2024/05/26 by Nikolina Židek · 2 voices
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Argentine historical studies #Borges, Kipling, and Jewish Identity #Translation Studies and Practices
paper · doi:10.1080/0031322x.2024.2412912
openalex publication_date 2024/05/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/13
After their defeat in the Second World War, thousands of Croats—including civilians, soldiers and the leadership of the Nazi-aligned Independent State of Croatia (NDH)—fled Croatia and established new communities throughout the western world. Argentina was one of the main destinations to which the NDH/Ustaša political and military leadership escaped. From 1945 to 1990, they preserved their narrative on the NDH as a fulfilment of a 1000-year-old yearning for Croatia’s independence, as they pushed for the destruction of socialist Yugoslavia and the recreation of an independent Croatian state. Due to the Cold War context and local anti-Communist alliances, they managed to reconfigure themselves as anti-Communists and victims of Communism in Yugoslavia, and, eventually, as democrats. This paper by Židek historicizes the tools of the intergenerational transmission of memory and political ideas among the post-Second World War Croatian diaspora in Argentina. It is based on extensive archival research from fifteen archives in three countries (Croatia, Serbia and Argentina), as well as semi-structured interviews and oral testimonies across generations of the Croatian diaspora in Argentina. What emerges is a monolithic narrative transmitted across generations, with inevitable reorganizations and reinterpretations to fit each generation’s needs. The resulting common denominator is a coherent and stainless victimization narrative devoid of any uncomfortable elements that would potentially unsettle a coherent collective memory and thereby collective identity.