Letter from Adolf Renert to the National Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Croatia

Italian forces fully occupied the Italian zone of the Independent State of Croatia in summer 1941 in order to suppress a popular uprising against the Croatian fascist Ustaše regime. In spring 1943, Italian authorities transferred all Jews interned in the Italian-occupied Yugoslav Dalmatia—some 3,000 Yugoslav Jews—to a camp already housing around 6,500 Slovenian prisoners on the island of Rab in the Adriatic Sea.¹

When Italy surrendered to the Allied powers in September 1943, Yugoslav partisan forces began evacuating about 3,000 Jews from the camp on the island of Rab. This took several weeks as partisan vessels shipped Jewish civilians from the island to the north Dalmatian coast. Sometimes this happened under German air bombardment.

Thousands of people walked from the coast to the territory liberated by the partisans in Lika and Kordun.² Jewish families were accommodated in local homes, and many liberated Jews joined the partisans. Many anti-Nazi resistance cells in German-occupied Europe did not welcome Jews, but this was not typical of Yugoslav partisans.³ Members of these forces generally accpeted Jews as equals, and there was no question that they needed to be protected from German and Ustaše forces.

In the fall of 1943, German forces occupied the areas the Italian army had deserted in the northern Adriatic. At Rab, they captured several hundred sick and elderly Jews who had not left the island with the partisans and sent them to their deaths at Auschwitz. The Yugoslav partisan leadership considered evacuating the civilian population to another liberated area in what today is eastern Croatia. The military activity in the region made it unsafe for civilians, but the journey would also be perilous.

In early November, a group of Jewish evacuees—mostly consisting of people who had not joined the partisan combat units—wrote to one of the leaders of the National Anti-Fascist Council of the National Liberation of Croatia (ZAVNOH). Led by a man named Adolf Renert, Jewish evacuees appealed to ZAVNOH not to be evacuated under current conditions. The plan was ultimately abandoned for its dangers, and the overwhelming majority of the Jews liberated from Rab survived the war.

For more about the camp at Rab, see the related Experiencing History items, Diary of Elvira Kohn and Report of the Communist Party Committee in the Jewish Camp at Rab.

For an account of this operation, see Emil Kerenji, "'Your Salvation is the Struggle Against Fascism': Yugoslav Communists and the Rescue of Jews, 1941–1945," Contemporary European History 25:1 (February 2016): 57–74.

For experiences of Jews in Soviet partisan units, see Yitzhak Arad, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union (Lincoln and Jerusalem: University of Nebraska Press and Yad Vashem, 2009).

Otočac, November 8, 1943

To the Regional ZAVNOH
To the attention of Dr. Jambrišak

Otočac

We, the undersigned representatives of Jewish evacuees of group VIII (working group), are addressing ZAVNOH as well as You, comrade doctor, with a plea to help us this time as well.

We would like to present our situation very briefly. There were 102 of us in total; in the meantime some of the people left, some have stayed here, so now there are around 90 persons total. Thirty-eight of those are men, the rest are women and children. Of those males, we have 10 children under the age of 10, 12 elderly men who are actually sick, so 16 men remain. The situation with women is similar. Of the 52 females, there are 7 girls and 15 elderly women and the sick.

As is well known, we spent almost a year in the camp, where, for the majority of us in this group who were not in very good financial standing, living conditions were very difficult, since the diet was very weak, and better food could be procured only with a lot of money. Even those of us who are healthy and able bodied are thus, unfortunately, quite weak, so we are not up to strenuous efforts.

Our bodily condition is mostly determined by our spiritual depression. We have been persecuted and assailed for two and a half years, and each one of us hid and escaped as best as he could. Our best people have been murdered and taken to German and ustaša camps. There is not a single one amongst us who is not mourning at least two of his loved ones, and there are many of us whose entire families have disappeared. We escaped and tried to save ourselves as best as we could. Many of us went to the forest, while others, like a drowning man clinging to a straw, fled for their lives to another zone. Not thinking or reflecting much, saving our bare lives, obsessed with just one thought, to survive through the end, to survive through our victory—we repeat, ours, since we have been convinced that the victory of Yugoslavia, Russia, and the Allies is our victory, that in that moment we will again be human, again be equal.

Since we have had the opportunity to get to know how considerate and understanding You are when it comes to us, we dare to appeal again to Your humanity, and so we beg You: do not send us [across] the cold and the snow[,] we have nowhere to go, do not make us take long, uncertain, and difficult journeys, we [will not be able to make] it, we are ashamed when we see how our comrades are fighting, but we dare tell it to You, because we know we will be met with understanding.

We beg you, save our children, the sick, and the old, this is our testament, we feel obliged to bring them to our homes alive.

We beg you and we appeal to You, allow us to spend the winter here, give us back the feeling that we are humans, we will be grateful until the end of our lives, and will strive, with the meager means at our disposal, to show our gratitude immediately, give us work, we will do whatever, wholeheartedly and happily, and we will be proud that we too, even a little bit, could contribute to the building of our homeland.

Death to Fascism—Freedom to the People! [the communist greeting]

In the name of the VIII group

Group leader Deputy

Adolf Renert [illegible]

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