The Death Camps of Croatia: Visions and Revisions, 1941–1945

Historiographic literature on the Second World War in Croatia has focused on the atrocities perpetrated against Jews, Serbs, and Roma by the Axis Powers and their local collaborators—the Ustaše, both Croats and Muslims, and the Volksdeutsche, Yugoslav citizens of German ancestry. The Četniks, a remnant of the Royal Serbian army, primarily hunted the Jews. Historians as well as survivors were eager to expose the atrocities so that people around the globe would know what had happened. Although there is a plethora of historiographic literature on the machinery of murder in the Serbian and Croatian death camps, it is plagued by disputes over the number of victims. Moreover, much of it is written to defend one or another ethnic perspective. Thus, Raphael Israeli writes that he came “to the mixed conclusion that the horrors of Jadovno and Jasenovac have to be reported to the public in some nonpartisan way.” His intent...