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This is the story of a father, as seen through the prism of a daughter’s memories of him. The personal story is offset against a greater political context and the destructive impact of nationalism on individuals and their families. It is a tale of survival, resilience and humanity. The book covers the time that the father, Dragan, spent in a World War II concentration camp set up by the separatist Independent State of Croatia, a Nazi-supported puppet state run by Croatian ultra-nationalists. The camp and the atrocities perpetrated there are still highly contentious issues in contemporary Croatia, Serbia and especially in Bosnia and Hercegovina. The absence of reconciliation over the events in the camp was one of the contributing factors in the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the subsequent Balkan wars and the continued instability of the region today. The memoir contains the manuscript left by Dragan, in conversation with his daughter Sibel, the author. It is indeed, a deeply personal learning experience about a part of her father that she never knew.
Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354-1804 provides an over-all picture of the least studied and most obscured part of Balkan history, the Ottoman period. The book begins with the early history of the Ottomans and with their establishment in Europe, describing the basic Muslim and Turkish features of the Ottoman state. The author goes on in subsequent sections to show how these features influenced every aspect of life in the European lands administered directly by the Ottomans (the "core" provinces) and left a permanent mark on states that were vassals of or paid tribute to the empire. Whether dealing with the "core" provinces of Rumelia or with the vassal and tribute-paying states (M...
When Yugoslavia was invaded by Nazi Germany and its allies in April 1941, what followed was as much a Yugoslav civil war as a war of occupation and liberation. Several hundred-thousand Yugoslav civilians were killed by other Yugoslavs in large-scale massacres or concentration camps, and the horrific events left the country ruined and deeply divided. Usable History? examines the way in which the history of Yugoslavia's internal problematic past was presented and used politically and ideologically, and asks how a society can cope with such an "unmasterable" history. How did Yugoslav historians and politicians represent and explain their own history and how did these representations interact with the cultural developments, political demands and societal needs? By investigating political documents, historiography and popular representations of history such as films, songs and literature, the book's author reveals a deeply disturbing narrative of historical (mis)inter-pretation and (mis)use.
The Ustasha camp in Jasenovac is a sensitive historical theme, which still provokes strong political conflicts more than 70 years after the closure of the camp. During the time of the second Yugoslavia, the camp was made into a myth and one of the main levers for disciplining the society of the time. The Communist Party imposed the number of 700,000 victims and an exaggerated view of the alleged crimes and methods of killing inmates. The aim was to present itself as sole guarantor of security, because in the case of its "reigning-in", the fratricidal war would happen again, with Jasenovac as its main symbol. Before 1990, an attempt to point out the absurdity of the 700,000 alleged victims of Jasenovac entailed going to prison or compulsory psychiatric treatment. The documents referenced in this book indicate the need to continue with research of the Jasenovac camp and that in a democratic atmosphere, as far as possible, its realistic historical picture may be reached.
This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.
On antisemitism, see pp. 290-304.