1 - Anti-Semitism and Economic Regeneration: The Ustasha Regime and the Nationalization of Jewish Property and Business in Sarajevo

Summary

The city of Sarajevo represents a unique case within the Independent State of Croatia. None of the state's other major cities had such a wealth of ethnic and religious diversity as Sarajevo, where Croats, Serbs, Muslims, and Jews had coexisted for centuries. These groups often lived in their own neighborhoods and occupied their own specific economic niches, but their relationships were generally harmonious prior to the establishment of the Ustasha state. However, not even a city with such a long-standing history of relative tolerance was immune to the terror of the Ustasha regime. When it took control of Sarajevo in April 1941, peaceful ethnic relations in the city were shattered, as neighbors were turned against one another by the racist ideology of the regime; the Jews and Serbs of Sarajevo were especially victimized.

The Ustasha regime's crimes against the Jews are notorious. The Jasenovac death camp has become the symbol of the horrors committed against them. However, the Ustasha regime first persecuted the Jews in the social and economic sphere before deporting them to concentration camps, where the majority met their deaths. The city of Sarajevo, where there had been little in the way of anti- Semitism prior to 1941, is an ideal location not only for the study of the state and local structures and processes for the nationalization and expropriation of Jewish property but also for an analysis of the capability of the local authorities to intervene in this process in the name of preserving local economic stability. Through studying the types of properties nationalized and expropriated, the handling of Jewish financial assets, the placement of Jewish firms under Croatian commissioners (povjerenici), and the procedure for the sale of expropriated Jewish property, it is possible to create a model for the nationalization of Jewish property in Sarajevo as well as to understand its economic impact on the city and the Ustasha regime's plan for the economic “regeneration” of the state. In the city of Sarajevo, while many properties were confiscated by the Croatian state, the local nationalization directorate as well as the city's authorities tried to mitigate the damage this process caused to the local economy through extralegal actions aimed at maintaining economic stability in the city.