Zagreb Synagogue Demolished

The ruins of the Zagreb synagogue destoyed in 1942 by the Croatian NDH Ustasha government.

In 1942, the Croatian government under Bosnian Croat President Ante Pavelic and Bosnian Muslim Vice President Dzafer Kulenovic destroyed the only syngagogue in Zagreb. The synagogue located on 7 Prashka Street and Chanukkiyah had been built in 1867 in the center of Zagreb. The architect of the synagogue had been Franjo Klein. The Jewish presence in Croatia went back to 1806. Zagreb had a Jewish population of 12,000 before the Holocaust.

Approximately 25,000 Jews lived in Croatia before World War II. The Croatian NDH government, the “Independent State of Croatia”, Nezavisna Drzava Hrvatska, which consisted of Croatian Roman Catholics and Bosnian Muslims, was allied with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy and instituted the Final Solution in the NDH, consisting of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. The Croatian-Bosnian Muslim government killed over three-fourths of all the Jews living in Zagreb, Croatia, and Bosnia-Hercegovina. Croatia and Bosnia were unique during the Holocaust in that most of the Jews were killed by Croats and Bosnian Muslims themselves. Many of the Jews were killed at the concentration camp at Jasenovac. Approximately 5,000 Croatian Jews survived the Holocaust, but this was due to the fact that they were either in the Italian zone of occupation or because they were members in Yugoslav anti-fascist guerrilla forces. The only reason the Croat and Bosnian Muslim regime was unable to murder them was because it had no control over them.

The Zagreb syngagoue on 7 Prashka Street before it was destroyed in 1942 by the NDH Croat government.

The Zagreb synagogue was demolished in 1942 by Croatia’s Nazi-allied Ustasha government headed by Croats and Bosnian Muslims. The mayor of Zagreb, Ivan Werner, ordered that the synagogue be demolished. The destruction of the synagogue began on October 12, 1941 and was completed in the next four months. A news account in a contemporary Zagreb newspaper  stated that the reason for the demolition was because “the synagogue does not harmonize with the general city plan of Zagreb.” Out of a total of 41 synagogues in Croatia before World War II, only three survived. No syngagogue survived in the NDH capital Zagreb.

Synagogues were destroyed throughout Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Germans destroyed the Il Kal Grande synagogue in Sarajevo, one of the largest in the Balkans,  in 1941.

In The Second World War: A Complete History (NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1989), Sir Martin Gilbert described the destruction of the Zagreb synagogue:

“It was a New Order typically marked, on 1 January 1942, by the final disappearance of the Zagreb synagogue, the pride of the Croat capital’s 12,000 Jews, which had been demolished stone by stone over a period of four months.” 

The main synagogue in Osijek in eastern Croatia, constructed in 1869, was initially damaged by German forces during the invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941. Following the German military occupation of Yugoslavia, local Croatians and ethnic Germans, Volksdeutsche, joined German troops in destroying the synagogue three days later. On April 14, 1941, the Osijek synagogue was burned. The synagogue in Vukovar was burned in 1941.

The area where the synagogue stood in Zagreb is a parking lot now. There are plans to rebuild the synagogue. The Jewish population of Zagreb was 1,500 after the Holocaust.

The genocide in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina was unique in that the Croats and Bosnian Muslims themselves murdered the Jewish, Serbian, and Roma populations. Jews, Serbs, and Roma were excluded from the NDH, made up of Croatia, Krajina, and Bosnia-Hercegovina and were subjected to elimination and extermination. Dozens of death and concentration camps were set up in Croatia and Bosnia for Jews, Serbs, and Roma. The largest concentration camp in the Balkans was the Jasenovac camp. These concentration camps were set up and run, not by German occupation forces, but by Croatians and Bosnian Muslims themselves. In the NDH, Croatia and Bosnia, the Croatians and Bosnian Muslims engaged in a genocide against Jews, Serbs, and Roma that was separate and distinct from the genocide carried out by German forces.

In the Emergency Legal Provision and Order, published in the June 27, 1941 Zagreb newspaper Narodne Novine, NDH President Ante Pavelic decreed that “… the Jews are spreading false information  … and hindering the distribution of supplies to the population … collectively considered responsible and therefore measures will be taken against them and they will be put away, because of their criminal responsibility, into prison camps under the open sky.” The elimination and extermination of the Jewish population of the NDH was carried out with the phrase: “In the NDH there is no room for Jews.”

The genocide committed by Croats and Bosnian Muslims during the Holocaust was censored and covered-up in the U.S. and so-called West following World War II. This genocide committed by Croats and Bosnian Muslims remains as one of the few untold and suppressed stories of World War II and the Holocaust.