Yom HaShoah 5779

The Holocaust,Voices from the Past:  Croatia

Family of Theodora Klayman

 Cohen Chapel

following the conclusion of  Evening Minyan

Facilitator: Thomas Klein

Dora Klayman’s family lived in mainly in Zagreb, Croatia, part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the interwar years.  Following a contentious debate, Yugoslavia joined the Axis powers on March 25, 1941.  Two days later, a Serbian-led coup established a new government which denounced this agreement.  On April 6^th, the German army, along with troops from Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria, invaded and overran Yugoslavia in just eleven days.  The Axis powers then partitioned the country, exploiting ethnic tensions to dissipate possible opposition.

Croatia became an independent state under the rule of a local fascist party, the Ustasa, which immediately turned on its Serbian Orthodox population (the Croats were largely Roman Catholic), killing nearly 340,000 people in just over a year.  Simultaneously the Croatian authorities focused on its Jewish population (about 32,000), incarcerating about 20,000 in local concentration camps where most died.  A further 7,000 Jews were transported to Auschwitz.  The Croatian Government also killed its entire Roma (Gypsy) population of about 25,000.