Nataša Milićević

THE PUBLIC AND DISEASE IN OCCUPIED SERBIA 1941–1944.

Abstract: The paper analyzes the process of informing the “public” about the health of the population and diseases in Serbia in the Second World War. Health issues that the Serbian authorities and the German occupier considered important to inform the “public” are identified. In particular, what is analyzed is the concept of the public at in the time of total government control over newspapers and magazines. Accordingly, we will examine the limitations and possibilities of the public in its expression, reactions and articulation. The paper is based on the research of collaborationist press, diary entries, archival material and literature. 

Keywords: “public”, disease, health, Serbia, Nazi occupation, Second World War 

Summary: The awareness of the “public” in occupied Serbia during the Second World War about the state of health, diseases, methods of treatment or measures taken to prevent illness was, as in the case of other areas of life, under the censorship and control of the German occupier and collaborationist authorities. That is why “the public” is not understood as a “real public” and a dynamic category. It was passivized, because it could not express itself in its traditional sense, criticize or propose measures in any domain, including the domain of fighting disease. Analyzing the extensive data published in the press in the form of decrees, brief information, extensive articles, statistical reviews, and even adverts, one gets the impression that there was a fairly high level of information among the “public” about diseases and their prevention, especially when it comes to “war diseases”, such as typhoid fever, paratyphoid or louse-borne typhus. Their appearance and possible spreading could harm the interests of the occupiers, as well as the occupied population, which is why timely and accurate information was of general interest. This, on the one hand, like the possible epidemic of typhoid fever at the beginning of the occupation in 1941, justified and explained the decrees of the German authorities regarding mass vaccination of the population of Belgrade, and on the other hand, reduced distrust of the population in the objectives of vaccination. Because of the constant opposition of the population, the success achieved by vaccination in preventing the epidemic was also used in vaccination against smallpox, scarlet fever and diphtheria. The opposition itself was not documented, but various types of penalties and threats addressed to the population testify to its existence. The health authorities’ awareness of the necessity of reliable and timely information to the public was even more pronounced during the louse-borne typhus epidemic in 1942. The intention was not only to prepare the population, but also to calm them down, given the traumatic experience with louse-borne typhus in World War I. At the same time, this suppressed rumors like the one that the communists, indifferent to the consequences, started a “biological war” against their own people. The German occupation authorities were less interested in monitoring other types of diseases and health issues, unlike the case with malaria. It left their control to the Serbian authorities. These diseases and health issues include the alteration of “peacetime diseases”, children’s diseases, hospital and spa treatments, medicaments and the fight against health misconceptions and the growing number of quacks, etc. Each of these topics received significant media attention and enabled the formation of a positive image of the authorities in the fight against disease, unlike the case with wartime infectious diseases. In keeping with the conservative ideas of the collaborationist authorities, what was especially emphasized was the care for the young and future generations of Serbia, motherhood and childbirth, as well as treatment in the new, modern hospitals and maternity wards. Only rarely did publicly available data, and even more so the unofficial ones recorded by contemporaries, hinted at a completely different picture in which hospitals are lacking doctors, medical equipment or modern devices, and that in the newly established modern maternity hospital, poor women cannot give birth, because of the costs.