On June 13 this year, the Union of Anti-Fascist Fighters and Anti-Fascists of the Republic of Croatia announced on their website that Nadir Dedic, the last Roma who survived the genocide against the Roma in the Jasenovac concentration camp in Croatia during the Second World War, had died.
Nadir was born in 1930 in the village of Žeravica near (Bosanska) Gradishka, where a large Roma community lived in the period between the two world wars. Leaving school early, Nadir was forced to work. His father Mustafa gave him to rich peasants, where he worked as a shepherd, first in the nearby village of Brestovčina, and then on the Volksdeutsche estate in Nova Topola. He stayed there until September 1942, when he was arrested on charges of arson and sent to a camp. He was deported to the Jasenovac camp, where he was assigned to forced labor in a locksmith workshop. He managed to survive in the camp because the Ustashas did not know that he was Roma, but considered him a Muslim (Bosniak). He was released after the intervention of a villager from the village of Orahovo, who was a friend of his father.
After returning to his native region, he started working again as a shepherd and, like other Roma in that region, connected with the partisans. Nadir himself saw the end of the war as a member of the 20th Kraina Partisan Strike Brigade.
After his release, he settled in Zagreb, where he lived until his death. He was an active member of Roma organizations and a participant in numerous gatherings in the country and abroad, and thanks to his efforts in the early 1970s, one of the first monuments to the Roma victims of the Second World War was erected in Žeravica. As one of the few surviving Roma, he was invited to Berlin in 2012, where he participated in the opening of the Memorial for the Roma and Sinti victims of National Socialism. With his wife and sons, he regularly came to the Jasenovac Memorial Area, where he attended commemorations in memory of the victims of the camp, and his direct approach will remain deeply etched in the memory of all employees of the Jasenovac Memorial Area.
Dedic's last farewell was held on Monday, June 19, at 1:20 p.m. in the Markovo Pole mortuary.
Link: https://sabh.hr/in-memoriam-nadir-dedic-1930-2023/
