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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 June 2025
Jewish resistance to the destruction of European Jewry during the Nazi era has stirred many scholars; however, some areas of war-torn Europe remain neglected in this respect, for instance Italy and Italian-occupied territories. This article aims to unearth the Jewish history of Jewish resistance in the Italian province of Dalmatia between June 1941 and September 1943, emphasising longer evolution of political ideology, personal networks and social organisations that fostered and sustained resistance. Based on either as-yet unknown or rarely used testimonies of the Holocaust survivors who spent the war years in Dalmatia, this article argues that these are crucial to understand why and how Jewish politics in inter-war Yugoslavia enabled Jews to self-organise and to start and sustain open resistance to fascism.
1 Daniel Carpi, ‘The Rescue of Jews in the Italian Zone of Occupied Croatia’, reprint from: Rescue Attempts during the Holocaust: Proceedings of the 2nd Yad Vashem Intl. Hist. Conf. – Apr. 1974 (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1974), 465–527. Carpi describes in detail the articles that came out in Italian newspapers already in 1944, just months after the liberation of Rome, followed by Jacques Sabille’s article in 1951.
2 The interest in this question spiked in the late 1980s and early 1990s: Carol Rittner, The Courage to Care: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust (New York: New York University Press, 1986); Ivo Hertzer, ed., The Italian Refuge: The Rescue of Jews during the Holocaust (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1989); Jonathan Steinberg, All or Nothing: The Axis and the Holocaust, 1941–1943 (London: Routledge, 1990); Menachem Shelah, Un debito di gratitudine. Storia dei rapport tra l’Esercto Italiano e gli Ebrei in Dalmazia (1941–1943) (Rome: Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito, 1991); István Deák, ‘Holocaust Heroes’, The New York Review, 5 November 1992, accessed 30 November 2023, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1992/11/05/holocaust-heroes/. Both Hertzer and Shelah were witnesses of Italian occupation. There has since also been an attempt to point out the role of the Croatian population in the salvation of Jews on their way to the Italian occupation zone and after the capitulation of Italy in September 1943: Esther Gitman, When Courage Prevailed: The Rescue and Survival of Jews in the Independent State of Croatia (St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2011), 27–8. Even recently published books take Italian benevolence or the Italian military leadership’s benevolence as a fact: Halik Kochanski, Resistance: The Underground War against Hitler, 1939–1945 (New York: Liveright Publishing Company, 2022), 418.
3 Emil Kerenji, ‘“Your Salvation Is the Struggle Against Fascism”: Yugoslav Communist and the Rescue of Jews, 1941–1945’, Contemporary European History 25, no. 1 (2016): 57–74.
4 Jaša Romano, Jevreji Jugoslavije, 1941–1945: Žrvte genocida i učenici Narodnooslobodilačkog rata (Belgrade: Savez Jevrejskih opština Jugoslavije, 1980).
5 We still do not have precise data on the number of local Jews and Jewish refugees residing in the Italian occupation zone nor this Adriatic area during the war; various numbers circulate the literature. Jonathan Steinberg attested 50,000 Jews that Italians saved from death in Nazi hands. Another estimate claims that Italians in general saved about 80 per cent of the 40,000 non-Italian Jews who were living under Italian protection, as they did of Jews who were Italian citizens. Klaus Voigt, estimating from sources and literature, points to the number of 10,000 Jewish refugees in all Italian occupation zones in Europe. When it comes to Dalmatia and the entire Italian occupation zone of the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Jaša Romano estimated, and most likely overstated, the number of Jewish survivors in the Italian occupation zone in this area at 3,700. Davide Rodogno downsized this to 2,500. Still, this article deals with Jewish agency during the war and relies on Jaša Romano’s estimate of 4,572 Yugoslav Jews entering the resistance movement (People’s Liberation Movement or NOP), out of whom around 2,700 Jews were under the Italian occupation zone in what was previously known as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Michele Sarfatti holds that there were between 2,640 and 2,740 Jews on Rab in the later summer of 1943. Steinberg, All or Nothing, 5; Jaša Romano, ‘Jevreji u logoru na Rabu i njihovo uključivanje u Narodnooslobodilački rat’, Zbornik 2: Studije i građa o učešću Jevreja u Narodnooslobodilačkom ratu (1972): 17–20; Davide Rodogno, ‘Italiani brava gente? Fascist Italy’s Policy toward the Jews in the Balkans, April 1941–July 1943’, European History Quarterly 35 (2005), 223–4. Michele Sarfatti, I confini di una persecuzione: Il fascismo e gli ebrei fuori d’Italia (1938–1943) (Rome: Viella Editrice, 2023) 94.
6 Geza B. HTV 2878, 1994.
7 Evgeny Finkel, Ordinary Jews: Choice and Survival during the Holocaust (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), 172–6. He builds on Doug McAdam, ‘Recruitment to High-Risk Activism: The Case of Freedom Summer’, American Journal of Sociology 92, no. 1 (1986): 64–90.
8 See also on Jewish participation in the Spanish civil war: Marko Perić, ‘Jevreji iz Jugoslavije – Španski borci’, Zbornik 3: Studije i građa o učešću Jevreja u Narodnooslobodilačkom ratu (Belgrade: Jevrejski istorijski muzej, 1975), 1–43; Vlajko Begović, ‘Učešće u pomoći Španskoj republici’, in Sarajevo u revoluciji I, ed. Nisam Albahari et al. (Sarajevo: Istorijski arhiv Sarajevo, 1976), 197–99; Željka Oparnica, ‘Sephardi Politics in the Balkans, 1900–1940’ (PhD diss., Birkbeck, University of London, 2022), 94–131.
9 This includes religious and non-religious, cultural and educational. See for example: Richard Middleton-Kaplan, ‘The Myth of Jewish Passivity’, in Jewish Resistance against the Nazis, ed. Patrick Henry (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 2014): 3–26; James M. Glass, Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust: Moral Uses of Violence and Will (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); but also Primo Levi, If This Is a Man (New York: Touchstone, 1968).
10 See for example: Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy (New York: Collins, 1986).
11 Renée Poznanski, ‘Rescue of the Jews and the Resistance in France: From History to Historiography’, French Politics, Culture & Society (Summer 2012): 15–18, 27.
12 Jeff Burzlaff, ‘Silence and Small Gestures: Jews and Non-Jews in the Netherlands’, Contemporary European History 32 (2023): 401–15.
13 Finkel, Ordinary Jews, 160.
14 Shmuel Krakowski, The War of the Doomed: Jewish Armed Resistance in Poland, 1942–1944 (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1984): 3–5.
15 Renée Poznanski, ‘Rescue of the Jews and the Resistance in France: From History to Historiography’, French Politics, Culture & Society Vol. 30, No. 2 (Summer 2012): 8–32.
16 Ariella Lang, ‘Resistance and Italian Jews in Wartime Italy’, in Jewish Resistance against the Nazis, ed. Patrick Henry (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), 138–60.
17 Steven Bowman, Jewish Resistance in Wartime Greece (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2006).
18 Finkel, Ordinary Jews.
19 Rachel L. Einwohner, Hope and Honor: Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022).
20 Jozo Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945 (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 61–63; Dragovan Šepic, ‘Talijanska okupaciona politika u Dalmaciji (1941–1943)’, Putovi revolucije 1–2 (1963): 215; Davide Rodogno, Il nuovo ordine Mediterraneo. Le politiche di occupazione dell’Italia fascista in Europa 1940–1945 (Torino: Borlatti Boringhieri, 2014), 76, 80–2.
21 Stevan K. Pavlovich, Hitler’s New Disorder: The Second World War in Yugoslavia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 187–8.
22 Romano, Jevreji Jugoslavije, 282.
23 Letter from Viktor Hajon to the Union of Jewish Communities, Belgrade (Savez jevrejskih opština, Beograd), Jevrejski istorijski muzej, Fond Holokaust, k 19-f.6-1/3674 (4 March 1955).
24 Kerenji, ‘Your Salvation’, 63–73. Kerenji relies on Elvira Kohn’s diary from the camp on Rab: Diary of Elvira Kohn, RG 61.019 M, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives, Washington, DC. Imre Rochlitz also dedicated space in his memoir to describing the reluctance and discomfort of his experience in the National Liberation Movement: Imre Rochlitz, Accident of Fate. Personal Account, 1938–1948 (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2011).
25 Kerenji, ‘Your Salvation’, 57.
26 Information about the Rab battalion, JIM, Fond Holokaust, k19, f. 6–1.
27 The oral testimonies come from the video archives USC Shoah Foundation (VHA), United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) and Video Archives (HVT).
28 Mi smo preživeli… Jevreji o Holokaustu I–V, ed. Aleksandar Gaon et all (Belgrade: Jevrejski istorijski muzej/Savez jevrejskih opština Srbije, 2007–2011).
29 Jovan Byford, ‘Remembering Jasenovac: Survivor Testimonies and the Cultural Dimension of Bearing Witness’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 28, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 58. This is also in line with Annette Wieviorka’s work: Annette Wieviorka, The Era of the Witness (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006).
30 Emil Kerenji, ‘Jewish Citizens of Socialist Yugoslavia: Politics of Jewish Identity in a Socialist State’ (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2008), 179–85; Jelena Subotić, Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019): 52–61.
31 Jaša Almuli (1918–2013) was a journalist and president of the Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia 1989–92. He became a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in 1938 and participated in the NOP during the Second World War in Dalmatia. He conducted interviews with survivors from the territories of the Yugoslav kingdom for the USHMM and the Fortunoff Archive. Byford and other scholars have recently debated to what extent he was an apologist for the Serbian side during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s: Byford, ‘Remembering Jasenovac’, 68–72.
32 Kerenji, ‘Jewish Citizens of Socialist Yugoslavia’; Subotić, Yellow Star, Red Star, 58–63.
33 Subotić, Yellow Star, Red Star, 55.
34 Salamon Pinto’s report on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Rab battalion: Jevrejski istorijski muzej (JIM), Fond Holokaust, k 19, f. 6-1, 3672 (n.d.). The Jewish community in Sarajevo reports on the letter Pinto wrote to the Jewish community in Belgrade on 7 March 1970 about his wartime experiences; however Salamon Pinto died in Sarajevo on 7 March 1969.
35 It seems that instead of this idea, Jaša Romano published an elaborated article on the Jewish camp and organisation of resistance in Kampor in anticipation of the thirtieth anniversary in 1973: Romano, ‘Jevreji u logoru na Rabu i njihovo uključivanje u Narodnooslobodilački rat’.
36 Report from the meeting of members of the Jewish battalion on Rab, Zagreb, 14 June 1968, Jevrejski istorijski muzej (JIM), Fond Holokaust, k 19, f, 6-1, reg. br 3673.
37 Duško Kečkemet, ‘Židovski sabirni logori na području pod talijanskom upravom’, in Antisemitizam, Holokaust, Antifašizam, ed. Ognjen Kraus (Zagreb: Židovska općina Zagreb, 1996), 120.
38 Duško Kečkemet, Židovi u povijesti Splita (Split: Slobodna Dalmacija,1971), 167.
39 On the importance of Serbo-Croatian for Jewish political culture in Yugoslavia: Željka Oparnica, ‘Serbo-Croatian as a Language of Sephardi Literature: The Cases of Isak Samokovlija and Jacques Confino’, European Journal of Jewish Studies 17 (2023): 38–60; Željka Oparnica, ‘Judeo-Spanish Pasts and Futures: The Question of Language in Sarajevo Sephardi Political Thought between 1900–1930’, in Minor Perspectives on Modernity beyond Europe: An Encounter between Jewish Studies and Postcolonial Thought, ed. Yael Attia, Jonathan Hirsch and Kathleen Samson (Berlin: Nomos, 2023), 29–52.
40 On Sarajevo, Zagreb and Belgrade: Harriet Friedenreich, Jews of Yugoslavia: A Quest for Community (Skokie: Varda Press, 1979). On Zagreb: Ognjen Kraus, ed., Dva stoljeća povijesti i culture Židova u Zagrebu (Zagreb: Židovska općina Zagreb, 1998).
41 On the beginnings of Zionism in the Balkans: Oparnica, ‘Sephardi Politics in the Balkans’; Kerenji, ‘Jewish Citizens of Socialist Yugoslavia’, 47–95. Ljiljana Dobrovšak, ‘Prva konferencija Zemaljskog udruženja cionista južnoslavenskih krajeva Austrougarske monarhije u Brodu na Savi 1909. godine’, Slavnonski Brod: Hrvatski institut za povijest - Podružnica za povijest Slavonije, Srijema i Baranje (2006): 234–66.
42 Ela V. VHA 37,877.
43 Bar Giora, društvo Židova visokoškolaca iz jugoslavenskih zemalja; in German, Bar Giora, Vereinigung jüdischer Hochschüler aus den südslavischen Länder.
44 Oparnica, ‘Sephardi Politics’, 84–7.
45 Marija Vulesica, ‘An Ambivalent Relationship: The Yugoslav Zionists and Their Perception of “Germanness,” Germany, and the German Jews at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century’, in Jews and Germans in Eastern Europe, ed. Tobias Grill (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), 176–98; Ljiljana Dobrovšak, ‘Prvi cionistički kongres u Osijeku 1904. godine’, Časopis za suvremenu povijest 37 (2005): 489; Oparnica, ‘Sephardi Politics’, 86–7.
46 In 1917, just after the publication of the Balfour Declaration, the Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Milenko Vesnić, expressed the sympathy of the Serbian state for the Jewish state in a letter that was sent directly to Serbian consul in Washington DC, David Albala, and then published in newspapers; Lebl Albala, Vidov život. Biorgrafija Dr Davida Albale (Belgrade: Čigoja štampa, 2008), 88; original kept in the Central Archive for the History of Jewish People, Jerusalem, after David Albala’s gift in 1935. On antisemitism in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia: Milan Koljanin, Jevreji i antisemitizam u Kraljevini Jugoslaviji. 1918–1941 (Belgrade: Institut za savremenu istoriju, 2008); Lovro Kralj, ‘Paving the Road to the Holocaust, Antisemitism in the Ustaša Movement, 1930–1945’ (PhD diss., Central European University, 2023).
47 Report on Zionist Organisations and their Tendencies, Hrvatski državni arhiv (HDA), 145, k 20, 42/36 (24 Sept. 1935).
48 Yaacov Shavit, Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Movement, 1925–1948 (London: Frank Cass & Co, 2013). On Betar’s ideological influences on Polish Jews in the eve of the Second World War: Daniel Kupfert Heller, Jabotinsky’s Children: Polish Jews and the Rise of Right-Wing Zionism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019).
49 Geza B. HVT 2878.
50 On Zionist Organisations and Their Tendencies.
51 Samuel D. Kassow, ‘The Left Poalei Tsiyon in Interwar Poland’, in The Emergence of Modern Jewish Politics: Bundism and ZIonism and Eastern Europe, ed. Zvi Gittelman (Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, 2003), 71–84; David Cesarani, The Jews and the Left (London: Labour Friends of Israel, 2004), 50.
52 Oparnica, ‘Sephardi Politics’, 194; Jakir Eventov, ‘Omladina iz 1918’, Jevrejski Almanah (1955–6), 103.
53 Wolfgang Maderthamer and Lisa Silverman, ‘“Weiner Kreise”: Jewishness, Culture, and Politics in Interwar Vienna’, in Interwar Vienna: Culture between Tradition and Modernity, ed. Deborah Holmes and Lisa Silverman (New York: Camden House, 2009), 71.
54 Eventov, ‘Omladina iz 1918’, 103.
55 Elkana Margalit, ‘Social and Intellectual Origins of the Hashomer Hatzair Youth movement, 1913–1920’, Journal of Contemporary History 4 (1969): 25–46.
56 Andreja Preger, ‘Jevrejska omladinska društva u Jugoslaviji od 1926. do 1941’, in Jevrejska omladinska društva na tlu Jugoslavije, 1919–1941, ed. Milica Mihajlović (Belgrade: Jevrejski istorijski muzej, 1995), 17–25 (24).
57 Hašomer Hacair (Zagreb: Biblioteka ‘Hanoar’, 1932). 3.
58 Anica D. HTV 3580, 1996.
59 Anica D. HTV 3580, 1996.
60 Anica D. HTV 3580, 1996.
61 Hašomer Hacair, 54.
62 Hašomer Hacair, 53.
63 Armando Moreno, ‘Jevrejska omladina Beograda u NOB’, Jevrejski almanah (1964), 105, fn1 (added by the editors of the volume).
64 Salamon R. HTV 3587, 1996.
65 ‘Matatja’, Jevrejski Život 133 (12 Tebet 5687/17 Dec. 1926), 2.
66 Oparnica, ‘Sephardi Politics’.
67 Moni Finci, ‘O radu u Matatji’, in Sarajevo u revoluciji I, ed. Nissim Albahari et al. (Sarajevo: Istorijski arhiv Sarajevo, 1986), 565.
68 Combined with a high natural increase in the population of the Kingdom SCS at large (especially in Bosnia-Herzegovina and southern parts of the country), this resulted in unemployment rates as high as 60 per cent by some estimates; Jelena Rafailović, ‘Economic Structure of the Population in the Kingdom of SCS’, Tokovi istorije 3 (2019), 79–104.
69 Moni Finci, ‘Jedna burna priredba Matatje’, Jevrejski almanah (1954): 97–102.
70 Finci, ‘O radu u Matatji’, 565.
71 Romano, Jevreji Jugoslavije, 42.
72 Friedenreich, The Jews of Yugoslavia, 168.
73 Anica D. HTV 3580, 1996.
74 We know that at the beginning of 1932, after significant purges, the party numbered 300–500 members. In 1933 it already had 1,400. Ivan Jelić, Komunisitčka partija Hrvatske, 1937–1945, vol. I (Zagreb: Globus, 1981), 29.
75 For Jews in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in the inter-war period see: Romano, Jevreji Jugoslavije, 19–54.
76 Kerenji, ‘Your Salvation’.
77 ‘Instruction of the Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Croatia for Dalmatia from August 1941’, in Zbornik dokumenata i podatka o narodnooslobodilačkom ratu Naroda Jugoslavije vol. 5/30 (Belgrade: Vojnoistorijski institut, 1963), 15.
78 Kerenji, ‘Your Salvation’, 60–6.
79 Miroljub Vasić, Revolucionarni omladinski pokret u Jugoslaviji, 1929–1941 (Belgrade: Narodna knjiga/Institut za savremenu istoriju, 1977), 118.
80 Vasić, Revolucionarni omladinski pokret, 595.
81 Sida S. HTV 3589, 1996.
82 Kečkemet, Židovi u povijesti Splita, 184–5.
83 Josif P. HTV 3760, 1997.
84 A selection of works on the Ustaša movement, their racist policies and destruction of Jewish communities in the Independent State of Croatia: Bogdan Krizman, Ante Pavelić i Ustaše (Zagreb: Globus, 1978); Bogdan Krizman , Ustaše i Treći rajh (Zagreb: Globus, 1983); Pavlovich, Hitler’s New Disorder, 22–48; Rory Yeomans, Visions of Annihilation: The Ustasha Regime and the Cultural Politics of Fascism, 1941–1945 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014); Ivo Goldstein, The Holocaust in Croatia (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2016); Goran Miljan, ‘From Obscure Beginnings to State “Resurrection”: Ideas and Practives of the Ustaša Organisation’, in Fascism 5 (2016): 3–25; Milan Koljanin, ed., Ustaška zverstva. Zbornik dokumenata (1941–1942) (Novi Sad: Arhiv Vojvodine/Eparhija Bačka, 2020).
85 Salamon Pinto’s report.
86 Josip P. VHA 43, 068.
87 Aleksandar L. HTV 2203, 1991.
88 Carlo Spartaco Capogreco, I campi di duce. L’internamento civile nell’Italia fascista (1940–1943) (Milan: Guilio Einaudi editore, 2019), 13.
89 Ustaša changed the citizenship law in order to limit it to Aryans and forbade participation in social and cultural organisations for non-Aryans, at first disposing of and finally nationalising Jewish and Serbian businesses and properties; Tomasevich, War and Revolution, 383–6. Nazi occupiers and Serbian collaborationists proscribed registration of Jews. As early as May, Jews were rounded up and sent to the Danica camp and later that summer they were deported, together with many Serbs, Roma and communists to the concentration and death camp Jasenovac in NDH.
90 Rodogno, ‘Italiani brava gente?’, 219.
91 On the relationship of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia with Jewish refugees: Olivera Milosavljević, Savremenici fašizma. Percepcija fašizma u beogradskoj javnosti, 1933–1941 (Belgrade: Helsinški odbor za ljudska prava, 2010), 241–80; Milan Ristović, Jugoslovenski Jevreji u bekstvu od Holokausta (1941–1945) (Belgrade: Čigoja štampa, 2016), 23–55. On Jewish migrations in NDH: Marica Karakaš-Obradov, ‘Prisilne migracije židovskog stanovništva na području Nezavisne Države Hrvatske’, Croatica Cristiana Periodica (2013): 153–78. Anna Maria Gruenfelder, Von der Shoah eingeholt. Ausländische jüdische Flüchtlinge im ehemaligen Jugoslawien (1938–1945) (Vienna: Böhlau, 2013), also available in Croatian as Sustigla ih Šoa. Strani Židovi izbjeglice u Jugoslaviji (1933–1945) (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2018); Anna Maria Gruenfelder, ‘Nepoželjni gosti. Židovske izbjeglice u Jugoslaviji (1941–1945)’, Zbornik Jevrejskog Istorijskog muzeja Beograd 10 (2015): 303–62.
92 Bernard Stulli, Židovi u Dubrovniku (Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, 1989), 80–1. E. Tolentino mentions 700 refugees in the first days of the war: Emilio Tolentino, ‘Fašistička okupacija Dubrovnika 1941–1945 i riješavanja “Jevrejskog pitanja”’, Studije i građa o Jevrejima Dubrovnika: Jevrejske studije 1 (Beograd: Jevrejski historijski muzej, 1971), 201.
93 Cipriani wrote that on the eve of Italian 1938 racist laws, there were only forty-six Jews in Zara; Carlo Cetteo Cipriani, ‘Squardo sugli Ebrei in Dalmazia dal 1938 e il lavoro coatto 1941–1943’, Atti e Memorie della Società Dalmata di Storia Patria n. 8, 3 (Vol. XLI), 73 (71–81).
94 Bojan Aleksov, Jewish Refugees in the Balkans, 1933–1945 (London/Leiden: Brill, 2023), 188–90. Aleksov describes in detail the ways to get past the border with ID documents in the name of real people from Dalmatia, wearing traditional Muslim clothing and using different levels of bribe.
95 Stulli, Židovi u Dubrovniku, 81.
96 Državni zavod za statistiku republike Hrvatske, Naselja i stanovništvo republike Hrvatske 1857–2001, last accessed 4 April 2023, https://web.dzs.hr/Hrv/DBHomepages/Naselja%20i%20stanovnistvo%20Republike%20Hrvatske/Naselja%20i%20stanovnistvo%20Republike%20Hrvatske.html. According to the population census of 1931, Split had around 40,000 inhabitants.
97 Kečkemet, Židovi u povijesti Splita, 120. Most authors agree that there were around 5,000 Jewish refugees in total in Italian Dalmatia; Karakaš-Obradov, ‘Prisilne migracije’.
98 Letter of the Jewish community of Split directed to Italian Committee for Assistance of Immigrant, Državni arhiv u Splitu (HR–DAST), K – 3/ III (1 May 1928).
99 Abigail Green, ‘New Networks, New Connections: The Emergence of the Jewish International’, in Religions Internationals in the Modern World: Globalization and Faith Communities since 1750, ed. Abigail Green and Vincent Viane (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 53–81.
100 Kečkemet, Židovi u povijesti Splita, 174.
101 Aleksov, Jewish Refugees, 212.
102 This was the case of children saved from Dalmatian coast by their transport and refugees at the Villa Emma, in Nonantola in the province of Modena; Klaus Voight, Villa Emma: Jüdische Kinder auf fer Flucht, 1940–1945 (Berlin: Metropol, 2016); Klaus Voigt, ‘The Children of Villa Emma at Nonantola’, in Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922–1945, ed. Joshua Zimmerman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 182–96.
103 Josip P. VHA 43,068.
104 Renée Poznanski, ‘Reflections on Jewish Resistance and Jewish Resistance in France’, Jewish Social Studies 2, no. 1 (1995): 141–5.
105 Josip P. VHA 43,068.
106 Josip P. VHA 43,068.
107 Anka Berus, ‘Split u socijalističkoj revoluciji’, in Split u Narodnooslobodilačkoj borbi 1941–1945, ed. Miroslav Ćurin (Split: Institut za historiju radničkog pokreta Dalmacije, 1981), 13.
108 Josip P. VHA 48,867.
109 On lack of contact between the party centre in Zagreb and Dalmatia in 1934: Jelić, Komunisitčka partija Hrvatske, 61–4. On the independence of unions working under the Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in Dalmatia in 1938: Jelić, Komunisitčka partija Hrvatske, 141–5.
110 This was only 100 members fewer than the entirety of continental Croatia. Berus, ‘Split u socijalističkoj revoluciji’, 13. Jelić, Komunistička partija Hrvatske, 58.
111 Sibe Kvesić, Dalmacija u narodnooslobodilačkoj borbi (Split: Institut za historiju radničkog pokreta Dalmacije, 1979), 7–49; 27–32.
112 In the early summer and autumn of 1943, Split was one of the crucial spots of the revolt, alongside Belgrade, Zagreb and Karlovac. Ivo Goldstein and Slavko Goldstein, Tito (Novi Sad: Akademska knjiga, 2018), 203, 207.
113 Miljan Paško, ‘O radu partijske i SKOJ-evske organizacije na sakupljanju, uskladištenju i održavanju oružja i municije na širem području Splita u proleće 1941. godine’, in Split u narodnooslobodilačkoj borbi i socijalističkoj revoluciji, 1941–1945, ed. Fabijan Trgo et al. (Split: Institut za historiju radničkog pokreta Dalmacije, 1981), 101–29; Tonći Šitin, ‘O razvitku omladinskog revolucionarnog pokreta u Splitu, 1941–1942’, in Split u narodnooslobodilačkoj borbi i socijalističkoj revoluciji, 1941–1945, ed. Fabijan Trgo et al. (Split: Institut za historiju radničkog pokreta Dalmacije, 1981), 377–406.
114 Cadik Danon, ‘Životni put jednog rabina’, in Mi smo preživeli IV (Belgrade: Jevrejski historijski muzej Beograd), 18.
115 Danon, ‘Životni put’, 18. Sara S. mentions her two cousins Rea A. and Rena A. who were in Hashomer Hatzair and joined the movement. The latter was shot by the Italians in Montenegro.
116 Romano, Jevreji Jugoslavije, 270–1.
117 HR–DAST 438, Pokrajinski komitet za Dalmaciju, k. 24, Report of the Regional Committee for Dalmatia, n.d. Drago Gizdić, Dalmacija 1941. godine (Split: Institut za historiju radničkog pokreta Dalmacije, 1972), 447.
118 Sara S. HVT 3589
119 Josip P. VHA 43,068. Similar actions were splashing bottles of red ink over stencilled drawings of Mussolini or putting up the Yugoslav flag on the cathedral spire; Aleksov, Jewish Refugees, 201.
120 Romano, Jevreji Jugoslavije, 263i; Mate Bilobrk, ‘Iz rada partijske organizacije Splita 1941. godine’, in Ustanak naroda Jugoslavije IV, ed. Petar Brajović et al. (Belgrade: Vojnoizdavački zavod ‘Vojno delo’, 1964), 158.
121 Danon, ‘Životni put’, 24.
122 Danon, ‘Životni put’, 25.
123 Mussolini held the Yugoslavs as primitive tribes undeserving of a nation-state; see more in: James Burgwych, Empire on the Adriatic. Mussolini’s Conquest of Yugoslavia, 1941–1943 (New York: Enigma Books, 2005), 21–2.
124 Steinberg, All or Nothing, 34–5.
125 Amedeo Osti Guerrazzi, The Italian Army in Slovenia: Strategies of Antipartisan Repression, 1941–1943 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 25–6. Osti Guerrazzi details the communist leadership of the Oslobodilna Fronta in Slovenia, which did not prevent individuals and groups with different ideologies from joining the resistance.
126 Narcisa Lengel-Krizman, ‘Koncentracioni logori talijanskog okupatora u Dalmaciji i Hrvatskom primorju (1941–1943)’, Povijesni prilozi 2, no. 1 (1983): 248.
127 Danon, ‘Život jednog rabina’, 26.
128 Duško Kečkemet, ‘Židovski sabirni logori na području pod talijanskom upravom’, 120.
129 Aleksov, Jewish Refugees, 202.
130 This was a method used in the entire Italian empire: removing foreign but also sometimes local Jews from the area of enforced italicisation or for reasons of war or shortage of living goods; Sarfatti, I confini di una persecuzione, 89.
131 Furthermore, camps also existed on the islands of Brač, Hvar and Korčula, of which only Korčula was under direct Italian control (in the so-called Zone I), while Brač and Hvar were under official NDH occupation and military rule while Italians held civil rule.
132 Marko Šprung on the camp on Rab, JIM, Fond Holokaust, k 19, f. 6–1, br. 3678 (12 Aug. 1968).
133 It is difficult to say precisely how many members of the school were on the island at the moment the war started in 1941. According to post-war lists of the Jewish communities in Yugoslavia between 1941 and 1943, Vela Luka hosted in total 218 internees; JIM, Fond Holokaust, k 74, f 4b-5, reg.br 4559. We know that Hachshara functioned until 1942 at least: HR–DAST 151, 5–III, 19 Jan. 1943. In 1943, the Jewish community in Split registers four recipients as former members of the ‘fishing school’; HR–DAST 151, 6–II, n.d.
134 Bojan Aleksov, ‘Exile on Korčula’, in Jewish Literatures and Cultures, ed. Renate Hansen-Kokoruš and Olaf Terpitz (Vienna: Böhlau, 2020), 298–305.
135 Enriko J., USHMM RG-50.459.0006.
136 Chiara Renzo, Jewish Displaced Persons in Italy: Politics, Rehabilitation, Identity (London: Routledge, 2024), 14.
137 Salamon Pinto’s report; Majer A. HTV 3592, 1996; Anica D. HTV 3580, 1996.
138 For more on the Jewish cafeteria in Vienna: Statuten des Verein jüdischer Hochschüler ‘Mensa academica Judaica’ in Wien (Vienna: Verein jüdischer Hochschüler ‘Mensa academica Judaica’, 1912). On attacks on the Jewish students’ cafeteria in Vienna: Roland Clark, ‘Terror and Antisemitic Student Violence in East–Central Europe, 1919–1923’, in A Transnational History of Right-Wing Terrorism: Political Violence and the Far Right in Eastern and Western Europe since 1900, ed. Johannes Dafinger and Moritz Florin (New York: Routledge, 2022), 77–8.
139 Vojo Rajčević, Studentski pokret na Zagrebačkom sveučilištu 1918–1941 (Zagreb: Mladost, 1959), 138.
140 Majer A. HTV 3592, 1996.
141 Salamon Pinto’s report; Marko Šprung’s report on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Rab battalion, JIM, Fond Holokaust, k 19, f. 6-1, 3678.
142 Enriko J. USHMM RG-50.459.0006; Aleksov, ‘Exile on Korčula’, 298.
143 Jens Hoppe, ‘Curzola Island’, in The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945. Camps and Ghettos under European Regimes Aligned with Nazi Germany. Vol. 3, ed. Geogey P. Megargee (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018) 546–7.
144 Aleksandar Mošić, ‘Jevreji na Korčuli’, Mi smo preživeli... : Jevreji o Holokaustu I, ed. Aleksandar Gaon et all (Belgrade: Jevrejski istorijski muzej Beograd, 2001), 185.
145 Mošić, ‘Jevreji na Korčuli’, 186.
146 Erlih was born in 1915 in Sarajevo. He died in a battle in 1944. “Erlih, Evald (Branko), Židovski biografski leksikon, Accessed June 3, 2025 https://zbl.lzmk.hr/?p=3264.
147 David Kabiljo’s report on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Rab battalion, JIM, Fond Holokaust, k. 19, f. 6–1, 6389 (1 May 1966).
148 Erlih died in Kordun, fighting Ustaša on either 22 or 26 October 1944. Viktor Hajon and David Kabiljo survived the war.
149 By 14 November or, more precisely, when the Yugoslav consulate in the Vatican heard about this camp from the Vatican State Secretary’s office; Karakaš-Obradov, ‘Prisilne migracije’, 158. They had all lived under different conditions; while Jews in Split and Dalmatia mostly lived in confino libero, the camp in Kraljevica is often described as a ‘real camp’. Kečkemet, ‘Židovski sabirni logori’, 124.
150 A severe policy introduced on 7 June 1942. Bastiani and Grazioli enforced a decree stating that all members of a partisan family were considered hostages, forbidding them from leaving their homes under the threat of immediate execution. Frank Verna, ‘Notes on Italian Rule in Dalmatia under Bastianini, 1941–1943’, International History Review 12, no. 3 (Aug. 1990), 538–9; Lengel-Krizman, ‘Koncentracioni logori’.
Rab was the meeting point of Jews and political enemies of the Italian regime, Slovenes and Croatians who were involved with the resistance movement. For them, the camp on Rab was the continuation of Italian repressive policy, the so-called rastrellamento or actions of cleaning the terrain: an unsupported doubt that partisans went through a village was enough to launch a strike against the local population that included destroying houses and barns, looting of the food supplies, cattle, mass shootings and, finally, taking hostages and family members to concentration camps in both the annexed territories and the Italian mainland. None of these punitive measures had much success and by January 1942, it was obvious that the civil administration was not capable of keeping the annexed territories in a state of peace. As a result of this, in mid-January 1942 Mussolini put the military in charge of public order in the Zara, Spalato, Cattaro and Liublana provinces and the territories surrounding the Fiume province. In March 1942, following the infamous circular 3C by General Roatta, which acknowledged the ‘ceaseless war’ on the former Yugoslav territories, mass round ups began of all civilians who were suspects of partisan activity, including unemployed workers, refugees, homeless people, former members of the army, beggars, university students, elementary school teachers, professionals and parish priests and their internment in camps. These camps were notorious for the low standards of hygiene, food deprivation, work and poor healthcare. The camp in Kampor on the island Rab, which also included a sub-camp for Jews, was also infamous for its conditions. More in: Kečkemet, ‘Židovski sabirni logori na području pod talijanskom upravom’, 124; Marina Cattaruza, Italy and Its Eastern Border, 1866–2016 (London: Routledge, 2016), 161; Ivan Kovačić, Kampor 1942–1943. Hrvati, Slovenci i Židovi u koncentracijskom logoru Kamporna otoku Rabu (Rijeka: Adamić, 1998).
151 Carlo Spartaco Capogreco and Jens Hoppe, ‘Arbe (Rab)’, in Encyclopedia Camps and Ghettos: Camps and Ghettos under European Regimes Aligned with Nazi Germany, ed. Geoggrey P. Megargee, vol. III (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018), 541.
152 Kovačić, Kampor, 226.
153 Kovačić, Kampor, 233; Janež Herman, Kampor, koncentracijsko taborišče na Rabu (Ljubljana: ČZDO Komunist/TOZD Komunit, 1968), 11–12.
154 Kovačić, Kampor, 233. Herman, Kampor, 11–12.
155 Salamon Pinto’s report.
156 Kovačić, Kampor, 291.
157 Kerenji, ‘Your Salvation’, 66. Kerenji emphasises the fact that some Jews joined the resistance movement reluctantly.
158 Zdenko Levental, Zločini fašističkih okupatora i njihovih pomagača protiv Jevreja u Jugoslaviji (Belgrade: Savez jevrejskih opština Jugoslavije, 1952), 132.