Introduction

Introduction Abstract: The introduction outlines the main aim of the book, which is to examine Ustasha race theory and its importance to the political and legal functioning of the Independent State of Croatia by focusing on the case of Croatian Jews who were granted the rights of Aryan citizens of the Ustasha state; this question is examined within the broader context of anti-Semitism, nationalism and race theory in Croatia from the mid-nineteenth century. The introduction provides an overview of the relevant historiography on the Ustasha regime and the Independent State of Croatia, pointing out that historians have tended to downplay or ignore the importance of racial ideas to the Ustasha movement, including racial anti-Semitism. Bartulin, Nevenko. Honorary Aryans: National–Racial Identity and Protected Jews in the Independent State of Croatia. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. DOI: 10.1057/9781137339126. DOI: 10.1057/9781137339126 N. Bartulin, Honorary Aryans: National-Racial Identity and Protected Jews in the Independent State of Croatia © Nevenko Bartulin 2013 Honorary Aryans In 1910 a Jewish member of the liberal–nationalist Croatian Pure Party of Right, Vladimir Sachs, declared that Croatia’s Jews were not part of a separate nation but ‘Croats of the Mosaic faith’.1 Thirty years later, in late May 1941, Sachs sent an application to the Jewish section of the Ustasha Directorate of Police requesting that it grant him, ‘a person of non-Aryan descent’, the full rights of an Aryan citizen of the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH), because he had proved himself ‘meritorious for the Croatian people’, and had always fought against ‘international Jewry’.2 Sachs based his application (to which he received a positive answer) upon the fact that the sixth article of the first Ustasha racial law decree, issued on 30 April 1941, had indeed given the Head of State the right to grant all political rights that belong to individuals of Aryan descent to non-Aryan individuals who had proven themselves ‘meritorious for the Croatian people, especially for its liberation’ before 10 April 1941.3 This date was the day the NDH was proclaimed by the unofficial head of the Ustasha movement in Croatia, the former Austro– Hungarian Colonel Slavko Kvaternik (1878–1947), who was married to the daughter of Josip Frank (1844–1911), the baptised Jew who had led the Pure Party of Right from 1895 to his death in 1911. The members of this party later became known as ‘Frankists’ (frankovci). Frank would have presumably had no inkling that his one-time political followers – including the future Poglavnik (Leader) of the NDH, Ante Pavelić (1889–1959) – would establish a movement and state that completely rejected his, and Sachs’, idea of a civic and liberal Croatian nation state. Sachs himself belonged to a small group of assimilated Jews who, given the ‘privilege’ of living in the NDH, would no longer be able to be Croats of the Mosaic faith, but merely ‘honorary Aryans’ or protected Jews, a coterie of Jews living on the margins of a racial state that was prepared to accept ‘exceptions to the rule’ (in this case Jews who were defined as possessing Aryan ‘spiritual’ or mental qualities) but not accept Jews as Jews. This book examines the case of the so-called honorary Aryans, as well as Jews in mixed marriages and so-called Mischlinge (half- and quarter Jews), by focusing on how these exemptions from the NDH’s race laws were justified by race theory. This question is explored within the broader context of anti-Semitism, nationalism and racial theory in Croatia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. This work analyses, in detail, the position of Jews in Croatian and Yugoslav nationalist discourses on race, ethnicity and nationhood. Ustasha anti-Semitism needs to be comprehended within DOI: 10.1057/9781137339126 Introduction the context of a wider racial ideology, which did not concern itself solely, or even primarily, with Jews. The historiography on the NDH has reduced the question of Ustasha anti-Semitism to: a) a matter of political pragmatism and opportunism on the part of the Ustashe, i.e. introducing anti-Semitic laws and policies in order to receive further favour and sympathy of the Third Reich; b) the need to protect members of the Ustasha movement who were of Jewish descent; and c) economic greed, in other words, pursing anti-Semitic policy merely in order to acquire Jewish property. Although these factors should not be ignored or overlooked in a study of Ustasha anti-Semitism, historians of the NDH have tended to dismiss Ustasha ideas on race in general as little more than a carbon copy of National Socialist ideological views. In line with that historiographical position, the existence of Jewish honorary Aryans could easily be seen as a contradiction of race theory, which thereby highlights the supposed ideological shallowness of the Ustashe, as well as their willingness to exempt certain Jews purely in return for economic gain. In her book Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), Hannah Arendt thus referred to the ‘highly assimilated and extraordi- narily rich’ group of Jews who were able to acquire honorary Aryan status by parting ‘voluntarily with their property’.4 Gerald Reitlinger wrote that ‘the whole of the Ustashe autocracy was mixed with Jewish blood’, but Pavelić nonetheless ‘decreed the confiscation of all Jewish property’ because ‘the trigger-happy Ustashe needed plunder and the wealth of the orthodox Serb minority was not enough to satisfy them’.5 Since the pub- lication of these two books (Reitlinger’s work was first published in 1953) little more has been offered in the way of a historiographical explana- tion for Ustasha anti-Semitic policy and the justification for exempting certain Jews. Only two historiographical studies have really dealt with the question of honorary Aryans in any detail, namely, Holokaust u Zagrebu (‘The Holocaust in Zagreb’, 2001) by Ivo (and Slavko) Goldstein, and When Courage Prevailed: The Rescue and Survival of Jews in the Independent State of Croatia 1941–1945 (2011), by Esther Gitman.6 While Goldstein examines the Ustasha persecution of Jews in the NDH (focusing on Zagreb), Gitman’s book explores the efforts of various political and social actors to save Jews from that persecution. While both books provide a good deal of detail on the individual cases and fates of Jewish honorary Aryans,7 they neglect to examine how the Ustasha government attempted to justify, in an ideological and legal sense, the exemption of these Jews from the race DOI: 10.1057/9781137339126 Honorary Aryans laws. Goldstein merely cites the sixth article of the first racial law decree, and provides biographical notes on the several high-ranking Ustashe of Jewish descent or married to Jewish/half-Jewish women,8 but makes no attempt to situate this question within the context of Ustasha ideology. In any case, Goldstein defines Ustasha ideology as nothing more than ‘a specific synthesis of Fascist and Nazi elements, adapted to the Croatian and Bosnian reality’. Accordingly, the Ustasha regime implemented the ‘ideology of Croatian exclusivism’, which had ‘developed into a typical Nazi ideology transplanted onto Croatian soil’.9 Goldstein is mainly concerned with highlighting the genocidal nature of the NDH, including its anti- Semitism, without actually examining the roots of Ustasha racial ideology. Gitman, for her part, notes that the Ustashe ‘officially embraced the Nazi goal of a genocidal Final Solution’, but also ‘worked to protect those individuals whose education, skills, or family ties they deemed vital to Croatia’s national interest’.10 She further argues that: [ ... ] Pavelić made one significant change to the Nazi definition of ‘Jew.’ Rather than relying on the criteria of three Jewish grandparents, he empow- ered himself as head of state to recognize new categories specific to Croatia: ‘Honorary Aryan’ and ‘Aryan Rights.’ The Nazis, naturally, objected to the change, primarily because it introduced arbitrary and subjective criteria that invited corrupt practices.11 While the last sentence is a valid point, Gitman is incorrect when she claims that Pavelić made a ‘significant change’ to the ‘Nazi definition of Jew’ by not relying on the criteria of three Jewish grandparents. According to the first Ustasha racial law decree, which Gitman does not actually examine, individuals with at least three Jewish grandparents were in fact legally defined as Jewish. Similarly to the position of German Jews under the 1935 Nuremberg laws, quarter Jews (individuals with one Jewish grandparent) and certain half-Jews (with two Jewish grandparents) in the NDH were able to acquire full Croatian citizenship and recognition as Aryans. As regards the categories ‘Honorary Aryan‘ (which was never officially used) and ‘Aryan rights’, it must be stressed that Jews who were granted such status were not in fact recognised or defined as racially Aryan. These Jews were awarded the full rights that belonged to Aryan citizens of the NDH because they had proven themselves ‘meritorious’ for the Croatian people and/or possessed vital economic skills, but they were only honorary Aryans. Although representatives of the German Foreign Ministry and SS (Schutzstaffel) in the NDH were critical of these DOI: 10.1057/9781137339126 Introduction exemptions from the race laws, the Third Reich itself granted certain groups of German Jews ‘clemency’ from the Nuremberg laws.12 Gitman also makes the common historiographical error

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