Testimonies

Nadir Dedić and Fatima Dedić are the only Roma who survived Jasenovac, the second largest extermination camp that had taken many Roma lives.

Testimony of Fatima Dedić is a part of a documentary movie “Mémoires tsiganes, l'autre génocide” (The Other Genocide. The Persecution of Sinti and Roma in Europe 1920–1946) made in France and directed by Henriette Asséo, Idit Bloch and Juliette Jourdan (from 41:12 to 43:44).

Nadir Dedić was arrested in the fall of 1942 as a political prisoner when the World War II stroke Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was falsely accused of setting a fire to the hay as a signal to the liberators. “It was that Gipsy boy who did it”, said Dedić and that statement alone was enough for him to end up in the camp where thousands of Roma were already facing their destiny - to be killed in a barbaric way by Ustasha Croatian fascist regime. Together with his wife Fatima, he spent four and a half terrifying months in Jasenovac concentration camp. Mr. Dedić shared an emotional and extremely touching testimony with the participants of the Barvalipe 3rd Roma Pride Summer School that took place in Kolašin, Montenegro, between 16 and 25 August 2013. "Heroes should be praised and celebrated!", said the participants whilst presenting the Appreciation Award to Mr. Dedić. Nadir Dedić's interview at Jadovno Memorial Site in 2014.

Katica Djurdjevich was born in 1921 in the small Croatian village of Viri into a Lovari Roma family. She grew up in the traditional Lovari way. Katica married very young and quickly had two children. Her husband Milan Shain was a Kalderash Rom, and she moved to Pitomača in northern Croatia to join his family, where she supported the family’s income by fortune-telling – a skill she had picked up from her mother and her grandmother. When the war came to Yugoslavia in 1941, and the Ustaše puppet state of Croatia was set up, Roma were subjected to violence and abuse. The first to be taken away were Katica’s family in Viri. They were deported to Jasenovac concentration camp where they were murdered. Katica’s husband and uncle were selected for forced labour in Germany because of their physical strength. Katica, her two small children and the remaining members of her husband’s family were also rounded up, put on cattle cars and transported to Jasenovac. When they reached the camp after eight days, they were informed that they could go home again. Orders had changed and, as ‘non-nomadic Gypsies’, they would no longer be incarcerated. They were sent back to Pitomača in the same cattle cars, but when they arrived they found their houses looted, broken or burnt down by the Ustaše. The testimony of Katica Djurdjevich

The testimony of Joka Nikolić, survivor, from Šarapovo near Čazma

Oral History of Ivo Herzer who describes a roundup (from which he was released) of Jews by Croatian collaborators in 1941 and transportation to the concentration camps on the island of Pag and Rab [Interview taken in 1989]