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The Relations and Attitudes of Non-Roma People Towards the Persecution and Suffering of Roma: The Case of the Independent State of Croatia, 1941–1945

In the chaos that ensued with the dismemberment of Yugoslavia in 1941, the Ustaša leadership targeted the Roma as an undesirable group in a society from which they intended to create a ‘racially pure’ nation. Croat authorities under the Ustaša regime persecuted the Roma – the last “free men”, as Croat writer Ivan Goran Kovačić called them on the eve of the war. Government officials and Ustaša ideologues were motivated to destroy Roma culture and identity: Roma perceptions of sovereignty and freedom, their way of life, culture, tradition, language, and history. Others in the Croat population sought to help or protect the Roma, trying to prevent their deportation to the camps, where they would be tortured and/or killed. The claim by non-Roma that the Roma were good and useful members of society contradicted the racist policy of the Ustaša government and the dominant, very negative popular perception of the Roma as hardened criminals and ‘asocial’ individuals. The Bosnian-Herzegovian Muslim secular and religious representatives went the furthest in their efforts, managing to convince the authorities that Muslim Roma were, as evidenced by their behavior and other actions, no longer Roma, but “good Croats of Muslim faith” – though even this argument, as necessary as it might have been under the circumstances, continued to maintain and pander to existing negative stereotyping. Finally, the case of the Roman Catholic priest Medven suggests a complex relationship between the Catholic Church and local Ustaša authorities towards the Roma, which should be further investigated. Thankfully, the attempt to annihilate the Roma in Croatia was not successful, and it is possible that this was in part due to the humane examples of their rescue by non-Roma people during the war.

Roma, World War II, Independent State of Croatia, Collaboration, Resistance

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