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.
Ustashe Looting During World War II: A Case Study of Jewish Shops in Sarajevo
Abstract: This paper presents the primary research findings regarding the looting of Jewish property, conducted across five archives and several other institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia, and other countries. In the introductory section, the author outlines the fundamental characteristics of the Jewish community in BiH prior to the Holocaust, including its size, structure, and the previously unexamined business profiles of shops owned by members of this ethnic group. The central part of the presentation addresses the actual process of property seizure and the general historical context in which it occurred. Specifically, members of the Jewish community were subject to daily discrimination, random and planned violence, arbitrary arrests, and increasingly rapid deportations to death camps. Jewish intellectuals and the wealthiest individuals—whose property Ustashe officials sought to acquire quickly—were particularly targeted for torture and were among the first to perish. Furthermore, the paper details the institutional infrastructure that facilitated the management of seized property, the process of selling stolen Jewish shops at auctions, and the participants involved. This is illustrated through case studies and examples of confiscated shops drawn from the wartime archives of Ustashe administrative services. In the concluding section, the author provides an assessment of the value of the seized Jewish property as estimated after the war, as well as the potential contemporary value of that loss. Additionally, the author compares this case with and discusses the possibilities for researching the looting of Serbian property in Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina during World War II.
EN 
SR