Some 80% of the Jews in Croatia were Liquidated During His Rule
Yugopress, March 9, 1958
"The Jewish question has been solved through resolute and sound moves," Andrija Artukovic, the then Ministers of Internal Affairs and Security Chief of the "Independent State of Croatia," recorded in a speech in February, 1942. Sixteen years later, at the moment when, after a seven-year dispute over formal questions, the substance of the Yugoslav demand for the extradition of this war criminal is again coming up for consideration before the District Court in Los Angeles, a group of aged people still recall with horror the methods used to reach that "solution". The group is that of some one-hundred individuals who are spending their declining days in the Home for Old People of the Federation of Jewish Communes in Yugoslavia in Zagreb; there is not a single one among them but that he has not sampled the Ustashi and Nazi concentration camps and prisons.
The majority of the inmates of this Home for Old People have survived by sheer accident, frequently representing the sole survivors of large families. Their memories of the hair-raising sufferings and tortures in the concentration camps of Pavelic's and Artukovic's Croatia are comparable with the darkest pages from the recollections of those who have survived the nightmares of the Nazi concentration camps at Mathausen and Auschwitz.
Living in this Home today is 75 year-old Fanika Svabenic, a woman whom Artukovic's way of "solving" of the Jewish question had cost the lives of over a hundred members of her family and closer relatives in Zagreb, Koprivnica, Bjelovar and Podravska Slatina. The victims include such next of kin as all her four daughters, four sons-in-laws and four grandsons. Three of her sons-in-law were killed in the concentration camp at Jasenovac and her daughters with their children at the Auschwitz camp in Germany.
Then there is the aged Juhiel Poljokan and his wife Rahela; they have lost over sixty members of their next of kin and closer relatives. Rahela Poljokan had three brothers and five sisters. Now she has none because Artukovic's men have liquidated them all. From the whole family only a child has survived.
The President of the Home's Curatorium, Rafael Montiljo, himself has been a victim of dreadful persecution. He lost his whole family, four married brothers with their children, and his sister. He hails from Bosnia, which province also formed part of Pavelic's quisling state after the partition of Yugoslavia during the last war.
"In our Home," Montiljo said, "the majority of the old men and women are from Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In my native province, Bosnia, the majority of the Jews were liquidated through Artukovic's cruel measures. Only a few have survived - those who had managed to flee or who had joined the anti-fascist fighters. In 1941 there were 11,000 Jews living in Sarajevo; only 800 have survived the war. Of the 14,000 Jews in the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina a mere 2,000-odd have survived."
A member of the Home's Curatorium, Hlanka Doner, also was imprisoned, together with her husband, a noted lawyer, she said:
"Just now we have about a hundred old men and women in the Home. Over-all they lost more than 1,500 of their dearest ones, whether next of kin or very close relatives. Last year Hermina Rosenberg died and she had lost eight sons in the massacres organized by Artukovic. And when we were burying another old woman, one Kardos recently, inscribed on her tombstone were the names of over twenty victims from that single family."
The Vice President of the Jewish Commune in Zagreb, Dr. Milan Polak recalls the murder of 170 Jewish youths aged from 16 to 19 years who had been brought to the "Danica" concentration camp at Koprivnica.
"In May, 1941 I myself was interned in that camp when those 170 young men were brought from Zagreb," Dr. Polak related. "Artukovic's Ustashi had managed to round them up by a ruse, having told them that they were wanted for road building work. They ordered them to put on the best clothes they had, then they affixed yellow badges on their chests and back which, by special order of Artukovic, all Jews had to wear. Afterwards these youths were isolated, completely despoiled, tortured with hunger, ultimately being taken to Jadovno, in Lika, and killed, every last one of them. For this, too, Artukovic bears responsibility because, as in the case of so many other crimes, these youngsters as well were liquidated on his orders and instructions."
The President of the Jewish Commune in Zagreb, Dr. Lav Singer, stated: "Nearly 80 percent of the Jews in Croatia were killed during Artukovic's era in power, from April, 1941 to October, 1942. Artukovic, who had participated in the enactment of laws and who issued all orders and instructions for the commission of these crimes not only against the Jews and Serbs, but his own Croat co-nationals, bears the responsibility for all these horrors. In 1941 there were 75,000 Jews in Yugoslavia. Of this number 60,000 perished during the Nazi occupation. A good part of the Jews were resident in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Artukovic was exercising power as Minister of Internal Affairs of Pavelic's quisling government. Therefore, we, the Jews of Croatia, also endorse the demand that this criminal be extradited and brought to trial, this being dictated by justice and the conscience of mankind," Dr. Singer concluded.
