Jelica S. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3752) interviewed by Jaša Almuli

Videotape testimony of Jelica S., who was born in Zagreb in 1916 to an assimilated family. She recalls her father's death; her sister's chronic illness; attending gymnasium; marriage to a non-Jewish Serb in 1936; attending university in Belgrade; her husband preventing her from registering as a Jew; returning to Zagreb; Jewish persecution by the Ustaša government; having to register as a Jew and wear the star; traveling to Belgrade using a government document; her husband sending her to relatives in Subjel; wonderful treatment by his family and local peasants (they all knew she was Jewish); Chetnik collaboration with the Germans; arrest and interrogation (she averted torture by an antisemitic commander because he had left earlier); assistance from one officer who believed that she was not a partisan; returning to Subjel; escaping because she knew arrest was imminent; living in Belgrade as the registered Jewish wife of a Serb (there were almost no Jews left there); divorce in 1946; and remarriage years later. Ms. S. discusses never feeling Jewish until being persecuted; her brother's, sister's, and mother's experiences; and believing the dissolution of Yugoslavia is a tragedy.