USTASHAS AND GERMANY REACHED AGREEMENT TO EXPEL 200,000 SERBS

BIJELJINA, JUNE 3 /SRNA/ - Nazi Germany and the Independent State of Croatia /NDH/ reached an agreement on June 4, 1941, to relocate, i.e., deport around 200,000 Serbs to Serbia.

This agreement was part of a broader policy aimed at creating an ethnically pure NDH through forced Catholic conversion, expulsion, and extermination of Serbs, Jews, and Roma. Prior to this, on May 13, 1941, NDH Minister of the Interior Andrija Artuković issued the “Implementing Order on Organization and Operation of the Public Order Directorate,” which efficiently outlawed around two million Serbs and tens of thousands of Jews and Roma. This decree was used as the legal basis for the genocide that followed. Under its provisions, Serbs were persecuted, murdered, forcibly converted to Catholicism, and expelled. The Jasenovac concentration camp was established, people were being killed without trial and thrown into pits.