Robbery of Jewish property in Yugoslavia (1940)/1941 - 1945. A comparative analysis of the German occupied Serbia and the Independent State of Croatia
Final Report Abstract
This research project investigated the appropriation of Jewish property in Serbia, occupied by the German Reich, and in the fascist Independent State of Croatia (1940)/1941 to 1945. This region in southeastern Europe has been multi-ethnic and multiconfessional for centuries, which is why a multi-perspective comparative analysis was decisive. With this approach the broad variety of power-factors in the multifold robbery-processes, many times interwoven with each other, could by analysed quite well. In a transnational approach, different spaces - large cities such as Zagreb, Sarajevo in the Independent State of Croatia (ISC) and Belgrade in Serbia, smaller cities such as Osijek in the ISC and Šabac as well as Gross-Betschkerek in Serbia – were researched with regard to three central questions: firstly, the various bureaucratic and openly violent forms of robbery, secondly, the different actors involved as well as appropriation processes, and thirdly, the history of the memory of the robbery of Jewish property in former Yugoslavia after 1945, respectively after independence in the republics of Croatia and Serbia. Based on extensive archival studies in Germany, Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, this resulted into the first comprehensive account of the process of looting Jewish property during the Second World War in this region with a special focus on the actors involved in the looting. The forms and processes of the looting, the connections between the looting of Jewish property and the persecution of other groups, the spatial specifics and, as an excursus, the memory of the topic with reference to both areas of investigation were worked out in close reference to each other. Furthermore, the comparison of the results of the two sub-studies has shown which interdependencies existed between the different power structures and robbery processes.
Publications
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The Robbing of Jewish Property as a Subject of Historical Research Outside the Ex-Yugoslav Area: A Short Overview of the State of Research, in: Limes plus: geopolitički časopis, 2018, (2-3), S. 143-150
Sanela Schmid & Christian Schölzel
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Robbing of the Jews for the Independent State of Croatia. Journal of Modern European History, 24(1), 71-87.
Schmid, Sanela
