Putting Jasenovac on the Holocaust Map: An Oath Kept

Despite controversies in recent years with Polish governments, it has long been an educational rite of passage for Israeli youth to visit one of the Nazi death camps on Polish soil. The goal is to remind and inculcate into the next generation of Israel’s citizens important lessons from recent history – about the Holocaust, how and why it happened and what must be done to prevent it from recurring.  

 The hidden Holocaust of the Balkans 

One death camp and perhaps the cruelest; however, remains relatively unknown. It’s not in Poland. And unlike all the other death camps of the war, it was never managed by Nazis. Instead, Jasenovac was a massive camp complex run by the fascist Croat Ustasha in their puppet state of the ironically named Independent State of Croatia. 

Jasenovac was larger and arguably more brutal than Auschwitz. Its system of camps extended over 240 square kilometers, six times larger than Auschwitz, and its guards employed 57 documented ways of killing to dispose of their victims – many of them quite manual. One example of this upfront and personal way of killing displayed at Jasenovac was a device called the Serb-cutter. It was essentially a curved blade used to slit victim’s throats. 

While tens of thousands of Jews and Roma met their deaths in Jasenovac, similar to their ethnic counterparts at other camps in other parts of Europe, as the name “Serb-cutter” implies, the main target of the Ustasha and Jasenovac were in fact ethnic Serbs. This choice of victim may have something to do with the collective amnesia regarding Jasenovac after the war, particularly in Tito’s Communist Yugoslavia, which wished to suppress memories of ethnic tensions and replace it with a sense of “brotherhood and unity.” 

Nevertheless, it does not explain why Jasenovac is not more widely known and taught in Israel and Jewish circles in the Diaspora. However, one small, but significant step towards changing the status quo is being taken by a descendant of Jasenovac victims. 

45-year-old Barak Gabor arranged the translation of ‘Jasenovac: Auschwitz of the Balkans,’ in memory of his great-grandparents Riza and Artur Adler, who died at the camp. (Adi Ehrman)

Enter Barak Gabor. The 45-year-old grandson of a Holocaust survivor and the great-grandson of two victims of Jasenovac, Gabor took it upon himself to organize the Hebrew translation of a massive 900-page volume documenting the atrocities of Jasenovac. The book, titled “Jasenovac: Auschwitz of the Balkans,” was written by Holocaust historian Prof. Gideon Greif and originally published in English and Serbian in 2018. 

 A family’s tragic encounter with Jasenovac 

Gabor’s great-grandparents Artur and Riza Adler lived in the Yugoslav town of Slavonski Brod (located in present-day Croatia) at the outbreak of the war. They were rounded up with their only child, Josipa “Shoshana” Adler and sent to Jasenovac. At some point, Shoshana was separated from her parents and put on a different train headed to Jasenovac, which was subsequently hit by aerial bombardment. She was among 20 children saved from the railcars by Yugoslav partisans.  

A photo of Artur and RIza Adler taken in approximately 1942, before their deportation to Jasenovac. (Courtesy of Barak Gabor)

Shoshana’s parents were not so lucky. Riza died relatively early on in the camp in 1942. Artur, on the other hand, was one of the few camp inmates to survive to the very end. He lived through the uprising and breakthrough of the last 1,000 inmates that spelled the end of the camp, dying several days later on April 27, 1945. Neither Riza nor Artur lived to see the end of the war and the victory over fascism. 

Josipa Adler becomes Shoshana Gabor 

Shoshana, thus orphaned by the war, eventually ended up in an orphanage in Belgrade, where she stayed from 1945 to 1949. In that year, she was allowed to make aliyah to the State of Israel. All told, roughly half of Yugoslav Jews who survived the war ended up moving to Israel in the immediate post-war period.  

Shoshana sailed on the Yugoslav ship “Radnik” from the port of Rijeka towards Haifa. From there she went to Kibbutz Ein Dor, where she lived for a year and met her husband-to-be Yaakov Gabor. The couple married in 1950 and moved to Kibbutz HaYotzrim (now called Kibbutz Shomrat), which was the first kibbutz established after the establishment of the state, out of 63 settlements built in 1948. 

 Shoshana stayed the rest of her life in Kibbutz Shomrat. She worked in the clothing warehouse of the kibbutz. She had two children, Tamar and Hillel, and between them, seven grandchildren – one of whom is Barak. Shoshana passed away at the age of 81 in 2014, three months after her husband, Yaakov. 

Barak’s oath of remembrance 

In 2014, soon after his grandparents passed away, Barak began researching his family history. “Unfortunately, the subject of the Holocaust of the Jews of Croatia and the other populations that passed through Jasenovac, and most notably the Serbian people, hundreds of thousands of whose sons and daughters were murdered in this camp, is not sufficiently, if at all, present in the consciousness of contemporary people,” Barak tells me when I ask him why he focused on the topic of Jasenovac. “The subject of the Jasenovac camp is almost non-existent – not even in the consciousness of educated and learned people.” 

He adds, “I came to the conclusion that I had to embrace the project of translating this book, which is an inseparable part of my family tree – ‘Jasenovac – Auschwitz of the Balkans’.” Barak committed to translating the book as a tribute to the memory of his great-grandparents who died there. 

“After I began studying the subject of the Jasenovac extermination camp, I feel lucky to have been born at all,” says Barak. 

Barak originally considered translating other books. One book he considered translating into Hebrew was Croatian journalist and ex-Jasenovac prisoner Djordje Milisa’s “The Hell Called Jasenovac.” He also thought of translating Israeli Holocaust historian Menahem Shelach’s “The History of the Holocaust – Yugoslavia” from Hebrew into English, something the historian didn’t manage to accomplish before his death in 1995. Shelach was perhaps the pre-eminent researcher of the Holocaust in the Balkans having pioneered the field. 

 Barak first became aware of the book “Jasenovac: Auschwitz of the Balkans” shortly after its publication in 2018. After seeing the book mentioned in some newspaper articles and Prof. Greif interviewed on TV, Barak approached the professor about getting a copy of the book, the Serbian-English edition, for his own family. After reading the book cover to cover, Barak decided that people in Israel should be able to read the book and its history of the atrocities at Jasenovac in their own language. 

“I sincerely hope that this book will raise the awareness of people around the world, and in Israel in particular, regarding the Jasenovac extermination camp, where hundreds of thousands of Serbs, tens of thousands of Jews, and tens of thousands of Roma, & others were murdered.” 

The book cover of the Hebrew-English of ‘Jasenovac: Auschwitz of the Balkans.’ (Courtesy of Knjiga Komerc publishing house)

The book was translated with the help of two Israeli women, Rachel Malina and Osnat Hazan, both with ties to the former Yugoslavia. Malina is an ex-high school teacher born in Banja Luka, which lies in today’s Republika Srpska region of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who served as translator. Meanwhile, Hazan, a native-born Israeli, is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor from Sarajevo, the capital of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, who served as editor of the translated Hebrew edition.  

The book in its Hebrew version will be soon distributed by an Israeli publisher. For the Balkans region, the Belgrade publishing house of Knjiga Komerc, will be responsible for publishing and distributing the book, as they have done for the Serbian-English edition for the better part of a decade. 

Bringing things full-circle in Donja Gradina 

This April 22, on the 80th anniversary of the Jasenovac prisoners’ breakthrough for freedom and in which his great-grandfather Artur participated, Barak Gabor will present the Hebrew-English edition of “Jasenovac: Auschwitz of the Balkans” to Milorad Dodik, President of the Republika Srpska. The ceremony will take place at a conference dedicated to the subject to be held in Donja Gradina, the site of camp VIII of the Jasenovac complex. Later in the week, Barak will present a copy of the book at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Belgrade.  Regarding both, Barak says, ”It is a great honor and privilege for me and constitutes for me a kind of ‘closing of the circle.’” 

He continues, “Suddenly everything happens at once, ‘gathering’ or rather ‘draining’ into one point in time.” 

It would perhaps be most fitting to end with an extended quote from my interview with Barak, in which he reflected his feelings leading up to the event this Tuesday:

The death certificate of Artur Adler, which attests to his death on April 27, 1945. (Courtesy of Barak Gabor)

I have been conducting research on my family’s roots for 10 years. I know where he or she was born, where he or she grew up, what happened to him or to her in the Holocaust, where he or she was murdered. 

It is so deeply moving to [be able to] place flowers at Donja Gradina where most of executions were made. I am a proud descendant of camp inmates of Jasenovac and to be there where it happened, where the heroic breakthrough of Jasenovac occurred, where they fought with their bare hands against Ustasha murderers. In that final breakthrough from Jasenovac and the fight for freedom in which my great-grandfather Artur participated but lived only another five days…I feel so devastated that he and most of the camp inmates from Jasenovac did not live to see May 9th and the victory over fascism.  

This is my first time in Donja Gradina – joy mixed with sadness. Rebirth after destruction.  

I am a person with a lot of hope and optimism for the future, but also cautious about the past – and well aware of what my family and people have been through. I grew up with two grandparents, who were Holocaust survivors – the only ones in their extended families that survived – both arrived in Israel without knowing a word of Hebrew, and without family. They endured endless hardships and were miraculously saved. 

On the one hand, I have a hard time with what they went through, but on the other hand – at last the liberation came – there is an end to the suffering. 

 The feelings are ambivalent, if it can even be defined that way.