Ivo was an only child born to a Jewish family in the city of Zagreb. His father worked in an insurance company. Though blatant antisemitism was considered uncommon in Yugoslavia, Jews were barred from government and university positions unless they converted to Christianity.
1933-39: In Zagreb Ivo studied at a public secondary school. The curriculum was fixed and included three languages as well as religion. His school was highly selective but he enjoyed studying and did well. Though he didn't personally encounter overt prejudice in Zagreb, some Croatian fascist groups were fiercely antisemitic and supported the policies of the Nazis. Ivo was 16 when the war began.
1940-44: In 1941 Yugoslavia was invaded by the Axis powers and split into occupation zones. Fearing the Croatian fascists, Ivo's family wanted to escape to the Italian zone. Using the only two Italian words he knew, "Jew" and "fear," Ivo approached some Italian army officers. They understood and sneaked them into the Italian zone. Ivo and his family weren't the only refugees; the Italians were shielding many Jews. Ivo's family was even invited to one of their army concerts. How ironic that Jews were being protected by a German ally.
Italy, defeated in 1943, pulled out of Yugoslavia, and Ivo crossed the Adriatic to southern Italy, recently liberated by the Allies. In 1948 Ivo immigrated to the United States.
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Leon was born to a large, Ladino-speaking, Sephardic-Jewish family. The Frankos lived in a large house in ethnically diverse Bitola, a town located in the southern part of Yugoslav Macedonia, near the Greek border. Leon's father, Yiosef, was a successful fabric merchant. The Frankos' children attended Yugoslav public schools where they learned to speak Serbian.
1933-39: Upon completing his schooling, Leon became a fabric merchant in Bitola. A handsome man from a well-to-do family, Leon was popular. His friends often remarked that he looked like a movie star. His younger brother, Dario, idolized him.
1940-44: In April 1941 the Germans invaded Yugoslavia, and Macedonia was annexed to Bulgaria. The Bulgarians introduced anti-Jewish laws and cooperated with the Germans. Leon and Dario fled to Kastoria, a town in Italian-occupied Greece. There, Leon met and married Rebecca Pissirilo. After Italy surrendered, the Germans deported Kastoria's 700 Jews to Salonika, where they were assembled for deportation to Auschwitz. In Salonika, Leon's wife, who was nine months pregnant, was taken by the International Red Cross to a hospital.
Leon was one of 700 Jews deported by train from Salonika to Auschwitz on April 1, 1944. Both he and his wife perished. Their baby, Esther, was saved by a nurse in the hospital.
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Ilija was born in a village in the Croatian part of Yugoslavia. Like his parents and two brothers, Ilija was baptized in the Serbian Orthodox faith. The Lemajic family lived in a part of Croatia inhabited mostly by Serbs. After Ilija had completed grade school, his family moved to the village of Dubovac. When he was 30, he married a local girl and moved to Novska, where he found work.
1933-39: Ilija has a nice wife and two beautiful young daughters. He is employed in the village of Novska in Croatia as a tax collector for the Yugoslav government. As Serbs in a predominantly Roman Catholic Croat village, Ilija and his family must travel whenever they want to attend a Serbian church. Yugoslavia's King Alexander was murdered in 1934--he was a Serb and many of the local Croats celebrated his death by throwing rocks at the windows of Serb homes.
1940-44: When the Germans invaded Yugoslavia, Croatian fascists came to power in Croatia. The new government told Ilija that he'd have to convert to Roman Catholicism if he wanted to keep his job. Ilija refused and was fired in July 1941. He moved his family to the nearby town of Okucani where he managed to find work. But in Okucani he was arrested, once by the Germans and once by the Croatian fascists. Both of those times he was released. Now he has been arrested yet again by the Croatian fascists. His crime--being a Serb.
Croatian fascists murdered Ilija near Okucani in September 1944. He was 47 years old.
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Francis grew up in a city with a Jewish community of 5,000. The Ofners belonged to a synagogue that sponsored many social activities, from sports to care for the elderly. In 1931 Francis began law school at the University of Zagreb. While a student, he organized a service that posted on university bulletin boards the translations of speeches by Nazi leaders broadcast on the radio.
1933-39: By the time Hitler became chancellor of Germany, Francis was heavily involved in trying to unify the university's Jewish students against the Nazi threat. In 1933 he helped organize the Betar Zionist organization in Yugoslavia. They helped send immigrants illegally to Palestine, trained Jews in self-defense, and cooperated with anti-Nazi Yugoslavs to counter pro-German activities in their country.
1940-45: On March 25, 1941, Yugoslavia allied itself with Germany. Francis participated in preparations for the coup that ousted the pro-German government two days later. But by April 6, Germany and its allies had invaded Yugoslavia and the city Novi Sad, where Francis lived, was occupied by Hungarian forces. He was taken away by the Hungarians for forced labor along with most of the city's Jewish men. This saved him, for while he was gone the Gestapo came to Novi Sad to arrest him because of my anti-German activities.
In 1942 Francis fled from Budapest to Turkey. In Istanbul he was hired by the U.S. Office of War Information as the Balkan Press Liaison Officer. He immigrated to Palestine in 1945.
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Cedomir was the oldest of five children born to Serbian Orthodox parents. The Soraks lived in the multi-ethnic city of Sarajevo, the capital of the region of Bosnia. Cedomir's father, Milan, was an engineer employed by the Yugoslav state railways, and his Hungarian-born mother, Andjelija, was a housewife.
1933-39: The Sorak family moved to Zagreb after Cedomir's father was promoted to the position of assistant director of the rail system in the region of Croatia. He graduated from secondary school in 1938 and enrolled in the University of Zagreb's veterinary school. Cedomir liked the big city and had a Croatian girlfriend.
1940-41: On April 6, 1941, when the Germans invaded Yugoslavia, Cedomir volunteered for the Yugoslav army. Four days later the Germans entered Zagreb. Croatian fascists came to power and began a campaign against Serbs, Jews and Roma (Gypsies). On April 27, as Cedomir was returning home from his girlfriend's house, he was rounded up by the Croatian police and incarcerated in the Petrinjska Street prison. He was sent to Koprivnica, Gospic and Jadovno, Croatian-run concentration camps in the south.
In Jadovno, Cedomir was in a large group of prisoners who were chained together, brought to a deep pit outside the camp, bashed with sledge hammers, and then pushed into the pit.
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Jovanka was one of six children born to Serbian Orthodox parents in a small town in the Bosnian part of Yugoslavia. Her parents were prominent Serbian nationalists. After Jovanka completed middle school in Foca, she moved with her parents in 1912 to the multi-ethnic city of Sarajevo. There she met and married Marko Babunovic in 1916. The couple raised three children.
1933-39: Jovanka was an active member of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Her husband was a prosperous businessman, and she was active in supporting various charities. Her favorite causes were helping needy families in Sarajevo and in her hometown of Foca, and supporting the construction of bell towers for Serbian Orthodox churches in the poor communities of rural Bosnia.
1940-44: The Germans invaded Yugoslavia in 1941. That spring, Jovanka's son, Momir, who was studying in Germany, was arrested as an "enemy alien" and sent to Dachau. After Sarajevo was taken over by Croatian fascists that year, Jovanka's husband was arrested because he was a Serb leader and her other son fled to Serbia. Jovanka remained in Sarajevo with her sister and daughter; they were arrested by Croatian police in 1944. Upon refusing to convert to Roman Catholicism, Jovanka was deported to a Croatian-run concentration camp.
Jovanka died in the Jasenovac concentration camp in late 1944. She was 50 years old.
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Milica was the fourth of nine children born to Serbian Orthodox landowners in the Croatian part of Yugoslavia. In 1922 Milica married Milan Kuhn, a Catholic Serb, in a Serbian Orthodox ceremony, and the couple moved to the Macedonian part of Yugoslavia, where Milan was working on hydroelectric projects. In 1932 the couple returned with their young daughter to live in northern Yugoslavia.
1933-39: The Kuhns lived in the city of Zrenjanin in the Vojvodina region where Milan worked as a hydroengineer responsible for protecting the region from flooding. Milica enjoyed cooking and hosting dinner parties. She also worked at home restoring antique furniture. Her specialties were Louis XVI and Chippendale styles. In 1938 the family moved to the city of Novi Sad.
1940-44: On March 27, 1941, two days after Yugoslavia concluded an alliance treaty with Germany, Serbian army officers overthrew the Yugoslav government. On April 6 Germany invaded Yugoslavia. Four days later, Croatian fascists came to power in Croatia, including in Sremska Mitrovica, where the Kuhns were then living. The new government targeted Serbs, Jews and Roma (Gypsies) as enemies. After anti-Serb laws were enacted, Milica was forcibly converted to Roman Catholicism and made to remarry her husband in a Catholic ceremony.
On February 3, 1942, Milica and her husband were machine-gunned to death together in Srem by Croatian fascists. She was 46 years old.
Item ViewFlory was born into a Sephardic Jewish family. When Flory was a young girl, her mother moved to Zagreb with Flory's stepfather; Flory joined them after living with her grandmother for two years. In Zagreb, Flory took music lessons and learned how to play the accordion. Germany and its allies invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, partitioning the country and establishing a fascist regime under the Ustase (pro-German Croatian nationalists) in Croatia. The Ustasa regime soon imposed anti-Jewish regulations in Zagreb; Flory was no longer allowed to attend school, and Jews were forced to wear a badge identifying them as Jews. Flory's family fled Zagreb, finding refuge in Italian-occupied areas and later in the south of mainland Italy. The Allies invaded Italy in 1943. After the Italian cease-fire in September 1943, Flory got a job with American forces in Bari, in southeastern Italy. In June 1945, after the war, Flory married an American sergeant, Harry Jagoda. They settled in the United States.
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