A Hushed Whisper and a Resounding Silence: A Comparative Study of Holocaust Memorialization in Serbia and Croatia

Abstract

This project evaluates how the Holocaust has been memorialized in Serbia and Croatia since the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Memorialization is physically manifested at sites and institutions of public memory, most notably museums, memorials, and monuments. This investigation examines how the Holocaust is either incorporated or ignored in existing narratives of the Second World War in Serbian and Croatian public memory. Though the Holocaust was not memorialized as an event separate from the Second World War in Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito, Jewish victims were remembered alongside other “victims of fascism,” and the Jewish community was permitted to commemorate its victims. How have memorial paradigms changed since collapse of the common Yugoslav state and the loss of the official narrative of the People’s Liberation War? By analyzing the narratives about the Second World War transmitted by new monuments and redesigned museum exhibits, a portrait emerges of the current state of Holocaust memorialization in Serbia and Croatia. This study reveals that memory of the Second World War is very different in these two states, but neither state adequately memorializes the Holocaust. This is due to the political victory of ethnic nationalism following the collapse of the Yugoslav state. In the wartime narratives of Serbian and Croatian nationalists, victims other than those of one’s own ethnic group are of little concern.