Honorary Aryans ― National-Racial Identity and Protected Jews in the Independent State of Croatia

Between 1941 and 1945, in one of the more curious episodes of racial politics during the Second World War, a small number of Jews were granted the rights of Aryan citizens in the Independent State of Croatia by the pro-Nazi Utasha regime. This study seeks to explain how these exemptions from Ustasha racial laws came to be, and in particular how they were justified by the race theory of the time. Author Nevenko Bartulin explores these questions within the broader histories of anti-Semitism, nationalism, and race in Croatia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, tracing Croatian Jews' troubled journey from "Croats of the Mosaic faith" before World War II to their eventual rejection as racial aliens by the Utasha movement.

Nevenko Bartulin has lectured in twentieth century European and World History at the University of Split, Croatia. His main research interests are nationalism, nation-building, racial theories, and National Socialism in Central and Eastern Europe, with a particular emphasis on the Croatian Ustasha regime and the Independent State of Croatia.