Talk:History of the Jews in Croatia

Spurious claims
This article is full of spurious claims. Some examples:

"The most notorious, where cruelty of unimaginable proportions was perpetrated against Jewish and Serbian prisoners were at Pag and Jasenovac." Comment The language used here is extremely POV and inflammatory. Enough said.

"The first genocide against Croatian (and Yugoslav) Jews began in July 1941. The Ustaše murdered between 300,000 and 700,000 Serbs, approximately 40,0000 Roma (Gypsies) and 32,000 Jews (including 20,000 of the 23,000-25,000 Croatian Jews[17]) in the territories they controlled[18]." Comment These numbers are based on TITO-era estimates, which many believe to have been artificially inflated so that Yugoslavia would recieve more reparation money. Moreover, no mention is made of other, more legitimate estimates, most notable those of Žerjavić.

"When Croatia broke away from Yugoslavia in 1991, many Jews felt threatened by the nationalistic government of Croatia, which used much of the symbolism of the Ustaše[21]." Comment The symbolism mentioned here, which I assume to be the Šahovnica, was used by the Ustaše, but it is much older, dating from the 10th century. The same is true of the Kuna. The reference cited for this sentence is trash, anyway. The website it was taken from is obviously not interested in NPOV standards. Klara Mandić, who is cited in the article, is nothing more than a puppet of the Serbian government, whose primary goal is to defame the Croats and make them out to be rabid anti-Semites.

"There are approximately 2,000 Jews in Croatia. Anti-Semitism continues to be an issue in Croatia, with Holocaust denial being the most prevalent form[22]." Comment Anti-Semitism is an issue everywhere...the question is, how much of an issue? That is not specified here, and is thus misleading.

Also, many of the sources don't even look like scholarly works, and cannot be held to any standard of accuracy. Some serious attention needs to be given to making this article accurate, properly sourced, and NPOV. Mihovil 19:49, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I've added two tags to this article for the time being; see my comments above. Mihovil 03:16, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Responses
Just a couple of thoughts:


 * 1) Perhaps: "The most notorious, where heinous crimes and cruel torture was perpetrated against Jewish and Serbian prisoners, were at Pag and Jasenovac." I understand that the topic is "inflammatory", and it is difficult to write about it, but I think the cruelty which occurred in the infamous camps should be mentioned. I'd be interested to hear other comments though.
 * 2) I'm happy for other estimates to be included in the article, including those of Žerjavić (whom I am not familiar with). The Simon Wiesenthal Center estimates that 300,000 Serbs were murdered by the Ustashe, and that twenty-something thousand (can't remember the number at the moment) Jews were murdered. If you can come up with other numbers and sources that would be great.
 * 3) I remember at the time that Jews in Croatia were worried by the rise in Croatian nationalism. Perhaps: "When Croatia broke away from Yugoslavia in 1991, many Jews felt unease at the resurgence in Croatian nationalism."
 * 4) Propose removing sentence on "Anti-Semitism continues to be an issue in Croatia...".

I'd be interested to see other people's comments, etc.

Cheers AWN AWN2 02:20, 11 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok. So I will respond to your comments one at a time.


 * 1. I think that your revision of language is much more acceptable. BTW, what I meant to say was not that the issue itself is "inflammatory," but rather language like, "cruelty of unimaginable proportions..." which takes a very non-neutral, almost scolding tone.


 * 2. I think that all relevant estimates should be mentioned, along with their respective controversies. We can thus keep from "endorsing" one set of numbers, which is important, since all existing estimates are disputed by someone.


 * 3. At the risk of splitting hairs, was it really the nascent nationalism that was worrying the Jewish community, or the influx of old Ustaša emigrés and rehabilitation by Tuđman of NDH ideology? We cannot treat the two as the same thing, no matter how singular they may have seemed at the time.


 * 4. That might be a good idea, unless someone can demonstrate that anti-Semitism is disproportionately high in Croatia.

Update 09/14/2006
I have made some changes to the article -- still to do: other estimates of Ustashe victims. Cheers AWN AWN2 08:01, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Post-War Community Edits
I've removed the POV claim in the article. Some persons in Serbia have put themselves in the service of greaterserbianist ideology. Somebody put the source where the opinions from persons (their heads are poisoned with anti-Croat propaganda) from Serbia were given. How come that Jews from Bosnia and Herzegovina have used Croatia as a way of evacuation from Bosnia and Herzegovina? Why are they gathering in independent Croatia regularly (in fact, they do it, right now, in September)? How come that Jews from other former Yugoslav republics had nothing to say against Croatia? If someone did, that was because of greaterserbian anti-Croat propaganda. The source http://emperors-clothes.com/cos/usefula2.htm is full of pro-greaterserbian anti-Croat propaganda. If you choose sources, choose properly. Kubura 02:48, 19 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I have made a few minor grammar changes to the Post-War Community edits, and I have removed the paragraph dealing with alleged Croatian anti-Semitism. As the issue is not discussed in the article, there's no need to 'refute' it. If anyone can source the statements on Croatian loyalty to the state and provide examples of Croatian-Jewish members of government, that would be great. Cheers, AWN AWN2 00:55, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Removal of the NPOV template
I have checked the article for accuracy and it does not promote a natural point of view(NPOV); therefore, I removed the templates. The article also lists plenty of sources and references so we do not need any more signs calling for more citations. I also read through the same Jewish History articles for the countries of Hungary and Serbia, and there is some information that applies to more than one country, but is not listed in each article. Great work everyone, (Edebundity 22:28, 24 November 2006 (UTC))

notable individuals
If Lavoslav Schwarz and Žiga Hirschler are notable as those articles purport, someone please link them from here. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 23:51, 1 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Also no mention of Ivan Goran Kovacic. An important historical figure of Croatian culture who was both Croatian and Jewish.99.252.224.37 (talk) 15:34, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Jewish survivors
The article claims some 5000 survivors, mostly partisans.(Dead link source) Elsewhere it is suggested "German SS, [] claimed that the NDH let 5,000 Jews survive via service in the NDH's armed forces", and that "Jews in Italian-held parts of Croatia avoiding the same persecution facing Jews in German-held eastern Croatia".

Do we have source that throw light on this disparity?

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:11, 31 January 2015 (UTC).

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Unclear population and deaths - contradictory sources
The article states:

"By the outbreak of World War II, the community numbered approximately 20,000[4] members, most of whom were murdered during the Holocaust"

The source #4 however says:

"Na prijelazu 19 u 20 stoljeće u Hrvatskoj živi oko 20.000 Židova." ("At the turn from the 19th into the 20th century there lived 20 000 Jews in Croatia.") - this agrees with a later part of the WP article ("By 1880, there were 13,488 Jews in Croatia, rising to 20,032 by 1900.", from source #7), but the number in this case is clearly used incorrectly

The first (incorrect) quote from the WP article contradicts the later statement, showing that nobody has bothered to read the article all the way through:

''During the Holocaust, a total of 29–31,000 Jews in the NDH were killed, around 75% by the Ustaše and around 25% by the Germans. This constituted 79 percent of the country's pre-war Jewish population,[23] including 20,000 of the 23,000-25,000 Croatian Jews.[24]''

But the source #24 contradicts the very statement that it supposedly supports:

By the beginning of the Nazi occupation in Croatia, more than 25,000 Jews lived in Croatia.

And the source #7 says:

On the eve of World War II Croatia had about 23,000 Jews.

There's so much inconsistency at play it seems impossible to untangle. I suppose the number 23-25k is some sort of midpoint between the different sources?? It should be also kept in mind that The Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia provides its own numbers as well, but they need not reflect the state on the eve of WW2, since at that point Croatia - i.e. the entity Banovina of Croatia as a part of Yugoslavia - was smaller in territory than the Independent State of Cro. that commited the Holocaust. Due to this confusion, I only corrected the first quote, with data from the book Jewish Population in Croatia and Zagreb by Melita Švob, I'll translate the key passage (from p.8) here for the sake of transparency:

"Pre-war censuses (the last one was in 1931, when on the territory of ex-Yugoslavia there were 68,405 Jews, and in Croatia 21,505) are trustworthy and were concerned only with the religious affiliation. It is assumed that immediately before the war there was around 75,000 Jews in Yugoslavia, out of which around 4,000-5,000 were refugees; in Croatia at that point there's around 25,000 Jews."

I wish best of luck to anyone who will take the time to clear up the article systematically. (Croatian WP is of no use since it provides sources once in a blue moon.) Phazd (talk) 00:15, 27 June 2022 (UTC)