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Suffering of the Bayash in Independent State of Croatia During World War II

The Bayash population that settled in the Croatian lands in the first half of the 19th century came from the Romanian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. Most of the Bayash population led a semi-nomadic way of life and the Croatian population called them Koritari because they often made and sold wooden household items such as water troughs (Croatian: korita za vodu). The Croatian authorities treated the Bayash population as the rest of the Roma population and implemented a repressive and assimilation policy towards them. The culmination of such an assimilation policy, which some see as an antiziganist policy, occurred during World War II, when the pro-fascist Ustaša government – supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy – took power by force in April 1941 and established the Independent State of Croatia. The Ustaša government considered the Bayash, like other Roma, to be an “undesirable” part of the population and a “socio-political problem” of the new regime. Due to this perception, only a few weeks after taking power, the Ustaša enacted racial laws that clearly defined the Romani, including Bayash, position in society, greatly limiting their civil rights and freedoms. The mass deportation of the Roma to the Jasenovac concentration camp began following a circular issued by the Ministry of Interior and a provision issued by the Ustaša Surveillance Service on 19 May 1942, which prescribed the deportation of all Roma living on Independent State of Croatia territory to the Jasenovac camp. Mass arrests and deportations of Roma began as soon as the mentioned provision was issued and lasted until the end of summer 1942. In this context, most of the Bayash population was deported to the Jasenovac camp, where most of them were killed. At the same time the persecution of the Bayash was taking place in the Independent State of Croatia, the Hungarian authorities persecuted them in the occupied Croatian territories of Međimurje and Baranja. This paper will focus on analyzing position of the Bayash population during World War II on Croatian territory. The analysis will encompass unpublished archival documents from Croatian archives, mainly the Croatian State Archives, as well as the relevant literature.

Bayash, Roma, World War II, Independent State of Croatia.

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