Goran Miljan

Short presentation

Goran Miljan is an Associate Professor in History and a researcher at the Uppsala Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Uppsala University. His research interests focus on the comparative history of the European twentieth century, emphasising questions of comparative fascism, Holocaust and genocide, social memory, radicalisation, violence, and legal history with a focus on transfer and cross-national influences in twentieth-century Europe.

Keywords

• legal history
• radicalisation
• fascism
• knowledge production
• holocaust and genocide studies
• holocaust memory culture
• violent extremism
• communism
• social memory

Biography

Goran Miljan is an Associate Professor in History and a researcher at the Hugo Valentin Centre, Uppsala University. He earned his PhD in comparative history from the Department of History at Central European University in Budapest. He was a primary investigator in a major research project, The Unwanted Citizens: The Holocaust and the Aryanization of Jewish Property in Romania and the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), 1940-1945, funded by the Marcus och Amalia Wallenbergs Minnesfond and served as a researcher on the project Segmented Narratives, Conflicting Histories: Social Memory about the Second World War in the Western Balkans, 1989-2018, funded by Vetenskapsrådet.

His research interests focus on the comparative history of the European twentieth century, emphasising questions of comparative fascism, the Holocaust and genocide, social memory, radicalisation, violence, and legal history, with a focus on transfer and cross-national influences in twentieth-century Europe. He is the author of Croatia and the Rise of Fascism: The Youth Movement and the Ustasha During WWII (I.B. Tauris, 2018; and Bloomsbury Academic (paperback), 2019) and a co-author of the book Revolucionari i ubojice. Iz povijest hrvatske nacionalističke emigracije u međuraću (Revolutionaries and Murderers. From the History of the Croatian Nationalist Emigre Circles in the Interwar Period, 2018). His latest publications include two co-authored articles, “The Unwanted Citizens: The ‘Legality’ of Jewish destruction in Croatia and Romania during World War II,” in Comparative Legal History (2023) (with Anders Blomqvist), “Why We Have Become Revolutionaries and Murderers”: Radicalization, Terrorism, and Fascism in the Ustaša–Croatian Revolutionary Organization,” in Terrorism and Political Violence (2022) (with Constantin Iordachi), and a sourcebook chapter “Croats,” in Roland Clark and Tim Grady, eds. European Fascist Movements: A Sourcebook (2023). Miljan was employed as an Assistant Professor in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the Hugo Valentin Centre (2021-2022) and has also gained work experience outside of academia during his internship, where he served as Assistant Project Manager at the Institute for European and Globalisation Studies (2014-2016) and as a co-author of a high school textbook on twentieth-century history published by a Profil Ltd. publishing house (2008-2009).

Research

The Unwanted Citizens: The Holocaust and the Aryanization of Jewish Property in Romania and the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), 1940-1945

Project leader: Goran Miljan

Funding: Stiftelsen Marcus och Amalia Wallenbergs Minnesfond

Research focus: Holocaust Studies

Project start: July 1, 2019

The forced transfer of Jewish property into “Aryan” hands (Aryanization) represented one of the crucial aspects of the process of exclusion of Jews from European societies during the Holocaust. The same process took place in the Axis partner states, Romania and the Independent State of Croatia – NDH during WWII. As active participants in the Holocaust the two regimes engaged in the mass dispossession of Jewish wealth for the purpose of reshaping their societies and changing the perceived internal power structure through the distribution of jobs, businesses and real estate to the “dominant” ethnic community.

This project investigates the policies and practices of Aryanization conducted in Romania and the NDH during WWII. By focusing on antisemitism, legislation, bureaucracy, policy implementation, and gentile and Jewish responses, the project examines the ideological, political, and legal factors that shaped this Aryanization in three major urban areas that hosted the largest Jewish communities: Bucharest, Iaşi, and Czernowitz in Romania, and Zagreb, Osijek, and Varaždin in the NDH. In particular, by showing how the Aryanization of minority property was utilized for the purposes of nation and state building during WWII, the project will provide a comparative perspective on the role of Aryanization in the two above-mentioned Axis countries. This comparative perspective will advance the existing scholarship on the dynamics and mutual influences between fascism, Holocaust and nationalization policies in Central and South Eastern Europe. Drawing on new archival collections, a comparative methodology, and state of the art research on fascism and Aryanization, the project will address not only the strategies employed to seize Jewish property but also the responses of gentiles and Jewish citizens.

The ‘Ideal Nation-State’ for the ‘Ideal New Croat’ – Fascism and Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941-1945

Project leader: Goran Miljan

Funding: The Hugo Valentin Centre

Research focus: Holocaust Studies

Project duration: July 1, 2016-June 30, 2018

This project investigates the role of local actors and communities, more precisely, that of the Ustaša Youth officials and members, in the Holocaust during the Ustaša regime, the Independent State of Croatia, 1941-1945. My research will focus on three major urban areas, cities of Varaždin, Bjelovar, and Karlovac in order to examine how the youth and local community responded to the fact that their neighbours, colleagues, and friends were arrested, expropriated, and deported to concentration camps.

While often disguised in daily newspapers and magazines, the Ustaša rhetoric and propaganda of ‘cleansing’ and regeneration presented itself in full in publications dedicated to the youth, especially those sections which emphasized the future role of the youth as representatives of the ‘new Croat’ – the Ustaša. Therefore, the examination and analysis of the Ustaša ideological setting and its radical implementation presents an unavoidable variable in this project. However, the key aspect of this project will be to connect the ideology with the practical implementation of the Holocaust on a local level in order to investigate how the local youth organizations and its members responded to this. By juxtaposing the discourse presented to the youth and the discourse connected to the imminent need for ‘purification’ and ‘cleansing’, this project will investigate how the Ustaša radical policies were justified and presented to the youth and how the members of the youth organization responded and reacted to the processes of expropriation and deportation.

The Ustaša belief in the imminent need for national rebirth and salvation of Croatian national community articulated the key component of fascism which ‘depicted history as a life-or-death struggle between the national community and its perceived foes, redrawing the boundaries of inclusion/exclusion, and prefiguring a future ideal state of organic unity and purity’. From the outset of their regime, the Ustaša idea of ‘national rebirth and cleansing’ was given a practical note, which was conducted through two parallel processes. On the one hand, their proclamation and implementation of racial and other discriminatory laws determined who can, and who cannot be a member of this newly established national community. On the other hand, the establishment of an all-embracing Ustaša Youth organization served as a platform for education and upbringing of the ‘new Croat’ – the Ustaša. Therefore, radical anti-Jewish, anti-Serbian, and anti-Roma policies, implemented from the outset, went hand- in- hand with the Ustaša policy of educating a ‘proper’, ‘new Croat – the Ustaša.