Jewish soldiers fighting for Axis Nations?

[CameronW]

Now back to the main topic can anyone verify the existence of Jewish soldiers fighting for the NDH. I've understood that in late 1943 the Utase temporarily repealed anti-semitic legislation to help exterminate the Serbs and an estimated 5,000 Jews served in the NDH's armed forces as a way to escape persecution. What were the extant of Jewish combatants in Croatia's army let alone why was this done by the local Government? Were there any special uniforms worn by these soldiers than compared to regular NDH forces?

[kiseli]

On October 9, 1942, Finance Minister Koshak agreed to pay to the German Government 30 reichsmark for each deported Jew —payment by the Croat people to the German people for the German contribution to the "final solution of the Jewish problem" in Croatia. The details of payment were worked out by Kasche and Foreign Minister Lorkovic.
Statistics of deported Croatian Jews are incomplete. Up to the end of 1942 the number was only 4927, but Jews were deported in small batches during 1943 and 1944. In March, 1943, the representative of the Reichsbahn in Zagreb agreed to furnish cars, to be hooked to regularly scheduled trains, for the deportation of about 2000 Jews via Austria to Auschwitz. On the occasion of these deportations another vain attempt was made to induce the Italians to co-operate in their zone. In July, 1943, Inland II Chief Wagner urged Kasche to do his utmost to deport some 800 Jewish women and children who still remained in Croat concentration camps. In September the Italian zone disappeared — not, however, before a large number of the Jews in the area had disappeared too.
In April, 1944, Kasche and the police attache, Obersturmbannfiihrer Helm, sent their final report to Berlin. The Jewish question in Croatia, said Kasche, had been solved, but for three general exceptions: the Jews recognized as honorary Aryans, Jews in mixed marriages, and Mischlinge. Police Attache Helm added that the problem of honorary Aryans was admittedly unsolved; some of them were still holding office.. Nevertheless, he promised to make every effort to secure a "review" of every privileged case. Neither Kasche nor Helm mentioned that many Jews had found refuge among Marshal Tito's partisans, who at that time had already liberated a considerable portion of Yugoslav territory

From: R.Hilberg;"The Destruction of European Jews"

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi CameronW,

That is a contentious proposition given that you offer no sources.

You write, "I've understood......"

Why have you "understood"?

Who "estimated...."?

Where did they do so?

Etc., etc.

Cheers,

Sid.

[CameronW]

Hi CameronW,

That is a contentious proposition given that you offer no sources.

You write, "I've understood......"

Why have you "understood"?

Who "estimated...."?

Where did they do so?

Etc., etc.

Cheers,

Sid.

While I know this isn't the most reliant source, Marcus Tanner's Croatia: "A Nation Forged In War" states "When the Ustaše needed more recruits to help exterminate the Serbs, and the state broke away from Nazi antisemitic policy by promising honorary Aryan citizenship, and thus freedom from persecution, to Jews who were willing to fight for the NDH.[46] As this was the only legal means allowing Jews to escape persecution, a number of Jews joined the NDH's armed forces. This aggravated the German SS, which claimed that the NDH let 5,000 Jews survive via service in the NDH's armed forces." This does appear to be a good factual evaluation of the situation happening at the time though I'm sure there are other more reliable sources out there that have better info.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi CameronW,

You cannot have it both ways. Either Marcus Tanner "isn't the most reliant source" or "This does appear to be a good factual evaluation of the situation.....".

If Tanner gives no source for this information, it must be assumed to have no foundation. Does Tanner give a source? The number [46] appears in the quote. To what does this refer?

Cheers,

Sid.

[4thskorpion]

The quoted text is copy & pasted from Wikipeida page: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independ ... of_Croatia and the [46] is Tanner, 1997, Pp. 149

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi 4thskorpion,

Yes, but what is Tanner's source?

Cheers,

Sid.

[4thskorpion]

Hi 4thskorpion,

Yes, but what is Tanner's source?

Cheers,

Sid.

I don't have Tanner's book "Croatia: "A Nation Forged In War" but this might be the reference via Google book contents search:

Croatia: "A Nation Forged In War" - page 149

See Note no. 20

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi 4thskorpion,

Thanks for your diligence.

I found the relevant passage in Eichmann in Jerusalem on p.184. (You can find it on Google books at http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=yGox ... ia&f=false)

The cited passage in Arendt is rather different from the one apparently derived from it in Tanner. It says that the SS found out that there were still some 1,500 Jews in Croatia and that these largely consisted of highly assimilated and/or wealthy Jews who were often married into the families of senior Ustasha members. Most were presumably not adult males of military age. There is no mention of anything to do with military service by them..

Cheers,

Sid

[4thskorpion]

I agree, there seems to be a level of "author interpretation (or extrapolation)" that is not borne out by examining the original quoted sources given on Wikipedia. Not an unfamiliar issue with such crowd-sourced compilations.

[michael mills]

here's an interesting article about karaites and the war--I don't attest to its veracity, but there are some sources to check as well:

The linked article is highly apologetic and its essential claim, that the Karaites of the Crimea and Poland/Lithuania were in no way Jewish, and entirely separate from the historical Karaites of the Middle East, is historically false.

The fact is that the Karaites of the Russian Empire did practise the same form of Judaism as the original Karaites of the Middle East, ie an antique form of Judaism based solely on the Torah and rejecting the Talmud as a purely human work, not the word of God. They had the same rituals as mainstream Rabbinic Judaism, ie they observed the Sabbath and the various festivals such as Passover etc.

Furthermore, they claimed descent from the Ancient Israelites, in the same way as all Jews do. One distinguishing feature is that they claimed to have emigrated from Judea to the Crimea immediately after the destruction of the First Temple, and therefore not to have lived in Palestine in Roman times, and not to be part of the Diaspora resulting from the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70CE, which is the foundation myth of Rabbinic Jewry.

The foundation myth of the Karaites living in Crimea and other parts of the Russian Empire, that they had settled there many centuries before the putative lifetime of Jesus of Nazareth, was used by them in the late 19th Century to claim exemption from the anti-Jewish legislation brought in by the Russian Imperial Government in the 1880s. The argument used by the Karaite leader, Abraham Firkovich, is that since their ancestors were not living in Roman Judea at the time of the crucifixion of Jesus described in the Christian Gospels, they had not inherited any blood guilt for that deed, unlike the Rabbinic Jews, and hence should not be subject to the same penalties as the latter. That argument was accepted by the Russian Imperial Government, and the Karaites were officially declared to be not members of the Jewish religious community for the purpose of the anti-Jewish legislation.

That is the origin of the notion that the Karaites are not really Jews, but have a different ethnic origin.

The Karaite leader, Abraham Firkovich, perpetrated a lot of forgeries in his attempt to differentiate his Karaite community from the Rabbinic Jews and thereby protect them from persecution. Some of those forgeries consisted of materials linking the Karaites to the Khazars, a Turkic people that had lived in the southern part of what is now Ukraine and had adopted a form of Judaism in about the 8th Century CE, although there is no proof that the religion they adopted was Karaite rather than Rabbinic Judaism. Firkovich also appears to have been the originator of the idea that Jesus and Muhammad had the status of prophets in the religious practices of the Russian Karaites, although that is quite doubtful, and is probably a form of concealment.

Because of their exemption from the anti-Jewish legislation in the Russian Empire, a number of Karaites served as officers in the Russian Army, and after the Revolution many of them became refugees in Germany, along with other anti-Bolshevik Russians. After Hitler came to power in 1933, those Karaite ex-officers petitioned the German Government to be exempted from the anti-Jewish legislation being introduced, on the basis that in Russia they had not been classified as Jews.

In making that petition, they did not use the religious arguments that had gained the Karaites exemption from persecution in the Russian Empire, since they knew that such arguments would cut no ice with the National Socialists. Rather, they used arguments that they knew would be valid in terms of National Socialist racial ideology, namely the claim that they were not racially Jewish, but were descended from Turkic tribes that had adopted a Judaic religion. In making that argument, they used the various forgeries made by Abraham Firkovich in the 19th Century.

Eventually, their claim to be not racially Jewish was accepted by the German Government, and the Karaites were officially declared to be not Jewish for the purposes of the Nuremberg Laws and other anti-Jewish legislation.

It is historically true that some hundreds of Karaites from the Crimea served in the Waffen-SS. What happened is that the German occupiers created a number of Crimean Tatar police units consisting mainly of Muslims but including a few hundred Karaites. Eventually those police units were absorbed into the Waffen-SS, as happened with a lot of the various auxiliary units formed out of Soviet minority groups.

In 1943, Himmler decreed that members of Waffen-SS units belonging to Soviet minority peoples would be permitted to practise their ancestral religions, as a means of keeping their loyalty in the anti-Bolshevik "crusade". As a result, the Crimean Tatars began practising their Muslim rituals, while the Karaites began practising their form of Judaism.

The sight of men in Waffen-SS uniform performing recognisably Jewish rites disturbed SS officers, who complained to Himmler about it. Eventually Himmler ruled that Karaite members of the Waffen-SS could continue to practise their religion, but only in private where it would not offend the anti-Jewish sensibilities of other SS-men.

[tramonte]

There were certainly Jews in the Finnish Army--here's an interesting article on the subject: http://jewishquarterly.org/issuearchive ... icleid=194

And gypsies too. Gypsy man living in my neighbour when i was child was veteran of Continuation War (1941-44).