Biography
Ana Ćirić Pavlović is a political scientist and historian specializing in Jewish Studies. She currently serves as the co-chair of the Serbian branch of the CIDOC Committee for Documentation of the International Council of Museums (CIDOC-ICOM). Her projects in the field of Jewish history and culture have been awarded grants from major international institutions such as the Claims Conference, the European Association for Jewish Studies, the EU Horizon Marie Curie program, and others. She is the recipient of the Gaon Award (awarded by the Moshe David Gaon Center for Ladino Culture at Ben-Gurion University in Israel) for her PhD thesis on Sephardic Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She has authored numerous scholarly papers and book chapters on the Jewish history of the Balkans, digital humanities, memory culture, and the restitution of property looted during World War II.
THE FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN SERBS AND JEWS IN USTASHA PROPAGANDA: Sarajevski Novi List 1941–1945
Abstract: This paper analyses newspaper articles about Serbs and Jews published during World War II in the main Ustasha daily and official gazette for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevski Novi List (renamed Novi List in 1942). Namely, since they were identified as the main enemies that the regime mercilessly persecuted, the quisling Independent State of Croatia (NDH) frequently published propaganda articles targeting these two peoples. As a rule, these articles emphasized the mutual friendship between Serbs and Jews, as well as their alleged complicity against Croats (including both Catholic and Muslim populations of the NDH). Three interconnected leitmotifs dominated the Ustasha propaganda narrative: ideological, racial, and economic. The ideological component accused Serbs and Jews of being both capitalists and communists, holding them responsible for all the misfortunes that had befallen the Croatian people. Classical anti-Semitic stereotypes (such as the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy and the portrayal of Jews as ruthless capitalists exploiting honest citizens) were extended to include Serbs, who were regarded as the most numerous political enemies. Consequently, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the Karađorđević royal dynasty, perceived as symbols of Serbian and Jewish dominance, became frequent targets of attack and ridicule in this Ustasha publication. The racial leitmotif aimed to dehumanize Serbs and Jews, thereby normalizing hatred and violence against them. While the NDH’s racial laws primarily defined Jews and Roma as "non-Aryans," propaganda manipulated various pseudoscientific theories about Serbian origins, attempting to depict them as a non-European, Middle Eastern, nomadic people—thus rendering them unworthy of the "Aryan" identity. Finally, the third dimension, arising from the first two and serving as the practical outcome of the propaganda, was economic. This Ustasha model of retributive justice, justified as the restitution of property allegedly stolen from Croats, in reality, represented a large-scale plundering of Serbian and Jewish property.
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