Abstract
In the month of May in Zagreb 1942, in what was the Nezavisna Država Hrvatska – or the Independent State of Croatia – the NDH regime proudly presented the opening of the antisemitic exhibition “ŽIDOVI” – or “JEWS”. The exhibition, which was to be held in Zagreb at the Art Pavillion by Strossmayers square, aimed to present to its visitors, as the exhibition title explains, the “expansion of Jewry and the destructive work of Jews in Croatia before April 10th, 1941 and the solving of the Jewish question in the NDH”. Great time and effort was put into the antisemitic exhibition which travelled across numerous cities in the NDH’s territory during the spring and summer of 1942. In many ways, the antisemitic exhibition “ŽIDOVI” was the culmination of the NDH’s antisemitic propaganda and efforts to persecute Jews across the NDH territory. Not only was the exhibition a means to spread antisemitic propaganda, and a homage to the establishment of the NDH and “Poglavnik”, or “leader”, Ante Pavelić, who they claimed through the establishment of the NDH had solved the Jewish question in Croatia. The exhibition also served to cement the extermination of the Jews in the NDH by celebrating them as a now long-gone “race”. Much of the exhibition’s contents served to justify the introduction of antisemitic laws by presenting the Jews as a destructive force throughout history not only in Croatia, but all corners of the world. The exhibition “ŽIDOVI” can then be said to be a synthesis, or a condensation, of the Ustasha antisemitism. This thesis will look at how antisemitism was expressed and its functions within the NDH and Ustasha through the creation and contents of the exhibition “ŽIDOVI”.