.
The End of the War
At the beginning of May 1945, the Independent State of Croatia collapsed in the face of the advance of partisans and Soviet military units. This led to the withdrawal of the Ustaša political leadership and the army with parts of the civilian population in the direction of Slovenia and Austria, in order to surrender under the protection of Western allied units. On 15 May 1945, the Croatian military officially surrendered to the British allied military units at Bleiburg (Austria). The British forces, however, handed them over to partisan units (units of the Yugoslav Army, formally established on 1 March 1945), which Thousands of the prisoners did not survive. Ante Pavelić and some Ustaša officials managed to evade arrest and to emigrate secretly, mainly to South American countries.
Number of Victims
The number of Roma killed in the Independent State of Croatia is difficult to determine because of the poor state of the records of the Ustaša authorities, especially of those who ran the camps where Roma were deported to and killed. The lack of reliable statistics for the year 1941 and the presumably high number of ethnically unidentified Roma make the task even more difficult.
The most advanced research on this topic relates to Jasenovac. The ‘List of Names of the Victims of the Jasenovac Concentration Camp 1941–1945’ contains the names of 16,173 Roma (5,688 men, 4,877 women, 5,608 children).11Jasenovac Memorial Site, “List of individual victims.” According to Antun Miletić (born 1931), a total of 23,658 Roma (19,532 from the territory of today’s Republic of Croatia and 4,126 from today’s Bosnia and Herzegovina) were killed in the Jasenovac camp.12Miletić, Ubijeni u koncentracijskom logoru, 445–450, 793–798. Further estimates of the total number of Roma killed in the ISC amount to 30,000 and more, but they are based on purely hypothetical calculations.13Dennis Reinhartz estimated around 30,000 Roma victims, Ferdo Čulinović 30,000, Milan Bulajić 40,000, and Rajko Đurić between 40,000 and 60,000. See Reinhartz, “Genocid nad jugoslavenskim Ciganima,” 104; Bulajić, Ustaški zločini, 83; Čulinović, Okupatorska podjela Jugoslavije, 324 f.; Đurić, Povijest Roma, 108.
Although the killings of Roma in the ISC are quite well known and documented, some revisionist scholars still claim that the suffering of Roma in the ISC is exaggerated, especially in accounts of their experience in the Jasenovac camp. By contrast, Dennis Reinhartz (born 1944) argues that, ‘proportionally’ speaking, the largest genocide against the Romani population during World War II was the one carried out in the ISC area.14Reinhartz, “Damnation of the Outsider,” 84; Reinhartz, “Unmarked Graves,” 84. Reinhartz’s assessment is corroborated by the results of the first post-war population census of 1948, which recorded only 405 Roma in Croatia and 442 on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Socialist Croatia
After World War II, the Croatian branch of the Yugoslav State Commission investigated several crimes of the Ustaša and the occupiers against the Roma in the former Independent State of Croatia, but this had no influence on public memory. The Yugoslav socialist state controlled the remembrance culture in relation to the ‘People’s Liberation War and the Socialist Revolution’ as one of its most significant ideological pillars. The government’s ideology of the ‘brotherhood and unity of all nations and nationalities’ formed the essence of official collective memory. The victims of the war were divided into ‘fallen fighters’ (partisans) and ‘victims of fascist terror’ (civilians killed by the occupiers and domestic ‘traitors’). The ethnicity of the victims was usually not mentioned, in accordance with collective and unitary policy that forbade the singling out of particular national groups as war victims.
For this reason, generalising terms like ‘victims of fascist terror’ were almost always used on monuments and during commemorative activities. The consequence of this culture of remembrance was the ‘drowning’ of the ethnic sign of Roma victims in the mass of other (fascist) victims. That is why, after World War II, the remembrance of Roma victims was marginalised on the territory of socialist Croatia.In July 1971, however, the Association of Fighters of the People’s Liberation War of Yugoslavia put up a memorial plaque to the Roma victims in the ISC at the cemetery in Uštica, which had become part of the Jasenovac Memorial Site in 1970. In total, 21 mass graves on 4,700 m2 were identified here. Uštica was the central and only place of remembrance for Roma victims in socialist Croatia, but it has been partially neglected since the 1980s. This has changed only in recent years.
Republic of Croatia
Initially, the establishment of the Republic of Croatia in 1991 did not significantly change the attitude of state authorities towards the issue of commemoration of the suffering of Roma. At the same time, the official number of Roma in the country grew continuously from 6,695 in 1991 to 17,980 in 2021. During this period, Roma were legally recognised as a national minority of Croatia for the first time (2002), and their political position was strengthened through their political representation in the Croatian Parliament.
In this context, the initiative to commemorate Roma victims came from Roma political representatives and NGOs. Veljko Kajtazi (born 1960), a Roma member of the Croatian Parliament, started organising commemorations at the Uštica site in memory of 2 August along with Roma and non-Roma NGOs and with the support of the state and the local government. On 12 December 2014, the Croatian Parliament officially recognised the 2nd of August as International Day of Remembrance for the Roma Victims of the Porajmos/Holocaust [Međunarodni dan sjećanja na romske žrtve Porajmosa/Holokausta], and three years later renamed it for Croatia the ‘International Day of Remembrance for the Roma Victims of the Genocide in World War II/Samudaripen’ [Međunarodni dan sjećanja na romske žrtve genocida u Drugom svjetskom ratu/Samudaripen].
In August 2020, at the initiative of Veljko Kajtazi and the Croatian Romani Union ‘Kali Sara’, the Roma Memorial Centre Uštica was opened as an educational, research and commemorative centre for the suffering of Roma during World War II. A further commemoration of Roma victims has been held at a cemetery in Draškovec since 2012, when a memorial cross was erected to commemorate the suffering of ten Roma who lost their lives at the end of March 1945 during a bombing by an Allied aircraft on a Roma prisoner column that was being driven westwards by Hungarian soldiers from the Nagykanizsa camp. In December 2019, a local NGO, with the help of local authorities, erected a new monument, on which the names of the victims are inscribed.
In January 2014, a memorial ossuary was built in Gornja Trebinja, Karlovac county, with the remains of 220 victims, among them about seventy Roma from the villages of Skakavac and Popović Brdo, who had been murdered by Ustaša units in early January 1942.
In May 2013, an international conference of scholars ‘Linkage of the historical experience of Roma in Europe with the promotion of tolerance and non-discrimination of Roma’ was held in Zagreb and Jasenovac. Participants in the event adopted the seven articles of the ‘Jasenovac Declaration’, stating that a genocide was carried out against the Roma during World War II, which has been ‘systematically denied’ and demands ‘recognition by the state and by society at large’.15Jasenovačka deklaracija,” 9. The declaration stressed the need to promote research and improve education on this topic, to ensure ‘adequate information’ by the media, to institute exemplary commemoration of Roma and to encourage museums and other similar institutions to organise cultural and educational activities on the suffering of Roma.
