Hrvatski
NOVI OMANUT MAGAZINE
Zagreb, November – December 1998/5759
Narcisa Lengel-Krizman and Mihael Sobolevski:
ARREST OF 165 JEWISH YOUTHS IN ZAGREB IN MAY 1941
It is hard to determine in which order did the repressive measures in all parts of the Independent State of Croatia start to enforce. The first target were the people included in the wave of racial laws (from April 30, 1941), then Yugoslav-orientated individuals, well-known “leftists”, prominent trade union leaders and some communists, because the general hunt for communists started only after the German attack on the Soviet Union (June 22, 1941), since the Ustashas for tactical reasons had not started systematically arresting and hunting communists (because the pact on non-aggression between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union was still in force).
One of the first activities right after the Ustasha state was proclaimed (April 10, 1941) was the request for contributions. The procedure to determine and certify the contribution was almost always the same. Germans and Ustashas would arrest the richest and most prominent Jews from a town and held them hostage until the Jews from that town collected a certain amount of money within a deadline. So the Germans in Zagreb arrested several Jewish public and cultural workers already on April 10 and 11, 1941, and Ustashas then in the same month, from 25th to 28th, arrested a large group of lawyers, lawyer trainees and certain wealthy Jews and detained all of them in a camp in Kerestinac (1) which had been founded on April 19, 1941 – so before the Legal Decree on Race and Legal Decree on Protection of Aryan Blood and Purity of Croatian People were adopted (April 30, 1941). From April to June 1941 arrests of Jews were individual, and mass arrests and deportations into camps started in late June and culminated in July, August and September that year. The last escalation was in August 1942, and the last deportation of remaining Jews – many of them from mixed marriages – happened in May 1943.
In that chronological order of organised persecution of Jews one exception was the arrest of group of young men, age 17 to 25, in Zagreb on May 29 and 30, 1941, most of them senior high school students, university students and a small number of craftsmen. They were mostly members of various sections of the Maccabi Sports Association, which gathered the Jewish youths (2). For the first time we publish the names of all 165 arrested:
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1. ABEND Andrija 2. ABRAHAM Robert 3. ADLER Egon 4. ADJUBEL Egon 5. ALEKSANDER Miljenko 6. ALTSTÄDTER Aleksa 7. ALTSTÄDTER Dragutin 8. ALTSTÄDTER Josip 9. ATIAS Ješua 10. BERENJI Pavao 11. BERGER Josip 12. BERGER Egon (Geze) 13. BERGER Egon (Elit) 14. BERGER Milivoj 15. BLANK Siegfried 16. BLIVAJS Josip 17. BLIVAJS Saša (napomena olovkom: vratio se kući) 18. BOROŠ Ignac 19. BOROŠ Zoltan 20. BRAUN Ivo 21. DEUTSCH Boris 22. DIAMANT Herman 23. EISENSTÄDTER Rudolf 24. ERNSTEIN Leo 25. FENIĆ-FLEISCHHACKER Zdenko 26. FERBER Aleksa 27. FISCHER Zdenko 28. FLESCH Fedor 29. FODOR Ante 30. FODOR Ivan 31. FRIEDMANN Oskar 32. FRÖHLICH Mladen 33. FUCHS Zvonko 34. FÜRST Željko 35.GESELIN Leo 36. GOLDMAN Ervin 37. GOTTLIEB Daniel 38. GUTTMAN Ervin 39. GUTTMAN Ivo 40. GYÖRI Aleksandar 41. HEINRICH Franjo 42. HERZOG Branko 43. HERZOG Ivan 44. HERMANN Hans 45. HERRNHÄUSER Ivo 46. HERŠKOVIĆ Ljudevit 47. HIRSCH Hinko 48. HIRSCH Julio 49. HIRSCHL Andrija 50. HIRSCHL Jakob 51. HIRSCHL Pavao 52. HOCHBERGER Sam 53. HOCHMANN Egon 54. JELENIK Milan 55. JUTTRE Davi |
56. JUN Benko 57. JUN Marcel 58. KABILJO Bedrich 59. KABILJO Milan 60. KATZ Rudolf 61. KALDERON Jakob 62. KALDERON Salamon 63. KASORLA Avram 64. KAUFER Drago 65. KAVIĆ-KARDOŠ Vojko 66. KERPNER Branko 67. KLEIN Aleksandar 68. KLEIN Ivo 69. KLEIN Đuro 70. KLUGMAN Salamon 71. KOHN Geza 72. KOLER Ivan 73. KÖNIG Vatroslav 74. KONRAD Fedor 75. KORENIĆ Branko 76. KOVAČ Nikola 77. KRAUS Dragutin 78. KRAUS Mario 79. KRAUTH Nikola 80. KREMER Slavko 81. KREŠIĆ Mladen 82. KRON David 83. KRON Hugo 84. LASLO Ervin 85. LEIMDÖRFER Franjo 86. LEITNER Zlatko 87. LEVI Karlo 88. LEVINGER Milan 89. LIVADIĆ Vlado 90. LÖWENTHAL Aleksandar 91. MAJER Eduard 92. MANDIĆ-MANDIL Boris 93. MANDLOVIĆ Vlado 94. MANDLOVIĆ Zvonko 95. MARKOVIĆ Hinko 96. MAUTNER Dragan 97. MAYERHOFFER Pavao 98. MEVORAH Abram 99. MONTILJO Mišo 100. NEMČIĆ Miroslav 101. NEUBERGER Dragutin 102. NEUMANN Đuro 103. NEUMANN Ervin 104. NEUMANN Hermann 105. PAPAI Ladislav 106. PARDO Moric 107. PARDU Reginald 108. PICK Bruno 109. PFEIFFER Željko 110. PICHLER Ivan |
111. PICHLER Slavko 112. POLLAK Ivan 113. RECHNITZER Feliks 114. REICH Mirko 115. REICH Zvonko 116. REICHER Đuro 117. REISS Đuro 118. ROSENBLAT Hinko 119. ROSENZWEIG Ruben 120. ROSENHEIM Aleksandar 121. ROSENWASSER Boris 122. ROSENWASSER Viktor 123. ROSNER Kurt 124. ROTH Zdenko 125. SALZBERGER Ivo 126. SALZER Ivan 127. SAMOKOVLIJA Rafael 128. SAVIĆ-SCHWARZ Aleksandar 129. SCHÖNFELD Gjeno 130. SCHÖNFELD Josip 131. SCHLENGER Miroslav 132. SCHLENGER Petar 133. SCHOTTEN Branko 134. SCHREIBER Otto 135. SCHULTZ Rudolf 136. SCHWARZ Aleksandar 137. SCHWARZ Božo 138. SEMNIC Gideon 139. SINGER Nikola 140. SORGER Sami 141. SPINGARN Veljko 142. STEIN Miroslav 143. STEINER Bela 144. STEINER Zlatko 145. STERN Miroslav 146. SVEĆENSKI Branko 147. SÖMJEN Davor 148. TAUSSIG Vlado 149. TKALČIĆ Srećko 150. TROSTLER Nikola 151. WACHTEL Norbert 152. WALTER Branko 153. WEIL Mladen 154. WEINBERGER Zdenko 155. WEINBERGER Zvonko 156. WEISS Aleksander 157. WEISS Branko 158. WEISS Dragutin 159. WEISS Juraj 160. WEISS Mihajlo 161. WINTER Jovan 162. WILHELM Gerhard 163. WOLLNER Ivo 164. WÜSLER Vilim 165. ZEITLIN Hinko (3) |
All of them were boarded onto three railway cars on May 31, 1941 escorted by ten policemen “who were issued free railway tickets for Koprivnica and back” (4). They were taken to Koprivnica with the explanation that they were sent to “perform students’ working duty” for eight weeks. For the first ten days they were accommodated in buildings of the “Danica” Chemical Products Factory (near Koprivnica) which had stopped production before the war and where the first camp surrounded with wire and guarded by Ustashas had been formed already on April 15, 1941. (5)
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Aleksandar Savić - Schwarz |
Norbert Wachetel |
Ignac Boroš |
Mladen Frohlich |
After arriving to the camp they were first accommodated into large common rooms with other inmates, with whom they went to work in the nearby village of Drnja to cover up trenches and other fortifications made by the Yugoslav military near the Hungarian border. The Jewish Religious Municipality in Zagreb, on proposal of the “Parents Council within the municipality” sent to the Ustasha Constabulary – the Jewish Department in Zagreb – an appeal to move the youths to Koprivnica to the local Oil Factory, and they “stated their readiness to pay the expenses for moving them, and to establish and maintain at their own expenses a canteen and pay for all necessary guards”. (6) A branch office of the Ustasha Constabulary – Jewish Department in Zagreb – informed the Ustasha Constabulary in Koprivnica (on June 11, 1941) “that regarding the upkeep of Jewish youths camp the following is approved:
- moving the camp to the oil factory
- establishing an independent canteen and maintaining it at their own expenses
- opening an office of the Jewish Religious Municipality in Koprivnica
- issuing a permanent pass for this camp to the representatives of the local Jewish Religious Municipality: Milan Reich, Dr. Slavko Hirschler, Žakio Rosenberg, only once
- installing a telephone number 5 to be used by the Jewish Religious Municipality in Koprivnica; the phone should be under constant control of the Ustasha Constabulary in Koprivnica
- issuing of passes for Zagreb at least once a fortnight for one of the persons from item 4.
All these provisions are issued for emergency sanitary reasons, from danger of an epidemic outbreak.” (7)
A testimony of that concern was the permit issued (on June 6) by the Ustasha Constabulary – Jewish Department in Zagreb – to Dr. Žiga Hafner, a physician from Zagreb, to travel to Koprivnica and “conduct permanent medical service for Jewish youths located in the Danica Factory”. (8)
According to that order, all of them were located in the oil factory in Koprivnice, where they had supplies and medical and other care. Three days later, they were joined by a group of 19 Jewish emigrants from Austria, Germany, Hungary and Romania (9), for whom the Jewish Religious Municipality from Zagreb asked for their “forced location” to be the village of Draganić, a place where at the same time a camp was established for Jewish refugees, 181 of them. (10)
Around twenty days later (June 30), the Ustasha Committee for Town and County of Koprivnica sent to the Ustasha Constabulary – Jewish Department in Zagreb an elaborate explanation which we fully quote (no corrections):
“Before all we warn you to a well-known fact that the very town of Koprivnica is a so-called Jewish El Dorado, and that in the town there is a significantly higher percentage of Jews within the population and until now they had the control over all economy and leading positions.
The town of Koprivnica and its surroundings have the Jews to thank for all local industry moving to Serbia, leaving the workers and the poor with nothing to eat. The local Jews oppressed the local population and citizens with their speculations and pushed many of them into poverty, and even now they have the audacity to threaten Croats with the worst of things!
With all that, in the last couple of days we have noticed some suspicious movement of the local Jews, secret meetings, carefully planned, so that even with our most vigilant attention we could not track them or find out what they were about.
Considering previously said, the decision of the Jewish Department of the Ustasha Constabulary Branch which gives a permission to move the Jewish youths from Zagreb to the local oil factory, to open a Jewish Religious Municipality (which already exists in Koprivnica), to issue permanent passes for the camp to local Jews (the loudest propagators and enemies of the NDH and our order) Milan Reich, Dr. Slavko Hirschler and Jakob Rosenberg and installing a telephone!? even if it is under police surveillance, cannot be welcomed by this Commission.
This commission is free to express its opinion that it would be most wise to send all those Jews, no matter what sex or age there are, to the local concentration camp “Danica” in a separate building and put them under the strict surveillance of the Ustasha Guards, (11) where they would stay until an opportunity arises for them to be removed completely from the State of Croatia. Many of them invested in Palestine a large amount of the valuables they hoarded. They built palaces there and established whole farms. There is where they belong and let them be dealt with their kindred race.
German officers and soldiers who pass by or stay in Koprivnica for short or long time, just as various technical units who stay here for various jobs, openly express their discontent due to mild treatment of Jews and the freedoms they enjoy. They even threaten that, if the Croatian Ustashas do not deal with the Jewish issue in the way dealt by Germany, they would take matters into their own hands and liquidate them.
Of course, the consequences of that would be damaging to Croatian interests, because in that case, everything left from the Jewish property would not go to the State of Croatia or Croatian people. This Commission is of this conviction based on everything presented.
According to the above, this Commission concluded that the measures approved by the Branch of the Ustasha Constabulary Commission, Jewish Department, would only benefit to the Jewish damaging propaganda, enable communication between the youths and the elders, if not communication in the whole of country, and force this Commission to organise a special Ustasha police authority for the surveillance of these savage enemies of everything not Jewish.
Therefore this Commission submits its report to you with a request for through examination and decision.” (12)
In early June 1941 the Gospić County Court Penitentiary was turned into a concentration camp with mass arrival of inmates that started in July and lasted until the disbandment in August 21, 1941. The group of Jewish youths mentioned here was moved in early July from the camp in Koprivnica to Gospić. From Gospić they were taken to the camp in Jadovno (a hamlet on a slope of Velebit in a thick forest at altitude of 1200 metres), but we could not determine accurately whether some of them were taken to the camps on the island of Pag and died there (13). Those camps were also disbanded on August 19, 1941. (14)
We think it is important to explain why the camps in Gospić, Jadovno and on Pag were disbanded. Basically, the aspirations of the Mussolini Italy were contained in the pre-war plans in which Like was just one of the zones for Italian progress into the Balkans. Since the occupation and all the way until mid 1943, Lika for Italy meant the hinterland and protective area for the safety of the coastal annexed zone (and connection with the same type zone in Slovenia). The area of Lika was a part of the co-called Second Italian Occupation Zone in which Italians kept strong military forces, especially in Gospić and Otočac, but moved troops frequently. In 1941, Italians were forced to change their occupation status three times. From the occupation until the Rome Agreements (April 10 to May 18), Italians exercised both the military and civilian authority in the area of Lika, but under their patronage and military protection the civilian administration and military units of the NDH slowly stated to form. However, after the Rome Agreements they demilitarised that area and all civilian authority was completely transferred to the NDH. The armed uprising in summer of 1941 caused worry amongst Italians and unlike the resistance in the annexed areas (Dalmatia, a part of Croatian Coast and Gorski Kotar) the uprising in Lika was viewed in a more tactical context. They believed that the genocide policy of the Ustasha regime against the Serbian population was the sole cause of the uprising. Since the Ustashas and Domobran units failed to quench the uprising in a short time, the Italians thought that the occupation of the so-called Second Zone would be the most efficient solution. Based on an agreement with the NDH Government (August 28, 1941), the Italian exercised a military occupation of Lika. The NDH military units were now under the Italian command and were not allowed to increase their numbers, but only decrease. Members of Ustasha organisations had to surrender their personal weapons, while the armed police was supposed to perform their regular duties together with Italian Carabinieri. This was the reason why these camps were disbanded and their inmates liquidated en masse. From around 2500 Jews detained there only 1500 survived only to be taken to the camps in Jastrebarsko and Krušćica and then to Jasenovac (men) and Loborgrad (women), where most of them died. (15)
Except for ten of them from the group of Jewish youths, the rest were murdered in the mass liquidation of inmates in Jadovno just before the camp was finally disbanded. (Those ten men were taken to Gospić to “sweep the streets” just few days before the liquidation and in that way managed to escape death in the mass slaughter. (16)
The parents, not aware of the tragic fate of their sons, sent individual or joint appeals to the Ministry of Interior for their “children to be released”. So on September 20, 1941 a total of 41 parents (signed personally) sent directly to the Ministry the following appeal:
“On May 31 this year, 165 Jewish youths from the enclosed list were sent to “Danica” camp in Koprivnica for students work duty. All of the children went there with great joy, because they knew they would be working there and then return home 8 weeks later.
For that reason the children carried only summer clothes and only necessities. After 8 weeks in the camp in Koprivnica the children hoped to be coming home and to be replaced by others, but they were sent to the camp Jadovno on Velebit.
All of these boys during their education had been brought up in the Croatian spirit, and felt Croatian body and soul. They were only members of Croatian and sports associations, and socialised only with their Croatian schoolmates. They were mostly good students and behaved well. It is well-known that a large number of rich Jewish students constantly supported their poor colleagues and supported all Croatian educational institutions. This can be confirmed by their teachers.
The winter is coming and those children are not supplied for colder weather, let alone winter. The clothes they brought with them must be torn by now, since they have been working for four months and we were unable to send them anything later on.
During our stay in Israel, we also met Mr Zvi Loker, a long time Director of the Jewish Archive of the Former Yugoslavia (HITACHDUT OLEY EX-YUGOSLAVIA). Mr Loker gave us some documents testifying the suffering of 163 Jewish youths in 1941. We publish the whole documents with consent of Mr Loker.
Iz gornjih opravdanih razloga molimo, da se naša djeca, navedena u popisu, vrate svojim roditeljima iz sadašnjih logora u Jasenovcu. Do 30. rujna bit će upravo 4 mjeseca, što su ta djeca na radu u logorima. Tako bi djeci bilo omogućeno, da barem privremeno nastave nauke i zanat.
For the justified reasons stated above, we ask for our children, named in the list, to be returned to their parents from the current camps in Jasenovac. On September 30 it will have been exactly 4 months since these children left to work in camps. In this way these children would be able to continue their education at least temporarily.
Expressing solidarity with their parents, we all vouch with our lives that our children will behave impeccably and study and work hard.
In our pain a sole hope remains that our children would be returned to their parents before winter.” (17)
The ten youths transferred from Jadovno to Gospić several days before the liquidation of the camp were: : Ivo Wollner, Boris and Viktor Rosenwasser, Dragan Mautner, Saša Blivajs, Emil Frojndlih, Ervin Guttmann, Srećko Tkalčić, Božo Schwarz and Aleksander with unknown surname. (18) Two from the group, Saša Blivajs and Emil Frojndlich – were released already in Gospić, and the other eight from Gospić were taken to the camp in Jastrebarsko, and then to Jasenovac. They were one of the first inmates in Jasenovac, and also one of the youngest.
In early 1942, Dragan Mautner and Božo Švarc were transferred to Stara Gradiška, and then to Feričanci and Obradovci (camp farms), and the remaining six in the spring of 1942 were transferred from Jasenovac to Stara Gradiška where they died of typhoid fever. Dragan Mautner was murdered in the summer of 1942 in Feričanci, while Božo Schwarz on June 15, 1942 managed to escape the camp with another six inmates and join the Partisans on Mount Papuk. (19)
Instead of a conclusion: out of 165 Jewish youths arrested in late May 1941 in Zagreb, only three survived!
NOTES:
1. Dizdar, Zdravko, Camps in the Northwest Croatia in the Second World War, Modern History Magazine, Zagreb 1990, pp 90-92.
2. Šreger, Željko, Zagreb Maccabi. “Two centuries of history and culture of Jews in Zagreb and Croatia”, ŽOZ Zagreb 1998, pp 260-262; Kramer, Fredi, Participation of Jews in sport in Croatia, same, pp 263-265.
3. Croatian State Archives (HDA), NDH fund, number 28233
4. HDA, NDH fund, number 27146
5. First individual inmates arrived to “Danica” camp on April 18 and at the end of the month larger groups arrived. So, already on May 18, 1941 there were 1007 of them in the camp, on June 30, 2175 and on July 15, 2656 inmates. But then transports of inmates started leaving from the camp to other camps, so in July 1941 out of 2656 inmates 1960 of them were transferred to the camp in Gospić, 76 of them were released, and were replaced with other inmates from all parts of the NDH, but also from other camps (Jastrebarsko, Lepoglava). From December 1941, male inmates were sent mostly to Jasenovac, and women and children to Stara Gradiška, and only individuals and smaller groups were released. The camp was disbanded in September 1942. The estimates say that around 5600 inmates went through that camp, and over 3000 of them died, mostly in Jadovno, Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška. Around 500 of them were released, many from other camps after staying for short or long time there. In terms of ethnicity, there were more than 3000 Serbs, around 1000 Croats, over 600 Jews, around 400 Gypsies – Romany, and the rest were other minorities (same as note 1, pp 88-89).
6. HDA, f. NDH, no. 27592
7. HDA, f. NDH, no. 27315
8. HDA, f. NDH, no. 27315, Dr Žiga Hafner (internist) one month later, by the order of the Ministry of Health, was sent to the Institution for combating endemic syphilis in Banja Luka, from there he was deployed to Žepče. In July 1943 he joined the Partisan units. He survived the war (Romano Jaša, Jews of Yugoslavia 1941-1945, Victims of Genocide and participants of the People’s Liberation War, Belgrade 1980, pg. 97, 392).
9. HDA, f. NDH, no. 27960, They were: Max Kutscher, Josef Wimmer, Fritz Weisz, Adalber Bela Fischer, Max Steinhauer, Hans Markovics, Hedwiga Tudiower, Walter and Ladislaus Berenyi (all from Vienna), Ervin Sussmann, Max Cohn, Siegfried Lateiner and Gottlieb Meier (from Berlin), Jacob Heim (from Leipzig), Otto Furst (from Graz), Andria Szanto (from Pesc, Hungary), Lazar Weissberger (from Gyora, Hungary), Tibor Ravasz (from Sombor) and Eugen Klein (from Medias, Romania).
10. Same as note 1, pg. 89.
11. The number of Ustasha guards from 67 in April increased by the end of June 1941 (when this report was written) to over one hundred (Northwest Croatia in PLW and Socialist Revolution, Documentation 1941-1945, I, Zagreb 1981, pp. 95-96.
12. HDA, f. NDH, no. 27592. The document was received in the branch office of the Ustasha Constabulary Commission – Jewish Department – Zagreb on June 7, 1941. The signature of the Commissioner – Camp Officer is illegible.
13. HDA, f. NDH, no. 28139 and 28049, appeals from Dragutin Schreiber and Žiga Schotten sent to the Poglavnik’s Office at the Ministry of Interior in which they plea for the release of their sons Otto and Branko who were transferred from Jadovno to Pag – according their information.
14. In camps Slana and Metajna (on Pag) 407 men, 239 women and 91 children were murdered in the Jewish male and female part of the camp. The survivors, around 450 of them were taken to other camps (Borislav Ostojić – Sobolevski, Mihael, Hell in Rocky Desert, Ustasha Concentration Camp on Pag, Novi List, Rijeka, no. 173-218, July 26 to September 18, 1985).
15. The estimates say that around 500 Jews went through that camp. A part of them was transferred to the camps on Pag and in Jadovno, while the survivors, around 1500 of them, were taken to collection sites and camps in Jastrebarsko, Krušćica, Loborgrad and Jasenovac (Lengel-Krizman, Narcisa, Camps for Jews in the NDH, Ista, Chronology of Jewish Suffering, collection: Anti-Semitism, Holocaust, Anti-Fascism, Zagreb 1996, pg.98, 254).
16. Švarc, Božo, Road to Freedom, Jewish Almanac 1965-1967, Belgrade 1967, pg. 203
17. HDA, f. NDH, no. 28049, 28233; f. NDH, no. 27145. The appeal was signed by: Maria Schlenger, Marija Abraham, Ljubica Frohlich, Etuška widow Berger, Adela Deutsch, Maria Hirš, Mirko Pichler, Marija Abend, Leni Winter, Elsa Reiss, Nada Svećenski, Berta Levinger, Julija widow Weinberger, Olga Pollak, Ana Leitner, Katica Lichtner, Dara Taussig, Julija Mandlović, Rosenzweig (name illegible), Berta Walter, Stella Berger, Marga Dragić, Hedy Klein, Mici Wusler, Đeri (name illegible), Ana Schreiber, Margita Fuchs, Ida Braun, Olga Geselin, Gizela Blühweiss, Ignatz Katz, Olga Schotten, Hela Weill, Frida Krešić, Berta Kraus, Jelka Kraus, Robert Hercog, Elizabeta (surname illegible) i Eugen (surname illegible) with a note: grandfather for grandson. The appeal was registered in the Ministry of Interior of the NDH on October 2, 1941 (number 732) with note: For Directorate for Public Order and Security – E. Kvaternik. We did not find any information in the archives about a reply.
18. Same as note 16. B. Švarc, named paper, pg. 203. Note: on the list of the arrested people (note: 3) there is no name of Emil Frojndlih.
19. J. Romano (named paper) on the List of Students in the People’s Liberation War (pp.307-511) out of 165 killed Jewish youths mentions only ten of them for whom, except for surviving B. Schwartz, he give mostly incorrect biographical data.
NOVI OMANUT
Zagreb, issue 34/35, May – August 1999/5769
REMEMBRANCE OF MILOVOJ BERGER
WITH ARTICLE “ARREST OF 165 JEWISH YOUTHS IN NOVI OMANUT, issue 31
In the article mentioned, Ms Narcisa Lengel-Krizman and Mr Mihael Sobolevski give the list of arrested youths who were taken to a concentration camp in May 1941. Number 14 on the list is Milivoj Berger.
He was my wife’s elder cousin. He was born, I remember, in Zagreb in 1920. He passed the matriculation exam with honours at the Grammar School. Milivoj was an excellent sophomore student of the Chemical Department of the Technical Faculty in Zagreb. He was a very diligent student, serious, modest, shy, considerate, social and most of all exercised camaraderie. He was supposed to take the Organic Chemistry exam in early June 1941, but he got arrested. His best friend in the faculty, Mirko Filajdić (later on a professor at the Faculty of Biotechnology in Zagreb) on the day of the exam took Milivoj’s student’s ID to Professor Prelog who was the lecturer and examiner for the Organic Chemistry (later on became a Nobel Prize winner for chemistry). When Professor Prelog found out that Milivoj could not take the exam because he got arrested and taken to a concentration camp, the professor gave Milivoj a passing grade based on his test results and practical work regardless of him being absent. However, unfortunately Milivoj did not return to continue his studies, his life!
Milivoj Berger, an excellent student, was murdered in Jadovno during the liquidation of imprisoned youths in autumn 1941.
His father, Mišo Berger, renowned wholesale merchant and co-owner of the wholesale shop “Imbro and Mišo Berger” at 1 Pejačević Square (now the British Square) was murdered in Jasenovac in 1943 together with a group of around one hundred minor children as their caretaker.
Unfortunately, amongst the family photos I found only a picture of Milivoj as a boy.
If Milivoj Berger had stayed alive he would have achieved significant success in chemistry. A valuable and promising young man lost his life by the hands of deranged and sadistic murderers!
Only with sorrow in my heart I can think about him, as an innocent victim!
Superintendent Dr Teodor Grüner
IN THE MEMORY OF MY BROTHER MIŠO MONTILJO
Mišo Montiljo’s sister Blanka, married name Baruch, living in Jerusalem, has saved several photos and memories on one of the youngest of the Jewish youths, who was not even eighteen when he got arrested by Ustashas and sent to a camp. After being contacted by our editorial staff she replied and wrote the following:
Dear Branko,
Thank you for your letter and I hope that you will choose a suitable photo to publish. You asked me to tell you something about my brother. Mišo and I were born in Dubrovnik. Mišo was born on July 2, 1923. We came to Zagreb in 1936. There Mišo continued his studies in the grammar school and managed to finish the seventh grade at 2nd Male Grammar School. He was a swimmer at the Zagreb Swimming Club (ZPK). When the NDH was declared, many young men were called to come to Maksimir, where they made a list of their names. One of the Ustashas asked Mišo what he was doing there. He probably thought that Mišo was not Jewish since he had blond hair and blue eyes. When an agent came to take Mišo to the camp he told him to come to the police station. He could have escaped at that time since he had a pass for Split at home, but we did not know what was going on and what awaited us. The last time we heard something about him it was from a card he sent from “Danica” (which we lost during the war). On the side he wrote “Greetings from Fambria and Haftuna”. In Spanish it means “from hunger and beatings”. It managed to get through to us because the words sounded as Muslim names. After that we did not get anything. I only remember that we heard they were being moved further on July 5.
When we (mom, dad and I) got out of Rab camp and went over Velebit, on the road the villagers told us that Ustashas killed all inmates. So dad and I already then knew the truth, but hid it from mom. When we came back to Zagreb in 1945, mom then realised that Mišo would never be coming back.
The first official confirmation we received from the Jewish Municipality in Zagreb in 1963 or 1964 when we needed it to get the pension for mom from Germany (until she died in 1983). I begged for information on Mišo’s fate. They immediately told me he was on the list of people murdered in Jadovno. People who have more information could send it to me, but I would not recommend since it is too disturbing. I did not dare to ask for more, I was simply afraid. This is the first time that Jadovno camp is mentioned. Even the Yad Vashem did not mark it on the monuments. Now at the Yad Vashem they are uploading to computers the data on six million people. One day I want to go there and see what it says. Maybe I will find out why it took almost sixty years to publish the truth and for this world to know what Ustashas did and to have it as the answer to those who claim that there were no murders in Croatian camps. It is hard for me now, as if we removed ashes from old wounds collected over the years and the wounds are now open and more painful than after the war.
When I asked for Mišo’s picture to be copied, the girl who took it said that the boy needs to be copied (“JELED”). And really, he was still a child.
Warm regards, Blanka
Rijeka, February 5, 1999
MY COUSIN MLADEN
Dear Mr Polić,
I attach a digital image of Mladen Krešić, which I took out of a family photo taken in 1941. Miljenko thinks it was the last photo of Mladen. You mentioned Mr Šrenger. I would be glad if a better picture of Mladen is found. Let’s start in order. I ask you to send Miljenko a copy of this Omanut on the address: Mark Kresic 10, Esquire Court ROSLYN NY 11576 USA. Then I would like to thank you for pulling out of oblivion the tragedy of Jewish youths in 1941. I phoned Dr Sobolevski and thanked him also for his effort. I was very touched by the letter – an appeal that was also signed by Mladen’s mother. I personally looked everywhere for information on Mladen. To my knowledge Mladen was arrested on May 27, 1941and put in the Zagreb Assembly (old Grand Fair), and then taken to Danica. In mid-June, my mother Zdranka Krešić went from Sušak to Koprivnica and visited Danica. She came to an Ustasha duty officer and brought a parcel for Mladen. The duty officer asked her what relation they were and she said she was his mother. The officer then brought Mladen so she saw him from a distance of fifteen metres. His hair was cut all the way. He just smiled and waved his hand. Then the officer told my mother to watch the parcel being delivered, so that people would not later say that they keep all parcels to themselves. Suddenly the officer remembered to ask my mother how she was not wearing the yellow band with the letter Ž, and asked her for papers.
My mother got out of it saying that she had not understand the officer well, because her Croatian is poor, that she is Catholic and has an Italian passport. Then the duty officer told her to leave. While returning to Zagreb, mother saw how Ustashas were catching some communists in a corn field and beat them terribly. Also, she saw two people hanged in Koprivnica on some lamp posts. When she came to Zagreb she did not want to scare Mladen’s parents, but told everything to me and my father. She thought that we all had to disappear from Zagreb. In Sušak, i.e. Sussa provinicia di Fiume, she agreed with Mladen mother’s sister that something should be done. Mama took advice with my teacher Nada Čohar from the Sušak town committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ), who said that they had bad news from Ustasha camps. The turning point was when an Italian colonel showed up with several photos of corpses from Pag, taken right after the camps in Metajana and Slano had been disbanded. Mom immediately went to Zagreb and found Miljenko’s father all packed to leave. With them was Miljenko’s Grandfather Mr Lausch. According to rumours, Mladen was supposed to return any moment so they had been waiting for him. Mother visited one of dad’s cousins, a Jew who was a pre-war sympathiser of the Ustasha movement, but he was so horrified by the news that reached Zagreb. He was so scared that he feared for his life. Later on Ustashas let him leave for Switzerland. There was no time and mother used some connections and obtained forged documents that Miljenko was her son (he was eleven) and took him to Sušak. During the Italian occupation, Miljenko lived with his mother’s sister family, and after the Germans arrived he lived with us. The second part of the story on Mladen I got from one acquaintance. He was Božo Švarc, a Major in the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) at the time, who was in the group of Jewish youths. He told me he had heard about some Krešić, but could not remember Mladen. Later on I realised that Božo saw Mirko Krešić, who was killed in Jasenovac in 1942. I spoke with Božo, a retired JNA colonel by then, two years ago in New York. Božo now lives in Belgrade. Božo told me that an Ustasha schoolmate of his from Zagreb literary recognised him in Jadovno. The Ustasha then had an idea to call out all of his schoolmates and found ten surnames. He sent all of them to Gospić to clean the town. It was hot and when they finished Božo asked him when would they be returning to Jadovno. The Ustasha told them there was no more Jadovno. It was on August 30 or 31, 1941. Ten of them were sent to Jasenovac. In 1942, Božo was sent to work in Feričanci and from there he escaped to the Partisans. I found out the third part of the story in an article form STORIA ILLUSTRATA which I translated and sent to Belgrade for a Jewish municipality bulletin. The article was not published. The article mentions the first zone, i.e. Sušak, Split, Zadar, etc, which were annexed by Italy in April. The second zone involved Italian occupation in August 1941 of approx. 50 kilometres from the coast, and the third in October 1941 thirty kilometres farther. That article mostly talked about discussions between Ustasha, German and Italian authorities on the fate of Jews. That Italian colonel in Gospić heard about the killings on Velebit, but had not material evidence. After the war I visited Jadovno as a mountaineer three times and heard that Ustashas there murdered around three thousand people by throwing them into Šaranova Pit which is around 400 metres deep. There were some plaques with names of some places in Slavonia (Grubišno Polje), some wilted flowers and wreaths. There was not a single sign of any Jewish organisation. From the local population I heard that also Chetniks and Partisans “used” the same pit for liquidations. Allegedly, some Serbs from Gospić died there in the Homeland War (1990s).
It is a shame that nobody wrote about those events after the Second World War. But what can we do. Thanks to you and your historians, some things did come to light. I do not understand how there was no access to confiscated Ustasha archives in fifty years after the Second World War. Who prevented it? One explanation: Miljenko, Mladen, Mirko and Branko were my cousins, i.e. our fathers were brothers. In the NDH, Mladen and Mirko were murdered, while Miljenko and Branko saved themselves by coming to Sušak. All other Krešićs escaped to Italy and later to Switzerland. Unfortunately, nine members of this large family ended up in Auschwitz.
That is all about these unfortunate events. Kind regards
Tito Krešić
TRAGEDY ON JADOVNO IN SUMMER 1941
In issue 31 of the “Novi Omanut” there was an article titled “The Arrest of 165 Jewish Youths in Zagreb in May of 1941”. My opinion is that this article was excellently written. The authors, Narcisa Lengel-Krizman and Mihael Sobolevski successfully portrayed that tragic chapter in a series of tragedies of Jews in Croatia during the Second World War and with that gave a very important contribution to the history of the Holocaust. This event should be remembered and emphasized in order not to forget what happened in those terrible times. That was a particularly heavy blow, because the intention was to completely destroy the Jewish youths in Zagreb and almost at the very beginning, before a series of additional blows and the destruction of Jews in Croatia. I find it particularly hard to look at the list of all those beautiful youths, many of them my best friends that are gone. I feel that it is my holy duty to write everything I know about their tragic fate. The article mentions my name amongst the notes and it seems that the authors did not know how I got into that group and saved myself later on, without being on the list of all arrested youths. Besides that, there are several minor corrections I would like to add and mention some facts that I know. Because of that I must briefly describe that part of my life.
I was supposed to be in that group, but I had been arrested earlier (May 17, 1941) as an “enemy of the state, communist, leftist”, as they had told me during the interrogation. I was taken to the detention in Petrinjska Street in Zagreb. I stayed there for nine days in terrible conditions and then taken to the camp in Kerestinec. When Ustashas came to arrest me together with other youths on May 30, 1941, I had already been imprisoned. In the camp in Kerestinec there was a group of communists and Zagreb Jewish lawyers and other prisoners accused for various things. The communists were well-organised but did not accept me into their group since they did not know me well. In the night of July 13-14 they breached the camp and tried to escape, which ended tragically for almost all of them, except the few. The next day all of us who remained were transferred to Gospić. There we were locked up together with a large group of Jewish families from Croatian towns in a building that served as a town cinema.
In the beginning we were able to move around the town under the watch of Ustasha guards and on that occasion I met some of my friends who told me that they were in Jadovno camp separated from the others and then taken to Gospić to work as “cleaners of Gospić town”. Several days later one of them (Saša Blivajs) was released home (this could be in early August) and they came for me to replace him. So I was with that group of ten, working on relatively easier tasks for two or three weeks and I found out from them what had happened and what they had been through. In the meantime the camp in Gospić was moved from town to a village farm, two kilometres outside of town. In mid August there was a rumour that the Italians were to take over the administration of the whole territory and that all camps would be moved. The ten of us were transferred to the camp and there had already been a group of male inmates from Pag. They told us that the women and children had been separated and that they did not know anything about what had happened to them (all women and children had been killed on Pag a short time after they had arrived). We waited and hoped that inmates from Jadovno would come, but they did not. In the morning of August 20 we were walking from the camp to the train station. On the road a loaded peasant wagon drove over my foot and Ustashas took me to the hospital in Gospić (I was never able to understand that act). There I was examined by a doctor to whom I told I was imprisoned in a Jewish camp. He quietly told me that my wound was light, but told Ustashas determinedly that I had to stay in hospital. Ustashas left and a young doctor (or perhaps a student), today Professor Dr Ante Fulgosi, who was working at the hospital and whom I recognised, simply advised me to leave the hospital, which I did. My parents were in Gospić at the time, asking for my release since they had acquired for me a pass for Sušak. The camp administration did not allow it, but after I had left the hospital we hid for five days and then left for Sušak. After several months we crossed the border near Trieste and Italians detained us (so-called confino libero). Later on we were moved to a camp in the south of Italy (Feramonti). We were liberated by the English and I joined the Partisans. As a medical student I worked in a medical unit and survived the war.
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Egon Berger (ELIT) |
Solomon Klugmann |
Pavao Mazerhofer |
Gerhard Wilhelm |
During the departure from the camp in Gospić, lawyer Edo Neufel also saved himself and got to Switzerland already during the war. Besides him I know about another young married couple who managed to get out of the transport on the way to the train station. They hid near the road for a while and then went to Sušak. I do not know their names. All others were taken to camps; men to Jasenovac and women to some other camp, I do not know where exactly. Besides a small group who managed to escape the camp, among them was Božo Švarc, one of the youths, all others were killed in camps. My story is not important. I mention it only to explain how I got into that group and where I got the information. Soon after the Independent State of Croatia was established, the Ustasha authorities prepared to destroy the Jewish youth in Zagreb. All of us received a summons to report for work duty and were registered in mid May 1941. The census was conducted at the sports stadium in Maskimir. On that occasion I got the Jewish ID. Ustashas’ intention was to arrest and destroy all youths of Zagreb. Many of them were active members of the Maccabi Club, but for Ustashas that was not the criterion. Only people who escaped earlier, those who were from mixed marriages and those who were not on the list by mistake managed to save themselves. All the youths, 165 of them, went bravely, proudly and without fear on that journey, for which they thought would be a work camp for a short time. In the article it says that in the first months of the NDH the authorities did not persecute or detain communists. I must correct it, because communists were arrested and locked up in great numbers in various town prisons and collected in Kerestinec camp already in April and May, so before the Germans attacked the Soviet Union (Zvonimir Komarica: Kerestinec Chronicles, Globus, Zagreb 1989), and this was my conclusion too. The group of youths was taken from Zagreb to “Danica” camp near Koprivnica. There they were forced to do hard labour covering up anti-tank trenches. The food was poor, but the morale of the group was very high (Božo Švarc, Jewish Almanac, Belgrade 1965). They worked with pride and overcame hardship through camaraderie and collective spirit. In mid July, the whole group was moved to Gospić and immediately taken to the camp on Jadovno. The conditions there were terrible. Several days later an Ustasha officer by the name of Mihalović, a man of our age, visited the camp. There I saw some colleagues from the secondary school. He was the one who gave the order for the ten people he knew to be taken to Gospić to do some easier work. The ten people who were moved were not, as I was told, those the Ustasha asked for. There had been some sort of a muddle with the names (to put it mildly the Ustashas in the camp were not the most literate people). In your article there are the names of the ten men, and mine is one of them. I do not know how my name was added. There should have been ten names without me, but I cannot remember who else was there. One of the names is wrong: “Aleksander, surname unknown”, was in fact Miljenko Aleksander (Aleksander was his surname). He is number five on the list. Those ten youths were in Jadovno camp only for several days and then moved to Gospić. According to my calculations, the murder of the inmates in Jadovno happened very early, maybe just several days after they arrived to the camp, and not like it says in the article, at the end, in the second half of August when all camps in the area had been liquidated. There were also Jews from other Croatian towns in Jadovno, mostly all young men. From the list I got from “Yad Vashem”, but which seems to be not entirely correct, because some names are repeated and some are missing, it reads that the number of murdered Jews was 288. Besides them, many Serbs were murdered also, mostly peasants from the area. When Ustashas realised that they would have to leave the area (from the Coast to Karlovac), they did not want for Italians to find out about the murders they had committed. It seems to me that was the reason they stopped with mass slaughters. When Saša Blivajs was released, the youths wanted to bring to Gospić several people or at least one to replace him, saying that they need more men to do their work well (cleaning the streets of Gospić). They were told then (first half of August) that nobody could be released from Jadovno. Then they asked for me, since I was in Gospić, and I was transferred to that group. If there had been any inmates left alive in Jadovno, they would have transferred someone. One night I bribed an Ustasha and gave him two parcels for two of my friends in Jadovno, wrote them a letter and waited for a reply. The Ustasha took the money and the parcels, of course, but it seems to me if they were still alive he would have come back to get more parcels and money from me and my friends. I would also like to say something about the role of Italians. The Italian army was always nearby and they must have known what was going on. We all know the impeccable behaviour of Italians during fascism and we know what positive role they had in saving the Jews of Yugoslavia and other countries (Menahem Shelach: Blood Account, The Rescue of Croatian Jews by the Italians 1941-1943, on Hebrew Sifriath Poalim Publising House, Tel Aviv 1986). I think that this fact has not been emphasised enough in historical data. However, the Italian army did not do what they could have done to save the Jews from the camp in summer 1941. It is hard to tell now what the possibilities were at the time, and it seems that this will always remain unclear (Zvi Loker, The Italians and the Jews of Croatia, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Washington D.C. 1993).
In the end I would like to say that the article title does not seem to be appropriate. The arrest was only a small and initial part of a great tragedy. I think that the more accurate title would be Murder, Slaughter, Death or something similar. This would be more suitable to the events that were described so well in the article. It is hard to look at the list of those names. One hundred and sixty five names, one hundred and sixty five beautiful youths. Only two survived that slaughter, my two close and dear friends, Saša Blivajs and Božo Švarc. Each name is one person, one human being, whole world. They were all young, ready to live and they disappeared so tragically. They have earned to be remembered, mentioned and not to be forgotten as long as possible. This was a hard and sad chapter in the history of suffering of the Zagreb Jews. I would like to finish with a Hebrew saying Jehi zichram baruch. May the memory of them be blessed.
Emil Freundlich,
Nahariya, Israel
(he died there in 2006)
NOVI OMANUT
Zagreb, issue 65/66, May-June 2000
Memorial plaque for Jadovno
The Jewish Municipality in Zagreb in their Newsletter (Hadašon) for April 2000, in the column Events, briefly announced that a memorial plaque would be built and gave an opportunity for everyone to join in the project with their contributions. What is it about?
In the organised persecution of Jews on May 29 and 30, 1941, under a false pretence that they were going to “perform students work duty for eight weeks”, a group of 165 young men age from 17 to 25 was arrested in Zagreb and taken to Koprivnica in three freight train cars. All of them, except two, were killed in Jadovno after being imprisoned in Koprivnica and Gospić (Narcisa Lengel-Krizman and Mihael Sobolevski, Novi Omanut 34/35, May/August 1999). Animated with renewed memories of that tragedy, Professor Dr Emil Freundlich (once a student of the Medical Faculty in Zagreb, now living in Nahariya) started late last year a project to build a memorial plaque for our friends and members of our generation who were not fortunate enough to survive the horrors of the persecution. Unfortunately, there were many such group and individual deportations of young and older Jews who died in Jadovno and other camps. Although the names of those victims are not on the plaque which is being prepared, that plaque is going to revive the memory on them as well, and possible animate the survivors and descendents of victims to continue keeping alive the memory on the victims of terror and continue building such memorial plaques. Thanks to the Council of the Jewish Municipality in Zagreb we were given permission to place the plaque in the Municipal building in Zagreb. We hope that in near or far future this plaque, and all those that may follow, will find their place in some memorial centre (Praška Street!!!) Although the costs of building and placing the plaque are not unreachable for the project, it would be welcome and it is needed to provide financial aid from anyone who can and in that way express remembrance and compassion with our friends and relatives. We thank from the bottom of our heart to all those who give a contribution, but also to those who just remember the suffering of our young men.
Dr. Boris Blau
Dr. Željko Šrenger
REACTIONS
With article
“Arrest of 165 Jewish youths”
In Omanut issue 31
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Eto (Karlo) Levi |
Ervin Laslo |
When I came back to Zagreb in 1945, my friends gave me a couple of pictures of my dear people. Their faces would never fade away in my memory even if I did not have those pictures. Still I love them. I am glad that now everything is being published. At least now the memory of them will survive for some time when the last of us are gone. There were many on that sad list, but I only have the pictures of Ervin and Eto.
Ervin Laslo lived to be 21. He studied civil engineering. He was a good student, educated and nice young man – too good for that terrible world. Maybe he could have saved himself if he did not think about his grandmother who raised him. With him another branch of Jewish future disappeared. The Levi family consisted of physicians, two medical students, Eto (Karlo) and Leo (Aurel) and daughter Malkica, my classmate. The last night in Zagreb I spent at their home. That was the last I saw them. None of them survived the Holocaust. More ruined hopes of Jewish and human future. Eto and Ervin were murdered in that terrible way in Jadovno, and with them all my classmates and all my friends.
May it never be forgotten!
Feja Frank
Zagreb, February 1999
“Omanut” Magazine
Attention Mr B. Polić
Z a g r e b
Mr Editor, The article about the arrest of 165 Jewish youths in 1941, co-authors N. Lengel-Krizman and M. Sobolevski, published in your magazine issue 31, June-July ’98, drew my attention for several reasons. First of all, the article was written studiously, based on research and archives, which makes it reliable. However, there is another dimension: all of the available names were given. This makes it humane. This was one of rare examples where victims of the Ustasha anti-Semite terror were named individually, by forename and surname and their individual fates, and not just as mere numbers. Further on, there is another reason I am writing. There are several of my schoolmates on that list. However, the list is missing three of them from the same class. They are: Zdenko Gostl, Bruno-Valger Tausk and Bruno Herzog. Due to the fact that they disappeared at the same time as the other schoolmates did – although I do not have any evidence for that – I assume that they must have been in the same group. If you should decide to publish my letter, maybe someone familiar with their fate and fate of their families will come forward. In the end, another tragic detail: the sister of one of the victims, Mišo Montiljo (number 99 on the list), who survived the NDH terror by escaping to “fascist” Italy, told me how her brother – he was not even 18 at the time – managed to send her a card, on which – since they were a Sephardic family – he wrote on the “Ladino” language: “Best regards from hunger and beatings!”
With deepest respects
Veljko Pribić
Documents:
Novi omanut, Zagreb, Novembar-Decembar, 1998/5759, str.6
Novi omanut, Zagreb, Novembar-Decembar, 1998/5759, str.7
Novi omanut, Zagreb, Novembar-Decembar, 1998/5759, str.8
Novi omanut, Zagreb, Novembar-Decembar, 1998/5759, str.9
Novi omanut, Zagreb, Maj-Avgust, 1999/5769, str.21
Novi omanut, Zagreb, Maj-Avgust, 1999/5769, str.22
Novi omanut, Zagreb, Maj-Avgust, 1999/5769, str.23
Ha-kol, br.65-66, Maj-Juni, 2000, str.15b
Ha-kol, br.65-66, Maj-Juni-2000, str.15
Novi omanut, Zagreb, 1999/32-33, str.17
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Danijel Simić, Zvi Loker, Dušan Bastašić, Jerusalim, 30. novembar 2010 |
Dušan Bastašić, Zvi Loker, Protosinđel Jovan Ćulibrk, Jerusalim, 30. novembar 2010 |
