ABSTRACT
The Ustasha-ruled Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska—NDH) was proclaimed under Nazi auspices on 10 April 1941, and then recognised as a sovereign entity within the Nazi-fascist “New Order.” Within less than a month, a third of its population (Serbs, Jews and Roma) was stripped of its basic human and civil rights on combined racial, ethnic and confessional grounds. 2 Jews and Roma had little, if any, prospect of survival in the NDH. The Orthodox Serbs, by far the most numerous of these three groups, were in a slightly different position. Demonised and proscribed, they were afflicted by uncertainties regarding the Ustashas’ intentions towards them. Whether, when and how they should expect to be killed, expelled or simply plundered, or whether they had a chance of surviving within the NDH by converting to Roman Catholicism and becoming Croats by assimilation, were open questions, at least up to the spring of 1942. 3 For all the attention it has received from researchers, the Ustasha obsession during 1941 and the early part of 1942, with a “final solution” of the Serbian question in Croatia, continues to throw up a seemingly inexhaustible stream of questions and answers.
