This lecture focuses on several questions regarding the development of the Holocaust on the local level in the Independent State of Croatia. Namely, how were the orders from the top transmitted, adapted and implemented by different officials, administrators, and security agents on the regional and local level? How much autonomy did the local agents have in interpreting and proposing their own “solutions” to the “Jewish question”? What motives were decisive for the variety of actions taken by local officials? What was the role of antisemitism in comparison to other motives, such as economic ones? Moreover, how did the violence against Jews impact other persecuted groups, and vice versa?

Lovro Kralj specializes in the fields of fascism, antisemitism, and Holocaust studies with a regional focus on Central and South-Eastern Europe. Kralj earned his PhD at the Central European University in Budapest/Vienna in 2023 with a thesis titled: “Paving the Road to the Holocaust in the NDH: Antisemitism in the Ustaša Movement 1930-1945.” He has participated in and presented at more than twenty international workshops and conferences including Lessons & Legacies. Additionally, he has held multiple fellowships, including the Junior Fellowship at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies. In 2021, he was awarded the Claims Conference University Partnership Lectureship at the University of Rijeka. He is currently the director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Research in Southeast Europe and continues to teach about the Holocaust at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Rijeka.