Emil Kjerte

Junior Fellow (10/2022 – 07/2023)

Ustaša Killing Specialists: The Personnel of the Jasenovac Concentration Camp Complex

The dissertation focuses on those men and women who served as guards in the concentration and death camp Jasenovac, the epicentre of state-organised extermination in the fascist Independent State of Croatia. Drawing on records from post-war trials in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and testimonies of survivors, the social backgrounds and motivation of the guards for their voluntary service will be explored. The broad spectrum of violent acts committed by the guards will be analysed.

Drawing on theories on the microdynamics of violence and insights from the historiography of Holocaust perpetrators, the connections between the use of violence and group-internal relationships within the guards will be examined. The focus is on the interplay between violence and identity formation. In addition, the violence against the civilian population in the vicinity of the camp will be analysed and the careers of the Jasenovac perpetrators in the post-war period will be examined.

Emil Kjerte, PhD student at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. B.A. in History at the University of Copenhagen and M.A. in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Uppsala University. Fellowships from the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah in Paris and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

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