Страдање и спасавање Јевреја у Чачку и околини 1941–1944. године

English title: Suffering and Rescue of Jews in Čačak and Its Surroundings, 1941–1944

The article “Suffering and Rescue of Jews in Čačak and Its Surroundings, 1941–1944” analyzes the fate of Jews in Čačak and the wider Čačak region during the Second World War. It starts from the broader framework of the Holocaust in occupied Serbia, but focuses on local mechanisms of persecution and on the concrete destinies of people who were registered, marked, arrested, hidden, killed, or rescued.

The article shows that German occupation authorities had the decisive role in the destruction of Jews, while domestic collaborationist structures participated in administrative and propagandistic support for persecution. At the same time, the local population was not a uniform mass of passive bystanders. The article analyzes cases of assistance, hiding, and rescue, including ordinary people, rescuing families, certain members and structures of the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland under General Mihailović, as well as Partisans.

The article is particularly important because it accepts neither an idealized image of Serbian-Jewish relations, nor propagandistic representations of collective guilt in Serbian society, nor the simplified view that Jews were helped exclusively by Partisans. It shows a more complex reality: rescue depended on local circumstances, personal decisions, family ties, resistance movements, and individuals willing to risk their lives, regardless of whether they later received recognition as Righteous Among the Nations or remained outside official registers.

In this way, the local history of the Holocaust in Čačak becomes a field in which the real mechanisms of occupation violence can be seen, as well as the moral weight of individual decisions. The article contributes to the historiography of the Holocaust in Serbia precisely because it brings “great history” down to the level of concrete people, addresses, families, lists, and actions.