Konferencija - Jasenovac - Eng

JASENOVAC - THE SIXTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
GENOCIDE AND CRIMES OF NDH

AGAINST SERBS, JEWS AND ROMA IN WWII
Banja Luka, 19th and 20th May 2014
PUBLISHER:
Association "Jasenovac-Donja Gradina
Banja Luka
FOR THE PUBLISHER:
PhD Vladimir Luki,
President of The Executive Board of "Jasenovac-Donja Gradina
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR:
PhD Smilja Avramov
EDITORIAL MANAGER:
Janko Velimirovi
EDITORIAL BOARD:
Vladimir Luki,
Saa Ai
LEKTOR:
Ranko Pavlovi
ENGLISH TRANSLATION:
Dejan Milinovi, Duko Popovi,
Slobodan Keleman and Svetlana Miti
LOYAUT & DESIGN:
Janko Velimirovi
PRINTED BY:
Printing House "GrafoMark", Laktai
FOR THE PRINTING HOUSE:
Svetozar erketa
NUMBER OF COPIES:
500
www. jasenovac-donjagradina.org.ba
Association "JASENOVAC-DONJA GRADINA"

BANJA LUKA
JASENOVAC
THE SIXTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
Banja Luka, 19th and 20th May 2014
GENOCIDE AND CRIMES OF
NEZAVISNA DRAVA HRVATSKA

(INDEPENDENT STATE OF CROATIA)
AGAINST SERBS, JEWS AND ROMA
IN WWII
The Proceedings
Banja Luka, 2014
CONTENTS
PREFACE
eljko Vujadinovi
ON THE OCCASION OF THE SIXTH INTERNATIONAL
CONFERENCE ON JASENOVAC ................................................................................. 13
PROCEEDINGS
Srboljub ivanovi
CROATIAN ROMAN CATHOLIC AND MUSLIM CRIMES AGAINST
SERBS, JEWS AND ROMA IN THE INDEPENDENT
STATE OF CROATIA ........................................................................................................ 19
Vladimir Umelji
THE SENSITIVE ISSUE OF ESTIMATION OF THE NUMBER OF
GENOCIDE VICTIMS........................................................................................................ 27
Svetozar Livada
THE VICTIM IS ALWAYS RIGHT............................................................................... 57
Bogdan Petkovi
WHY DID PARTISAN UNITS NOT LIBERATE
THE JASENOVAC CAMP? ............................................................................................. 65
Ivan Fumi
CONCENTRATION CAMPS IN THE TERRITORY OF
THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF CROATIA (NDH) .............................................. 77
Bilana ivkovi
JASENOVAC - THE WORST PLACE OF EXECUTION OF SERBS ................. 97
JASENOVAC THE SIXTH INTERN. CONFERENCE BANJA LUKA, 19-20 MAY 2014
Danilo Trbojevi
THE POLICY OF SELECTIVE MEMORY IN THE AGE OF
TRANSITION: THE RELATION BETWEEN THE IDENTITY OF
THE VICTIM AND PERPETRATOR TODAY ........................................................ 111
Dragana Mijatovi -Tomaevi

THE REASON FOR MASSACRE OF SERBS AND OTHER
NON-CATHOLIC POPULATION BY CROATS AND MUSLIMS IN
THE SECOND WORLD WAR ...................................................................................... 131
Pavel Tihomirov
LESSONS FROM WIKIPEDIA ..................................................................................... 137
Ekatarina Samoylova
A PROGRAMME OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH OF THE MASS GRAVES OF
THE JASENOVAC CONCENTRATION CAMP RELATIVE TO
THE CHANGES IN THE GLOBAL PARADIGMS IN
THE LAST TWO YEARS ............................................................................................... 151
Marina Chernosvitova
RESULTS OF INVESTIGATION IN ARCHIVES OF
THE FORMER USSR, THE USA, FRANCE, ITALY, AUSTRIA,
TURKEY, ISRAEL, HUNGARY AND BULGARIA IN REGARD TO
CHANGES OF GLOBAL PARADIGM IN THE LAST TWO YEARS................ 161
Paul Isaac Hagouel, Ph.D

JASENOVAC IN CONTEXT AND PERSPECTIVE: LESSONS FOR
THE 21ST CENTURY ..................................................................................................... 173
Jean Toschi Marazzani Visconti

IN DEFENSE OF THE MEMORY OF AN OBSCURED TRAGEDY. ................ 185
Ana Krini Lozica

BETWEEN MEMORY AND OBLIVION: JASENOVAC AS A DOUBLY
MEDIATED TRAUMA .................................................................................................... 191
Prof. Dr. Marko p. Atlagi mr Dalibor m. Elezovi

FRANJO TUDJMAN AS THE FIRST FORGER OF OVERALL
NUMBER OF TOTAL SERBIAN VICTIMS IN THE JASENOVAC
CONCETRATION CAMP (1941-1945) IN FUNCTION OF
HISTORICAL GENOCIDAL CROATIAN VERTICAL .......................................... 215
Vladislav Jovanovi
WE MUST FORGIVE BUT NOT FORGET .......................................................... 231
GENOCIDE AND CRIMES OF NDH AGAINST SERBS, JEWS AND ROMA IN WWII
eljko Vujadinovi
RACIAL POLICY AND RACIAL LEGISLATION IN............................................. 237
Eli Tauber
DEPORTATION OF JEWS OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA TO
COLLECTION AND CONCENTRATION CAMPS, WITH THE
CHRONOLOGY OF DEPORTATION TO THE JASENOVAC
CONCENTRATION CAMP ........................................................................................... 247
Dr uro Zatezalo
FATHOMLESS PITS - PLACES OF MASS EXECUTION IN
THE COMPLEX OF JADOVNO USTASHA CAMPS ........................................... 261
Jovan Pejin
AN INSIGHT INTO THE GENOCIDE COMMITTED AGAINST
THE SERBS IN THE REGION OF SREM DURING 1941-1945 ......................... 273
Michael Pravica
WHY JASENOVAC STILL MATTERS ..................................................................... 285
Mila Mihajlovi
ARCHIVES RECORDS ON THE MASSACRES OF SERBS IN LIKA
AND DALMATIA ACCORDING TO ITALIAN SOURCES FROM 1941 ......... 301
Vasilije Karan
SORROW FOR A LIFETIME ........................................................................................ 317
Milan Bastai
CROATS BETWEEN JAZOVKA AND JADOVNO ................................................ 323
PhD Mladenka Ivankovi

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD, CHILDREN IN DEATH CAMPS ... 329
Radovan Jovi
SUFFERING OF CHILDREN IN JASENOVAC AND OTHER
CONCENTRATION CAMPS IN NDH ........................................................................ 341
Dejan Motl
ECONOMIES .................................................................................................................. 375
Nenad Antonijevi
THE PLACE AND ROLE OF THE MUSEUM OF GENOCIDE VICTIMS
IN EDUCATING YOUNG PEOPLE IN SCHOOLS IN THE REPUBLIC
OF SERBIA ON THE SUBJECT OF GENOCIDE AND HOLOCAUST ............ 383
Sanja Savi
LEGISLATIVE ACTIVITY IN SERVICE OF THE GENOCIDAL
POLICY OF THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF CROATIA (NDH).................... 395
Tanja Tulekovi
NEW RESEARCH FINDINGS ON THE PERSECUTION IN
THE KOZARA REGION UNDER THE RULE OF INDEPENDENT
STATE OF CROATIA ...................................................................................................... 405
Draga Mastilovi
MASSACRES OF THE SERBS IN SREBRENICA IN
THE SECOND WORLD WAR ..................................................................................... 411
Milenko Jahura
WHAT IS THE SIMILARITY BETWEEN THE SUFFERING IN
THE CZECH LIDICE AND HERZEGOVINA PREBILOVCI, AND
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE IN CHERISHING THE MEMORY OF
THE VICTIMS ................................................................................................................... 435
Nikola Oegovi
ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY IN THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF
CROATIA ............................................................................................................................ 451
Radovan Piljak
ANOTHER NEW CITY IN THE REPUBLIC OF SRPSKA
THE CITY OF WHITE ANGELS.............................................................................. 461
MEMORIES
Bogdan Petkovi
THE CHARACTER OF WORLD WAR II PRISONER CAMPS IN
GERMANY AND THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF CROATIA ........................ 467
Milinko eki
NURTURING THE MEMORY OF FALLEN COMRADES ................................. 483
Dobrila Kukolj
WAR YEAR 1943, RETURN FROM THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF
CROATIA to the Village of MEEA (Bosanska Dubica) ................................... 505
Zorka Skiba, ne Deli

CRIMES OF GENOCIDE OF ROMAN CATHOLIC NUNS IN
CHILDRENS CAMPS IN SISAK AND JASTREBARSKO .................................. 513
Milinko Skrobi
THE ENDLESS SUFFERING........................................................................................ 519
Vasilije Karan
WOUNDS OF KOZARANS HAVE BEEN FORGOTTEN BY
THE WORLD ..................................................................................................................... 531
Lazar Milinovi
THE GREATEST SIN IS TO FORGET ....................................................................... 535
Veljko Mari
HORROR, CRIES, SUFFERINGS... ............................................................................. 545
CASES
Savo trbac
CAMP JASENOVAC BEFORE THE INTERNATIONAL
COURT OF JUSTICE ...................................................................................................... 553
INTRODUCTION
eljko Vujadinovi
ON THE OCCASION OF THE SIXTH

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON
JASENOVAC
The Sixth International Conference on Jasenovac will be held in Banja Luka

on 19th and 20th May 2014. Like the Fourth and the Fifth Conference, the
Sixth International Conference is being organised by the Jasenovac Donja
Gradina Association. In my foreword to the Proceedings of the Fifth Conference, held in Banja Luka in 2011, I point out that the Association has proved
its relevance with its efforts to organise and hold these international conferences on the subject of Jasenovac, along with its support to the work of the
International Commission on Jasenovac and initiatives to design and build
the Donja Gradina Memorial Site and propose and adopt the required
applicable legislation. In addition, the Association or its members have
actively participated in a series of round tables, either as authors of papers or
as co-organisers, dedicated to other killing fields in the Independent State of
Croatia (NDH): unjar 1941 (three round tables have been held thus far),
Garavice 1941 (one round table have been held), Crimes of Genocide of the
NDH on Mount Kozara and in Potkozarje in World War II (the first round
table has been held), and Crimes of the NDH against the Serbs, Jews and
Roma in Herzegovina (the first round table has been held). The proceedings
of the round tables are miscellanies of research papers, publicistic writing
and accounts of the few living eyewitnesses, camp survivors and people
persecuted in the NDH. Owing to the great efforts of the organisers, the
proceedings of these conferences have been published in Serbian and
English.
13
The Sixth Conference on Jasenovac, like the previous ones, is international,

in the true sense of the word. The Proceedings contain the works of
researchers from several countries (Russia, Great Britain, Israel, Italy, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina). It is not dedicated only to the Jasenovac
camp, but also to other killing fields in the NDH, recognisable primarily for
the fact those who perished were mainly Orthodox Christian Serbs, followed
by Jews and Gypsies, their deaths attributable to religious and racial intolerance that is, a plan to create an ethnically and religiously pure Croatian
state. The victims were of both sexes and all ages. The NDH was the only
country that had a systematically organised childrens concentration camp in
World War II. Among the detainees, there were also Roman Catholic Croats
and Muslims, as well as people who disapproved of the policies of the NDH.
The papers submitted for presentation in the Conference address a variety of
topics. The authors do not only attempt to reconstruct the events in the camp
and at other places of execution, but also focus on the genesis of the racial
policy and racial legislation in the NDH, the history of remembrance of those
events, the treatment of the Jasenovac camp before the International Court
of Justice in the current dispute between Serbia and Croatia, accusing one
another of the crime of genocide, lessons for the future, historical
revisionism, and in general the historical paradigm that has undergone
change in the past two decades. Such a wide array of topics reflects the
importance and need to have this Conference in the first place, its relevance
for accumulating and organising what has been learnt thus far and for raising
new issues in regard to the essence and character of the NDH. The texts are
heuristically varied and demonstrate different levels of research meticulousness involved, thus resulting in works of unequal scientific usability. The
Editorial Board has not made or suggested any corrections content-wise; the
attitudes presented should are attributable to the authors alone.
Survivor accounts are an integral part of the Proceedings. There were very
few Jasenovac inmates and survivors of other atrocities in other places of
execution in the NDH immediately after World War II, let alone today, which
makes their testimonies invaluable. Those authentic accounts present all free
and independent minds with an opportunity to interpret the events and
processes described in their own way, to have their own understanding of
the character and horrors of Jasenovac and other places of execution, and to
try to understand the nature of the NDH in their own way.
14
Like on the previous occasions, this Book of Proceedings was published in

Serbian and English before the Conference. An additional book will be
published after the Conference, also in Serbian and English, to include the
opening speeches and addresses, participant presentations, discussions and
subsequently submitted papers. The two books will represent an organic
whole.
The NDH did not happen as a historical coincidence that can allow us to forget
the atrocities and the persecution and deaths immediately caused by them.
The past cannot be made normal with conservative historicism, by neglecting
a history that only burdens the future. The genocide committed in the NDH
has to serve as a warning against the emergence of any kind of racial and/or
religious intolerance. It is not subject to comparison, nor can it be made
relative by comparison with other crimes. The past can only be normalised if
real efforts are made to disclose and learn the complete truth and all parties
concerned are invited to confront it. Because memories of the persecution
and suffering, including the atrocities committed in Jasenovac and other
places of execution in the NDH, are deeply ingrained in the Serbian people.
Also in the Jewish people. And the Roma people. On the other hand, in the
Bosniaks too. And the Croats.
In the commemoration ceremony held in Jasenovac on 4 May 2014, Ivo Josipovi, President of the Republic of Croatia, pointed out that an atrocity
happened in Jasenovac, a crime of genocide which will continue to hurt,
which we will never forget. Does this anticipate present-day Croatian society might begin to seriously ponder the true character of the NDH?
In Banja Luka, 5nd May 2014
15
PROCEEDINGS
17
PhD Srboljub ivanovi1
CROATIAN ROMAN CATHOLIC AND

MUSLIM CRIMES AGAINST SERBS,
JEWS AND ROMA IN THE
INDEPENDENT STATE OF CROATIA
The widely known desire of the Roman Catholic Church to expand its
influence and forces throughout the Balkan Peninsula has taught the Roman
Catholic Croatian people for centuries to feel hate and exterminate all nonCatholics, primarily Orthodox Serbs, Jews and Roma. In doing so, they do
not need choose the ways of implementing the policy of the Vatican and
Roman Catholic Church. It is all visible if we read statements and articles
published in the Roman Catholic newspapers and various publications before,
during and after World War II. Roman Catholic bishops and archbishops
have openly called upon Croats and Bosniaks - Muslims to commit crimes
against innocent Orthodox Serbs and the Jews.
Throughout the then Austro-Hungarian state, there were crimes against
Serbs and Jews committed at the same time while spreading anger and hatred
primarily incited by Roman Catholic priests and numerous activists of the
Roman Catholic Church. Widespread hatred against the Orthodox Serbs
was particularly performed by Catholic monks of the monastery, the Jesuits
and Franciscans and various Catholic activists, nuns, Catholic youth organisations such as the Eagles and Crusaders, etc. It is difficult to list those following the policy of Pope Benedict XV and the Vatican urging Roman Catholic
1
President of The International Commission for the Truth on Jasenovac
19
Croats and Bosniaks Muslims to murder, torture, rob, rape and put the
blame on the Orthodox Serbs their former neighbours, for all the evils of
this world. Yet, valid data on all crimes and hatred shown toward the
Orthodox Serbs and Jews could be encountered in the Roman Catholic papers
and their books published at the time of these atrocities in Croatia, Bosnia and
Herzegovina and all over the former Austro-Hungarian state. The Serbian
Orthodox Church was steadily depreciated together with its bishops and
priests. Any possible negative events of the Orthodox Serbian people were
highlighted. Unlike Roman Catholics and Bosnian-Muslims, Orthodox Serbian people never felt animosity or hatred toward any Roman Catholic Croats
and Bosniaks - Muslims. For Serbs, they were brothers of the other law. On
the contrary, the Roman Catholic and Muslim priests encouraged Croats and
Muslims to commit crimes against Serbs. Austro-Hungarian authorities
encouraged and helped carrying out the crimes against Serbs.
At the beginning of the World War II following the occupation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia by Germans, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Italians, Albanians,
a real rampage of Roman Catholic Croats and Bosniaks - Muslims against
Serbs, Jews and Roma spread out. The Independent State of Croatia, the
Roman Catholic Church headed by a war criminal, later cardinal, blessed
Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac, while in Bosnia and Herzegovina which was
annexed to the country of Croats, the head of the Catholic Church was
another war criminal, Archbishop of Sarajevo, Archbishop of Vrhbosna,
Jesuit Ivan ari. Roman Pope Pius XII personally welcomed the fragmentation and occupation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the establishment of
the Independent State of Croatia as a Catholic Civitas Dei. Pius XII appointed a proven Ustasha to the position of bishop of Mostar in Herzegovina, Dr.
Petar ule, who became the leader of the Roman Catholics and Ustashas in
Herzegovina. The leader of Croatia, Ante Paveli decorated Dr. Peter ule
for Ustashas work on the extermination of Serbs, Jews and Roma and
awarded him an Order of Merit Order of the Star. Independent Croatian
State authorities recruited Bosniaks the Muslim population to execute
slaughter, torture, rape, and robbery and to mistreat Orthodox Serbs, Jews
and Roma. Recently disclosed archives show that many Muslim Bosniaks
were the organisers and perpetrators of these crimes. In that way Sulja
Baagi and Sucurija Pekusic were known for their atrocities in Nevesinje.
The Ustasha camp commander in Gacko was Hasan utovi, who was the
20
administrator of the local post office, followed by Mahmut ampara,

administrative clerk, Serif Zvizdi, etc., and in Avtovac, Fahim Pai, Meho
Salin, Hamid Gado and Uzeir Delali, a priest who organised massacres of
Serbs. The Ustasha camp commander and organiser of the massacre in
Trebinje was Muhamed air, a local dentist. An Ustasha leader in Mostar
was the salesman Ahmet Badak. The one in Konjic was Ragib Mufti. A large
number of Bosnian-Muslims, in Stolac, committing crimes against Serbs
were led by Umar Rizvanbegovi, Mayor, as well as Hamid Hrle and others.
In apljina, Ahmet Kaptanovi was exceptional in executing crimes. The
robberies, torture and killings of Serbs and Jews in Hrasno were all executed
by Marko Ragu and Meho Galii. The slaughter of Serbs and Jews in Biha
was organised by Enver Kapetanovi and incredibly cruel Hasan Bajramovi,
Dervi Salihodi, Ibrahim Bai and others. In particular, they were prominent for raping girls and especially very young girls. Ale Omerovi and
Hamzo Hadi, as well as other Bosniaks from Cazin stood out for the massacre, torture and robbery of Serbs and Jews. Beir Bori personally
slaughtered more than a hundred women and children with his hands on 2
August 1941. The act of slaughtering was going on until 3 a.m. of the next
day. Muslim Bosniaks were extremely bloodthirsty towards women. For
example one of them raped 13 Serbian girls, and then slaughtered all of them.
Mustafa Terzi was one of the main cutthroats in Bosanski Petrovac. In the
village of Bravsko, Halija Ferizovi was the main criminal as well as Mujo
Malko, Faik Huji and many others. Meho Mueta, Mehmed Alti and Husa
Zeli were the leading criminals in Kulen Vakuf.
We could continue listing the names of Bosniak - Muslim criminals from all
over the former Independent State of Croatia forever, but what we have
presented here is sufficient to understand the essence of these crimes.
When you look at archival documents now available to the public, it is
obvious that the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, pressured by Croat and Muslim
ministers (Cvetkovi Maek agreement) established some kind of Independent State of Croatia in the form of an extended and independent Croatian
banovina [province]. This Banovina of Croatia was an autonomous state of
Croatia, which was only formally located within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
The head of that Banovina of Croatia was Ivan Subai, who after World War
II, formed a new government together with Josip Broz Tito. The government
21
led by two Croats, Broz and Subai, banned the return of the young King
Peter II to the country, and abolished the monarchy.
The rampage and crimes of Roman Catholic Croats and Bosniaks - Muslims
in the Independent State of Croatia began immediately after the outbreak of
war on 6 April 1941. The very beginning of the war was marked by
slaughtering, killing, torture, robbery, rape of young girls, adolescent girls
and women, killing the elderly and disabled, throwing live people in karst
caves and sinkholes, burning the Serbs, Jews and Roma dead or alive. Roman
Catholic Croats were taking away the infants from the arms of mothers and
smashing their heads in the trees or rocks. Italian officers and soldiers were
eye witnessing all these acts by being disgusted with such barbarism.
Recently, some documents have been released from the archives of the Italian
military where the senior officers reported these events to the Italian Army
commands. The Italian army officers were horrified by seeing the Croatian
Roman Catholic priests personally killing and torturing Serbs, regardless of
age and sex of the victims. They demanded that that the Italian soldiers stop
those frenzied minds of Croats and Bosniaks - Muslims and their priests and
religious leaders. Afterwards, the Italian army occupied some coastal areas
forcing the Croats to close the camps in Jadovno and Pag and expelled them
from Velebit where Croats were throwing away half-dead humans or still
alive Serbian and Jewish prisoners into sinkholes and caves. Following the
closure of Jadovno camp, Croats opened Jasenovac system of concentration
camps for the extermination of Serbs, Jews and Roma. The Roman Catholic
Church, the Pope and the Vatican state have never condemned these
crimes.
It is impossible to list all the atrocities and crimes of Roman Catholic Croats
and Bosniaks - Muslims in all the places and provinces of the former
Independent State of Croatia. In most places, such as Biha, Livno, Duvno,
Kupres, Sanski Most, unjar etc., there are no more Serbs at all. It is
sufficient to note that a representative of the United States at a meeting of the
International Commission for the truth about Jasenovac held in New York
under the Presidency of American professor Bernard Klein said that
according to the data of the United States of America more than 1,400 Roman
Catholic priests in Croatia were personally killing Serbs, Jews and Roma. Out
of three Roman Catholic priests in Croatia, two were killers and murderers.
22
By the end of World War II communist authorities in the former Yugoslavia

continued the policy of extermination of Serbs from Croatia, Bosnia and
Herzegovina and other regions by a forced displacement from the western
parts of the country to Vojvodina. At the same time the return of refugees to
their homes from which they were expelled by Croats, Albanians and
Macedonians, was forbidden.
The traces of the crimes committed by Croats, Muslims, Macedonians and
Albanians were systematically destroyed. Every attempt at writing or making
a testimony about these crimes was suppressed. Thus, the communist
government in Yugoslavia was systematically removing traces of the Jasenovac system of Croatian concentration camps for extermination of Serbs, Jews
and Roma. In 1946 and 1947, the entire wall around the camp of Jasenovac
was removed, although it is well known that over 80 percent of the wall was
preserved until then. Observation towers, the so-called watchtowers were
partially damaged but they were removed too. Remains of the Picilli
Furnace or crematoria for the incineration of alive and dead prisoners were
removed as late as 1950. The remains of the walls of sawmill, chain factory,
carpentry and electric power plant were also removed. The famous Granik
on the banks of the Sava River was removed in the year of 1948. Sokolski
Dom in Jasenovac, where the part of Koara camp was placed, was also
burned in the year of 1945. Then the bunkers were destroyed and barbed
wires placed around the camp. Frenzied minds of Croatia and in communist
Yugoslavia thought that removing the traces of Croatian concentration
camps would erase the crimes committed by Roman Catholic priests, Muslim
priests, Croats and Muslim Bosniaks from the memory.
Newly released documents show that there was a close link and cooperation
between the Communist Party of Croatia and Yugoslavia and communist
leader of Yugoslavia Josip Broz Tito with the Vatican, Croatian Ustasha movement and Croatian leader Ante Paveli in the extermination of the
Orthodox Serbian population in Croatia and in other western parts of the
country. The documents showing Tito visiting the Vatican several times
during World War II have been published. Academician Smilja Avramov, in
her book Genocid u Jugoslaviji u svetlosti meunarodnog prava (Beograd,
1992, p. 261-262) writes about Tito going to visit the Vatican on 9 August,
1944, where he held meetings with Pope Pius XII. The agenda of these
discussions and negotiations have never been published anywhere.
23
According to the words of a Yugoslav diplomat Vladimir Velebit from the

time of World War II and post-war Yugoslavia, Tito was [part of the text
missing, t/n]. We now know to what extent these connections of communists
and Croatian Ustashas were devastating for Serbs, Jews and Roma. Josip
Broz Tito, the Yugoslav communist president for life, never wanted to visit
the Jasenovac system of Croatian concentration camps for extermination of
Serbs, Jews and Roma. In the states that emerged after the disintegration of
Yugoslavia it is still hidden that in the Jasenovac concentration camps, in
addition to the so-called Chetniks, Serbs, soldiers of the Royal Yugoslav
Army released by the Germans from their concentration camps, were killed,
too. Nobody was talking about members of the Communist Party of Croatia
in Ustasha uniforms slaughtering, killing and stealing. There was no spoken
or written word about the Jasenovac system of Croatian camps nor did
anything similar appear in television shows. Children are not taught about
these crimes in schools nor do schools ever organise excursions to Jasenovac
and Donja Gradina, where children would be able to see the suffering of
Serbs, Jews and Roma in the Independent State of Croatia. The Republic of
Srpska is the only exception. There are huge documentation materials and
original films about the sufferings of Serbs, Jews and Roma in depots of
Radio Television of Serbia, but none of these documents is available to the
public. It turns out that censorship is implemented in Serbia, disabling the
publication of those materials to the public. If there is no formal state
censorship, there seems to be some sort of self-censorship among the staff of
Radio Television of Serbia, who are still afraid of being punished if they
present this documentation material. The media in Serbia is still silent about
the findings of the International Commission for the Truth on Jasenovac.
They never released information that in the Jasenovac system of Croatian
camps for extermination of Serbs, Jews and Roma, having been severely
tortured, over 700,000 Serbs, 23,000 Jews and 80,000 Roma were killed,
including 110,000 children under 14 years of age. Likewise, there is the
opportunity to interview some associates of the neo-Ustasha movement in
Croatia and President Franjo Tuman presented various untruths about the
Jasenovac killing fields.
A number of about 70,000 victims was manipulated on the basis of the data of
a superficial and amateur survey during the communist Yugoslavia. The
Museum of Genocide Victims in Belgrade, which is still a branch office of the
24
appropriate museum in Kragujevac, is trying to fill out this information by

turning it into a kind of analysis. The media in Serbia takes the number of
respondents as the number of victims killed in the Jasenovac system of
camps. The repeatedly truth emphasised about the number of victims of
Jasenovac will never be known, since nobody knows how to count the unborn
children removed from the wombs of pregnant women, how to call the
victims burnt alive and thrown into the crater of the Picilli furnaces, how
to call the miserable unfortunates buried in the banks along the Sava, how to
call the victims thrown into the Sava River, how to call the prisoners cooked
in the pots used for making soap, etc. The register books of Serbian churches
were burnt but the remaining ones were confiscated and destroyed after the
end of World War II. No one now has an idea who was alive and killed or who
was living where, etc.
Lists of victims made so far are quite unreliable and incomplete, and among
the surviving people there are very few who could personally witness
something. The findings of the International Commission for the Truth on
Jasenovac are very precious since they are based on scientifically validated
facts. It is up to us to accept those facts and use them in our works and
performances. The International Conference on Jasenovac has recently
adopted the Declaration on the genocide against Serbs, Jews and Roma in the
Independent State of Croatia, which was published in eight world languages
and sent to all the countries of the world as a testimony to the extermination
of Serbs, Jews and Roma in Croatia during World War II.
References:
Kazimirovi, V.: NDH u svjetlu njemakih dokumenata i dnevnika Gleza fon Horstenau
1941-1944, Nova knjiga - Narodna knjiga, Beograd, 1987.
Komarica, S. i Odi, S.: Zato Jasenovac nije osloboen, Institut za suvremenu povijest,
Beograd, 2005.
Lazi, M.: Kriarski rat Nezavisne Drave Hrvatske, Riznica duhovnog blaga, Banja Luka,
2011.
Lui, D.: Varvarstvo u ime Kristovo, Ekopres, Zrenjanin, 2000.
Rochlitz, I.: Accident of Fate, Wilfrid Laurier, Waterloo, Ontario 2005.
Runov, M .: Zato Jasenovac , IKP Nikola Pai, Beograd, 2001.
Opai, P. i dr. .: Genocid nad Srbima, Grafopublik, Beograd, 1992.
etvernikova, O .: Zavjera papizma protiv kranstva, Sveta Rusija, Beograd, 2012.
Zlatar, B.: Zatiranje Srba u Hrvatskoj , IKP Nikola Pai , Beograd, 2008.
ivanovi, S.: Jasenovac (drugo izdanje), Pei i sinovi, Beograd, 2012.
25
PhD Vladimir Umelji
THE SENSITIVE ISSUE OF

ESTIMATION OF THE NUMBER OF
GENOCIDE VICTIMS
HISTORICAL SCIENCE, MATHEMATICAL

STOCHASTICS AND
PHILOSOPHIA MORALIS
Twentieth-century Europe witnessed three major genocides (Armenian genocide by Turks in 1915-1919 falls into a completely different historical, social
and ethical category, due not only to geopolitical factors but, as I believe, its
cultural and socio-psychological characteristics. I believe that the research of
this first major twentieth-century genocide is borderline European, i.e. it
falls into the field of Turkology):
The Jewish genocide (The Holocaust/Shoah) by Nazis and all their German
and non-German supporters remains the most elaborately and comprehensively researched genocide in history. The number of victims, as agreed by
the majority in the field of history and other humanistic sciences, is estimated
at 6,000.000.
The genocide of Sinti and Roma, unfortunately, has not been researched
enough. However, we do know that the Nazis and their supporters systematically killed more than 500,000 people belonging to this ethnic group.
During World War II, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini created the so-called
Independent State of Croatia in the Balkans. It was responsible for the third
major genocide in the twentieth-century Europe, the genocide of Sinti and
27
Roma (around 40,000 victims), Jews (around 30,000 victims) and, most of all,
Serbs (Serbocide1), who were persecuted following a publicly proclaimed
rule deport one-third of the Serbs, convert one-third to Catholicism, or the
Croatian Catholicism, and kill the remaining third.2 The results were as follows:
Over 100,000 Serbs were exiled;
Over 240,000 Serbs were forcibly converted to Catholicism; and
According to the still incomplete and inconclusive data predominantly
sourced from informed Nazi and fascist witnesses (and defenders of the Croatian state), we can safely assume that at least 750,000 Serbs were killed.3 This
1 The term Serbocide was introduced to the scientific genocide research in 2006, as a
new terminus technicus to denote the genocide of the Serbs by Croats and Bosnian Muslims in the Independent State of Croatia in 1941-1945. I already used this terminus technicus in late 1990s (e.g., at the lecture Serbocide and the Balkan version of the Auschwitz-lie Srbocid i balkanska verzija Lai o Auvicu at The First International Conference about the Jasenovac Concentration Camp, New York, 1997). It was, however, definitely established in an interview with a well known and reputable German sociologist and
genocide researcher, Mr. Richard Albrecht, in 2006. He rightly characterised the term Holocaust or Shoah as a quick identifier of the German genocide of Jews, so we went from
there, thinking that a specific name of the Serb genocide in the Croatian state in 1941-1945
should naturally follow Lemkins term genocide. Richard Albrecht, whose research was
focused on the Armenian genocide by Turks, pointed out his own efforts in the scientific
acknowledgment of the term Armenocide. My final and conclusive introduction of the
terminus technicus Serbocide in the research of genocide occurred in the essay Ethik
und Definitionsmacht, published in the scientific magazine Kultursoziologie 2006/I. in
Leipzig, 2006. Richard Albrecht acted a bit later that same year, in his contribution
Serbozid 1941-1945, ber den Dritten Europischen Vlkermord im 20. Jahrhundert,
GRIN-Online, 2006.
2 Compare German historical sources in: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte: Bundeszentrale
fr Heimatdienst (Germany). Bundeszentrale fr Politische Bildung (Germany), 1993.
Further reading: Jure Kristo, Katolicka crkva i Nezavisna Drzava Hrvatska, Vol. 1, Zagreb 1998, p. 187.
3 Find more in: Vladimir Umeljic, Die Besatzungszeit und das Genozid in Jugoslawien
1941-1945, Graphics High Publishing, Los Angeles, 1994. The number of victims has not
been definitely determined and it is hardly ever going to be final, unless one day secret archives become available, like those in Vatican.
28
number was derived from valuable primary historical sources. It remains an

estimate, because it has not been finally verified in terms of mass exhumations, identifications, etc.
The above-mentioned numbers relating to the three major genocides in
twentieth-century Europe are therefore based on the existing research and
widely acknowledged results of the positive historical science and other humanistic sciences.
This issue is still open.
Since liberal sciences do not accept dogmas and only rarely (social sciences)
axioms, final number of victims of the major genocides in twentieth-century
Europe depends on argumentative and, appropriate to this sensitive issue,
humanistic or ethically and morally based discussion.4
Why, however, the number of victims of the major twentieth-century Europe genocides has not been precisely determined even now, 70 years later?
Why are we still using somewhat cautious and restrained expressions such
as about..., as agreed by majority consensus in historical and other humanistic sciences..., possibly even..., can safely assume that...?
To establish the historical truth in terms of the most faithful representation
of reality is not only an axiom of the humanistic ratio (liberal social sciences)
or just a basic assumption of the necessary sanctioning of crime (legal determinant in civilised societies), but also an imperative reflection of morally
conditioned piety towards the innocent genocide victims (philosophia
moralis).
The truth is, conclusively, a conditio sine qua non of the prophylactic principle Never again!
A particularly controversial debate is the one about the number of the Serbian victims of the genocide in the NDH from 1941 to 1945. The number
Note: Balkan version of this Auschwitz-Lge relativisation and denial of the 1941-1945
genocide in the Croatian intellectual, political and clerical elite, is, unfortunately, a rule rather than an exception.
4 This restriction does not intend to inhibit the freedom of scientific research, but clearly
distance itself from all apologetic, political and ideological attempts to relativise and deny
the genocide.
29
mentioned above is a probable marginal number (inconclusive in both directions, because it has not yet been finally verified) of 750,000 victims of the
1941 to 1945 Serbocide, as a result of the comparison and evaluation of multiple credible primary historical sources.
Using only the statistical method, the number of Serbian victims in the entire
Yugoslavian territory should have amounted to 487,000 (Bogoljub Koovi,
1985), that is 530,000 (Vladimir erjavi, 1989). Out of that number, 370,000
(Koovi), or 335,000 (erjavi) should have been the number of Serbs killed
in the Croatian territory.5
The striking difference in the estimates of around 50 fewer (again, only statistically determined), i.e. more victims (the totality of the historical sources
and subsequent use of the mathematical probability theory) clearly illustrates
the complexity of this, by nature, very sensitive issue, with an immense and
more than understandable emotional charge.
I would like to quote a short excerpt from the above mentioned valuable
primary historical sources relating to the number of Serbocide victims coming from the Nazi witnesses of that genocide and defenders of the former
Croatian state, which means from qualified witnesses to the history of their
time.
Those witnesses were also Croatian allies, who considered the Serbs their
enemies:
Head of the Nazi military administration of the Territory of the Military
Commander in Serbia, privy councillor and SS-gruppenfuhrer, Dr. Turner,
reported on 3September1941:
According to the available reports, around 200,000 Serbs have been
killed in Croatia alone. These killings are common knowledge here and,
given the fact that Croatian territories have been given independence
under the auspices of the German Reich, and that our troops in Croatia
Bogoljub Koovi: rtve Drugog svetskog rata u Jugoslaviji, Sarajevo, Svjetlost, 1990.
(First edition: London, Veritas, 1985). Vladimir erjavi: Opsesije i megalomanije oko
Jasenovca i Bleiburga, Demografski gubici stanovnitva Jugoslavije u Drugom svjetskom
ratu, Globus, Zagreb, 1992.
30
have not prevented those horrible atrocities, the accountability for

them falls onto the Germans...6
In a report to SS-Reichsfuhrer Himmler of 17 February 1942, Chief of Security and SD explains: The number of Orthodox Christians (authors note:
mostly Serbs, to a lesser extent Roma) massacred and tortured to death by
Croats who use the most sadistic methods, has to be estimated at 300,000 victims.7
The German ambassador Benzler reported to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
in Berlin on 16 September 1942:
Since the foundation of this state to this day, the persecution of Serbs
has not stopped and the death toll and a very cautious estimate at that
is several thousand Serbs. In doing so, those who were never held
accountable committed such terrible crimes, which could only be expected of perverse Bolsheviks...8
An Italian officer and witness, Enzo Cataldi, estimates the number of victims:
The slaughter of Serbs committed by Croats in 1941 and 1942 alone seems
to have resulted in 356,000 Serbian and several thousands of Jewish victims...9
A member of the Roman Curia, Cardinal Tisserant said, among other things,
on 6 March 1942: Germans acknowledged the Croatian Orthodox Church
only in our presence ... killed all Orthodox priests and after more than
350,000 Serbs have vanished...10
The commander-in-chief of the South Command, Colonel General Lhr,
wrote on 27 September 1943:
The most important element of the political situation in Croatia is the
fact that at this point Croats are unable to govern themselves (...) the
police (...) are only observers of the terrorist acts by the Ustashas
6
Abschrift in Akten des Pers. Stabes des Reichsfhrers SS, Mikrofilm Inst. f. Zeitgeschichte MA 328, p. 65 1866 FF.
7 Abschrift in PA/AA, Bro RAM, Kroatien 1941/42, pp. 442-449.
8 PA/AA, Bro StS, Jugoslawien, Vol. 4.
9 Enzo Cataldi, La Jugoslavia alle Porte, Tra Cronaca e Documento una Storia che Nessuno
Racconta, Club die Autori, 1968.
10 Delegation of the Independent State of Croatia, V.T. No.-V.-1942, Rome, 06/03/1942.
31
against the Orthodox population, of whom according to Ustasha

sources around 400,000 have been killed...11
The German Lieutenant General Lothar Renduliv was also a witness to the
events that took place in the NDH:
While German troops were stationed in a small number of places in
Croatia, the first savage Croatian persecutions of the Orthodox Christians began (...) in doing so they have killed, as everyone claims, at least
500,000 people12
At the end of the war, on 16 March 1944, Brigade Commander SS Major General Ernst Fick wrote to Heinrich Himmler, his superior: The Croatian Ustasha party are Catholic, undisciplined, poorly trained, to an extent unreliable
in terms of combat and known for having slaughtered, Balkan-style, between
600,000 and 700,000 of religious and political opponents (...) they call themselves the Croatian SS.13
Germanys special commissioner for South-East Europe Hermann Neubacher said:
The recipe of the Ustasha leader and Poglavnik of Croatia, Ante
Paveli, in relation to the Orthodox Christians reminds of the bloody
religious wars from the past: One-third must be converted to Roman
Catholicism, one-third has to be exiled, while the remaining third has
to die. This last item has been accomplished. When the Ustasha leaders
claim that around 1,000,000 Orthodox Serbs (including babies, children, women and the elderly) have been slaughtered, it is my opinion
that it is but a boastful exaggeration. Based on the reports I have received, my estimate is that the number of the helpless and slaughtered
people is around 750,000...14
11
Nrnberger Dokumente, NOKW, 376.

Lothar Rendulic, Gekmpft, gesiegt, geschlagen, Heidelberg, 1951, pp. 160, 222.
13 Abschrift im Archiv VII, NA, Mikrothek, Belgrad, NAV-T-175, R. 70, pp. 888-890.
14 H. Neubacher, Sonderauftrag Sdosten 1941-1945. Bericht eines fliegenden Diplomaten,
Gttingen, 1956 p. 31.
12
32
Nazi Commander-in-Chief for Serbia, General Bader, said on 5th February

1942: No doubt, Croats have the intention of destroying the entire Serbian
population...15
According to these primary historical sources (German, Italian, Vatican), the
Croatian state already killed as many Serbs in 1941-1942 as Koovi and erjavi say were killed in total by the end of the war in 1945.
Is it logical or likely that the Serbocide was truly completed in 1942 and the
Nazi and fascist witnesses in the period from 1942 to 1945 just fabricated and
arbitrarily exaggerated the number of victims, all up to the enormous number of 750,000 victims? It is difficult to find even a remotely reasonable reason or motive for it (of then Croatian allies and Serbian enemies), but either
that is how it really happened or the statistical exactness of those authors has
some significant weaknesses.
The fact remains, however, that the final number of Serbocide victims has
not yet been determined (statistically) and it will hardly ever be determined,
unless secret archives become publicly available one day, like it was the case
with Vatican archives (or those classified as the communist Yugoslavia legacy).
Let us discuss the example of the current controversy surrounding the issue
of the number of victims in the biggest concentration camp in this part of
Europe and at the same time the biggest concentration camp from World War
II, which was not established and managed by Nazis, the camp in Jasenovac.
In this case, the estimates vary to an even greater extent.
THE NUMBER OF VICTIMS IN THE JASENOVAC

SYSTEM OF CONCENTRATION CAMPS
The Jasenovac camp was built in summer 1941 on the banks of the
Sava River and later developed into an infamous place, well known for
the horrors that happened there and the mass killings of Serbs and
15
L. Kosti, Hrvatska zverstva u II svetskom ratu, prema izjavama njihovih saveznika, Beograd, 1991, p. 56.
33
Jews. The more resistance Pavelis deportation idea met with the German military command, the more people were interned in Jasenovac
and other camps. The worst hygienic and other living conditions that
caused the enormous rate of mortality, and various activities aimed at
killing the prisoners, made Jasenovac known as a death camp...16
The estimated number of victims in literature dealing with this death camp
ranges from between 2,000 and 3,000 (Croatian side) to even 1 million (Serbian side), where these extreme numbers are definitely scientifically unsubstantiated and counterproductive.
The statements given by the witnesses who participated in those events,
mostly surviving prisoners, witnesses and a few perpetrators (among them
was a former Croatian commander of the Jasenovac concentration camp system, who revealed after the war ended that 500,000 people had died there
see below), often mention several hundred thousand victims of this proverbial death manufacture.
Let us take a closer look at some of those data, the statements of the survivors
and estimates given by the relevant institutions and agencies of the possible
number of victims, which yet again impressively show the complexity of this
issue:
Jasenovac was a system of several concentration camps, which spread across
an area of around 210 square kilometres, where by the end of April 1945
countless victims had found death (still unaccounted for). On 11th May 1945,
the Croatian State Commission confirmed the number of victims in writing
to the Nuremberg tribunal, and estimated it at between 500,000 and
600,000.17
On 15th November 1961, the NOR Veteran Association Committee in Bosanska Dubica began excavations in the area of Donja Gradina (the biggest execution place in Jasenovac system) and discovered 120 mass graves of similar
size. They exhumed the first three mass graves and counted the victims.
16
L. Horry and M. Broszat: Der kroatische Ustascha-Staat 1941-1945, Schriftenreihe der

Vierteljahreshefte fr Zeitgeschichte, No. 8, Stuttgart, p. 102.
17 A. Mileti, Koncentracioni logor Jasenovac 1941-1945, Vol. 2, Beograd, pp. 1090-1091,
1100.
34
The activity was, however, politically unwanted in the new Yugoslavia lead
by the Croatian communist and autocrat Tito, and it was suspended. Based on
the number of victims exhumed from the three mass graves, the Committee
estimated the total number of victims at 550,800.
A group of anthropologists and forensic experts explored the area around
Donja Gradina and Ciglane in June 1964 until they were forbidden to continue their work as well and estimated the number of victims at about
336,000. Between 1964 and 1973, around one hundred mass graves were discovered, but unfortunately they were never examined.
The area around Stara Gradika has not been examined either yet, and authentic historical sources speak of the violent death of between 40,000 and
60,000 prisoners; Krapje and Broice areas just like Mlaka with five large
mass graves remain inaccessible for examination.18
A former prisoner from Jasenovac and the long-time president of the Association of Former Jasenovac Inmates, the Croatian attorney K. Huber, confirms:
Every prisoner from Jasenovac knows that between 1,000 and 1,500
people were killed a night in Gradina, maybe even more when the Ustashas had reinforcements (...) Mass graves discovered in Gradina revealed between 300,000 and 400,000 bodies. What about the bodies of
those tossed into the Sava River? Or those killed in surrounding fields
and remote areas?19
One of his co-sufferers, Dr N. Nikoli, estimated the number of the killed at

700,000.20
The problem of determining the number of victims (no records, killing the
victims on the spot, as soon as they were imprisoned and thorough destruction of documentation at the end of the war) is cited in Encyclopaedia of the
Holocaust, due to which reason it estimates the number of Jasenovac victims
at between 300,000 and 700,000.21
18
Compare: M. Bulaji, Ustaki zloini genocida II, Vol. 2, Beograd, 1988.

Intervju, Vol. 235, Beograd, pp. 23-25.
20 N. Nikoli, Jasenovaki logor smrti, Beograd, pp. 190-192.
21 Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust, edited by Yisrael Gutman, Vol. 1, 1995, pp. 739-740.
19
35
The Yad Vashem Center estimate that about 500,000 Serbs were killed in the
entire NDH, Wiesenthal Centre estimate 600,000 victims. Finnish author Ari
Rusila has recently drawn the attention of the scientific community to the
fact that, by the number of victims, Jasenovac was the third biggest death
camp from the World War II era (following Auschwitz with 1,400,000 and
Treblinka with 870,000 victims).22
Let me quote the opinion of the highest representative of Nazi Germany in
Croatia at that time, Plenipotentiary General Edmund Glaise von Horstenau,
following a visit to one of the Croatian concentration camps, which made him
mention Jasenovac:
We later went on to a concentration camp, which was built in a factory. Horrible image. Few men, many women and children poorly
dressed, whose beds were cold stones. Bare skeletons... The camp commander punk! I ignored him. I told the Ustashas in my escort:
After seeing something like this, one can only spit... nothing but spit,
gentlemen!
And the worst part: along a wall in one room lied about fifty naked children on scattered straw, surely due to my inspection, some already
dead, some dying! Let us not forget that concentration camps were discovered by the British during Boer War.
But those places of horror in Croatia, under Poglavnik who we had appointed ourselves, were worse than horror.
Jasenovac, however, must have been the worst, where ordinary man
would not dare to step into... (underlined by the author).23
ARI RUSILA, JASENOVAC HOLOCAUST PROMOTED BY VATICAN

(WWW.EUROPESWORLD.ORG/NEWENGLISH/HOME_OLD/COMMUNITYPOSTS/T
ABID/809/POSTID/1087/JASENOVACHOLOCAUSTPROMOTEDBYVATICAN.ASPX)
23 General von Horstenau sent a number of reports on the treatment of Serbian prisoners in
concentration camps throughout the Croatian State in 1941-1945. For example, in 1942 he
reported the following: There is a concentration camp near Slavonska Poega, called
Ustasha camp for emigrants. The warden of that camp is a former catholic priest, now famous Ustasha, Klajic (...) During one usual session of torture, a prisoner tried to take a rifle
from one of his torturers. When Klajic found out about that, he gave order to kill all prisoners with machine guns loaded with expanding bullets. The firing at the entrance into the
barracks took an hour. The appearance of the barracks after this incident is impossible to
22
36
In 1993, the Austrian historian Hans Safrian published another report by

General von Horstenau written in 1944 (having established that the exact
number of Jasenovac victims cannot be determined due to the lack of written
records so only estimates are possible), according to which between
300,000 and 400,000 people were killed in Jasenovac by the end of 1943.24
If, however, all the above-mentioned primary historical sources (and many
others) had been ignored and science had been satisfied with individual victims identified exclusively and only by name, than it would have arrived to
the statistically verified number, which would probably have ranged between
122,300 and 130,100.25
Let us take a look here at how Professor Srboljub ivanovi, a researcher of
Serbocide, medic and anthropologist, arrived at his conclusion that around
700,000 people or even more lost their lives in Jasenovac concentration camp
system alone.
***
The large number of possible victims who perished in the Croatian state at
that time as estimated by ivanovi, in one concentration camp alone (albeit
the largest in this part of Europe), is hardly ever going to be statistically verified and proved final, beyond the shadow of doubt.
Furthermore, that claim seems rash and illogical at first, even very questionable, since the authors estimated number of victims in Jasenovac practically
reaches the number of victims in the entire territory of the NDH in 1941-
describe. The walls were painted in blood and there were pieces of flash and brains hanging about, while floors were covered with mutilated bodies. The barracks were left looking
like that for two entire days, until the arrival of the new group of prisoners, who then
cleaned it all. Quoted from: Peter Broucek (ed.), Ein General im Zwielicht. Die Erinnerungen Edmund Glaises von Horstenau, 3 volumes, Wien: Bhlau 1980-88. See als the
relevant historical documents in: sterreichisches Staatsarchiv, Mitteilungen des sterreichischen Staatsarchivs, Vol. 47, 1999.
24 Hans Safrian in einer Funote des Buches Die Eichmann-Mnner, Europa Verlag,
Hamburg, 1993.
25 Dragan Cvetkovi, Stradanje civila Nezavisne drzave Hrvatske u logoru Jasenovac,
Tokovi istorije, Institute of Recent History of Serbia Journal, Issue 04/2007, Beograd.
37
1945, confirmed by the above mentioned sources (German and Italian), and
exceeds by 100 the corresponding figures offered by the above named statisticians, Koovi and erjavi, for the entire researched territory, and by
600 the figure offered by Cvetkovi, which is the number of thus far statistically verified Jasenovac victim count.
If ivanovis position was meant to be primarily a conscious and provocative
counterweight to the claims of the Croatian science to a couple of tens of
thousands at most Serbian victims of Jasenovac, and as an intent not to leave
the debate/conclusions on this issue to the other concerned party (with the
ultimate consequence: Serbs have, in fact, committed a genocide against
Croats!, as was claimed merely ten years after World War II and the Serbocide by the senior Croatian intellectual and clerical official Ivo Omranin),
then from that particular point of view it is understandable.
In that case, it is no longer primarily the historical science, of course, but a
deliberate attempt to maintain the tension, or the popularity of the issue
(and nolens volens partly politically conditioned controversy).
Therefore, it would be worthwhile to ponder over the following dilemma
(which definitely is questionable): is ivanovis position scientific at all, in
other words, to what extent is it legitimate?
It is a known fact what parameters, criteria and consequently arguments statistics uses, so how did ivanovi arrive at this number of victims at Jasenovac? It is worth mentioning that he relied on three scientific fields and their
methods (historical science, partial exhumations with medical/anthropological analysis and mathematical science):
The entirety of available valid primary historical sources (written testimonies by Nazi and fascist aggressor who had no logical reason to side with the
Serbian enemy and lie to hurt their Croatian friends, and the testimonies of
the surviving camp prisoners and a few of the perpetrators. In other words,
testimonies of witnesses and a few written records from the Independent
State of Croatia, etc.).
Personal professional involvement in the post-war excavations of the mass
graves at Jasenovac in 1964 and the scientific validation of the discovered
human remains and their everyday possessions. Due to circumstances, that
38
research was seen as politically inappropriate by Titos regime, so it remained initial and incomplete.
Therefore the author multiplied the quantitative findings from a relatively
small number of mass graves (31) with the probable number of bodies remaining in other mass graves at the camp grounds (which was supported by,
for example, areal images of the terrain) and arrived at the above mentioned
number. Thus, he relied on the mathematical twin of statistics, the theory
of probability. The probability theory and statistics make the field of mathematical stochastics.
The mathematical theory of probability is by definition based on existing axiomatic assumptions, while the starting point is usually an event, whose correspondent probability in accordance with the mandatory minimum criteria is mathematically determined and always represents a real number. An
axiomatic explanation of the probability theory was given in the thirties of
the twentieth century by a Russian mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov.26
As already mentioned, all of the available primary and valid historical sources
(presence of German Nazis and Italian fascists, testimonies of the surviving
camp prisoners and a few perpetrators, witnesses) spoke about hundreds of
thousands of victims. Then in 1964 the research team (Vida Brodar, Anton
Pogacnik and Srboljub ivanovi) went to the crime scene.
The exhumations at the Jasenovac camp grounds showed that the burial
area of 2m2 revealed on average 27 skeletons (authors note: the camp used to
spread over the area of 210km2); the areal images showed huge number of
mass graves; the fact that there were no human remains found in some of the
opened graves, but only personal items for everyday use (combs, buttons,
etc.) was explained for example by a testimony of a long-time witness of those
events and a forensic expert, Professor Ante Premer, who survived Jasenovac and confirmed that he was forced in 1943 to organise exhumations and
burn the remains of the victims. It was done with the aim of destroying all
26
Compare: Hans-Otto Georgi, Stochastik, 4th edition, de Gruyter, 2009. Also: Ulrich
Krengel, Einfhrung in die Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie und Statistik. Vieweg, Braunschweig, 1988.
39
traces of the crime (capitulation of fascist Italy was a very bad sign for the
clerical and fascist Croatia, etc.).27
So, what does the use of mathematical probability theory look like here, when
applied to a case study in the field of social sciences (with the help of natural
sciences, medicine and anthropology)?
The basis (existing axiomatic assumption) in this case was the proven genocidal policy of the Croatian state from 1941 to 1945, the starting point (event)
was the proven large-scale implementation of that policy in the system of
concentration camps of Jasenovac. The scientifically and historically assumed number of victims based on the number of exhumed graves and
(quantitative and qualitative) analysis of their contents and the number of the
graves in the Jasenovac camp area is then, based on the mandatory minimum criteria, mathematically allocated its corresponding probability value,
which is always a real number.
ivanovis position thus turns out to be scientifically and theoretically substantiated and legitimate, although also under the law of probability it is
statistically difficult to prove or even presumably impossible to prove in
terms of the identification of individual victims by names.
One weakness of his position has to do with the small number of exhumed
graves (31), although the findings of the first and the largest grave must be
seen as indicative; it was 6 x 2.5m and contained 197 skeletons (of which 51
children younger than 14), which can certainly not be ignored. Evidence that
this number corresponds to the average number of all or most part of mass
graves, however, due to specific circumstances is not there.28
The second big weakness to his conclusion lies in its obvious (and even impossible by every law of probability) incompatibility with the population census in the territory of the former NDH before and after World War II and
the Serbocide, and, of course, with all the statistical efforts that have been
made so far to identify the victims from this camp. It is not 10, 20 or even 40 ,
27
Srboljub ivanovi, Jasenovac, Srpska knjiga, Beograd, International Slovenian Academy

of Science, Education and Art, Department of Great Britain and Ireland, London, 2008.
28 Ibid.
40
but almost 600 difference in the estimate of the number of Jasenovac victims.
Those censuses and the post-war method of determining the number of victims of the war and genocide, show, however, significant weaknesses on their
part, uncertainties and imprecision that have to be seriously debated, regardless of ivanovis hypothesis (see below), but it may be considered out of the
question that the magnitude of their assumed difference from the realistic
numbers to such an enormous extent occurred.
This means that, even if the mentioned weaknesses have been found and
eliminated by the correction of statistical results (which is probably appropriate and even expected) and possible determination of a larger number of
victims, it is difficult to assume that the end result of ivanovis hypothesis
could ever really be verified and even the following facts clearly show that:
If we even for a moment disregard the current statistical assumptions and
presume that the estimate of the qualified historical witnesses (= primary historical sources, stripped of any recognisable and subjective interpretations)
of about 750,000 Serbian victims in the entire NDH from 1941 to 1945 is realistic, and then correlate ivanovis assumption of the number of Jasenovac
victims with that number, we will find that his conclusion is not compatible
with this estimate either, because:
The first consequence is that according to him, 700,000 Serbs were killed in
the concentration camp Jasenovac alone, or even more, which means that in
the rest of the NDH there were only a couple of tens of thousands. It definitely
was not the case. Numerous historical sources speak of many more, several
hundreds of thousands of victims across the NDH in 1941-1945.
If we however incorporate the fact that all historical sources assume several
hundred thousands of victims across the NDH in 1941-1945 (which was even
statistically confirmed) in this stream of thought, in that case, the Serbocide
death toll from 1941 to 1945 would have to be along with 700,000 victims
or more in Jasenovac alone according to ivanovi much bigger than
1,000,000 victims in the NDH from 1941 to 1945 (originally between
1,800,000 and 2,000,000 across its territory). It would, however, mean that
the number of Serbs in that territory (Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
41
Srem) after the war consequently amounted to about 800,000. This was definitely not the case either, there were more in Bosnia and Herzegovina alone.
Despite the reasonably assumed unsustainability of his final position or conclusion in quantitative terms, and the large discrepancy in the scientific research results on the one hand exclusively mathematical statistics, on the
other its twin, the probability theory, but also medical and anthropological
research and primary historical sources (original documents, witness testimonies, etc.) at the very least implies that current singular use of statistics
could hardly put an end to this Serbocide death toll research.
In other words, ivanovis approach to this problem was indeed scientific
and multidisciplinary, but his conclusion, on the other hand, was not only
impossible to prove, but also too big a venture into the field of minimal probability or practically untenable assumptions.
The concluding implications of this Chapter will show that his initial position
(basically hundreds of thousands of Jasenovac victims), however, is not
merely a controlled speculation in the field of the so-called virtual or counterfactual history.29
Therefore, Srboljub ivanovi not only i) remains a rare and extremely important witness of his time, but also ii) for decades has been giving a strong
impulse to further research the Serbocide and the undeniable contribution to
the fact that the debate around the number of victims (justifiably so) is not
subsiding.
THIS CONTRIBUTION ALONE IS PRICELESS.

Authors position, once more, is that this issue remains unresolved and that
further research will lead to the correction of currently valid statistical assumptions and direct it not only in a direction of, but possibly, bring it close
to the valid assumptions of historical science, the qualified witnesses to that
time.
29
Compare: Niall Ferguson (ed.): Virtuelle Geschichte. Historische Alternativen im 20.

Jahrhundert. Darmstadt, 1999.
42
The concluding quantity of genocide victims is by all means one of the imperatives in the research of this phenomenon, but again not a diachronically valid dogma or a taboo. This issue can, should and has to be constructively and argumentatively discussed (based on ethics). The quantity of victims does not determine the quality of the crime (genocide), while the opposite is always so, as a rule.
Let us conclude this discussion about ivanovis position with the statement
that scientific scepticism is very appropriate in relation to the end result of
his hypothesis (in other words, it is considered unsustainable with a high degree of probability), but the same scepticism is quite appropriately legitimate
in relation to current statistical claims and assumptions.
***
In fact, there are specific empirical elements, important specific reasons why
it would be highly advisable that the research of this segment (total number
of genocide victims in the Croatian state in 1941-1945) should not be reduced
to merely a statistical method, that it should be further verified by other relevant scientific sources.
This is problematic to a certain extent, because these statisticians, Koovi
and erjavi, are basically dealing with estimates. The number of citizens in
the former Croatian state and its national structure can only be estimated
statistically, since the Yugoslavia population census was not done in 1941, so
the calculations were based on the results from 1921 and 1931 censuses,
which lead to different results with different authors. More so because the
mentioned censuses were done using different methods:
Bogoljub Koovi, for example, estimated there were 718,000 Serbs living in
the Croatian territory in 194130, while Vladimir erjavi assumed there were
703,000. Compared to the number of Serbian victims in the entire territory
of Yugoslavia, the difference between their initial assumptions becomes even
30
Bogoljub Koovi, rtve drugoga svetskog rata u Jugoslaviji, London, 1985, p. 143.
43
bigger (around 43,000) and the number should have been either 487,000 (Bogoljub Koovi, 1985) or 530,000 (Vladimir erjavi, 1989).31
It means they partly relied on the mathematical probability theory as well.
It must be further taken into account that the population censuses before and
after the war and the registries of births and deaths from the period just before World War II in the Balkans by no means can be measured by contemporary criteria, therefore those data have been much less reliable than it is
the case today.
Births and deaths were often registered in church registries only, particularly in rural areas, which were a majority, or not registered at all, and the
church registries were systematically destroyed and burned ever since the
first Ustasha clerical fascists came into power, much like the Orthodox
churches and even priests and followers.
Consistent with the open announcement by one of the deputy chiefs in the
Croatian state lead by Ante Paveli in that period, a man called Victor Guti
who sent a message to Serbs at a rally held on 28 May 1941: I want to serve
to the Gods and peoples will. These unwanted elements are going to be destroyed without a trace (underlined by the author) across our territory in the
shortest time and the only thing that is going to survive will be a bad memory
of them...32
The statistical method in this case has once again an essential weakness, because on the one hand it is based on the census results from 1921 and 1931
(instead on the unknown situation in 1941) and on the other on results from
the 1948 census, i.e. an incomplete and unfinished census from 1964, and the
victim registration method itself just after World War II, when the survivors
were simply called in to register the dead with the authorities. The big
question is whether all the survivors have responded to this appeal, if at all,
and in what numbers, amidst the chaotic aftermath, regime liquidations,
31
32
Gubici stanovnitva Jugoslavije u Drugome svjetskom ratu, Zagreb, 1989, p. 39.

V. Novak, Magnum Crimen, Zagreb, 1948, p. 609; excerpt from the memorandum sent to
the Nazi Commander in Chief in Serbia by the Beograd Archbishop, July 1941.
44
searches for disappeared relatives, ordered and voluntary interstate and international migrations and attempts to reorganise normal life?33
Besides, who could have registered and reported entire Serbian villages completely destroyed and burned to the ground, with no survivors? Which
church registries of births and deaths together with their priests disappeared
without a trace as Guti had requested?
Or all those Serbian children who were brought to Jasenovac (never registered) and obviously often thrown in the depths of the Sava River, as confirmed by Diana Budisavljevi in her diary many times over:
We did not find a single child. I later found out that most of those children
died in Jasenovac, they apparently used to put them in boats and sink them
in the middle of the river (...)34
This great, extremely noble and brave woman saved around 12,000 Serbian
children from the death camps in Croatia in 1941-1945 (authors note: another paragraph from her diary about the intentions of the Croatian regime
in that period: ... terrible accusation against the Ustashas, who want to destroy the children of an entire nation ... she says all children and that expression can only mean all children of a nationally determined human community without exception, because every exception by the nature of things,
would have to explicitly imply not identifying with the concerned nation)
how many did not she manage to save or even register and save from oblivion?
What were the numbers of the above-mentioned (in)voluntary migrants
forced to resettle between the end of the war and the first census (1945-1948),
or between the two censuses (1948-1964)? By whom, how often, to what end
and how thorough, systematic or reliable was the statistical recording?
It means that the number of possible genocide victims in Croatia between
1941 and 1945 who were never registered anywhere either in registries of
births and population censuses before the war or dungeons and concentration
camps, i.e. numerous and completely destroyed villages in 1941-1945, or the
33
34
Compare: www. http://forum.b92.net/topic/50758-ukupan-broj-ustaskih-zrtava/

Note of 23 August 1943.
45
census immediately after the war is unknown, that is, it is at least an insufficiently exact and unreliable constant.
This further means that statistics or the total exact number of individually
named Serbian citizens before and after the war and Serbocide in the territory of the NDH can only conditionally be accepted as such a (unquestionable,
because it is based on mathematics) starting and ending point.
That the mentioned population censuses in this area can quickly become absurd is shown in a popular article on the Croatian Wikipedia (October 2013),
which claims that in the Croatian territory in that period there were no casualties at all amongst Serbs, on the contrary, their population increased in
that period for about 120,000 people:
The number of killed Serbs in the territory of the Independent State of Croatia during World War II can be estimated by comparing the results of the
population census results before and after the war, in 1931 and 1948. The
NDH covered the territory of todays Croatia, except for the area of Baranja,
the entire Bosnia and Herzegovina and Srem. The population census for this
area in 1931 showed 1,790,000 Serbs, while in 1948 there were 1,829,000
Serbs. In order to compare this number with the results from before the war,
we need to subtract the number of Muslims who registered as Yugoslavs and
add those who migrated to Vojvodina or abroad; it comes to 1,907,000 of
true Serbs.35
There is no need to emphasise how the criteria of positive historical science
and moral parameters of philosophy value this mathematical and statistical
absurd, which noticeably serves the purpose of the ideological apologetics
concerning the Serbocide in Croatia in 1941-1945.
Such public statements serve only the permanent apologetic campaign of a
large part of the Croatian scientific, political and clerical elite, characterised
in a Croatian scientific publication by a prominent German historian, Holm
Sundhaussen, as follows:
What is described as the Auschwitz lie by right-oriented radicals and NeoNazi circles in Germany and other countries is the Jasenovac lie for nationalist circles in Croatia, or the so-called Jasenovac fairy tale. In both cases it
35
hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srbi_u_NDH:_Broj_rtava.
46
is about the devaluation of numerically inexact and poorly documented

crimes to a dimension beyond recognition or even full denial. Both cases are
about the cleansing of their respective national past, where mass killings are
described as empty slender and historical fabrications.36
Let us remember the fact that all historical sources related to the genocide of
Jews (Holocaust, Shoah) very convincingly assume 6,000,000 Jewish victims,
and at the same time even the Memorial Centre Yad Vashem has a list of
names or statistically verified victims, of about just over 4,000,000.37
Therefore, one third is missing here as well, almost 2,000,000 victims identified by name.
One of the examples belonging to that entirety of historical sources regarding
the Holocaust is the statement of a German witness and SS intelligence officer, lieutenant colonel Wilhelm Httl who testified before the Nuremberg
tribunal that Adolf Eichmann personally told him that around 4,000,000
Jews were killed in Nazi concentration camps and around 2,000,000 in other
execution sites.38
In fact, there are no plausible reasons why Httl or Eichmann would lie and
the same is true for the Jasenovac commander at the time, former Franciscan, Miroslav Filipovi (another direct eyewitness here mentioned with respect to Serbocide39), who in relation to Jasenovac, on 25 June 1946, said before the post-war investigation authorities: Vjekoslav Maks Luburic who
36 Holm Sundhaussen, A review of the German edition of Jurevis book Origin of the
Jasenovac myth, Radovi Croatian History Institute, 41, Zagreb, 2009, p. 483.
37
Yad Vashem, 21 December 2010: 4 Million Victims of Holocaust Identified; de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust.

38 IMT: Der Nrnberger Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher. Nachdruck Mnchen
1989, Vol. XXXI, p. 85 (Document 2738-PS). Testimony of this witness (published under
the pseudonym Walter Hagen) has already been cited regarding the Serbocide in Croatia in
1941-1945, where he served for a while.
39 Also: Eugen Drewermann, Jesus von Nazareth: Befreiung zum Frieden, Walter, 1996,
p. 694; Also: Verein Romano Centro, Roma: das unbekannte Volk, Schicksal und Kultur,
Bhlau, 1994, p. 101.
47
was the camp Commander-in-Chief for the longest period of time and probably kept records, told me that around 500,000 people had been killed
there.40 He had nothing to gain or lose either.
Their testimonies surely have to be compared and checked against the entire
historical sources where they primarily belong.
The mentioned Vjekoslav Maks Luburic organised a celebration on 9October 1942 in the concentration camp Jasenovac and formally awarded gold
and silver medals to the deserving camp guards. On that occasion, he said:
We have killed more people here in Jasenovac in a year than the Ottoman
Empire did during its entire presence in Europe.41
Let us not forget other similar (but differently conditioned) difficulties in
determination of the exact number of victims in the genocide of Roma
(Porajmos), which in turn derive from partly nomadic lifestyle, absence from
population censuses, etc.
The Central Council of Sinti and Roma in Germany, for example, assume the
count of around 500,000 victims. Gratton Puxton uses similar numbers
(1979).42 Michael Zimmermann, however, talks about probably 94,000 victims (2003)43, while Donald Kenrick (and Gratton Puxton in later studies,
40
Private archive of Vladimira Dedijer, published in: V. Dedijer, Vatikan i Jasenovac, Beograd, 1987, p. 389. Compare the official minutes cited below by the State Commission to Investigate the Crimes of the Nazis and Their Allies from 1945, which confirm the statement
given by Filipovi.
41 Wolf Oschlies, Das Kroatische KZ Jasenovac, Das balkanische Auschwitz. Zukunft
braucht Erinnerung Shoa.de. Also compare: Sofsky, Wolfgang: Die Ordnung des Terrors Das Konzentrationslager, Frankfurt a.M. 1993. Also: Gutman, Israel / Eberhard Jckel /
Peter Longerich (ed.): Enzyklopdie des Holocaust. Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der
europischen Juden. Mnchen, 1998 .
42 Gratton Puxon, Verschleppte Wiedergutmachung, in: Tilman Zlch (ed.), In Auschwitz
vergast, bis heute verfolgt, Reinbek, 1979, pp. 149-161, here: p. 159.
43 Michael Zimmermann: Die nationalsozialistische Verfolgung der Zigeuner. Ein berblick. In: Yaron Matras, Hans Winterberg, Michael Zimmermann (Hrsg.): Sinti, Roma,
Gypsies. Sprache Geschichte Gegenwart. Berlin 2003, pp. 115153, here: p. 138; See also:
Der Vlkermord an Sinti und Roma. In: LeMO (Deutsches Historisches Museum).
48
2009) estimates around 200,000 Roma were deliberately killed or died

through starvation or lack of medical attention.44
***
Another reason for questioning the singular use of statistical method (identification of victims by name) is, for example, the fact that numerous primary
historical sources, as mentioned, undoubtedly testify of the frequently used
method in Jasenovac, when newcomers would be killed immediately upon
their arrival at the camp grounds, due to capacity overfilling. They would be
mass killed and thrown into the Sava or burnt in blast furnaces.45
They were killed before any kind of registration.
It is significant that even Pavelis Primary living in a circular letter sent
to all commanding offices in 1941, also confirms that camp Jasenovac is of
unlimited (underlined by the author) capacities...46
Since, naturally, there is no such a physical space that can claim to be having
unlimited admission capacity, that document emphasized with great proba-
44
Donald Kenrick/Gratton Puxon, Gypsies under the Swastika, Hatfield (UK) 2009, p.
153, quoted after: Fings/Opfermann, ibid, p. 344.
45 Those furnaces were designed and adapted to the purpose of burning alive and dead people by Ustasha colonel Dominik Hinko Piccili. Memorial site Jasenovac (http://www.juspjasenovac.hr/Default.aspx?sid=6248) writes: He enlisted with Ustasha forces in 1942 and
soon was appointed commander of labour division at camp III Ciglana Jasenovac. He held
that position until the end of 1944, when he was appointed commander-in-chief of the
camp. According to the prisoners testimonies, he personally designed and built a primitive
crematorium out of blast furnaces, where both alive and killed prisoners were burnt in the
period from February to May 1942. Since the beginning of 1945 he organised, together
with former commanders of the camp III Ciglana, Ljubo Milos, Dinko Sakic and Miroslav
Filipovi-Majstorovi, the cremation of killed and deceased prisoners in order to cover the
tracks and hide the committed crimes. He participated in the liquidations of the remaining
prisoners in April 1945.
46 Facsimile published in: V. Umeljic, Die Besatzungszeit und das Genozid in Yugoslawien
1941-1945, Graphics High Publishing, Los Angeles, 1994 and again here, in Mala fototeka
Srbocida u hrvatskoj drzavi 1941-1945.
49
bility the rapid fluctuation of prisoners and relentless discharge of prisoners by the Ustashas, i.e. they would diligently free up some space in the
concentration camp Jasenovac to maintain unlimited capacity.
In practice, it means mass killings, because Jasenovac was in principle the
last stop for the prisoners and their release was extremely rare.
Let us mention (conclusively) with regard to the issue of determining the
number of victims in this concentration camp system, the introduction to the
report by the National committee for the investigation of crimes committed
by the occupiers and their supporters from 1945, which is elaborated (with
regard to the criminal nature of prisoner treatment) and at the same time
insufficient (with regard to the quantity of the committed crimes, i.e. number
of victims).
The first paragraph already briefly outlines the entire issue:
The National committee could not find any written documents about the
crimes in the Jasenovac camp. The Ustasha criminals had destroyed all documentation in order to erase all traces of this unprecedented torture chamber, which was, without doubt, one of the bloodiest of all the Nazi camps in
Europe by the severity and cruelty of crimes. However, even if those records
kept by the camp management had been saved, they could not have served
as reliable sources of data regarding the number of victims. As found from
the testimonies given by witnesses, the victims who were killed there had not
always been registered and recorded.47
47
Croatian State Archives, HR-HDA-306, Croatian national committee for the investigation
of the crimes of the occupiers and their supporters, (fund), Zagreb. See also: Z. Kantolic,
Djelovanje anketne komisije 1945 u Zagrebu: Utvrdjivanje zlocina kulturne suradnje s
neprijateljom.
Also: arhinet.arhiv.hr/_.../ArhivskeJedinice.PublicDetails.a...
50
CONCLUDING IMPLICATIONS OF THE ISSUE OF

DETERMINING THE NUMBER OF GENOCIDE
VICTIMS (USING 1941-1945 SERBOCIDE AS AN
EXAMPLE)
The room for scientific uncertainty and irresponsible speculation regarding
this very complex issue (here relating to Serbocide) firstly depends on the
following factors:
Croatian authorities, being part of the defeated Hitlers alliance in World War
II, were consistently and systematically destroying documentation and other
material evidence of their crimes at the end of the war, and to a large extent
succeeded.
The leader of Croatian state in that period, Ante Paveli submitted the official
archives before he fled the country to the Roman Catholic Archbishop in Zagreb and president of the Croatian Bishop Conference, Aloysius Stepinac,
who then forwarded most of it to the Vatican. The Headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church, however, have kept refusing to make that precious historical material available to science ever since.48
The post-war regime of the Croatian communist Tito also consistently and
consequently interfered and even forbade exhumations and identifications at
well known execution sites (e.g. Jasenovac), large number of underground
caves in Herzegovina used by genocidal killers in the service of the NDH as
mass graves for Serbs were even cemented, etc.
During the entire Titos reign of about half a century, it was politically incorrect for scientists to deal with this subject, which could have had serious
48
Archives of the Croatian Republic Secretariat of Internal Affairs, Zagreb. There were
findings kept under number 001050-31 in those archives, discovered inside a basement
wall at Stepinacs residence: a small part of the official documentation of the Independent
State of Croatia, Stepinacs diaries, vinyl records with recorded speeches Pavelic had held
and part of the gold from the state treasury, primarily gold dentures, taken from victims
across numerous concentration camps. See also: Ulrich Schiller: Deutschland und seine
Kroaten Vom Ustasa-Faschismus zu Tudjmans Nationalismus, Preface Hans Koschnick /
Donat-Verlag Bremen, 2010.
51
consequences in the communist regime, imprisonment and even worse. Social sciences, unfortunately, complied to the dictate almost without exception.
Even the most exact science, mathematics, or in this case statistics, was forced
to partly rely on (its theoretical twin sister in the field of stochastics) probability theory, therefore to deal with estimates, since the population census
from 1941 had not been found, so the calculations were based on results from
the censuses made in 1921 and 1931. Once again, according to numerous primary German, Italian, Vatican historical sources, Croatian state had already killed as many Serbs in 1941-1942 as Koovi and erjavi assumed
should have been killed in total by the end of the war in 1945. How logical is
it or how likely that the Serbocide had already been completed in 1942 and
Nazi and fascist witnesses giving testimonies from then until 1945 fabricated
and arbitrarily exaggerated the number of the killed, all up to the enormous
figure of 750,000 victims? Finally, was the Jewish survivor and qualified witness of his time (later prominent researcher of genocide), Zeev Milo also fabricating when he described the attitude of the Croatian state towards Serbs
in 1941-1945 with a single sentence: Mass destruction of the Serbian population during the entire four years of Ustasha terror knew no breaks (underlined by the author)?
The review of this material has revealed another concluding and very interesting quantitative (and consequently qualitative) constellation between the
testimonies of the witnesses on the one and statistics on the other hand, both
regarding the total number of Serbocide victims and the number of victims
from the concentration camp system Jasenovac:
There is an obvious difference between according to direct and qualified
historical witnesses after the war about 750,000 Serbian victims in total, as
opposed to statistical assumptions of 370,000 (Koovi) or 335,000 (erjavi).
The difference, roughly speaking, is about 370,000 people.
There is also an obvious difference between according to direct and qualified historical witnesses hundreds of thousands (among them the smallest
number after the war and Serbocide was given by the former Franciscan Filipovi, about 500,000, while a report by General von Horstenau from 1944
claimed that between 300,000 and 400,000 people were killed in Jasenovac
by the end of 1943) and so far about 130,000 statistically verified victims
52
from Jasenovac. The difference in this case, roughly speaking, is about

370,000 people.
Could this coincidence be only a coincidence?
Because the claim that it is yet another consequential evidence of the exactness or justification for its own methodology alone, which both these particular sciences could indicate, would have had a one-sided and thus insufficient
reach, it would serve primarily as an alibi to its own and singular infallibility, as an attempt to explain the unwillingness to recognise what definitely
is a common problem.
In both cases the entire NDH and Jasenovac once again, it is in fact the
same (disputed) number of Serbocide victims, credibly given by the historical sources, while statistics due to various, largely objective reasons so far
has not been able to verify it by its own methodology.
Thus appear glimpses of a ligature in the enormous divergence between the
results of these two sciences, if for a moment we stop insisting on any of the
currently valid absolute and singularly postulated numbers. At the same time,
there is another evidence to the need for multidisciplinary collaboration instead of confrontation:
If we start from the logical assumption that Nazi and fascist witnesses and
genocidal perpetrators (for example former commander in chief at Jasenovac, Filipovi) and Serbocide victims (for example valid testimonies of the
Jasenovac survivors) have not succumbed to a collective brainwashing by
a higher power or a mysterious mass psychosis that has hit Germans, Italians,
Croats and Serbs and even for example the (French) Roman Curia Cardinal
Tisserant in the Vatican, who confirmed on 6 March 1942 his discovery of
over 350,000 Serbocide victims until then, therefore sworn enemies and allies at the same time, killers and their tutors, i.e. victims, which is why they
all eagerly fabricated and arbitrarily exaggerated the number of killed Serbs,
then the following question can legitimately be opened for discussion:
Since we are talking about approximately the same number of the presumed
existing victims, postulated by direct and qualified historical sources both in
the NDH and Jasenovac, who are statistically postulated as the presumably
non-existing number because they could not be found due to various rea-
53
sons, is it then sufficiently logical to presume with sufficient probability (scientific scepticism) that statistics due to mentioned weaknesses and deficiencies at this point is not giving the true reflection of (definite, constant) reality?
Note: All attempts to answer the consequential question of whether the mentioned statistical deficiencies may include the entire difference in current estimates (about 370,000 victims) in both Jasenovac and the entire NDH territory, would at this point be only speculative.
Koovi himself, however, revealed that in his calculation of 1,014,000 people killed during World War II in Yugoslavia, while demographic losses were
1,925,000, the possibility of calculation error is +/ 250,000 victims (underlined by the author).49
In theory, this conclusion alone could resolve to a great extent the seemingly
impossible to overcome difference between statistics and the primary sources
of historical science of several hundred percent in estimation of the total
number of Serbian victims (which, yet again, does not change anything in
the reasonably presumed unverifiability of ivanovis final assumption of
about 700,000 dead at Jasenovac alone, and also reasonably assumed number
of about 750,000 victims in the entire territory of the NDH, but supports his
initial position on possibly hundreds of thousands).
In the meantime, erjavi has been compromised as a scientist (see below).
The issue of the number of victims in any given genocide is extremely important because (among other important reasons such as legal and moral
sanction of the crime, cherishing of the prophylactic principle Never
again!, etc.) with all due respect to the loyalty of certain sciences to their
own methodologies, the added issue here (and in humanistic terms even primary) is one of respect for the ethical and moral imperative which surpasses
all sciences, or the respect for the only remaining right of the innocent people
who were killed, the right not to be forgotten, not to lose posthumously the
status of human beings and victims of other, extremely deviant human beings.
49
See also: [http://www.knjigainfo.com/index.php?gde=@http 3A//www.knjigainfo.com
54
Only animals sink into oblivion after death and by doing so no one has the
right to confirm, justify or give an alibi to ideologists and those who gave
orders, but most of all to direct perpetrators of genocide, typically normal
people (Hanna Arendt, The Banality of Evil), to confirm that those before
them were merely anthropomorphic creatures, worthless and alien, because
they were radically dehumanised by the usurpers of the ownership of definitions, nothing but lower biological species or a species of animals.
The final question that remains open is whether the concentration camp system Jasenovac could have counted for additional tens or even hundreds or
thousands of victims nowhere registered (long-time commander at Jasenovac, Vjekoslav Maks Luburic said in 1942: We managed to kill here in
Jasenovac alone more people in a year than the Ottoman Empire did during
its entire presence in Europe!) and without the usual graves, because they
were:
Burnt (dead or alive),
Thrown into the River Sava, like for example Serbian children who were
never counted or registered anywhere (testimony by Diana Budisavljevi),
Killed in the surrounding or remote fields (as testified by witness Karl Huber) and impossible to find after the war, i.e. impossible to identify or forensically determine the place of their deaths,
Lying in unopened and unexplored mass graves in about 210km2 of the former concentration camp system Jasenovac, which ivanovi has been rightly
warning about for decades, and not accepted by todays statistics not even in
theory (=mathematical probability theory) because it simply cannot bring
them in line with its (reasonably presumed) exact, but still only a singular
methodology.
The authors position on this matter is that it is definitely possible due to the
existence of many reliable historical sources, and axiomatic assumptions of
the mathematical probability theory, therefore deserves and requires further
research. The question of the number of genocide victims in Croatia in 19411945 remains open, at the very least.
The credit for that goes to Srboljub ivanovi, among others.
55
PhD Svetozar Livada
THE VICTIM IS ALWAYS RIGHT
The European Union Commissioner for Refugees asked me in a lengthy letter: Why did all this happen to the Serbs in the Republic of Croatia? What
about their individual or collective guilt?
I replied briefly:
Serbs are victims of a historical unpunished crime. Historical guilt of
collectivity does not exist. Historical crime of a nation does not require
faults of the nation itself the collectivity. Historical crime is the crime
affecting the people and their institutions, goods, homes and heritage
including cemeteries, etc. Mr. Commissioner, crimes are always
concrete and actionable. My concern is finding at least the facts that go
in favour of shedding the light on the essence of guilt, responsibility
and scope of the crime.
Studying the racial laws and genocide policy of the NDH, execution sites (for
example: in my wider homeland, the polygon of death, there were 170 execution sites with more than 30,000 citizens murdered), the fate of 82 concentration camps, persecution, ethnic cleansing, I have come to the fundamental
guilt of statehood doctrines and ideology networked partly with clerical fascism. Within this, I found one of the most important subjects of these ideological grounds, the so-called historic entrepreneur clerical fascism of the
Catholic Church. Clerical fascism is the worst form of fascism. For example,
the local church has not, even after seventy years, condemned fascism or the
fascists from its ranks. Clerical fascism has lived here in these areas as a constant cause of almost all historical troubles of Serbs in Croatia. The Serbs as
Orthodox Christians only ritually differ from the Catholic Croats. However,
the attitude of Cardinal Stepinac against the Serbs during the Second World
57
War was morbid. Just listen to this statement: If a Serb and a Croat were
cooked, the soup would separate in two. Elsewhere in his diary, he states:
As far as Orthodoxy is concerned, there are no humans, honesty, morality,
truth,... Therefore, the people were completely negated as human beings. It
is widely known that the Serbs came to this region (Croatia) during the great
migration of peoples, especially after the expansion of the Ottoman Empire.
Although the Serbs together with Croats built their national consciousness,
defended the integrity of these areas, hence, fighting the expansion of the
Turkish Empire, there has always been contradictory attitudes of the Catholic Church towards Orthodoxy. Serbs were living on the borders, bulwarks
of Christianity and swallowed the bitter fates of horses and heroes for the
defence of that bulwark where heads would burst like pumpkins, and bones
like cordwood, as a poet said, it never meant anything to some Catholics.
Some resourceful connoisseur summed up these sufferings in these verses:
Krajina is a blood-stained dress, lunch with blood, dinner with blood, everyones chewing on some bloody bites. Whole generations of Serbs died defending this bulwark border of Christianity.
Moreover, Serbs fought in the areas where the Austrian Empire was fighting,
and in some Napoleonic wars too. The position of Serbs is best realised when
dossiers of 180 Krajina generals are studied. Each of them, regardless of ability, merit, experience or military heroism had to be converted to Catholicism
if they were not Catholics. There was a man who did not want to do so and
got hold of the bitter fate, Mihailo Mikainovi. As a researcher I noticed a
document from the 17th century near Velika close to Slavonska Poega,
where more than 400 Orthodox Christians who did not want to become Catholics were executed. Some would say its the most brutal echo of religious
wars in Europe of the time on this soil. When you read the most profound
texts of the father of the homeland Starevi, the diary of Holly Stepinac,
then you can see the views and standpoints toward Orthodox religion and
Orthodox people, which leads to absurdity, to the negation of Serbs as human
beings. It is sufficient to mention, according to Bogdan Koovi, that more
than 400,000 Serbs were executed in the NDH. In addition to those killed,
240,000 Serbs were converted to Catholicism, which, through his Nunciate,
Pope Pius XII assessed as the victory of Catholicism, and we all know how
Baptism was going on especially in three churches: Glina, Kolari and
Sadilovac by massacre and mallets.
58
All these processes that happened to the Serbs forced me to determine the
number of Serbs by a mathematical method of extrapolation regardless of
any natural and mechanical movements within their corpus if there had not
been genocide and ethnic cleansing. Following this mathematical logic there
would have to be 1,600,000 Serbs in Croatia today but unfortunately there
are only 186,000 people according to the last census of 2011. It is much more
than a demographic collapse. It is a complete biological disaster within the
Serbian corpus with no possibility of a biological renewal because families
impaired by national return policies are reduced solely to the dying elderly
population. We have to remember that the average age of the overall Serbian
population at the last 2011 census was 53.1 years, and for peasants it was 58.5
years.
This logic speaks for itself meaning it is a balance resulting from the
historical crimes. The interest of the state that destroys its own society was
raised above life and death by the state-forming movement, without limiting
it to the Serbs only, but also to Croats to a great extent, Catholics, especially
by following Tumans concept (The Norval Programme of the Lustration
of Serbs to reduce them to three percent, and war-scorched earth).
It was horrible; I was troubled with being able to hear Tuman's speech a few
months before the elections in 1990. He came to my atelier probably thinking
of making me become his Augustini and enthusiastically began talking
about it.
Croatian people must get their own state with blood, that we (he with
the HDZ) will do what Paveli failed to do in 1941, that 50 percent of
Serbs will pack their suitcases and move away and the remaining 50
percent will have to become Croats or disappear! I replied and told him
he was crazy and that he should seek treatment and from then on, I
stopped any contact with him. Reasoning for working on the Viva la
muerte as a response to Tumans terrible cynicism and callousness,
was found in one of his speeches to the mothers and widows of the Croatian defenders in 1993, which were posthumously awarded medals by
the words that they needed to be happy and delighted since their sons
and husbands died for Croatia!'1
Identitet, no. 61, 2003, p. 8-11, conversation between Mira Babi uvar and Edo Murti
59
It should always be borne in mind that the existential necessity of Serbs for
becoming antifascists was threatened by racial laws. Tuman ordered that all
antifascist monuments be brought down to delete the history by counterrevolution realising what Paveli, due to antifascism itself, could not realise.
Operation Storm alone destroyed over 24,000 village houses and over 13,000
commercial buildings, 182 cooperative houses, 56 clinics, 78 churches, 29
museums, 181 cemeteries, 325 shops, 113 water supply systems, 96 substations, 167 industrial facilities, 920 monuments, 211 taverns, 410 craft shops,
118 warehouses. There is a complete elimination of Serbian toponyms. Unpunished to this day! More than 200,000 Croats moved in the best building
through the colonisation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Croatia has lost more
through conversion, to be more precise the robbery of the century than
through its war-time evil deeds.
By stealing past labour and imposing capitation on current labour, the most
productive generations die three and a half years earlier, which is the toll of
counter-revolution, the transfer of social to private ownership.
By living in this area for centuries Serbs have become to resemble Croats
more than themselves due to the fact they have lived in their environment
according to their customs, laws and obligations. Therefore, until recently in
relation to the number of Croats, every fourth person was Serbian which is
now reduced to every twenty-third person. They were subject to destruction
in 82 concentration camps, hundreds of mass graves, tens of thousands of
individual executions on their own doorsteps, fields, roads, at public meetings
and so on. A brutal killing of 213 priests and destruction of 240 Orthodox
church buildings, aiming to eradication of Orthodox religion. By Norval Programme in the 1990s, the Serbs were intimidated, robbed, persecuted, killed
based on the leopard skin model and finally deprived of any rights in an organised and government-programmed way. By following the programme of
complete displacement from rural areas, nearly 230,000 farmers were deported together with 124,000 city Serbs. For example, just in the city of Split
more than 10,000 Serbs were expelled, and almost 12,000 Serbs were thrown
out of Karlovac in three days. The ethnicities were not hated so much as their
stolen goods were loved.
60
So after not punishing the acts of robbery, it was like: Come on, looters!
Serbs lost their elites after tenancy rights in cities were seized. Approximately 60,000 dwelling units were taken away with all their contents, without
any punishment. This programme of attacks on Serbs attacked toponymy,
onomastics, cadastre, history, conducted culture-cide and rural-cide and
even the Serbian cemeteries were given to colonised Croats. For example, by
destroying books more than four million books were destroyed under the
guise of the destruction of the Cyrillic script although the Cyrillic belongs to
Slavic groups together with the Croatian alphabet, too. Nowadays, there are
irrational fights in Vukovar against the Cyrillic script, and people regret that
the logic of Operation Storm had not been applied in Eastern Slavonia too.
Nothing was spared in the war. People, institutions, sanctuaries; the Museum
of Orthodoxy in Zagreb was mined together with Home and Museum of the
builders of the civilisation of Nikola Tesla; neither the Tesla Monument in
Gospi was spared. Integral nationalism of the nation-state, nominally titled
the Republic, statehood contingents obscured the mind to the extent that they
are now threatened by the remaining Serbs in Croatia through the Cyrillic
script. They go back to the 1990s. They have allowed only the elderly to return to die in their homes.
Here is what Tuman, the blacksmith of war said: Croatia has addressed the
Serbian issue in Croatia. We have accepted the return of some of the Serbs in
Croatia in order to prevent any attacks on Croatia and any remarks that Croatia is a continuation of the NDH and that it does want to have a single Serb.
We have resolved the Serbian issue and there will no longer be 12 percent of
Serbs or 6 percent of Yugoslavs like before. And the remaining 3 percent will
not endanger the Croatian state. (No more 12 percent of Serbs! - Franjo
Tuman, President of the Republic of Croatia at the opening of the war school
of Ban Josip Jelai in Zagreb, 15 December 1998). This is what I call the
logic of nation-building euthanasia. In these areas, no single pilot project for
the reconstruction of Serbian villages has been achieved or any nursing home
or palliative institutions constructed, no industrial zone, let alone destroyed
infrastructure (electricity, road networks, plumbing, phones, etc.). For example, over 52,000 pensioners live today in Serbia, displaced Serbs from Croatia whose pensions have been denied, their home-ground devastated, primary groups families destroyed, meaning that they are existence in exile is
under threat. That dishonour to the Serbs as a nation goes into the core of the
61
Serbian corpus, in which they are not guilty at all, except for those for whom
a specific crime can be established due to the armed conflict, and doubtless
there was a considerable number of such cases among the Serbs in the entire
area affected by the war. No one can pardon them for that, I in the least!
Crime is punishable.
I could continuously cite plenty of details about what the consequences of
mechanical, social and spatial breaking of the families as the primary group
means. However, since neither the country of exile nor the country of acceptance adheres to the laws and conventions, victims will suffer without anyone being punished. However, the government of Croatia practically took
position on collective guilt and passed the Law on National Minorities, which
is a classic Kelsenism because all national identities of ethnic minorities were
reduced to one third, and the Serbian corpus massacred to the level of inability of biological renewal. They do not implement the laws, yet advertise it to
Europe.
Therefore, Serbian guilt exists only in specific forms of war crimes of individuals, while Serbian collective guilt does not exist, nor can it exist, but it is
treated in the process of practical application to the collectivity. Serbs are
even considered to be foreigners, guests, through its representative in the
European Parliament.
If I, dear Sir, I replied the Commissioner for Refugees of the European Union were to describe to you the torture in Kuline, Lora near Split, Gospi,
Sisak, Zagreb, Kerestinec, Pakraka Poljana, Osijek and other places you
could not believe such kind of atrocity, unpunished.
Finally, to conclude, the Serbs have not only lost their constitutionality, but
also citizenship and all their properties, no matter when they came here and
when the living ones were born. I repeat, more than 52,000 pensioners were
denied pensions while living as refugees in Serbia. All the past labour of their
generations has been taken away from them. It sounds grotesque with devastating consequences. Croatia paid about 32 million Euros for the defence of
Gotovina and Marka alone before the ICTY. If I showed you court rulings of
some innocent Serbs and their rationales you would not believe that a Turkish custom has returned to this land: Qadi sues you, Qadi tries you! [Its a
kangaroo court! t/n]
62
Therefore, my dear wise and noble Sir, the Serbian issue in Croatia practically does not exist, but rather the issue of the Croatian state and its attitude
towards the Serbs. This attitude of historical crimes against Serbs is the result
achieved by Croats with an enormous assistance of the international community without punishment. They introduced themselves to themselves and the
world as a victim with huge historical crimes, but without any Croatian guilt.
If they could decide to accept Croatia into the European Union, they should
not have accepted it with the burden of such crimes, a large number of unpunished murders, plunder and expulsion of a huge number of Serbs.
My dear Sir, this is a brief answer to your question Why and how did all this
happen to the Serbs.
63
Bogdan Petkovi
WHY DID PARTISAN UNITS NOT

LIBERATE THE JASENOVAC CAMP?
Some time in 1988 or 1989, the Belgrade weekly Svet published an article
about why the Partisans did not attack the camp Jasenovac and liberate the
prisoners from that monstrous camp. It stated that we had divisions and
corps, but that there was no political will to do it. It also claimed, as far as I
remember, that there had been a plan, but that it was cancelled at the last
moment by Dr Vladimir Bakari. I joined that debate because I was a former
prisoner of the Jasenovac camp and I had spent 135 days in it. I was deported
to Jasenovac on 5th October 1944 as a captured Partisan soldier and arrived
at the camp in German uniform. On 18th February 1945, I was deported from
the camp, along with 300-400 other prisoners, to work in Germany, so I
incidentally managed to leave Jasenovac alive.
I explained the position of the camp and described the barbed wire, the camp
wall which was 3-3.5 m high and which encircled the entire camp and on it
were 7 (seven) watchtowers with heavy machine guns. Then, there was a
powerful Ustasha garrison and most prisoners were placed in only 6 (six)
living quarters. I stated that it would be pointless even to think that anyone
could have been rescued from the hands of those bloodthirsty Ustashas,
because, in a critical moment, they would have killed all the prisoners. I
cannot remember all the details of that dispute, but I do remember that one
strategist replied with a condescending tone: Hey, I'm so scared of those
towers of yours, because they were a piece of cake for him. Some people
thought that such a military action was possible and surely feasible, but,
unfortunately, it was cancelled by Dr Vladimir Bakari. Let's put aside the
65
fact that in this kind of military action Dr Bakari would have the final
decision, because Croatian and Bosnian Partisan units would have to be
coordinated.
The subject of not liberating the camp Jasenovac was discussed in the Second,
Fourth and Fifth Jasenovac conference, which were all held in Banja Luka
between 2000 and 2011 and which I participated in.
It should be noted that this issue was not raised by our military leaders from
the 6th and 10th Corps, Partisans of that region or senior party officials from
the area. This issue was raised by writers, various literati, that is people who
are not competent in this area and also people who are not from these parts.
None of those experts stated in what type of geographical location the camp
Jasenovac was positioned, i.e. that it was located between the railway line,
and at that time also road, Zagreb - Beograd and the River Sava. Anyone who
has not fought in a war in this terrain has no idea what the railway line
Vienna - Zidani Most - Zagreb - Beograd - Salonika meant for the enemy,
that is it was the lifeline for supplying German army group C in Greece.
Constantly patrolling that railway line were armoured trains, dislocated
strong garrisons while all bridges, crossings or overpasses were protected
with concrete bunkers with permanent crews. Enemy units deployed in
garrisons on the railway line surpassed the total number troops in 6th and 10th
Corps.
As a Partisan of the Moslavina Partisan detachments, a member of the 2nd
Moslavina Brigade and the Matija Gubec Brigade, I crossed that railway line
and took part in its demolition, but not a single unit has ever been on the
railway line during the day. Never has any unit, to the best of my knowledge,
attacked any garrison on the railway line with the goal of taking control of it.
It is true that the 10th Corps had the 3rd Sabotage detachment made up of two
battalions, of which the stronger one was deployed for sabotages on the
railway between Dugo Selo and Banova Jaruga, while the other was deployed
on the railway Zagreb - Krievci - Koprivnica. During the entire war period,
19 armoured trains were blown up, of which only one was completely
destroyed, while the others were merely damaged and after repairs were put
back on patrol again.
66
I would like to say that my brigade, 2nd Moslavina Brigade, on 29 t h March

1944, was in the village Oborova, that is between the River Sava and the
railway line Zagreb - Beograd. The brigade was surrounded and, in that
battle, two battalions were decimated. The outcome was 156 killed Partisans
and 11 lost machine guns. Anyone who hasn't fought in this area cannot have
an idea what the railway line Zagreb - Beograd meant and why the enemy
used such force to control and defend it.
None of those criticisers from the weekly Svet, nor anyone of the people
who raised the issued in Jasenovac Conferences mention how great of a risk
it would have been to engage in this military action. Wasn't it necessary to
consider what the Ustashas would have done to the prisoners if it had become
apparent that the action would be successful? Personally, I believe that they
would have executed all the prisoners. In that case, what would be the point
of the action, of the sacrifice? In case of failure, which was more than likely,
how could such an attempt, whose success was questionable, be justified?
Today, we witness situations where even the world's superpowers, when they
are in a position to rescue their citizens taken hostage, despite all the
technology that is at their disposal cannot save hostages. An obvious example
would be the capturing of the entire American embassy in Tehran. Their
agony lasted for a full year, because there was no possible way to have a
rescue mission and keep the hostages alive.
The frequently asked question of why was that slaughter house, that is the
camp Jasenovac, allowed to operate all until 22 n d April 1945 could be
answered with a counter-question: why wasn't a second front created in
France in 1941, 1942 or 1943, but only in 1944? During these first three
years, did actual conditions exist for a successful landing and were they
promising? It is known that Russians greatly pressured the western Allies to
create a second front. However, even the Russians wouldn't have benefited
from Allies creating that front and failing, and instead of being successful the
Allies would have been defeated. How long would it have taken them to repeat
that kind of military action and be surely successful?
We have to keep in mind that, during the entire war, the enemy was
technically superior (that was unquestionable), it was greater in numbers
about 3-4 times, when considering all garrisons, and the enemy always had
an endless supply of ammunition and other lethal ordnances, because they
67
had factories working for them, while we would get possession of

ammunition and explosive ordnances mostly when we managed to capture
them. Only in mid 1944, our sabotage units started using plastic explosives,
remote detonators and John Bull grenade launchers for destroying
bunkers. Up until then, for large-scale operations, our sabotage units had to
use dismantled unexploded plane bombs, which were found on the ground.
STATEMENTS OF THE RESPONSIBLE PARTISAN

COMMANDERS ABOUT JASENOVAC
Our historian, one of those who published the greatest number of detailed
documents and arguments on the camp Jasenovac, Antun Mileti, along with
his fifth book about the camp Jasenovac Killed in the concentration camp
Jasenovac 1941-1945 published a brochure NDH - concentration camp
Jasenovac 1941-1945 and in that brochure he listed statements of the
responsible Partisan commanders about the topic of Jasenovac. Here, some
of them will be quoted in the following order:
Obrad Stiovi, Commander of the Kozara Partisan detachment:

We, from Kozara, were quite familiar with the atrocities fascists did
in Jasenovac and we made various plans to liberate the prisoners. We
gathered information about Jasenovac and about enemy forces; we took
military actions toward Jasenovac and, in one of them, in Prosara, we
managed to liberate 30 prisoners, who Ustashas brought to chop wood
in the forest. We have devised ever new ways how to get boats and use
them to get to the other bank of the River Sava. In order to get close to
Jasenovac, on 22 n d April 1942, we attacked Bosanska Dubica, but all
our plans failed. Soldiers of the Kozara detachment fought to the last
not to allow the enemy to enter their villages and take new prisoners to
Jasenovac. This went on until June 1942 when a massive enemy
offensive started towards the Mountain Kozara. Then, Kozara
Partisans engaged in battle with a 15 times stronger enemy. The battle
lasted for 25 days and nights and it made them into legends.
Simply said, in the first years of the war, we could not successfully
perform such a large and complex operation. That would have been a
battle lost beforehand and we would have lost soldiers and weapons, but
we would not be able to liberate the prisoners. It would have been our
68
great defeat, a blow from which we would hardly recover. We

desperately wanted to attack that Paveli's place of execution, it would
have been a matter of great pride for us, but we could not achieve the
impossible.
Veljko Kovaevi, one of the commanders of the 6th Slavonia Corps:

An attack on Jasenovac was absolutely unfeasible. Those who attack
us now, because we didn't destroy that Ustasha death factory, could
also, by the same reasoning, criticise us for not attacking Zagreb and
Sisak or for not liberating prisoners in Banjica and Sajmite in
Belgrade. The camp Jasenovac was not an ordinary field fanced with
wire and defended with a few machine guns. It was an impenetrable
ring. The camp had such a position, it was fortified and defended in
such a way that it represented an insurmountable obstacle for our
forces. Even if the conditions had been favourable for an attack - what
would it have meant for the thousands of tortured people, how would
they have fared in the camp? They would perish. They would be killed
not only by Ustasha machine guns, but also by deadly fire. The
prisoners had no cover from bullets, since they lived in the open or in
wooden barracks, surrounded by a high wall, barbed wire, bunkers and
trenches. If the Partisan troops had had heavy weapons, it would have
been very risky to use heavy artillery in an attack on the camp.
Kovaevi emphasised that was not familiar with any examples in the Second
World War where a fascist camp was attacked. Even the Red Army did not
do that, nor did the western Allies. He continues:
In our hearts, every one of us wanted to attack Jasenovac, every
officer and every soldier. Despite the best of intentions and the moral
commitment, we could not do that. That was not an option. Not only for
the prisoners, but our units as well - an attack on Jasenovac would have
been fatal. It would have been suicide. What commissar and
commander could make that kind of decision? A reckless attack on
Jasenovac and our defeat would reflect hard on both the morale of the
units, but also on the morale of prisoners and people. Only the enemy
would benefit from that.
Josip Maar oa and Boko Siljegovi, commanderand commissar of the

Fifth Krajina strike brigade:
69
In a saved latter of the Headquarters of the 5th Krajina strike brigade

of 19th October 1942, addressed to the Headquarters of the 3rd
Operations zone of the National Liberation Army of Croatia, it can be
seen that Krajiniks suggest to Slvonians to jointly attack Dubica,
Jasenovac and Stara Gradika. The following is stated in the letter: The
most useful thing in the political sense would be to destroy Jasenovac
and in the military sense Dubica.
The reply of the Headquarters of the 3rd Operations zone of the National
Liberation Army of Croatia was sent on 26th October 1942 and it read:
Concerning your suggestion for the joint attack on Jasenovac, Dubica
and Gradika, we hold the view that these actions are not possible at this
moment and not only on our part, but on yours as well. They are
incredibly demanding actions and considering the military and
political state in our region, and in yours, they need to be forgotten (for
now)... What worries us is a large number of wounded in last actions
we undertook and we have to consider that it influences the morale of
Partisans, as well as the fact that we do not have safe hospitals, doctors
nor enough medical supplies for the effective treatment of the
woundedWe must destroy large strongholds by cutting communications to them, disabling their connections with other enemy forces,
which means fighting on roads and railway lines are the best means of
destroying enemy strongholds, especially when we do not have heavy
automatic weapons or a sufficient number of automatic weapons at our
disposal. The above mentioned places will be considered later, when we
put out of commission the main road Zagreb- Beograd, as well as the
railway line.
In its reply, the Headquarters of the 3rd Operations zone gave a cautious
evaluation of the potential attack on Jasenovac, because it best understands
the situation in that area and has insight into the uncertainty of the outcome
of that kind of operation.
Jefto ai1, at the time the commissar of the 12th Slavonia Division:
Jefto ai was born in Novska, that is near Jasenovac
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We, Slavonia Partisans, wanted to destroy that bloody Paveli's

slaughter house more than anything else. But, wishes are one thing and
possibilities something completely else. I can now say that it is a good
thing that we didn't succumb to emotions back then and attempted that
operation, which did not stand a chance for success. We wouldn't have
accomplished anything. We would have gotten ouselves and the
prisoners killed. The result would have been dead bodies upon dead
bodies. The High Command asked us to examine, together with the
Krajiniks, the possibilities of an attack on Jasenovac. The order was
clear: a possible attack needs to be successfully executed, that is to
destroy the camp and take the prisoners to free territory. In no way can
we allow Ustashas to kill the prisoners during the attack, and the reality
of the situation was that not only wouldn't we be able to liberate the
thousands of tormented and hungry people, but we would lose our
troops as well. It was necessary to incapacitate the enemy in a very
short time period, so that it could not kill the prisoners. It would be a
massacre with incredibly severe consequences. A large number of the
prisoners were not able to move, due to illness or starvation, let alone
manage a march to Psunj.
A prominent leader of the uprising in Slavonia, Pero Car, whose
mother was killed in Jasenovac, could not make this kind of decision,
nor could Vlado Popovi, a delegate of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of Yugoslavia in the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of Croatia, whose wife Zlata egvi was behind the
barbed wire of Jasenovac, and not even Franjo Knebl, whose parents
died in Jasenovac. I, too, lost my father Jovo in Jasenovac. We didn't
have the right to take thousands of the finest sons of our country into
certain death.
Radojica Nenezi2, the Commander of the 28th Division, which entered the
camp Stara Gradika:
The interior of the camp was gruesome. Blood and brains ran down
the staircases and the carts, which were used to transport corpses to the
river, as well as the plateau over the river on which people were
The units of the 25th Strike Brigade of the Slavonia Division of the 2nd Yugoslav Army
took the concentration camp Stara Gradika on 23rd April 1945.
71
executed, made out of Slavonian oak planks, were black from human
blood mixed with tannin. A heavy stench of human blood within the
camp walls was unbearable. A few soldiers, brave and strong young
men fell unconscious there. We found three infants, not more than
three weeks old, with shattered skulls and traces of butchers' knives
which were visible on their feeble bodies. In a corner of a cell, a young
woman sat with a small child (judging by her clothes, she was a Muslim
girl from Bosnia and Herzegovina). The villains set them on fire and
their bodies were still burning when we entered the cell. In short, it
was a horrible sight. I realised and will remember for as long as I shell
live that it was a reflection, or more precisely put, a result of racial,
religious, national and class differences in our region and it would have
been even worse if it hadn't been for the victory of the political and
military strategy and tactics, and the ideological and political unity of
the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.
In the camp, we also found 14 living corpses - people of whom the
largest one did not weight even 50 kg. I left the camp and remembered,
among other things, a multitude of crosses and crucifixes that hung on
the inner walls of the concentration camp.
In the fighting for the liberation of the camp Stara Gradika, an Ustasha
major, the commander of the camp, was captured and also captured were
around 100 Ustasha butchers from the camps Jasenovac, Mlaka, Krapje and
Puska; all that made the Jasenovac camp system.
From the statement of general Nenezi, it is understood that 14 people were
found alive in the camp Stara Gradika, most likely, because Ustashas did not
have enough time to execute them. There were no survivors in Jasenovac,
because even the prisoners who did not take part in the breakout were killed.
They stayed in the building of the female camp, most likely because of
exhaustion, but every last one was executed.
Red Army units liberated the concentration camp Auschwitz in Poland on
27th February 1945. Journalists and cameramen entered the camp with the
units and filmed the state it was in. I think they found about 3500 live
prisoners. Truth be told, they looked like living corpses, but alive nevertheless. The crematorium was functional and the barracks were intact. The
Soviets delivered all of the footage to the western Allies to publish. However,
the western Allies did not publish it becuase they thought it was exaggerated
72
and that it was part of Soviet propaganda. When the American forced entered
the camp Buchenwald, they realised that the footage filmed in Auschwitz was
authentic, only after they saw the state of things in Buchenwald. It is known
that, after the liberation of Buchenwald, an American commander ordered
that the German population in the Buchenwald area go through the camp and
witness the atrocities, about which they probably have known nothing.
Based on the above quotes of the most responsible military leaders of the 6th
Slavonia corps on all possible factors of the Jasenovac operation, it can be
seen that it was a great risk and that there was little or no chance that the
operation would be successful, that is to liberate prisoners and bring them to
safety.
Once again, the focus shifts on the significance of the railway Zagreb Belgrade, the forces allocated along it and the determination of occupiers and
their quislings to defend this link at all cost.
We should keep in mind that in the possible Jasenovac operation there could
not be any surprises, because it was necessary to cross the Zagreb - Begrade
road, as well as the railway and get control of the bunkers in Mali Strug and
Veliki Strug, after that overcome all water obstacles and only then come to
the 3-3 . 5 m high camp wall which had seven towers with machine guns and
permanent crews. The possibly created corridor would need to be defended
from the west, the direction Kutina - Sunja, from the north, direction Lipik Okuani and from the east side, the direction Stara Gradika - Pakrac. Where
could we get so many troops to hold these positions? We must not forget that
the enemy would try to cut off that corridor, because it had enough troops in
the surrounding garrisons to do that.
Also, we need to mention that the successful liberation of the prisoners from
the Lepoglava penitentiary on 13thJuly 1943 was done thanks to the fact that
Lepoglava was not located in a strategic communication point unlike the
camp Jasenovac. Due to circumstances, shortly before the attack on Lepoglava, a Home Guard artillery division from the Jalkovec garrison surrendered near Varadin, so the Partisans had at their disposal five 105 mm
howitzers, of which they only used one and disabled the others. It has to be
said that Lepoglava was a penitentiary and not a camp. There were no
executions there, only people serving their prison sentences. The fact that
some liberated communist political prisoners asked for the penitentiary
73
warden to be released tells us about the conditions in the prison. The

Partisans left the criminals incarcerated.
After this operation, the penitentiary Lepoglava was rebuilt and turned into
a camp and major Ljubo Milo, a butcher from Jasenovac, was appointed its
warden.
We know that political internees from Kerestinac managed to break out
themselves in July 1941, but the action of taking them in failed, so they
were on their own. There was no one to meet them and take them to safety.
Some of them headed to Zagreb and some to umberk, but without a clear
destination. The enemy organised chase parties of gendarmes, Ustashas and
the police and most of them were killed in pursuit or later, in prisons. Very
few managed to get away. This was a significant loss, because all of them were
communists and intellectuals, such as: Prica, Adija, Cesarec, Rihtman and so
on.
After the war, there was great debate about who failed in that operation and
it was concluded that the operation was not prepared well enough and that it
was hastily organised which led to failure.
What needs to be taken into consideration is the type of Ustasha units which
secured the camp Jasenovac and also the type of units in the surrounding
garrisons. The Jasenovac garrison always had 1 - 2 battalions stationed
there, that is about 1500 - 2000 Ustashas. According to Ljubo Milo's statement, at the hearing after the war, the Ustasha defence brigade had 13 000
soldiers near the end of the war. Ustasha officers in the defence brigade were
mostly Ustasha repatriates who were hardened cutthroats. This Ustasha
defence brigade was distributed in the surrounding garrisons and their main
task was to protect the camp Jasenovac.
Finally, on 21 t h April 1945, the camp was reduced to 1073 prisoners, who
were locked up in one workshop building in the female camp. On that day,
the female camp was definitely shut down, because all 600 - 700 women
were killed.
On 22 n d April 1945, the camp was supposed to definitely be destroyed,
since, during the night between 21 s t /22 n d April, all the building in it were
mined.
74
The breakout was organised by members of the Communist Party of

Yugoslavia led by prisoner Ante Bakoti, a Partisan from Dalmatia. On 22nd
April 1945, around 500-600 prisoners decided to attempt a breakout, while
the others stayed behind because of exhaustion. Ustashas killed every single
person left in the building. A fortunate circumstance was that the Ustashas
did not lock the east gate and that Mile Risti, a Partisan from Kozara,
strangled an Ustasha machine gunner, grabbed his machine gun and
discharged burst fire on Ustasha towers on the camp wall. This briefly caused
confusion among Ustashas, so some prisoners managed to open the gate and
around 110 -120 prisoners managed to save their lives by escaping from the
camp. Even today, their exact number is unknown, because after the Second
World War there was no will to determine it and to decorate and show
appropriate respect and gratitude to those heroes for their feat.
We should not forget that on that day, 22 n d April 1945, the camp Jasenovac
was still not under threat by the Yugoslav Army units, because, at the time,
the front was about 30 km to the east, near Stara Gradika. If only there had
been some humaneness, humanity and kindness, the Ustashas could have
retreated peacefully and leave the camp, as the Germans had done. But, they
didn't. They had the task to kill all the prisoners, because they thought that
by doing so the truth about Jasenovac will not be found out.
I have not read anywhere that the Germans destroyed camp facilities during
their retreat, they left the prisoners there to their fate. Even in Auschwitz,
3500 prisoners were found alive.
However, when Ustashas retreated, the only things they left behind were
corpses and burned ruins. That was their signature and not only in Jasenovac.
I read that Rafael Boban, an Ustasha Colonel and Commander of the Ustasha
5 t h Active Service Brigade, during the retreat in May 1945 , ordered the
execution of all prisoners who were in prisons in that garrison.
I will give an example from my neighbouring municipality, Ivani-Grad. In
that town, for the entire war, an Ustasha garrison brigade was located. Before
their retreat to Slovenia in May 1945, they took all the prisoners out of the
prison, led them to the forest Ovrine, some 5 km away, and killed them
there. I remember the names from the memorial plaque which was erected
after World War II, but it was destroyed in the last war. On it were names:
Vaclav Kurka, Pajo Dra, Marko Krnjaji and my uncle Rade Puhovi. I don't
75
remember the other names. Marko Krnjaji's family identified him only by
his wallet, which was found in his possession, because he was massacred. His
grandson, Milo Jelaa, told me this. Unfortunately, this was not an
isolated case, because that was typical Ustasha behaviour.
According to everything I presented here, it can be concluded that there was
no possibility to save anyone from the camp Jasenovac. All the sacrifices
would have been in vain, because the chances for success were minimal.
I think that after quoting the responsible leaders from the 6th Slavonia corps
it should be left to the conscience of possible strategists not to deal with this
topic any more, because the most competent people said everything there is
about this camp.
I hope we will not deal with this topic in the future in the lines of "what could
have happened", because that would just be a waste of time and paper.
76
Ivan Fumi
CONCENTRATION CAMPS IN THE

TERRITORY OF THE INDEPENDENT
STATE OF CROATIA (NDH) 1
THE PERSECUTION OF THE SERBS, JEWS, ROMA

AND ANTI-FASCISTS2
After issuing the Ustasha principles,3 the Ustasha proclaimed the Serbs the
archenemies of the Croats, hence they ought to be eradicated coercively. By
obliterating the Serbs, they planned to create a clean environment for the
needs of the Croats and Muslims. Therefore, they formed concentration
camps. The legal provision of 25 April 1941 prohibited the Cyrillic alphabet
in the NDH, and the legal provision about the conversion from one religion
to another was introduced.4 In early June 1941, an Order on the Elimination
of all Serbian folk denominational schools and kindergartens was issued,
and a mid-July Order was released abolishing the Serbian Orthodox
religion, on the grounds that it was not in line with the new political system.
Shortly after that, orders were carried out about the changes of the names of
certain places having some Serbian marks In early May, an Order prohibiting
Ivan Fumi and Mio Deveri, Hrvatska u logorima 1941.1945", SABA, Zagreb
With the exception of the Kruica camp near the town of Travnik, this paper does not
discuss any of the camps on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina that were part of the
NDH during World War II.
3
4
Documents on the Ustasha, Zagrebaka stvarnost, Zagreb, 1995, p. 57.

Ibid., p. 170.
77
the movement of the Serbs during the night and on their emigration from
northern part of the city was adopted in Zagreb. Afterwards, the same orders
appeared in other cities and towns.
Bearing in mind the fact that the Ustasha adhered totally to the racial policy
of their fascist rulers, the Jews and the Roma were included in their later
plans to exterminate the undesirable people. Persecution of the Serbs and
Jews were preceded by strong propaganda activities of the Ustasha officials
and the adoption of appropriate legal regulations. During 1941, a plethora of
regulations in regard to the Jews were issued. The Ustasha propaganda
against the Jews was conducted under the following slogan: There is no
place for the Jews in the Independent State of Croatia. Paveli announced
publicly that the question of the Jews would be solved radically. That threat
was published in the Official Gazette The Croatian People, Vol. 83, in Zagreb
on 6 May 1941. From mid-1941 until early 1942, the terror against the Jews
culminated. They were taken to concentration camps and murdered there. In
the Independent State of Croatia (the NDH) in 1941, there were 36,000 Jews,
and in 1943 only about 5.000. In May 1943, 1,700 Jews were arrested in
Zagreb and 2,500 were arrested in other areas of the NDH. They were all
handed over to the Germans who took them to the German concentration
camps and killed them in gas chambers. Only a small number of the Jews
managed to cross to the Italian occupation zone in the territory of Croatia
where living conditions were more favorable for them. Upon assuming the
power in April 1941, the Ustasha carried out racial policy against the Roma,
which was identical to the one conducted in Germany. This particularly
related to the Roma called ergari. According to estimates by Vladimir
erjavi, 14,000 Roma were killed in the Jasenovac concentration camp.5
After being brought to the Jasenovac concentration camp, the Roma were
located in the village of Utica with the promise that they would be resettled
there. Instead of that, they were all killed.
Vladimir erjavi, Demografski gubici stanovnitva na teritoriju bive Jugoslavije u II.

Svjetskom ratu 1941.1945, Tisak, Dom i svijet, 1977.
78
A GENERAL OVERVIEW OF THE CAMPS IN THE

TERRITORY OF THE NDH
Transit camps were established for the needs of the coercive resettlement of
the population. Some authors use different names for the camps. However,
an important feature was that inmates of the camps were seen as numbers,
and not as individual beings. In this paper, we divided the camps in the
following categories: transit camps, collection camps, concentration camps
the group of the Jasenovac cams, camps for children and women, GermanUstasha camps, Italian camps, and Chetnick camps, all in the territory of the
NDH.
TRANSIT CAMPS
A demand to evict the Serbs from Croatia and a plan to resettle them in
Serbia was approved by Heinrich Himmler, Head of the Schutzstaffel (SS) of
the Nazi Germany, on behalf of the Third Reich on 18 April 1941.6
At a conference held on 4 June 1941, an agreement to exile the Serbs and the
Slovenes was reached. The agreement was made between representatives of
the Nazi Germany and the Ustasha regime. An exact schedule of the
resettlements of the Serbs in Serbia was determined, with the Slovenes from
the city of Maribor and the region of Slovenian Styria settling in their places.
It was decided to form camps in the locality of Caprag, Bjelovar and Slavonska
Poega.
All Serbs living in the areas of the NDH, such as counties and municipalities,
were enumerated, and the collection centers and modes of transport to the
camps were determined.
According to the saved documents, from the Caprag camp near the town of
Sisak, around 5,076 Serbs from the regions of Banovina, Kordun and Lika
were transported to Serbia, out of whom 2,370 were men, 2,380 women and
326 children younger than 4 years. About 1,000 camp inmates from mixed
Heinrich Himmler was one of Hitlers closest and head of all police forces in the German
Reich.
79
marriages were released. According to the documents of the State Directorate, a total of 4,693 people, of whom 2,139 were men, 2,252 women and
302 children younger than 4 years, were sent to Serbia from the Bjelovar
camp.
The Poega camp had 9,028 Slovenes, who were supposed to settle in the
empty houses of the Serbs. Occasionally, some Serbs were sent to Serbia from
that camp, and similar transit camps were established in all counties of the
NDH. In that way, more than 5,000 persons were transported to Serbia from
this camp. Smaller groups of inmates were taken to the Jasenovac camp. A
mass execution of the inmates took place on 26 August 1941, when around
400 people were killed in the camp. In the reports, the executions were
justified by an alleged mutiny of the inmates. It is estimated that in 194,
within just three months, between 140,000 and 180,000 Serbs were deported
from Croatia to Serbia.7
COLLECTION CAMPS
By the Decision of the authorities of the Banovina of Croatia, the Samobor
camp designed for the accommodation of the Jewish immigrants who were
fleeing before German Nazi was built in the town of Samobor in 1939. Until
the attack on Yugoslavia, the camp contained 200 Jews. Only some Jews
survived World War II in German camps, but no Jew survived in the Ustasha
camps. The camp was closed on 27 May 1941.
The collection camp in the town of Samobor was opened again by the Ustasha
on 13 September, while undertaking the cleansing action of the free region
of Zumberak. During those operations, the Ustasha burnt a couple of villages
and killed 80 peasants, mostly Croats, and threw them in the Jazovka pit.
Ninety-nine men and women suspected of having collabourated with the
Partisans were brought to the Samobor camp. After an investigation, 24 of
them were shot, and the rest were deported to other Ustasha camps.
Apart from that, from this region, the Ustasha captured 312 Serbian children
from the localities of Kozara, Banija, and Lika, who were situated in the
villages of Zumberak. In August 1942, from the Jastrebarsko camp they were
Duan Bilandi, Hrvatska moderna povijest, Golden Marketing, Zagreb, 1999.
80
rescued by the NOV (the National Liberation Army) units from Croatia. The
children from Samobor were transported to Zagreb and made available to
the Ministry of Corporate Affairs.
Camps of the Zagreb camp group were situated in different locations. For
instance, the Zagreb Assembly (located on Savska Street, todays location
of the Student Centre) was the biggest collection camp in the city of Zagreb.
It was established shortly after the Ustasha came to power. The arrested
Serbs, mostly from the locality of Zagreb and surrounding areas, were
brought to the camp. The Serbs were brought here before they were evicted
to Serbia, and the Jews before they were killed or dispatched to other camps.
Only the Jews of Zagreb were placed on Zavrtnica Street, as they were
evicted from their homes upon the first day of the establishment of the NDH.
For their redemption, the Ustashas asked for the so-called contribution,
following the example of the Nazi Germany. Nevertheless, the mass arrests
of the Jews started after the introduction of the Decree on Racial
Identification and Protection of Aryan Blood and the Honor of the Croatian
People, of 30 April 1941. In the area of Zagreb, there existed three collection
Ustasha camps for children and women. There were about 13,000 camp
inmates, mostly children, of whom 700 died due to abuse or illness. Some
groups of children were deported to other camps, and the majority of them
were rescued with the help of the Red Cross personnel, the activists of the
National Liberation Movement (the NOP) and the citizens of Zagreb, who
later adopted some children.
The camp located in the building of the Institute for the education of deafmutes on 113 Ilica Street was the largest collection camp for women and
children. A total of 5,612 children passed through this camp. 157 children
died there and 215 children died in hospitals in Zagreb, where they were sent
for treatment. Only a dozen of them were transported to the Medical Centre
in the area of Perjavica. Croatian civilians took care of the rest of the children.
After the war, the children, if alive, were returned to their parents or sent to
dormitories for educational purposes. A total of 800 children, mostly Serbian,
were brought to the Home for mothers and infants in the suburban area of
Josipovac (I. G. Kovaia Street), and according to estimates, around 530 of
them died. The Reception for state children colonies housed children from
new-borns to 3-year-old infants, brought from the Stara Gradika camp, and
children aged 2 to 8, brought in from the Mlaka and Sisak camps.
81
The Jeronimska Hall at 21 Tomislav Square was also a camp for women and
children. They were brought from the Stara Gradika camp and later from
the Sisak camp. There are no accounts about how many children and women
went through this camp, nor about how many of them died.
The CPC (the Communist Party of Croatia) established an illegal hospital in
Zagreb for sick children. The Hospital was located in the outskirts of Zagreb,
in Perjavica, in a private residence. Forty sickest children were housed there.
Volunteer doctors and nurses came there, giving their best to save these
children from death.
At the same time, the activists of NOP assisted by the Red Cross staff would
find some civilians who would take care of the children, adopting them and
saving them from the tortures of the Ustasha. Thus, out of 7,000 Serbian
children who went through collection camps in Zagreb, around 6.000 were
rescued.
The Jastrebarsko camp was the only camp where there were not greater
terror and torture, but there were some killings. Two hundred Serbs and
Jews were killed. Almost every day, the Ustasha would transport the inmates
to the Danica camp near the locality of Koprivnica, the village of Kruica
near the town of Travnik, then to the Stara Gradika and Jasenovac camps.
Serbian and Jewish women together with their children were sent to the
Lobor camp. The inmates headed for the Jasenovac camp were killed there.
The Tenje collection camp was formed after the establishment of the Ustasha
reign, and it was designed for the Jews coming from the city of Osijek and
surrounding regions, where 2,500 of them lived there. A settlement only for
the Jews was built at one location. The captured Jews took care of their
maintenance and food. It was a kind of racial ghetto, the one similar to that
in Warsaw.
In mid-August 1942, the Ustasha began to send the Jews to Germany. A
thousand Jews, among whom 700 were children, were directly deported to
the Auschwitz concentration camp. At the same time, some of the Jews were
sent to the Jasenovac camp. The first inmates of the akovo camp were some
Jewish women from Bosnia and Herzegovina. They instantly formed
committees for food, hygiene, health care, treasury and kitchen. All this was
done at the expense of the Jewish community. Together with the Jewish
women, there were 800 Serbian women.
82
Terror, torture and murders were common phenomena. Poor diet prompted
the spread of various diseases. Around 900 inmates were seriously ill. Aside
from diseases, cases of murders and rapes increased. A total of 2,400 inmates
were killed.
The Kerestinec camp was formed on 19 April 1941 and remained active until
14 July 1941. The inmates of this camp were political prisoners. The conflict
with the communists started in July 1941. On that day, the announcement
of the Ministry of internal affairs of the NDH was issued about the execution
of ten communists for retaliation for a murdered Ustasha agent.8 They
picked ten communists and fascists from the Kerestinec camp whom they
accused as spiritual initiators of this crime, although they had no connection
with the murder of Tiljak. Two Croats, two Serbs and six Jews, among whom
were Dr. Boidar Adija and Prof. Ognjen Prica and journalist Otokar
Kerovani, were killed.9
It is worth nothing that the Ustasha zealously persecuted the intelligentsia.
The Slaveti camp was a camp for the Jews, mostly for immigrants, but other
Jews were there too. They were supervised by the Ustasha police, and looked
after by the Jewish religious community from Zagreb. The camp was closed
in late November when men were deported to the Jasenovac camp, and
women to the Lobor camp.
CONCENTRATION CAMPS
In the second half of April 1941, the Ustashas formed the Danica
concentration camp in the locality of Koprivnica. 5,600 persons went through
this camp. The first inmates were the arrested Serbs from the towns of
Grubino Polje, Krievci, Pakrac and other places, together with some
inmates of other camps. Although, there were not mass executions in the
camps, around 200 people were killed, which says something about the
regime of the camps. People died because of exhaustion, famine, diseases and
torture. Since there were no possibilities of mass executions in the vicinity
An Announcement of the Ministry of the Interior of the NDH about the shooting of the
communists is kept in the State Archives of Croatia.
9 The list of executed camp detainees can be found on the memorial in the village of
Kerestinec.
83
of Koprivnica County, for it was densely populated place, the camp was closed
in April 1942. The inmates were transported to the Jasenovac camp or the
Stara Gradika camp, where they were mostly killed. The Gospi camp was
formed in May 1941 and operated until 21 August 1941. A total of 40,123 Jews
and Serbs and dozens of Communist Croats were killed in the Gospi and
Jadovno camps. The Gospi camp served as a transit base on the way to the
camps in the localities of Jadovno and Pag.
The Serbs and Jews arrested throughout the territory of the NDH were
brought to the Gospi camp. In August 1941, the Italians took the control of
the 2nd occupation zone,10 which included the town of Gospi, so they forced
the Ustashas to urgently vacate the camp complexes in the town of Gospi
and the village of Jadovno. Considering the fact that they could not
exterminate all inmates in such a short period of time, they deported 1.500
inmates to the Jastrebarsko camp and later to the Jasenovac and Stara
Gradika camp on 20 August 1941.
The Jadovno camp was located in the forested area of Velebit Mountain, at
an altitude of 1,200. The place was uninhabited with many sinkholes and karst
caves. From the first days, the Ustashas would throw the killed Serbs, Jews
and communists in those caves and sinkholes. The Jadovno camp was not
exactly a camp but a station on the way to the execution place. After the
Jasenovac camp, the Jadovno camp with surrounding places of execution
represented the biggest execution site of the Ustasha regime in the territory
of the NDH.
The names of those killed in that camp could be found at the monument in
the village of Kerestinec. The Slano and Metajna camp were formed at the
same time as the Jadovno camp. They were connected with the Gospi camp
since their purpose was the same. The Italian medical Lieutenant Sante
Strazz, an Italian military doctor, head of the First Disinfectant Section,
Director of the Medical Department of the Italian Army Command of the 5th
10
Documents on the Ustasha, pp. 177 and 178. The Italian occupation zone in Croatia was
divided into two parts. In the first part, they had complete military and civil authority, and
in the second, it was only military authority. The town of Gospi was part of the 2nd zone.
84
Corpus, provided an extremely dreadful and shocking report about the Slano
and Metajna camps.11
A larger number of prisoners were transported to the Kruica camp in late
August 1941. The prisoners were brought from the Gospi and Jastrebarsko
camps. They were Jews. There were also 200 Serbian women and children
from Bosnia. In September, the camp had more than 3.000 persons. After six
days spent in the Kruica camp, around 1,200 Jewish women and children
and 300 Serbian women were transported to the Lobor camp.
THE JASENOVAC CONCENTRATION CAMPS
The group of the Jasenovac concentration camps consisted of the following
camps: Krapje, Broice, Ciglana, Kozara and Stara Gradika.
The first inmates of the Jasenovac camps arrived in late August 1941, and a
legal provision on sending people to labour camps was adopted in November
1941. This implied that the Ustashas sent people they deemed undesirable and
thus prone to be murdered into the collection and labour camps three month
months before the adoption of the legal provision.
The Krapje I camp and the Broice II camp were formed at the same time.
The first camp inmates were transported from the Gospi and Jastrebarsko
camps in late August 1941. Due to the autumn rains, both camps were flooded,
hence they were closed. Some healthier inmates were sent to the Ciglana
camp in the village of Jasenovac, and 1,200 inmates were killed. The Ciglana
III camp was ironically named labour camp and represented the biggest and
the most terrifying execution place of the Ustasha regime. Most Serbs, Jews,
Roma, Croats and Slovenes were killed in that camp. According to the
number of victims and the instruments and means for killing, it is ranked
only after some German concentration camps. From the very formation,
smaller or bigger groups of detainees from Zagreb, Sarajevo, the towns of
Banja Luka and Lepoglava and the Danica camp were brought to Camp III.
By 21 April 1945, in the camp III, only 1,073 inmates remained. They knew
they were about to be killed, so they decided to organise a breakthrough. The
time for the breakthrough was arranged on 22 April at 10:30 a.m. Upon a
11
The report of Lieutenant Dr. Sante Strazz is kept in the State Archives of Croatia.
85
signal, an assault of disarmed inmates on the Ustasha guard and bunkers

began. All inmates participated in this breakthrough. In this unfair fight, the
majority of the inmates died, but around 70 of them managed to escape. The
Kozara IV camp usually kept the same number of inmates. There were 150
of them, mostly experts of Jewish origin. Some individual murders occurred
there too. However, the conditions of work and life were a bit milder in that
camp. The Stara Gradika V camp was a bit specific in regard to other
camps.12 The camp contained the biggest number of communists and fascists
throughout the NDH who were mostly Croats. A relatively big number of
women and children of the Serbian nationality from the localities of Kozara
and Potkozarije were also in that camp. The camp served for the investigation
of the arrested Partisans and sympathisers of the NOP, in order to obtain
come information about the NOV, authorities of peoples government and
associates of the NOP.
Though tortures and murders were very common, apart from rare
exceptions, there were no mass executions in the camp V. In late 1944, the
Ustashas closed the camp, sending a group of 700 inmates, mostly Croats and
some Jews, to Jasenovac. Around 500 inmates were deported to the
Lepoglava camp.
THE LEPOGLAVA CAMP
In April 1941, the Ustashas took the control over the camp with 1,000
convicts, mostly criminals and more than 70 non-grata communists. From
that time, new prisoners began to arrive. By July, 71 persons, of whom 40
were from the town of Kerestinec, were deported. Fearing the flight of the
inmates, the Ustashas commenced killing the undesirable persons. Soon, they
started to send again political convicts or the non-grata elements to the
Lepoglava camp. On 12 and 13 July, this penitentiary was occupied by
common units of the NOV from Slavonija, and the Partisans detachment from
Kalnic who released the political detainees. A total of 733 prisoners were
released, of whom a hundred of them were detained due to some political
reasons. All political convicts joined the units of the National Liberation
12
Marijana-Buca Amuli and edomil Huber: Otpor u logoru Stara Gradika, Spomenpodruje Jasenovca, 1980.
86
Army, and the criminals were sent back to the penitentiary. The Velika
Gorica camp served for detaining hostages and suspects whom the Ustashas
planned to arrest during their operation of cleansing of the part of the
region of Pokuplje. In early September 1942, 720 hostages were brought to
the camp. Those were the family members of veterans and followers of the
National Liberation War (the NLW), Serbs and Croats and war deserters. The
main objective was to destroy the NOP in the region of Pokuplje by intimidating people. According to some estimates, around 2,000 hostages, women
and men went through the camp. The primary function of the Sisak camp
was to accommodate residents from the territory of Kozara and Potkozarje
after the German-Ustasha attack. In addition, the Ustashas brought prisoners
from other camps there, mostly from the Stara Gradika and Jasenovac
camps, or the arrested people from the region of Moslavina, Banija, Slavonija ,
Kordun and Gorski Kotar, where the Ustashas carried out cleansing
operation, i.e., where they tried to destroy the NOP by frightening people
who aided the movement. A camp for children also existed in the town of
Sisak. Around 1,800 children died or were killed there.
CAMPS FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN
On 6 October, 1,370 Serbian and Jewish women and children were imprisoned in the Lombor camp. Due to overcrowding, the Ustashas formed
another camp under the rule of the Lobor camp in the locality of Gornja
Rijeka. Seventy elderly Jewish women and children and 250 Serbian women
with children were brought to this camp. One hundred and forty Serbian
women were sent to the Zemun camp, via Lombor and Zagreb. This camp
imprisoned 400 children. Given the fact that the wells providing children
with water were contaminated, epidemic of typhus emerged among the
children. Under fever, on their own, without medicines, accommodation,
food and water, these children were bound to die. Around 150 children were
sent to the Jastrebarsko camp, where the majority of them survived for they
were given medical treatments. Unfortunately, 140 of them forever
remained in the locality of Gornja Rijeka.
87
THE JASTREBARSKO AND RIJEKA CAMPS

Serbian children from 6 months to 14 years old were imprisoned in the camp
for children in the town of Jastrebarsko. A total of 3,220 children were
deported here, of whom 54 died during the transport. Part of the children
was rescued by the Kordun Brigade IV on 26 August 1942. Out of 727
children, 587 of them, having been examined by a physician, went with the
Brigade towards the village of Zumberak, where they were provided with
accommodation. Unfortunately, during the Ustasha offensive on the village
of Zumberak, 312 children were entrapped, and sent back to the collection
camp, this time in the town of Samobor, and then to Zagreb, where they were
taken over by the Ministry Corporate Affairs. More than 2,000 children from
the Jastrebarsko camp, where 1,566 children remained, were sent and
relocated to the Rijeka camp. The situation in this camp was ever harsher.
There were no electricity, no water or sanitation, and the food was very
scarce. Due to malnutrition and diseases, the mortality in both camps was
very high. Up to 200 children would die in a month. This was confirmed by
the documents of the National Commission for the Investigation of the crimes
of occupiers and associates. Both camps were closed in the mid of November
1942. A total of 3,166 Serbian children went through these camps, of whom
1,637 were rescued and adopted by Croatian families from Zagreb, and
around 300 remained in a castle a hospital, until the liberation on 9 May
1945. Were it not for the Croatian families, who, putting their lives at risk,
tried to save Serbian children, the children would not have survived. It was
even harder to imagine that those children would survive under the
conditions in the camps.
THE GERMAN-USTASHA CAMPS IN THE NDH
The Zemun camp was located in the area of the Belgrade fairgrounds. Until
July 1942, it served solely for the accommodation of the Jewish women and
children. The Jewish men were immediately transported to Germany in the
camps and were killed. The Vinkovici camp was founded by the Germans,
and was operated by the Gestapo. The Germans planned to eradicate soldiers
of the Yugoslavia NOV and its followers from the region between the village
of Bosuta and the Sava River. Presently, 1,400 persons were imprisoned in
the camp. The inmates were divided into three groups. The first group
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consisted of communists and captured soldiers of the NOV of Yugoslavia, the

second one of the NOP associates, and the third one of the suspected sympathisers of the NOP. More than 4,000 inmates went through the Vinkovici
camp. The majority of them ended up at the execution sites of the Jasenovac
camp, and part of them as labour force in Germany. It is worth noting that
the detailed accounts about the Vinkovici and Zemun camps cannot be
obtained without an insight into German archives and hopefully, that will be
done by those who will further study the Nazi and Ustasha camps.
The German camp Jankomir was designed to house the arrested soldiers of
NOV of Croatia and its supporters together with young men from the villages
for labour force in Germany. The first group of people was brought on
November 1943. Those were the people from the region of Vukovar and
Srijem. During the next days, 300 women were deported to Germany, whose
children were taken away from them by force. Older and weaker women who
were unable to work were handed over to the Ustashas. Their lives ended in
the Ustasha camps. Children were handed over to the Ministry of Corporate
Affairs and the Red Cross. A group of 200 captured soldiers of the NOV of
Croatia and a group of NOP activists were transferred to the camp on 2 April
1944 after the battle in the village of Oborovo in the vicinity of Zagreb. This
group was traded for German officer on 6 June 1946. A particular case was
that of 105 mental patients who were brought to the camp from the Vrapce
Psychiatric Hospital by the Germans. On 1 October 1944, those patients were
transported to Germany, from which no one returned alive. According to the
Ustasha estimates, more than 10,000 people passed through this camp, and
hundreds of them were killed.
ITALIAN CAMPS ON THE TERRITORY OF THE NDH,
1941-1943
Italians established many concentration camps in Croatia. Those were the
camps in the localities of Bakar, Kraljevica, Opatija, Kampor and Molat, Gru,
Kupari, Prevlaka, Zlarin, Dubrovnik, Lovrijenac, Lopud and Mamula.
The Bakar camp was founded in March 1942 for detention of the Jews.
Croatian antifascist from the Novi Vinodolski and Gorski kotar were arrested
and imprisoned there. Women and children were mostly in the Bakar camp.
89
As soon as the number of inmates went over 2,000, they would be transported
to the camps in Italy or to the Kampor camp.
The first detainees of the Kraljevica camp were the families of Croatia NOV
soldiers from the localities of Gorski Kotar, Delnice, Vrbovsko and Ogulin.
There were mostly Croats. Up to 1,200 persons were detained in the camp.
The biggest troubles were with food supply. About 10,000 persons, mostly
Croats from the coastal region of Dalmatia, went through the Molat camp.
Around 1,000 persons lost their lives in this camp. The living conditions in
the camp were such that people often died of starvation. A total of 1,000
persons died in this camp. Until mid-1943, the Italians occasionally took
groups of inmates and executed them for redemption. The formation of the
Kampor camp on the island of Rab was closely related to the military
operations which occurred in Slovenia and Risnjak Mountain and in the
Gorski kotar.13 The first camp inmates from Slovenia were delivered on 28
June 1942. Until October 1942, a total of 7,541 persons were imprisoned.
Some were liberated after they accepted to join the anticommunist volunteer
militia. In the operations of territory cleansing, more than 300 persons
were shot, and more than 7,000 taken to concentration camps. Within 22
months of the existence of the camps in the coastal area, around 23,000 people
were detained there. They were Slovenes, Croats, Serbs and Jews. Out of the
total number of detainees, 3,000 were children up to 16 years old. More than
5,000 persons lost their lives in the Italian camps, of which the Kampor camp
was the biggest.
In early 1943, the Supreme Command of the Italian army decided to deport
the Jews from all concentration camps in the Adriatic area which were
within its occupation zone to the common Kampor camp at the island of Rab.
Camps in the area of Dubrovnik were built for the Jews. The camps were
built in the localities of Lopud, Kupari, Gru and Lovrijenac. The organization and structure of the camps were also special. The camp was internally
managed by the inmates themselves. They would prepare food, maintain
order and discipline, do medical treatment and provide foreign language
courses. The external management was under the control of smaller units of
13
Spartaco Carlo Capogreco, Mussolinijevi logori, Golden marketing, Tehnika knjiga,

Zagreb, 2006. pp. 157-164.
90
the Italian army. In all three camps in Dubrovnik, a total of 1,700 Jews were
detained. The Mamula camp, though in the territory of Montenegro, was
included in the group of the Italian camps in the territory of Croatia, since
this camp had some Croatian civilians. This camp represented the most
notorious Italian fascist camp, and was located on the small island of Mamula.
The inmates were kept in dark and totally damp rooms in the basement. The
inmates who were punished in some other Italian camps and prisons would
be brought here, and they were sentenced to death from starvation. After the
capitulation of Italy, the Germans took over the camp until the National
Liberation Army of Yugoslavia expelled them. The Zarin camp was located
at the Cape of Marin. The famine in that camp was so bad that the inmates
started to eat the roots of the plants around. However, the biggest problem
was thirst. The remaining inmates, a total of 1,200, were deported to Italy.
Killings without reasons, accusations or verdicts, then torture, thirst and
starvation of women and children and various kinds of humiliations were
common occurrences in these camps.
THE CHETNICK CAMPS
During World War II, all concentration camps in the territory of the NDH
were built by the Chetnicks, who imprisoned their true and alleged enemies
there, i.e., both the Croats and the Serbs. They closely cooperated with the
Italian occupation authorities, whom they would deliver the inmates and get
some reward for, or killed them themselves. In the second half of 1942, the
Chetnicks signed an agreement with the Italians, according to which they
became an integral part of the Italian Army. They signed a written agreement
with the NDH authorities about their cooperation in the fight against the
Partisans.
In August 1942, a concentration camp for the region of Borjansko-militaryChetnick unit in the school of the village of Kara was formed. At the same
time, a concentration camp in the village of Joevica was formed. The camp
included the control of the Bosnian Chetnick units. Having spent a short
period of time in these camps, the majority of inmates were executed, and
smaller groups were handed over to the Germans. In early 1943, a central
camp in the region of Kosovo near the town of Knin was established. Activists
of the NOP and civilians the Serbs from the territory of Grahovo, Drvar,
91
Bosanski Petrovac, and numerous Croats were detained there. Due to harsh
conditions in this camp, people named it another Jasenovac camp. It is hard
to determine the exact number of the killed persons in the Chetnick camps
for they did not have the records of the number of the victims. Nonetheless,
the Chetnicks killed a much greater number of the Serbs, Croats and Muslims
in the villages. According to the estimates of Vladimir erjavi, the Chetnicks
killed 18,000 Croats during World War II.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
According to historical documents and other facts about the camps on the
territory of the NDH in the period of 1941 to 1945, it can be concluded that:
1. During World War II, in accordance with the Ustasha movement and
acceptance of the Nazi doctrine, the Ustashas, immediately after taking
power, launched mass persecutions and executions of the Serbs, Jews, Roma,
communists and other people whom they deemed opponents or alleged
opponents of the Nazi-fascism. The formation of camps in the NDH was of
large extent. According to agreements with the Germans, some camps were
used for detaining the Serbs and transporting them to Serbia, since the
Germans resettled Slovenes on their land, and in turn, the Germans were
allowed to settle on the property of Slovenes. The majority of the camps were
designed for the execution of the Serbs, Jews, Roma, Croats, communists and
antifascist of different nationalities. In regard to that, the camps intended for
such purposes were located in Gospi, Jadovno, the Slano camp on the island
of Pag, Lepoglava and Jasenovac. The classification of the camps according
to type is quite a feat since some camps were closed and reopened, or their
use was changed. Nevertheless, in each of them people relentlessly died from
thirst, famine or diseases. The fact that the Ustashas, Germans and Italians
built more than 50 camps on the territory of the NDH says a lot about the
extent of the Ustasha operations. The image of the NDH is illustrated by the
fact it was also the aggressors, apart from the Ustashas, that built
concentration camps throughout the NDH, at their discretion, where they
imprisoned the Croats, torturing and killing them without any accountability. This paper states the numbers of the people who died or were killed,
as based on the available documents. We believe that future researchers will
succeed in obtaining the data about the camps which never revealed the
92
number of their victims. Perhaps, these data can be found in Germany, Italy
or some other countries.
2. Although it has been documented that most of the camps were used to
execute the Serbs, Jews and Roma, there are still people who deny it or
diminish the veracity and importance of these facts. Apart from those who
reject those facts or those who keep quiet about the Ustasha camps and their
horrifying crimes, there are those who justify them. They have to face not
only the undeniable facts of the crimes, but also the truth that the Ustasha
and aggressors crimes were condemned by the citizens of the world. Both
Serb and Croat radicals have manipulated and speculated the number of the
Serbs and Croats killed in the camps, outside the camps, or in general during
World War II. Acting that way, they prompt further racial conflicts, which
have thus far caused terrible tragedies, since hatred is continuously
propagated. These conflicts are in the service of manipulators and those who
spread national and religious hatred among the generations, who, unfortunately, do not learn enough about historical facts from World War II.
3. The defeat and severe losses of the aggressor armies and their allies the
Ustashas, Chetnicks and others In May 1945 have nothing to do with
nationality, but with the fact that all of them committed terrible crimes and
put up resistance in order to escape. Unfortunately, innocent people were
killed. The aggressor forces and their allies were tried in and outside court
in all European countries whose citizens served the German or Italian
aggressor. War criminals and their partners were mostly penalised. In this
regard, no country was an exception.
4. This book was written as a contribution of the Union of Antifascist
Veterans and Antifascists of the Republic of Croatia and the Union of the
Josip Broz Tito Societies to disclose the truth by revealing the actual
circumstances during the period under consideration, but also to prompt
further research on those hard times. This book offers answers to historians,
preachers and those favouring the Ustashas and Chetnicks, who have denied
the existence of Ustasha and Chetnick camps and atrocities, because this
denial of the truth was something that led to a repetition of evil. Therefore, it
is the duty of all democratic powers to confront with the initiators of evil by
showing them the arguments of truth, because otherwise, we will be doomed
93
to perpetual hatred towards others and those different from us, which must
result in the repetition of crimes.
REFERENCES
Amuli, Marijana-Buca, Humber, edomil, Otpor u logoru Stara Gradika, Ognjen Prica,
Daruvar, 1980.
Bilandi, Duan, Historija SFRJ Glavni procesi, kolska knjiga, Zagreb, 1978.
Bilandi, Duan, Hrvatska moderna povijest, Golden marketing, Zagreb, 1999.
Capogreco, Spartaco Carlo, Mussolinijevi logori, Golden marketing Tehnika knjiga, Zagreb, 2006.
Dizdar, Zdravko, etniki zloini u BiH 19411945, HIP Zagreb, 2002.
Dizdar, Zdravko, Logor Kerestinec, HIP, PP-8.
Dokumenti Ustaa, Zagrebaka stvarnost, Zagreb, 1995.
Grguri, Mladen, Talijanski koncentracijski logori, Rijeka, 2005.
Horvati, Franjo, Sjevernozapadna Hrvatska u NOB-i i socijalistikoj revoluciji, Varadin,
1976.
Hrvatski dravni arhiv za povijest, Zemaljska komisija za utvrivanje zloina okupatora i
njihovih pomagaa Hrvatske, Glavni urudbeni zapisnik. Boxes: 6, item 1727/45; 10, items
223/7 bc-45, 2235/4 b1-45, 2235/7c-45; 11, item 28-42, 2235/7b-45; 12, item 1872/47; 13,
item 2335/45; 45, items 2235/8a-45, 2235/21 a 4464/45; 116, item 5449/46; 227, item 60366047
Institut za povijest (HIP), prije Institut za suvremenu povijest, Institut za historiju
radnikog pokreta (Zbornik. NDH); 278; 280; 281; 284; 289; 291; 285, item
3153; 288, item 3746, 3811; 292, item 5731; 3711, 5649.
Jakovljevi, Ilija, Konclogor na Savi, Konzor, Zagreb, 1999.
Jezernik, Talijanski koncentracioni logori, Ljubljana, 1997.
Jurevi, Josip, Nastanak jasenovakog mita, Zagreb, 1998.
Klai, imo, Sjeanja Krvavi badnjak, Jasenovac, br. 230/86.
Koovi, Bogoljub, rtve II svjetskog rata u Jugoslaviji, London, 1985.
Kovai, Ivan, Kampor 19421943, Adami, Rijeka, 1998.
Tisak spomen-podruja Jasenovca 2006, Memorijalni muzej Jasenovac.

Miller, Ervin, Izabran za umiranje, Durieux, Zagreb, 2004.
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Miljkovi, Ante, Noem i maljem, in Dokumenti ustakog terora, Vjesnik, 1944.
95
Bilana ivkovi
JASENOVAC - THE WORST PLACE OF

EXECUTION OF SERBS
Abstract: This paper deals with the horrifying genocide committed

against the Serbs children, women, and the elderly the innocent
people in Jasenova concentration camp (1941-1945) in the clericalfascistic Independent State of Croatia (NDH). Jasenovac is the place
where the largest number of Serbs were ever killed.
Key words: Jasenovac, genocide, Vatican, Jastrebarsko, Piccili's
crematoria, Pope Pius XII, Stara Gradika, death camps, Paveli, the
Ustasha NDH, Donja Gradina, Artur Hefner, holocaust, Artukovi,
Franciscan friars, crimes against Serbs.
Jasenovac, a death camp in the NDH, is the place more monstrous than any
other in destruction of the youth and the future of Serbs, together with all
other concentration camps in the NDH. Atrocities committed in these camps
are no less horrible than those the Jewish people suffered in Nazi Germany
and across Europe during the Second World War.
We, the Serbs, have always known that. Throughout our painful and tragic
history, we have learnt what genocide is. In the modern, globalist history, we
have personally felt what it is like when our people, who have martyred for
centuries and who are being killed, expelled and converted into Catholicism..
The attitude some scholars dealing with Jasenovac take - that the genocide
against the Serbs has never ended - is totally correct!
97
Will we ever find out how many Serbs and their children were killed in
Ustasha camps in the period 1941-1945?
In the Glina hospital, in mid-May of 1941, the Ustasha minister of justice, Dr
Marko Puk, held a secret meeting with the main Ustasha leaders. They made
the decision to immediately start a planned liquidation of Serbs, Jews and
other undesirable elements. The Ustasha minister and Ante Paveli's
assignee for internal affairs in Nova Gradika, Dr Milovan arko, was talking
in threatening language about the NDH policy on 1st June 1941: This country
must be the country of Croats and nobody else. We, the Ustashas, will use
every possible method to make this country Croatian and cleanse it of the
Serbs. In Zagreb, the inscriptions were placed in public places: No Serbs,
Jews and Gypsies allowed. The Serbs were forced to wear a blue ribbon with
the letter P (t/n: pravoslavac, Orthodox in Serbian) or a red one with the
inscription Serben (Serb in German).
Paveli's commissioner, Dr Viktor Guti, a lawyer from Banja Luka, said in
Sanski Most in the same period: Roads will miss Serbs, but there will be no
Serbs to walk them! (t/n: a paraphrase of a line from a Serbian epic poem) It
should be known that Viktor Guti (the Ustasha God, as he would call
himself) abolished the Serbs as ethnic group and the term Serb, renaming
all Serbs into Greek-Easterners.
DEPORTATION AND MURDERING OF SERBIAN

CHILDREN
The data on number of children deported to Jasenovac are uncertain;
according to the press from Tito's time and historical readers, it ranges from
23,858 to 40,000 or 68,000. According to historical experts, an estimated
120,000 Serbian children perished in Jasenovac hell. Tito did not want to
satanize his Croatian people and Ustashas, so it was very noticeable that,
during his rule, the mentioning of Serbs as victims was forbidden. Historical
documents from that period claimed that the victims were innocent citizens
of Croatia and anti-fascists. The 1946 State Commission report, Crimes in
Jasenovac Camp, even hardly mentions the Serbs as victims; to remind, more
than 730,000 Serbs, 32,000 Jews and 80,000 Roma were killed in Jasenovac.
Out of them, 120,000 were children. There were no Serbs even among the
98
members of the State Commission for War Crimes. The testimonies to the
State Commission by the surviving inmates were almost never given by the
Serb inmates. The testimonies were usually given by Croats, Slovenes or
Jews. As if the genocide against the Serbs in the NDH had never been
committed. Hushing up the atrocities committed by Croats, Tito consciously
supported the genocide against the Serbs. Therefore, it is no wonder that the
world did not know of the Serbian Auschwitz.
In the summer of 1942, endless files of Serbs, leaving clouds of dust behind,
were moving towards concentration camps in Jasenovac, Mlaka, Jablanac,
Cerovljani near Dubica, Novska, Paklenica, Stara Gradika...
Mubera Karabegovi-Osmi well remembers the Ustasha atrocities against
Serb mothers and their children:
- Screaming and moaning were so loud that we couldnt endure it. Beating
their mothers, mad Ustashas ripped small children out of their arms and
threw them aside like logs. Some mothers did not want to separate from their
children. They held their babies firmly in their arms and fought fiercely.
Shots were fired. Dead mothers would fall down, dropping their children
from their arms.
The Ustashas separated grown and healthy male children trying to make
them little Ustashas and forcing them to put on the uniform of those who had
massacred their mothers, fathers, grandparents, brothers and sisters. They
took their parents to Mlaka to slaughter them. Drunk and naked to the waist,
they would turn back from the place of massacre, their hands and uniforms
smeared in blood. Apart from Vrban, the most notorious Ustashas in Stara
Gradika camp were: Maks Luburi, Ljubo Milo, Drago Pudi, the female
Ustasha Maja Budon etc.
In Mlaka assembly centre, in September 1942, 3,645 women, 392 men and
5,531 children were recorded. In only two days, from 3rd to 5th August, more
than 2,000 children were taken to Jastrebarsko and Sisak camps. In June
1942, 8,000 women with their children were taken to Utica camp. They were
transferred from there to the assembly centre in Lipik. Labour camps, as
called by Ustashas, were places of gore and death. It is known that in
Jasenovac corpses of inmates were built into embankments. Jasenovac camp
(1941-1945) is the most monstrous concentration camp in this region, the
99
place of worst atrocities and methods of torture in the whole of occupied

Europe at the time. According to research, the Croatian death camp existed
for 1,337 days. Men, woman, children and the elderly were killed in an
unbelievable speed. It is known that the monstrous butcher Ljubo Milo
confessed that over a thousand Serbs had been slaughtered in Jasenovac in
just one night.
Simo Kotur recalls the bringing of around 1,000 people from Mount Kozara
in front of the camp III c (the worst part of Jasenovac inferno) on 1st
September 1942:
There were a lot of boys between 12 and 15 years of age. I saw my father and
my uncle, Spasoje radakovi, with his sons and Jovo Gavran. The same day,
in the dusk, the Ustashas herded all deported Serbs, together with some
inmates from the Gypsy section, towards Sava River. The following day we
saw their clothes in the Gypsy camp.
Mihailo Draga was 14 when he was deported to Jasenovac from village
Selfije together with his parents and his brothers:
We were in the dreadful camp III c. We lived and slept among the
dead. We starved terribly. One day I found a bone on the dump, I don't
know of which animal, and gnawed it for a long time. On 21st September
1942, around a hundred of Ustashas encamped near us. Then the Gypsy
inmates brought cauldrons with hot broth, pouring it into tin plates.
Several Serbs started to eat immediately; shortly after, they writhed in
pain and died in agony. Our father whispered to us not to eat the broth
as it had been poisoned. We threw the broth away secretly. When we
were ordered to stand up, most of the people had been dead. The
survivors were tied with wire and taken before the firing squad. My
father shouted me to run away... I could hear shots, screams and blows
behind... All members of my Draga family were killed.
Some moments are so deeply etched into a human soul, remaining there as
permanent scars. These are the words of Duanka Bati, born in village
Sivolinca, talking about the suffering of Serbian children:
One day, the Ustashas ordered us to line up. They announced the
baptism of Serbian children. They took two mothers and two
children of each one. Among the Ustashas preparing this blood feast
was also a Catholic priest called Brekalo, dressed in a cassock, and the
Ustasha called Mujica, one of the worst butchers. They seized the
100
children from their mothers. The priest took one child, Ustasha Mujica
took another and then they impaled the children onto their bayonets.
The mothers screamed and fell on the ground. Later on, they were
burnt together with their children.
The Jasenovac camp, formed in August 1941, was destroyed by Ustashas in

April 1945. Its area was around 210 hectares. It was a complex of camps
where, according to information to date, over 730,000 Serbs were massacred.
In Gradina alone, which was the largest place of execution in Jasenovac
complex, more than 400,000 men, women, children and the elderly and were
killed.
During the ethnic cleansing of Mount Kozara and Mount Prosara, Ustashas
killed a lot of children together with their parents immediately after bringing
them to the camps, most often in Gradina and Utice. Helath and young
women were separated and sent to forced labour in Germany. The weak, the
ill, the pregnant, the nursing mothers and the orphans were sent in three
directions - to Stara Gradika and Jasenovac, while children were separately
transported to Jastrebarsko, the only concentration camp for children in the
whole world! The camp III - Ciglana in Jasenovac was 1.5 sq kilometre in area
and was of triangular shape. It was the largest camp, which also had a
crematorium. The main entrance was on the west side of the camp, by the
road stretching along Sava River and leading from Jaasenovac to village
Koutarica and further on, towards Gradika.
In the summer of 1942, thousands of children were taken from Stara
Gradika camp, the fifth subcamp (t/n: subcamps were outlying detention
centres under the command of a main concentration camp) of Jasenovac
camp and executed on the right bank of Sava River. The butchers killed the
children with hammers as they wanted to save ammunition. Such kind of
execution they humorously called hammering. Small children would die
on the spot, whereas grown children were killed above a mass grave with
small hammers. That rendered them stunned, not dead. The children were
dying in excruciating agony. In the NDH, all these horrifying atrocities were
done on purpose. From the very beginning and in each camp, the order by
Poglavnik (t/n: the title used by Ante Paveli, the Ustasha leader) was
followed, according to which a victim had to suffer as much as possible before
they died. At the hearing, the Ustashas Ljubo Milo and Vjekoslav
Majstorovi said that, due to still alive children, these mass graves were
101
breathing for several days after the massacre. Serbian children were dying
buried alive.
The Ustasha butcher Ljubo Milo said the following on the trial in Zagreb in
1947:
People were brought by train or on foot. Present were also minister
Turina, Catholic priest Krunoslav Draganovi and Ivica Matkovi, one
of Jasenovac commanders. That was the board established to receive
the inmates from Kozara region. A small part of them was sent to labour
camps in Germany; most of them were sent to Jasenovac and Stara
Gradika camps, where they were liquidated. I was there at the time
with minister Turina and priest Draganovi. The captured were taken
off the trucks and forced to run towards the camp. They were all tied.
They were ordered to sit in front of the entrance until the dusk, when
Fra Majstorovi-Filipovi liquidated them in Gradina. They were
women and children, several tens of thousands. The liquidation
procedure was the following: upon arrival in Jasenovac, the transports
would be removed to the other railway track, located in the camp alone.
They would remain there until execution. The great majority of mass
murders were committed at night. I remember that groups of over 300
inmates were killed several times during the day. The number of
inmates executed at night sometimes amounted to over 1,500. In late
spring of 1942, the inflow of inmates became far more frequent several times a week, sometimes even several times in a row. The total
number of inmates executed in Ciglana (brickwork) camp with its
surroundings, during my time there or during the whole time
Jasenovac existed, I, or anybody else, cannot determine as no record
was kept of the transports sent for liquidation. The number of people
executed was meant to remain a secret. That number is vast, actually
staggering .
In the process of purification of Croatian nation, Serbian children were the

first to be killed, together with adults. Ustashas killed even the children who
were still nursed. The youngest children were still in cradles, while the oldest
were about 14 years of age. During the Second World War, Croatia was the
only place in whole Europe to have special camps for children.
102
THE VATICANS DIRTY GAME

The slaughterers, but only some of them, were brought to justice after the
war. Owing to Tito's support, many of them managed to escape to the USA,
Argentinaetc. Some of them boastfully claimed to have received help from
Tito personally to flee from justice, like Slavko Dasovi, who returned after
several decades to Croatia to spend his last days there. Vjekoslav Maks
Luburi (t/n: the commander-in-chief of all the NDH concentration camps)
was a German agent and Ustasha criminal. He liked his nickname Scourge
of God. His life was ended on 20th April 1969 in the town of Carcaixent, near
Spanish port of Valencia. He was personally responsible for the death of about
220,000 Serbian children. Vjekoslav Majstorovi, a Catholic friar and
administrator of the camp or, as he would sometimes introduce himself,
Filipovi, was brought to justice in 1945. In the name of the State
Commission, Fra Majstorovi i.e. Fra Satan was interrogated by a Croat,
Vojdrag Beri. The lawyers, the doctors, the secretary - they were all Croats
except for one Jew. An incomparable number of victims were Serbs, whereas
almost no Serbs took place in Majstorovi's trial. This was not by accident, of
course! Filipovi i.e. Majstorovi admitted to his crimes. He defended himself
before the court claiming to have slaughtered Serbian children to prevent
them from becoming criminals when they grew up. He was sentenced to
death by firing squad in June 1945. Vatican i.e. the Roman Catholic Church
had never distanced itself from Majstorovi and his crimes.
The US Commission for War Crimes Investigation mentions 1,400 catholic
priests who took an active part in slaughtering and murdering, while Milan
Bulaji (an international expert on genocide), based on detailed research,
found out that 1,171 catholic priest took part in killing Serbian children,
cooperated with Ustashas or supported them strongly. Out of this number,
27 friars were teachers and even 108 were PhDs. Ante Paveli decorated all
of these heroes for exceptional merits in the NDH.
Massacres of Serbs were organised by over 130 Catholic priests, while 27 of
them personally proved themselves in mass slaughtering. The book
Jasenovac Concentration Camp by Dr Nikola Nikoli, a Croatian doctor
who survived the Jasenovac inferno, says that Fra Sreko Peri ordered the
congregation in front of the altar in a Catholic church: Croats, go and kill all
103
Serbs but first kill my sister who is married to a Serb. When you are done,
get back to the church and all your sins will be forgiven! On that 20th August
1941, more than 5,000 Serbs and Serbian children were slaughtered. Friar
Dr Alojzije osi received a Croatian medal for atrocities committed against
Serbs, Jews and Roma. Military officer Nikola Bilogrivi was one of
organisers of extermination of Serbs, Jews and Roma in Banja Luka.
Croatian Catholic clerics overtly helped Paveli and Archbishop Stepinac to
make Croatia a horrible place of genocide. The Catholic Church had
understanding for all these atrocities and even for the words of bestial,
pathological hatred spoken by the Franciscan friar and governor imi, who
appealed: To kill all the Serbs as soon as possible. This is our programme.
In his confidential report, the military commander in Serbia, general Paul
Bader says: The Croats undoubtedly strive to destroy the entire Serbian
population.
Karlheinz Deschner, a philosopher and historian, points out the following in
one of his books titled The Politics of the Papacy in the 20th Century: Pope
Pius XII blessed Paveli at the beginning of his gruesome career, during it
and on his sickbed (book 2, p. 154).
According to Hermann Neubacher, Vatican, led by the Pope Pius XII, saw
nothing wrong in the monstrous killing of 750,000 Serbs (according to SS
major-general Ernst Fick, the number is 700,000) under pious and devoted
Catholic Ante Paveli. In that way, the Pope approved the usurping of the
entire property of the Serbian Orthodox Church by the NDH. The fate of the
Serbian Orthodox Church priests in the Ustasha Croatia is obvious from the
ordeal of 599 Orthodox priests and Serbian Orthodox archbishops.
The NDH consistently joined the new Nazi order, a main goal of which was
the planned genocide against the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia and
Herzegovina. It is unlikely that the exact number will ever be determined of
the innocent Serbian children, women, the elderly and men killed in the
monstrous NDH, although M. M. Scheinmann, in his book titled Vatican and
Second World War, says that the number of Serbs killed is about 800,000.
104
ANDRIJA ARTUKOVI AND HIS CRIMES

Besides the unpunished criminal Ante Paveli, Andrija Artukovi played one
of the most significant roles as an organiser and the orderer of mass atrocities
against the Serbian population. When Artukovi, a lawyer and the NDH
minister of death, was tried in Zagreb in April and May 1986, many details
on the genocide against the Serbs came up.
The argumentation to support the indictment said the following:
As early as May 1941, Artukovi ordered his subordinates to arrest
and kill thousands of Serbian citizens including Orthodox priests,
children, women and the elderly, as well as to burn and destroy whole
settlements. In May 1942, he initiated systematic sending of people to
concentration camps. From April 1941 to October 1942 he ordered and
instigated the forced sending to and murdering of Serbs, Jews and
Roma in concentration camps Jasenovac, Stara Gradika, akovo,
Lobor, Jastrebarsko, Utice, etc.
The indictment charged him with the death of more than 200,000 innocent
people killed in that short period.
Out of that number, over 2,000 children were killed with the
poisonous gas Zyklon B in Stara Gradika, while over 15,600 children
were slain by starvation, putting caustic soda into food and in other
cruel ways.
In 1942, transports of around 5,000 women and children would arrive in

Stara Gradika camp every day. The duty of taking over the slaves was
assigned to the Ustasha lieutenant, war criminal Ante Vrban, born in
Croatian province of Lika. One of the testimonies from Stara Gradika was
retold by Ivanka Pinter-Gajer, the district attorney at Andrija Artukovi's
trial in Zagreb on 14th April 1986. Jordana Fritlander described an event in
this camp. Everything she said was included into the indictment against
Andrija Artukovi.
In the summer of 1942, transports with over 5,000 women and children from
Kozara region were coming to Stara Gradika camp. The Ustasha officer in
charge of taking them over was war criminal Ante Vrban. The children were
imprisoned with their mothers in the death tower. Afterwards, they were
forcefully separated from their mothers. By Vrban's order, the infants were
105
removed to the rooms for killing. They were the children between six months
and two years of age.
Jordana F. was a witness to the barbaric killing of the Serbian children:
Vrban appeared one day and ordered us to remove the small children
into a room of 16 sq metres in area. Poor mothers could hear their
children screaming . A dozen of Croatian female inmates were ordered
to bring the children in blankets, so that we had to carry 10 to 15 babies
at a time. Children were thrown over one another. The room was piled
up with children up to two metres in height so the inmates were forced
to tread on them. A child's leg protruded through an opening... Vrban
threw the door open smashing the baby's leg; he grabbed the poor baby
by the other leg and hit it against the wall several times, killing it
instantly. The inmates were bringing children until very late at night
literally treading on them, often on dead ones whose intestines had
come out. All the children were afterwards gassed to death with Zyklon
B.
The female inmate Maja Vejnovi remembers that thousands women and
children were dying in Stara Gradika camp every day during the summer
heat in 1942. They had been brought from Kozara, Kordun, Banija, Slavonija
etc.
They would first brought them to the notorious tower liquidating
many of them. Children were spearated from their mothers. A few
nuns came in with tin buckets and paintbrushes in their hands, giving
the children's mouth a stroke with the paintbrush. They told the
children that would quench their thirst. In fact, the nuns were
poisoning the children. Two hours later, the children started to scream
in agony and die. After two days, the bodies began to decompose. The
Ustashas drove them away and threw into pits. There was also a room
where children were gassed. One day they piled 500 children in the
room. An Ustasha came, who was in charge of gassing.
Twenty-six witnesses gave their testimony against Artukovi at the trial

along with 19 written statements given by other inmates.
106
PICCILI'S CREMATORIA
Nobody knows how many Serbian children were slain. Many were burnt
alive in Jasenovac. Engineer Hinko Dominik Piccili, one of the camp
commanders, took care of that. He was the head of labour service in
Jasenovac camp complex. He would beat inmates to death. Moaning of his
victims would make him frenzied and ecstatic. The Jasenovac camp
command assigned Piccili the construction of two crematoria - one in an old
brickworks and another in Gradina. In a short time, he reconstructed one
furnace from the brickworks into several smaller ones. All furnaces had a
single chimney. The design of furnaces allowed the burning of 50 adults and
about 100 children at a time. The crematorium would swallow more than 600
people in a single night. The door was opened outwards, towards the tunnel,
a wide gateway to the raging inferno. The first ones to be burnt in the
crematorium were the inmates - bricklayers who had built the furnaces
according to Piccili's plans. They were burnt to ashes in a few minutes, which
made Piccili delighted with his monstrous design. The temperature in the
crematorium was over 2,000 C. Hinko Piccili and Maks Luburi, the camp
commander, wanted to maintain the crematorium in secrecy. The
executioners were afraid that the inmates could hear the screams of those
being burnt alive, which could cause a mutiny. The ventilation in
crematorium did not work. Piccili was drawing a plan for crematorium with
pre- chambers, which he called a modern crematorium, where victims were
supposed to be gassed and then burnt like in the Nazi crematoria. Luckily, he
did not have enough time for that. Terrible stench spread across the wide
surroundings, so that it was widespread rumoured in this part on the NDH
about a concentration camp where Ustashas burnt people. Paveli tried to
hush that up, while Luburi organised a big gathering in the place of
Jasenovac where he tried to deny that Ustashas burn, as he said, their
enemies alive . According to the testimonies by numerous witnesses:
Vojislav Kovaevi, Brank Balija, Josip Herak, Marijan Hebner etc, between
15,000 and 20,000 dead or alive men, women and children were burnt in
Piccili's crematorium.
The organiser of the genocide against the Serbs in 1941-1945 was in Vatican,
while the executors were Romanised Croats with the help from Muslims -
107
the flower of Croatianism. Numerous data confirm the fanatical character

of Paveli and Stepinac.
In the preface to the book Jasenovac and the Srebrenica Myth, Predrag
Dragi Kijuk says that even Nazi generals were appalled by the horrors of
Jasenovac. For example, general von Horstenau, Hitler's envoy in Zagreb,
recorded in his personal log for 1942 that the Ustasha camps in the NDH were
the essence of horror, while Artur Hefner, the officer in charge of the
transport of slave labour force to the Reich, wrote the following about
Jasenovac on 11th November 1942: The concept of Jasenovac camp should
actually be realised as a complex of several camps, a few kilometres away
from one another and grouped around Jasenovac alone. Regardless of the
public propaganda, it is one of the most horrible camps, comparable only with
Dante's Inferno
From only several sentences written by K. Deschner in his book The
Politics of the Papacy in the 20th Century can the scope and dynamics be
realised of the Ustasha crime against the innocent Serbian population - says
Kijuk. Therefore we quote those parts of Deschner's book: Book 2, Section
Pope Pius XII) As early as July 1941, the Croatian embodied devils the
Ustashas, slayed over 100,000 Serbian men, women and children in churches,
streets and fields.
K. Deschner: In first eight months of the clerical-fascistic regime alone, the
number of Ustasha victims reached 350,000 people massacred in a way
having been absolutely strange to the human mind before. According to a
report by the special emissary of the German Ministry of Exterior, Hermann
Neubacher, Dechner says: Based on reports available to me, I estimate that
the number of those slaughtered barehanded in the NDH amounts to three
quarters of a million.
SUMMARY
Jasenovac camp (1941-1945) is the most monstrous concentration camp in
this region, the place of worst atrocities and methods of torture in the whole
of occupied Europe at the time. According to research, the Croatian death
camp existed for 1,337 days. Men, woman, children and the elderly were
killed in an unbelievable speed. It is known that the monstrous butcher Ljubo
108
Milo confessed that he himself had slaughtered over a thousand Serbs in

Jasenovac in just one night. The organiser of the genocide against the Serbs
in 1941-1945 was in Vatican, while the executors were Romanised Croats.
Numerous data confirm the fanatical character of Paveli and Stepinac. In
the process of purification of Croatian nation, Serbian children were the
first to be killed, together with adults. Ustashas killed even the children who
were still nursed. The youngest children were still in cradles, while the oldest
were about 14 years of age. During the Second World War, Croatia was the
only place in whole Europe to have special camps for children. Vatican, led
by the Pope Pius XII, saw nothing wrong in the monstrous killing of 750,000
Serbs under pious and devoted Catholic Ante Paveli. In that way, the Pope
permitted that the Catholic Church usurp the entire property of the Serbian
Orthodox Church, murdering hundreds of Orthodox priests.
REFERENCES
Dr Nikola Nikoli, Jasenovaki logor;
K. Deschner, Politika rimskih papa; Zloini u logoru Jasenovac (1946);
Deca u logorima smrti (1986);
Izvetaj Zemalske komisije (1946);
Koncentracioni logor Jasenovac; R. Bulatovi,
Dokumenti o protunarodnom radu i zloinima jednog dijela katolikog klera (1946);
Jasenovac i srebreniki mit (2012).
109
Danilo Trbojevi
THE POLICY OF SELECTIVE

MEMORY IN THE AGE OF
TRANSITION: THE RELATION
BETWEEN THE IDENTITY OF THE
VICTIM AND PERPETRATOR TODAY
INTRODUCTION
The topic of the Holocaust is as stratified as it is current. I believe that the
area of the Balkans is particularly interesting when it comes to the analysis
of the collective memory of a society, as well as the politics of organising
collective and national identity. In that sense, the example of the memory of
the holocaust in Croatia is exceptionally interesting because it is so complex,
and very current. This paper will analyse the process of reconstruction of the
Croatian identity in light of European integrations. We are aware that the
imperative of cooperation and compliance to the European Union standards
especially noticeable in the countries of ex-Yugoslavia. For years now there
has been a conflict between Serbia and Croatia about the portrayal of memories of the NDH camps and victims of the Ustasha regime in Croatia. Theoretical and empirical material will be presented in the paper, which indicates
how Croatia today remembers the holocaust and the crimes committed in the
name of the NDH.1 If we understand the reasons for a certain way of presenting and shaping memories and subsequently identities, we will see not only
1
NDH = the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Drava Hrvatska)
111
the reasons of the reconstruction but also the change in inter-social relations
that follow these processes. The goal of this paper is to analyse the use of
selective memory in the process of identity reconstruction as well as overviewing its consequences, especially in the attitude towards otherness in Croatia.
HOLOCAUST, POLITICS, MEMORY, IDENTITY

In the past I have written papers on the topic of the culture of memory2, selective memory and the politics of commemoration which influence the identity of a society, in my masters thesis and some other published papers.3 To
illustrate the influence that selective social or political organisation of
memory can have on the identity of social groups, nation, state and even the
global discourse, I will present several best-known traumas of the presentation of memories of the victim and perpetrator.
The first example I would like to present would be Germany. It is a good example because it shows how two different political influences, that of the East
and that of the West, have made Germany develop several different and contradicting identities in the decades following the war. Before the reunification, East and West Germany had different views of their common history,
at least when it comes to the events of the Second World War. After 1990, i.e.
the reunification of Germany, the process of the reconstruction of memory
was launched by changing the politics of the new state and with it changing
the institutions that control identity formation.4 When Germany reunited, it
For more information see: Todor Kulji, Kultura seanja: teorijska objanjenja upotrebe
prolosti, igoja, Beograd, 2006.

3
For more information see: Danilo Trbojevi, Seanje na zlo: memorijalni centri, filmovi i
politika komemoracije rtava nemakih i NDH logora, masters thesis defended at the Department of ethnology and anthropology of the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, 2010;
Danilo Trbojevi, Antropologija amerikanizacije Holokausta, Biblioteka INITIUM, Zadubina Andrejevi, Beograd, 2013, , , 5.
, , 2011.
4 Sarah Farmer, Symbols that Face Two Ways: Commemorating the Victims of Nazism
and Stalinism at
Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen, University of California Press, 1995, p. 97.
112
was noticed not only that the identities of Germans in the west and those in
the East were very different, because one side was branded to be the perpetrators and the other to be victims, but also that the latter (in East Germany)
have developed a culture of memory that made them see themselves as victims of Hitlers, Stalins, and ultimately the western capitalistic (fascist) regime.5
The example of political commemoration at the Buchenwald Memorial
clearly illustrates how dominant political currents and regimes can disrupt
or distort some historical facts with the aim to reconstruct group history and
identity. In different periods of the Memorial one side of Germany was celebrated and the other neglected. After the war, heavily influenced by the Soviet Union, East Germans shared the identity of the fighters of socialism who
had defeated fascism, so they saw themselves as anti-fascist victims. This was
the consequence of Soviet Union's strong influence on East German politics.
This situation went on for decades and all the while East Germans commemorated victims of Hitler's repression. After the Berlin Wall was torn down the
two Germanies united, but their identities remained opposing. The new collective memory of Germany changed to a degree the identity of East Germans
since West Germans were appointed to head positions of institutions in
charge of the politics of memory. Although East Germany was forced to accept the identity of the perpetrator in the Second World War, it created a
new identity of victim. From then on East Germans considered themselves
victims not only of Hitlers regime, but also of the multi-decennial oppression
by the Soviet Union and Stalin. Today, when Germans are aware of the double history of Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen they have a different view of
their history and past, political present and future.6 And yet, the identities of
the two Germanies still have not been unified, for the reason that after the
reunification and West Germany assuming government, East Germans began
seeing themselves as victims in a third form. Namely, because of the investigations that the western regime had carried out on East Germans who had
worked or cooperated with the infamous Stasi secret police after the war,
the East Germans who believed that cooperation to have been imposed on
5
6
Farmer, ibid.., p. 104.

Ibid.
113
them viewed the western investigations as a new wave of oppression. Consequently, East Germans developed a third victim identity where the perpetrator is seen to be the political (capitalist / fascist) government of West Germany.7
The Auschwitz Memorial in Poland most directly indicates who the victims
were, and who the perpetrators. On the other hand, the Auschwitz Memorial
does not accentuate the role of the bystander nation, in this case Poland,
which is also a form of the culture of forgetting. The Auschwitz Museum is
listed as an example of a museum in the country of a nation that still has not
fully resolved its role in the holocaust, i.e. the role of the passive bystander.
There are two examples of the way Polish society views this Memorial, which
indicate that even a globally important area of memory can sometimes be not
so desirable in case the society has a divided identity in the context of the
holocaust. In the first example the nature of the Memorial and its significance
to the local community changes in relation to other social (in this case economic) factors, while the second example indicates the possibility that such a
space can develop completely different social relations on the local and the
global level (as a tourist and economic centre for the citizens of Oswiecim,
and as sacred grounds of commemoration and memory of the descendants of
the holocaust victims on the global level).
Namely, in the devastated Poland after the war a part of the camp disappeared
since the timber was stolen to be used for rebuilding homes or as firewood.
The area of what used to be the camp had been going to ruins for years, since
for the Poles this area was of little importance in the following decades when
the standard of living was miserable. There was also a level of animosity that
the citizens of Oswiecim manifested towards the area of the camp. Namely,
the whole area of the camp had been protected in the first decades after the
war and there was a ban on making any drastic changes or using the facilities
for anything other than as a museum. This meant the closing of one of the
factories that had been built by the inmates of the first camp of Auschwitz
Farmer op. cit., p. 107.
114
and where the inmates had worked, i.e. toiled and died, throughout the existence of the camp.8 In poverty-stricken post-war Poland work was scarce and
operating industrial facilities even scarcer. The citizens of Oswiecim demanded that the factory that was located in one section of the ex-camp be reactivated, which would have been very significant for the citizens of this and
nearby places in terms of new job openings, profit and ultimately food on the
table. 9
Soon the situation changed drastically. Although the factory was not re-activated, something else happened which changed the attitude of the populace
towards the Auschwitz Memorial. A railway to the Memorial was built in
1967. Very soon this area had proven an excellent tourist destination with
huge potential. Soon there were lots of ex-inmates coming to visit, descendants of inmates, school and student excursions etc., and Oswiecim bloomed
economically.10 In the years to come the town of Oswiecim became one of
Polands obligatory tourist destinations, but the attitude of the citizens towards the space was still mixed. In the second case, the problem was the symbolic detachment of the camp from the town. It turned out that if the
Oswiecim youth would like to launch a project for a parking lot, supermarket
or disco club. These initiatives were discarded because such projects would
disturb the concept of the Memorial, which no longer belonged to Oswiecim
or Poland, but to the whole world. 11 In that sense, it can be seen how an area
which is very important for the victim identity waived potential profit for
the sake of the memories it represents. There is an ongoing debate about the
relation of the town of Oswiecim and the area of Auschwitz as contrasting
Michal Y. Bodemann, Eclipse of Memory: German Representations of Auschwitz in the

Early Postwar Period, New German Critique, No. 75, 2008, p. 63.
9 Alison Stenning, Andrew Charlesworthb, Robert Guzikc, Micha Paszkowskic, A tale of
two institutions:
Shaping Owicim-Auschwitz, Geoforum, Environmental Economic Geography,Volume
39, Issue 1, pp. 402 405.
10 Ibid.
11 Alexandra Rahr, Are Holocaust Memorials Ethical?, The Elie Wesel Foundation for
Humanity, New York, 2003, pp. 11-12.
115
the space of the living with the space of the dead, the relation of the national
and global identity.
Next to The Auschwitz Memorial and the Yad Vashem Memorial in Israel,
the third most famous memorial to the holocaust is in the United States of
America. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington is
one of several most important centres for the global discourse on victims and
perpetrators in the context of the holocaust. Examining the concepts of the
installations of this museum one notices the American cultural context which
is very present. America, although geographically remote from the events of
the holocaust, depicts in this museum its role in these events, of course as the
winners and liberators, and not as perpetrators or bystanders. This message
would be quite justified in America itself did not deserve a place among at
least those who were characterised as passive bystanders in the suffering,
since there are several examples where the Museum management failed to
mention USAs involvement in the suffering of innocent civilians. This refers
to the time when groups of Jews asked for help (asylum) from America in
1938, which they were denied and deported back to Germany, where they
were later persecuted and murdered.12 This event was imbedded in the installation in such a way that it reveals very little information about the dark
side of American memory. The part of the installation that speaks of the dark
part of American memory, titled No help, no refuge 1938 was portrayed
negligibly in relation to for example the first image that the visitors of the
Museum see at the entrance, which is the image of the American liberators
who freed these camps.13
The United States of America, regardless of its history of cooperation with
Hitlers pre-war regime, its history of racism, slavery and genocide against
the Indians, its history of imprisoning Japanese people who used to live in
America and placing them into camps, has every reason to feel as a perpetrator. It is enough to read a bit about anti-Semitism and Hitlers ideas which
were widely accepted by the American elites and citizens in the period right
12
Jennifer Faber, Holocaust memory and museums in the United States: problems of representation, Miami University, History, 2005, op. cit., p. 24.
13 Faber, op. cit, p. 28.
116
before the war and14 it becomes clear why America today wants to establish
its role as the nation which holds monopoly over the memories of the holocaust and as a flagship of freedom and tolerance. I would call this a classic
case of whitewashing. 15
THE TRAUMA OF THE PORTRAYAL OF

MEMORIES OF NDH CRIMES IN CROATIA
I have written papers earlier about Holocaust Memory in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, where the politics of collective memory was directed at maintaining a singular Yugoslav identity which was based on the
idea that the Yugoslav peoples are brothers united in the fight against fascism.
In that sense, after the war the dominant communist regime portrayed the
Partisan movement as a central highlight of the war, while the Chetniks and
Ustashas were vilified as anti-communist and fascist in character. In order to
avoid the conflicts of identities of nations in Yugoslavia, which considered
each other as the perpetrators, the commemorations of the victims of fascism
and death camps (such as Jasenovac) were organised in a similar manner as
in East Germany, which meant that everybody was celebrated as having assisted in the victory against the Nazis, with victims celebrated from each nation, if their deaths helped the victory.16
After the secession of Germany, the breakup of Yugoslavia and the bloody
wars that ensued in this part of the Balkans, the elements and institutions of
collective memory changed their places, which, as this paper will show, effected a change of identity. In Croatia, in a time frame of only two decades,
through spatially institutionalised and ritual form and the influence of the
educational system, those who had been recognised for decades as the perpetrators have completely changed their places.
14
Faber, ibid.., p. 34.

Young. E. James, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meanings, New
Heaven, Yale University, p. 336.
16 Wolfram A. Mark, Representations of the Holocaust at Dachau and Buchenwald in Comparison with Auschwitz, Yad Vashem and Washington, German Studies Association, pp.
688-689.
15
117
In the example of Croatian memory through the institutionalised space we

see that the dividing line between the perpetrator and the victim is now
hazy.17 A special form of revisionism plays a major role in Croatia in the
memory of events which should not be brought into question. Namely, the
narrative of the installation of the Jasenovac Museum has been showing a
significantly lower number of victims for years, a confusing log of the ethnicity of the victims, the motives and ideological and ethical specificities of
the perpetrators. Diminishing the number of victims and obscuring the definitions of the victims and perpetrators and the specificities of the crimes expunges the crime itself (from social memory). In that sense, as I have already
written in my earlier papers, over time the Jasenovac Museum has become a
place of experiments in organising selective memory with powerful political
influences on the identity of Croatia both on the internal and the external
level.
Obscuring memory in Croatia is a practice not only limited to the installation
of the Jasenovac Memorial, but also manifested through the example of the
annual commemoration to the victims of Jasenovac and (Croatian) victims
and heroes in Bleiburg.18 While the Jasenovac Museum today portrays a
pale and ineffective image of events which insufficiently tell the tale of genocide, camps, atrocities and specificities of the bloodthirsty Ustasha regime
and the vast numbers of Serb, Roma and Jewish victims, Bleiburg, a place in
Austria where a number of captured Ustasha soldiers were executed at the
end of the war, is slowly becoming the main place of national commemoration of suffering for the Croats. The example of the Bleiburg commemoration
is an excellent example for educational, anthropological, sociological, psychological and especially historical analysis of how a change in the social, historical and political context effects the change of identity.
The memory of Bleiburg changed from commemorations to executed fascists
being completely prohibited by the communist regime of the time, to the fact
that today more attention is paid in Croatia to the memory of the Ustashas
17
For more information on revisionism in Croatia, see: Salamon Jazbec, Magnissimum

crimen, Margelov institut, Zagreb, 2008.
18 David Bruce MacDonald, Balkan holocausts?: Serbian and Croatian victim-centered propaganda and the war in Yugoslavia, Manchester University Press, 2003.
118
executed in Bleiburg than to the innocent Serb, Jewish and Roma victims
exterminated in Jasenovac. Basic knowledge of history and elementary logic
dictate that the victims of Jasenovac were in no way involved in the deaths
of the men executed in Bleiburg, while it is certain that many of the executed
Ustashas were directly involved in the deaths of not only the victims of
Jasenovac, but also the victims of other camps and places of execution across
the NDH. In any case, it is a fact that in the past several years Croatia decreased the budget for the commemorations in Jasenovac, and increased that
of organised group trips to Austria on the day of commemoration to the victims at Bleiburg. This idea is fully supported by the Catholic Church which
greatly encourages this commemoration.19
Although in recent years Croatian political leaders or representatives of the
government have started to make appearances and hols speeches at the
Jasenovac commemoration, the narratives of their speeches are mainly of the
artificial politically correct kind with what is now a traditional controversy
over the number of victims. On the day of the commemoration, the Croatian
side commemorates several tens of thousands of victims of the Ustasha regime, while on the other side of the river, in the Republic of Srpska, the commemoration is dedicated to over half a million victims.20 Truth be told, the
speeches of the Croatian politicians are governed by European integrations.
In that sense, one should not be surprised that the commemoration in the
Croatian part of Jasenovac does not seem very sincere nor particularly desirable.21 Understandably, for the Croatian state these commemorations are
just as unpleasant and necessary a factor as the cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which is simply an element of the process of the change in Croatias identity from a Balkan state
into a European state.
19
Jazbec, ibid., p. 491.

MacDonald, ibid.
21 Salamon Jazbec states that such commemorations should be taken away from politicians
as central figures, and even from religious figures who use these occasions to make political speeches, accentuate conflicts with other political or religious communities and to promote themselves.
20
119
Today the two opposing commemorative practices (Jasenovac / Bleiburg) indicate the two identities of Croatia, and are logically opposed to each other,
which creates the paradox of the same country regards itself as the victim,
bystander and perpetrator of the same historical and political period. It is
clear that today Bleiburg is the space that the Croatian state/nation needs to
reconstruct the identity of the perpetrator or bystander into the identity of
the victim and hero martyrs.
THE OUTCOME OF USING SELECTIVE MEMORY

IN THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CROATIAN
IDENTITY AND THE RELATION TOWARDS
OTHERNESS IN CROATIA TODAY
When the commemorations to the victims of Jasenovac were reinstated after
the 1990s, they jeopardised the then current Croatian narrative of a justified
defence against the aggressor and of innocent victims, Home Guardsmen.
The demons of the past marked Croatia as a nation of perpetrators, which
was problematic, because during secession from Yugoslavia and the following civil war the image placed in the media was that of an oppressed nation
of righteous defenders (Home Guard) and innocent victims of the aggression
of Great Serbia or Yugoslavia. In the early aftermath of the breakup of Yugoslavia, and more importantly, of the Yugoslavian identity, the Croatian nation quite easily stifled the idea of the Ustasha regime being genocidal, and
replaced it with the premise of brave and righteous Ustasha defenders of the
Croatian state. Hence the abundance of sympathisers of the Ustasha movement among the generations who were born decades after the Second World
War, and even the wars of the 1990s. And of course, as the neo-Ustasha trend
strengthens, the issue of revisionism comes forth. It is clear what would happen in Germany if, for example, a band was to emerge, whose fans wore the
insignia of the infamous Nazi SS troops, or saluted their musicians with Heil
Hitler! And it is choreographies and salutes such as these can be noticed in
concerts of pro-Ustasha or radical-right wing bands in Croatia. Salomon
Jazbec very keenly observed and listed the entire narrative complex surrounding Croatias most popular national ethno/rock musician, Marko
120
Perkovi aka Thompson, which was indicative that although this musician no
longer flaunts the directly nationalistic narrative from his early career, he
still has strong ties to the motives of the Ustasha movement be it through
choreography or audience communication, through the names and lyrics of
his songs, which, conveniently, have common motives or even words with
Ustasha songs.22 And yet the charges of revisionism are rare in Croatia or
come from minority groups that have no actual political power to change the
attitude of the Croatian government towards the crimes of the Ustasha regime. On the other side, Croatia skilfully avoids accusations of revisionism
by using the Jasenovac commemorations as signs of good will to remember
the crimes or victims. If it is possible to commemorate two spaces at the same
time which have contradicting memories and if one of them is more dominant than the other, as it is the case in Croatia today with Bleiburg and
Jasenovac, then there is no need for direct historical revisionism, i.e. calling
Jasenovac into question. There is no need for direct revisionism and calling
the nature of Jasenovac into question for the simple reason that remembrance and social memory of the suffering in Bleiburg are slowly but surely
supressing and marginalising the memory of the victims and perpetrators of
Jasenovac.23 This way Croatia can avoid global accusations of revisionist politics and the condemnation of the international community, since today it
does commemorate the victims of Jasenovac (the way it does) while at the
same time it commemorates innocent Croatian victims the executed Ustashas in Bleiburg. 24
What makes this phenomenon of identity reconstruction even more interesting is that if such a switch of the space of memory continues over time the
memory of Bleiburg will become more and more dominant at the spatial,
symbolic and social level, thus denigrating Jasenovac and the trauma of portraying Croatia as a symbolic successor to the criminal NDH. In that case the
22
For more information on revisionism in Croatia see: Salamon Jazbec, Magnissimum

crimen, argelov institut, Zagreb, 2008.
23 Trbojevi, Seanje na zlo: memorijalni centri, filmovi i politika komemoracije rtava
nemakih i NDH logora, p. 181.
24 Ibid.
121
Croatian identity will rely solely on the idea of Croats as fighters against injustice, as liberators, who have committed no atrocities or crimes, but were
victims both in the wars of the 1990s and the Second World War.
The heralds of the change in identity in Croatia can be seen today, and they
represent only a part of the identity which is being organised. Today we can
see the consequences of forgetting traumatic historical events which used to
link Croatia to the identity of the perpetrator, such as the example of the
aforementioned singer Thompson, as well as other cases which are mostly
popularised by the Balkan media. Lately, the Croatian media, and subsequently Serbian media as well, have been overwhelmed with reports of ethnic-based incidents, to put it mildly, involving more or less known and famous members of the post-war generation of Croatian youth. Of course, in
most cases a special role belongs to the older generation, i.e. the Home
Guardsmen, who are seen by a part of the Croatian society as brave righteous
men who have liberated and practically created independent Croatia as it is
today.
The most recent such case was the alleged disappearance of a Kristina
urkovi, from what the Serbian public later found out, one of the radical
right wing activists, who was often involved in protests in Croatia as well as
performances which emphasise the anti-EU protests and the glorification of
the Croatian fighter.25 Soon young Kristina became the face of new-generation Croatian nationalism. This girl is irrelevant, but what is relevant is that
her range of activities, apart from criticising Croatian EU integration politics,
includes anti-Serb concepts with a special focus on the ban of Cyrillic writing
in Vukovar. To be honest, it is clear that Kristina is using a tension-packed
social climate to build some kind of a career and a name for herself in the
Croatian political milieu. Other personas from the Croatian cultural life find
their inspiration in continuously tense relations between Croatia and Serbia.
Aside from Thompson, who adapted the extreme nationalism from the beginning of his career to the social climate where he is now presenting his
patriotic approach to ethno rock and making a decent living, we have the
25
http://www.telegraf.rs/vesti/913622-nestala-najpoznatija-ustaskinja-mrziteljka-srba-icirilice
122
controversial writer called Vedrana Rudan,26 who touches on the traumatic

aspects of the Croatian cultural life and relations with Serbia in her blog or
TV appearances, or the director Oliver Frlji, who uses his plays to delve into
the trauma of portrayal of memory and identity in Croatia as well as in the
Balkans, which makes him controversial even outside his own country.27 In
an interview for a Serbian magazine called Kurir, for several times this author touched on the nationalistic rampage and destruction of signs and name
plates in Cyrillic script in Vukovar.28 This incident, or this series of incidents
in Vukovar is merely one of many events caused by the reconstruction of
identity in Croatia. The mere existence of the idea to put up signs in the Cyrillic alphabet, the Serb writing caused an outburst of retaliation of the Right
in Croatia. The largest problem was that using this script was a symbol for
Croatian nationalists for the return of Serbs to Croatia. Although Vukovar
had always been predominantly populated by Serbs, even after the war, these
signs being put up and then demolished was represented as a struggle against
some sort of a new colonisation or Serb aggression towards the Croatian state
and culture.29
In other cases, when the motive has a symbolic weight to it, important not
only in the Balkans but also globally, there is a desire to make it part of the
Croatian identity even if it comes from the opposite, Serb culture. Such a case
is the question of the identity of Nikola Tesla. Tesla, a world-famous and
acknowledged scientist, was born to a Serb family in the village of Smiljan in
Lika. Up to the 1990s, there were many Serbs in the village, as well as most
of Lika. Lately there is more and more debate over whether Tesla was a Serb
26
http://www.rudan.info/
http://www.kurir-info.rs/kontroverzni-hrvatski-reditelj-pozoriste-ne-moze-nistauciniti-ni-za-hrvatsku-ni-za-srbiju-clanak-1107823
28 This author commented on the future of the relationship between the Croats and the
Serbs: It is hard to believe that these societies will heal any time soon. Their nationalist atavisms break out every now and then. Perhaps the original question is what created the
wound, and not whether we should poke at it. http://www.kurir-info.rs/kontroverznihrvatski-reditelj-pozoriste-ne-moze-nista-uciniti-ni-za-hrvatsku-ni-za-srbiju-clanak1107823
29 http://ww.novosti.co.rs/vesti/planeta.300.html:464127-Hrvatski-ministar-MaticBranitelji-slusaju-Cecu-a-smeta-im-cirilica
27
123
or a Croat. In several Croatian forums and websites I found texts that are
supposed to show that the famed scientist was nothing other than a Croat.30
For example, the Croatian version of the Wikipedia page on Nikola Tesla31
describes Teslas ethnic background with: Nikola Tesla was born on 9th/10th
July 1856 in the village of Smiljan near Gospi. Tesla was of Serb or Croatian
origin (Teslas diary). His father Milutin is said to have been an Orthodox
Christian priest, and his mother Georgina Mandi (nicknamed uka) was an
uneducated, but highly intelligent woman.32
This is an example of selective appropriation, which clearly illustrates how
the Croatian society of today absorbs elements which are favourable to the
positive nature of its European identity, which it is developing alongside the
process of forgetting the other part of its history. If there werent for the
parallel influence of the culture of memory and the culture of forgetting, the
new identity would simply not be feasible because the conflicting elements
would simply cancel each other out. As we have seen in the examples of Germany, America or Poland, this process is not particular only to Croatia, but
is equally arbitrary, and we can recognize the elements if we know the social
and historical context. Similar ideas on selective memory and constructing
new mythology and identity, not only on defining a nation, were presented
much earlier in papers by Benedict Anderson or Paul Connerton,33 who indicate exactly that possibility of construction and reconstruction of elements
of social or national identity and the pertinent role of memory.
And yet, perhaps the best illustration of the degree of revisionism or extent
of forgetting historical facts is pertinent not to politicians or people from Croatias cultural life, but to a sportsman and several dozen thousand common
30
http://www.dnevno.hr/vijesti/hrvatska/97744-hrvatski-znanstvenik-tvrdi-tesla-je-hrvata-to-znaju-vrhuske-katolicke-i-pravoslavne-crkve.html
http://www.hrhb.info/showthread.php?t=4065
31 http://www.wikipedia.org/
32 http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
33 For more information see: Anderson Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on
the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (rev. ed. ed.). London: Verso. 1991 [1983]. Or Konerton Pol, Kako drutva pamte, Fabrika knjiga, Beograd, 2002.
124
people, who sent a joint message to both the Croatian society and their Balkan neighbours.
In November 2013, the Maksimir stadium in Zagreb was full and the football fans and players were celebrating their victory over Iceland in the international match which brought them a place in the World Championship. The
incident that occurred was when Josip imuni, a Croatian footballer, ran
onto the pitch holding a microphone and greeted the already ecstatic fans.
The issue isnt that imuni ran out and addressed the fans. The shocking
part was the salute he chose, much more than what the fans responded with.
Namely, the player came onto the field and greeted the fans with the (wartime) salute most notable for its use among members of the Ustasha movement in the NDH: For the Homeland... ... ready! When imuni uttered the
first part of the salute: For the home...!, it was met with a frenetic response
from the already ecstatic fans: ... READY!!! 34 Of course, it was immediately
clear that the player would get into trouble for this.
When asked by the press why he had done it, imuni said: I had always
wanted to do it. Some people should brush up on their history, and I am not
afraid. I have done nothing wrong, I support my country and my homeland,
and if someone has an issue with that, it is their problem, not mine.35 The
arguments imuni used was much unfounded, since this salute infamous
because it was not only widespread among the Ustashas, but as official and
characteristic as the Heil Hitler among the Nazi Germans. The player may
had wanted to correct his mistake by pointing out to the historical origin of
the salute, dating from before the Second World War or the Ustasha movement. But then the same argument could be used by the German Right or any
other groups that today use the infamous Heil! justifying it because it relates to the ancient Roman salute by raising the hand or using the same salute
in the 18th or late 19th century. Of course, the situation would be just as unfa-
34
http://sport.blic.rs/Fudbal/Svetski-fudbal/243360/Ustaski-pir-na-Maksimiru-Hrvatskifudbaler-skandirao-za-dom-spremni-sa-navijacima
35 Ibid.
125
vourable because anybody who is familiar with the social, historical and political context can immediately relate the salute to the Nazi and fascist salute,
and not the Roman one, or the one from the time of Paulo Ritter Vitezovi.36
Officials of the International Federation of Football Associations (FIFA)
seemed to share similar viewpoints as the player. Josip imuni was punished
because of his pro-Nazi salute with a ban from ten official matches for his
national team, which meant that the player would not play for his team at the
world championship.37 Although the Croatian public, headed by the national
team coach and chairman of the Croatian Football Association, and all the
fans, was shocked by the Draconian punishment that the FIFA imposed on
the player,38 the other, Serbian side considered the punishment too lenient.
Chairman of Serbias Football Association Tomislav Karadi said that not
only he felt the punishment was too lenient, but that imuni is a man of a
deranged mind.39
Although imuni was in the end punished for his rash and seemingly illconsidered gesture, the second party that took place in the performance at
the stadium was not punished, but was warned. It was not the whole Croatian
society at the stadium that day, nor were all the people who were there aware
of the historical background of the salute and its gravity. It is a fact, however,
that the majority of the fans, without any second thoughts or consideration,
accepted the Ustasha salute as their national or personal salute. Had there
been more determined presentations of the memory of the holocaust and the
NDH crimes which are transferred through education, perhaps at least a part
of those who chanted at the stadium or vandalised signs in Vukovar would
have reconsidered. This way the Croatian identity is divided into two parts,
the first being under pressure from the other one, which has government
support and threatens to become the dominant one. The other one is actually
36
For more information see: http://books.google.hr/books?id=oNIpAAAAYAAJ

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2013/dec/16/croatia-josip-simunic-ban-world-cuppro-nazi-chant
38 http://sportski.net.hr/nogomet/reprezentacija/niko-kovac-o-kazni-simunicu-neugodnosam-iznenadjen-sokiran-i-razocaran
39 http://www.b92.net/sport/fudbal/vesti.php?yyyy=2013&mm=12&dd=18&nav_id=790593
37
126
a different Croatia, a Croatia which was heard loudly and clearly in the response to imunis call, for the Homeland! ... Ready!
We should keep in mind that Croatia today is not a homogenous unit of identity in thought or behaviour, and that the cases presented here are not the
rule, but they are present in Croatia today. The problem this paper is trying
to indicate is the escalation or spreading of such examples as a consequence
to the trauma of portrayal or forgetting dark parts of own history.
CLOSING REMARKS
As we have seen in the examples of Germany, Poland and America, national
memory can often be divided by and consequential to influences of culture,
economy and identity. Regardless of which approach to organising social
memory is chosen, the consequences are visible at all levels of social and inter-social communication. The holocaust represents one of those examples
from human history which is by definition a precedent and a warning not
only to the generations that experienced it, but for all future ones as well,
because the gravity of the holocaust is not only reflected in the number of
victims but in the memory of one of the darkest periods of human history,
which shows what one is capable of if one allows oneself to be led by hatred.
Jasenovac and the other NDH camps speak the same story of the dark side of
Croatian history, or to be more precise, of the criminal regime that sent to
their deaths not only Serbs, Roma people and Jews, but also members of the
same ethnicity who were seen as unfavourable. Unfortunately, instead of accepting, condemning and overcoming the crimes of the Ustasha regime and
thus move forward, we are witnessing the process of identity reconstruction,
which ignores the memory of other groups in Croatia, and not only memory
but also historical facts that will continue to be a threat, and anybody referencing to these facts considered an enemy.
The problem that arises is the repressed anger and animosity being built up
with the youth in Croatia on the one side because of poor living conditions,
standard of life and a growing number of unemployed people and on the
other side because of the Serb aggressors, Serb Cyrillic script, globalist
Europe or some other enemy. The fact remains that a society which builds
its identity on the idea of heroism, struggle and number of victims, and at the
127
same time ignores the dark side of its history, consequently suffers from
identity confusion. The problem arises when the memories of other ethnic
groups within and without of the country are opposed to what is in this case
the official corpus. This kind of opposition represents a threat because it can
sway the foundations of identity in the process of reconstruction, as well as
the social and political potential of the new identity compared to the discarded
old one.
In that sense, the culture of forgetting or diminishing the number of victims
of Ustasha terror and the direct replacement of ideas by using the motive of
Bleiburg as a place of remembrance where the men who were shot are portrayed not as members of the evil Ustasha movement but innocent and brave
Home Guardsmen, cause the problem of an expectedly large animosity towards outsiders, which endangers the elements of selective memory.
It is clear that with these switches of identity Croatia today is trying to get
rid of undesirable images of its past with the aim to achieve as much integration into the European Union as possible, where it would be free of the blemishes in its identity related to WWII genocide or crimes committed in the
wars of the 1990s. This self-definement still has clear consequences which
are reflected in its relation to outsiders. It is the motive of omnipresence of
hostile outsiders that indicates the consequences of a uniform construction
of identity which neglects bad events from own history. A consequence of
the state of forgettance which engulfs the Croatian society today can be identified in the additional drop of tolerance towards minorities of any kind.
It is the phenomenon of social forgettance or selective memory that warrants
the existence of memorials such as Auschwitz, Yad Vashem or the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Unfortunately, these museums
themselves are not immune to social or political influences, but the facts presented there, even the traumatic ones, are inherently undeniable. Any time
some fact related to the holocaust as a civilizational warning is changed, falsified or challenged without scientific proof, we can call it revisionism, which
in itself entails serious consequences.
In the case of Croatia, state politics towards organising national memory is
such that revisionism, although very present, is actually well concealed. A
consequence of this kind of approach is the examples of internal animosity
between the two identities of Croatia, as well as the increasing level of fear
128
and aggressive attitude towards the cultural, ethnic, religious or other outsiders. The only way to overcome this situation is for the Croatian state to
assume measures that include the condemnation of any kind of revision of
the holocaust and the crimes of the NDH. For as long as this does not happen,
the relations between Serbia and Croatia, meaning between Serbs and Croats,
will be not only bad, but the tradition of animosity will be continued in the
generations to come.
REFERENCES
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism (rev. ed. ed.). London: Verso. 1991 [1983]
Jennifer Faber, Holocaust memory and museums in the United States: problems of
representation, Miami University, History, 2005.
Todor Kulji, Kultura seanja: teorijska objanjenja upotrebe prolosti, igoja, Beograd,
2006.
David Bruce MacDonald, Balkan holocausts?: Serbian and Croatian victim-centered
propaganda and the war in Yugoslavia, Manchester University Press, 2003.
Pol Konerton, Kako drutva pamte, Fabrika knjiga, Beograd, 2002.
Alexandra Rahr, Are Holocaust Memorials Ethical?, The Elie Wesel Foundation for
Humanity, New York, 2003.
Alison Stenning, Andrew Charlesworthy, Robert Guzikc, Micha Paszkowskic, A tale of
two institutions: Shaping Owicim-Auschwitz, Geoforum, Environmental Economic
Geography, Volume 39, Issue 1.
Danilo Trbojevi, Seanje na zlo: memorijalni centri, filmovi i politika komemoracije rtava
nemakih i NDH logora, masters thesis defended at the Department of ethnology and
anthropology of the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, 2010.
, , 5. , , 2011.
Danilo Trbojevi, Antropologija amerikanizacije Holokausta, Biblioteka INITIUM,
Zadubina Andrejevi, Beograd, 2013.
Sarah Farmer, Symbols that Face Two Ways: Commemorating the Victims of Nazism and
Stalinism at Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen, University of California Press, 1995.
Mark A. Wolfram, Representations of the Holocaust at Dachau and Buchenwald in
Comparsion with Auschwitz, Yad Vashem and Washington, German Studies Association.
129
Michal Y. Bodemann, Eclipse of Memory: German Representations of Auschwitz in the
Early Postwar Period, New German Critique, No. 75, 2008.
James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meanings, New
Heaven, Yale University.
http://www.telegraf.rs
http://www.rudan.info
http://www.kurir-info.rs
http://ww.novosti.co.rs
http://www.dnevno.hr
http://www.wikipedia.org/
http://sport.blic.rs
http://www.theguardian.com
http://www.b92.net
130
Dragana Mijatovi -Tomaevi
THE REASON FOR MASSACRE OF

SERBS AND OTHER NON-CATHOLIC
POPULATION BY CROATS AND
MUSLIMS IN THE SECOND WORLD
WAR
In the previous conferences on the Jasenovac concentration camp, we heard

a lot about horrible persecutions, torturing and killing of the Serb, Jewish
and Roma populations and other non-Catholics in the NDH in the Second
World War, committed against ordinary people like peasants and town
people on one hand and high-positioned ones like doctors, priests etc. on the
second.
A sane person must ask themselves how it is possible that a whole nation
(such as Croats in the Second World War) turns into a genocidal nation who
kills, slaughters and exterminates all non-Catholics.
The answer to this painful question can be found in an extraordinary theory
by our contemporary Vladimir Umelji. His theory of definitionism provides
a very simple pattern which explains that, by virtue of psychagogic methods,
the elite political leadership of a country, through public media, advocates the
dehumanisation of another ethnic group as a lower race. This means
redefining the target people as a lower race, whose physical elimination is
not a sin but an allowed action, not only much needed but also necessary
for survival. This psychological logic is further advocated throughout the
perpetration of genocide in order to vindicate this illegal and unjustified
131
crime. Finally, as the last act, comes negation or minimisation of crimes by

the perpetrators.
I do not think that the definitionism theory should be applied to the NDH in
the Second World War but to the Roman Catholic Church. Namely, as is
known, the Roman Catholic Church has always strived to subject the
Orthodox Church. In its expansion to the East, it first needed to build a
stronghold and secure its position in the Balkans. This stronghold, or Civitas
Dei, was built in the NDH.
For better comprehension of how the Catholic Church managed to mobilise
a mass of normal perpetrators i.e. almost the whole country to commit the
genocide against everybody who were not Catholics, let us look at the
example of little known but very interesting person Ivan Hans Merz.
Ivan Merz was born in Banja Luka in 1894. He was the illegitimate child; his
father was an Austro-Hungarian and his mother was a Hungarian Jew. He
received a decent, secular, liberal education, but the milestone in his love for
the Roman Catholic Church was his literature teacher in the Zagreb
Gymnasium (t/n: grammar school), the layman Ljubomir Marakovi.
Reading and drawing inspiration from literary works chosen by professor
Marakovi, young Merz was unconsciously taught to view the world through
the eyes of Catholic truths and the church morals. The Catholic Church
gradually embraced this intelligent and knowledge-thirsty young man
coming from spiritually ignorant and weak family. Owing to the commitment
of Jesuit Miroslav Vanin, Merz won a scholarship to the Catholic University
of Paris.
Enchanted and imbued by fanatical love for the Catholic Church and Pope,
he went to Zagreb to win a doctorate in 1923. However, having come to
Zagreb he found the situation he did not like.
Namely, after the end of the First World War, the people in Croatia began to
gradually liberalise as the wounds of war were healing. The influence of
international organisations as well as Karl Marx's liberalism had a great
influence on the development of culture, banking, economy and society in
Croatia.
Always being active in public life and imbued with love for Catholicism and
the church, passionately devoted to the Pope, he translated the texts on
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important events in Catholic life from newspapers from France, Austria,

Belgium, Italy and the local press.
His fanatical love and devotion to the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope
did not go unnoticed even in Rome. Feeling that it was losing its position
again, due to the rise of liberalism in Europe, the Catholic Church took a
measure to regain people's favour. In 1923, the notorious Catholic Action
was officially founded in Italy. Upon invitation by the Pope Pius XI, Merz
was assigned the establishment of Catholic Action in Croatia, which he gladly
accepted.
Although Croatian political elite at the time considered Merz's ideas as
extreme, which caused many conflicts and turbulences, Merz prevailed in
this struggle and founded the youth movement called The Union of Croatian
Eagles (hereinafter referred to as The Eagles). In the organisation's
handbook, written by Merz himself as the ideologist and pioneer of the
Catholic Action, the strong ideological foundation was built for the Catholic
Action in Croatia. The Catholic Action, whose foundation was set by the Pope
Pius XI in his encyclical titled Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio [English: 'On the
Peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ'] to promote the movement. In fact,
the idea was to mobilise all Catholics against free thought, liberalism,
international societies etc.
In this region, the mobilisation was conducted through The Eagles, led by
its ideologist Ivan Merz and the president Dr Ivo Protulipac. Among other
things, they were the main counterbalance to the Serbian liberal youth
society called The Sokol Movement (hereinafter referred to as The Sokol,
the Slavic word for falcon). The two societies had the same goal: to assemble
the youth throughout the country into a single organisation. While The
Sokol, especially its Serbian branch, organised parties, social events and
sport competitions, The Eagles raised Croatian Catholic youth in a strictly
religious spirit, forming their personality through moral instructions and
church truths. Just to mention that the preface Merz wrote to The Eagles'
handbook, The Golden Book, was so extreme that the Board of The Eagles
withdrew the preface at the moment when The Golden Book had already
been in printing!
This enthusiastic youth organisation founded by Merz, the pioneer of
Catholic Action, was actually a school for future butchers and slayers who
133
committed the genocide against the Serbs, Jews, Roma and other nonCatholics in the NDH. To prove this statement, we will quote the handbook,
The Golden Book: The purpose of the organisation is to assemble all
Catholic youth in a single battalion and make them a battalion of apostles,
educating them religiously, morally, socially and physically; those youth is to
awake, solidify and make people eager to follow the ideals of Catholic thought
and life... The Eagle will learn them how to point out, spread, use and defend
the Catholic principles in the life of an individual, family and the human
society as a whole... The Eagle cannot be friendly to an enemy of the Catholic
faith and to those who neglect religion... However, if it can, may the
organisation try to direct, undeceive and bring them back under the wing of
the Holy Church...
In other words, the youth of The Eagles were trained either to kill nonCatholics or to convert them into Catholicism.
The most honourable place in the organisation belonged to the clergy, whose
role was to keep the religious life of members and branches of the
organisation, and encourage them to perform their duties within the
organisation.
The Dictatorship of 6th January 1929 (t/n: a royal dictatorship established in
the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes by King Alexander) abolished all
associations founded on tribal or religious basis, thus abolishing the
clerical-fascist political organisation The Union of Croatian Eagles.
However, Dr Ivo Protulipac, the president of The Eagles, found a quick
solution and founded the organisation called The Crusaders as entirely
religious institution of Catholic Action with, of course, the same membership. The Eagles, now under the different name - The Crusaders,
performed their activity in an identical way based on Ivan Merz's ideology
presented in The Golden Book and under the old motto of The Eagles Sacrifice, Eucharist, Apostolate, coined by Merz himself. The Ustasha press
clearly shows that Ustashas' spiritual ideas were in complete concordance
with spiritual ideas of the Crusaders and the Eagles. They certainly were, as
most of Ustashas were Crusaders. The harvest of Merz's ideology was reaped
by Paveli together with his Ustashas in 1941.
The Catholic clergy took pastoral care of the religious life of members of
Merz's school, which raised future slaughterers and encouraged them during
134
performing their duties in WWII. Merz did not live long to enjoy the fruits
of his ideology as he had died long before the WWII broke out, in 1928, but
his students went down in history as the only nation to have built a
concentration camp for children.
Let us remember the complex of Croatian concentration camps for extermination of Serbs, Jews and Roma - Jasenovac. Let us also remember the
genocide in Mount Velebit, Foa, Split, Dubrovnik etc. Merz's school
educated many names to be eternally remembered in the history of Serbs;
one of them is the war criminal Alojzije Stepinac.
Although he was the ideologist of The Eagles, he also drafted a statute of a
similar women's organisation. His vision of this organisation was realised 10
years after, by his close associate Marica Stankovi, who founded the woman
Catholic organisation called The Associates of the Lord Christ. The Serb
history will also long remember this organisation, as it used to help the
members of the Eagles Crusaders Ustashas; she killed and converted the
Serb children into Catholicism as well as other organisations of Marija's
congregations which closely cooperated with the Ustasha movement.
Ivan Merz's permanent religious devotion and his devotion to the establishment of the Catholic school for slayers, the Catholic Action in Croatia,
which was ethnically cleansed of non-Catholic population, was awarded in
2003 by his beatification in Petrievac Monastery in Banja Luka, Bosnia and
Herzegovina. This monastery was the starting point for Fra Satan (t/n: real
name Miroslav Filipovi. During World War II he participated in mass

murder of Serbs and other non-Croats particularly in the Jasenovac concentration camp. His actions in the camp earned him the nickname The Devil of
Jasenovac). The pioneer of the Catholic Action, Ivan Merz, is today one of
18 most significant saints of the Catholic Church, who the Pope Benedict
XVI personally prayed for every day.
In the end, it is interesting to mention that the Roman Catholic Church is still
active in terms of this topic. During WWII, Ustashas named a street after Ivan
Merz in Banja Luka; when the war ended, the street was renamed to its old,
pre-war name. However, if we take a closer look at our beautiful Banja Luka,
we must notice something. Namely, in Banja Luka in 2005, a Catholic
gymnasium named after Ivan Merz was started. The reason for starting this
school was most probably the inability of the Banja Luka Gramar School to
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accept all talented and intelligent Serb students, so the children who are not
admitted to the Grammar School, which Merz himself attended, apply for the
Catholic Gymnasium named after him. I hereby appeal to the Serbian
Orthodox Church to start an Orthodox gymnasium so as to prevent our
children from going to Merz's school!
REFERENCES
Vladimir Umeli, The Theory of Definitionism and Phenomenon of Genocide; Magna Plus;
2nd edition, Belgrade, 2010.
Viktor Novak, Magnum Crimen, Nova knjiga, Belgrade, 1986.
Dr ZoranMiloevi: Who is Hans Ivan Merz?, Beli Aneo, abac, 2003.
Postulatura for Canonisation of Blessed Ivan Merz: Ivan Merz, Collected Works, Book 1, 2
and 3, The Faculty of Philosophy of the Society of Jesus, Glas Koncila, Zagreb, 2011 and
2012.
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Pavel Tihomirov
LESSONS FROM WIKIPEDIA
Three years ago, having returned from the conference in Banja Luka, we
tried to organise the distribution of the materials from that 5th International
Conference on Jasenovac. However, almost nobody answered the call for papers. What had happened? Did the emails go to the spam folder? Or was it
a lack of readiness to have a discussion on Jasenovac? One of the possible
answers comes from Wikipedia.
Wikipedias article on the camp in Russian says the following about Jasenovac: There is a disaccord of opinions on the number of victims in Jasenovac.
[...] The issue of the number of victims became a subject of political speculation in the 1990s. Even today different sources offer significantly different
numbers of victims of the camp: from 50,000 to over a million people. With
that in mind, the question is raised: how can we even begin to comment such
variations in numbers? The focus of research for this paper were articles
from Wikipedia. We all know very well that research data from Wikipedia
are more or less unsuitable as sources. However, since we are interested
precisely in the phenomenon of how Jasenovac is perceived in the common
knowledge of people, there can be no better source than a popular encyclopaedia.
However, before we discuss this mini-study, I would like to say a few words
on a book I have recently read. It is a bestseller, the novel Red Light by Maxim
Kantor, a descendant of Jewish internationalists who came to Russia from
Argentina. One of the goals of the novel was to negate the practice of identifying Stalins regime with Hitlers. In the course of the story Kantor draws
parallels between Nazism and liberalism, illustrating the exploitative and
anti-human essence of the latter. A lot was said about various death camps,
137
even mentioning Goli Otok, but I was truly surprised that there was no mention whatsoever of Jasenovac.
And immediately prior to that, in one of our Internet forums, father Nikolai
Savchenko, not unknown to our polemicists, casually mentioned Jasenovac,
and having mentioned this sad place, he stated some information that completely discouraged me. The number of victims our opponent stated were
greatly disproportionate to the numbers acknowledged in the Serb and Russian milieux. It was a kind of a promotion for Tumans rhetoric. When father Nikolai was asked to comment on his numbers, as his source he pointed
to a fragment of the Jasenovac page on Serbian Wikipedia. Having looked
this page up, I was confused to notice that the official standpoint of the
Jasenovac Memorial Centre is indeed in accordance to what is already
known to us as the historiography by the late president of the Independent
Republic of Croatia. This discovery made us start researching: what can people really read about Jasenovac on Wikipedia? They can read lots of thing.
But the conclusion we can draw is still predictable.
In summary, the Russian Wikipedia page on Jasenovac speaks of estimates
of victim numbers, limited to two sentences: While the official Yugoslavian
government, when the country still existed, favoured the version of 840 thousand victims, while according to estimates by a Croatian historiographer
named Vladimir erjavi, the number was 83,000, and a Serbian historiographer named Bogoljub Koovi puts the number at 70,000. The Jasenovac
Memorial contains information about 75,159 victims, while the Holocaust
Memorial Museum speaks of 56 to 97 thousand victims. The link to the data
on Jasenovac from the Memorial Centre will be repeated over and over again,
so it is a mystery where the authors of the Russian Wikipedia found the version of 75,159 victims. All other sources relating to the information from the
Memorial Centre give the number of 80,914. Further, let us see how this information for Jasenovac was presented in other language versions of this free
encyclopaedia. The articles on the Jasenovac concentration camp complex
are significantly different, in their size as well as details, which undoubtedly
has an intermediate effect on the formation of viewpoints towards this subject in speakers of this or that language.
138
Let us begin with the Serbian version.

http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logor _Jasenovac
The German generals from the Second World War were giving very
differing and thus unreliable data on the number of Serbs killed in the
NDH. Alexander Lhr quoted 400,000 Serbs in 1943, Lothar Rendulic
quoted 500,000 Orthodox Christians (August 1943), Hermann Neubacher quoted over 750,000 in 1943, and Ernst Fick gave the number
of 600,000 to 700,000 by March 1944. The number of victims at the
Jasenovac camp is still a subject scientific and political debate.
The Yugoslavian State Commission from 1946 estimated the number of
victims to 500,000 to 600,000.
The Yad Vashem centre in Israel quotes 700,000 victims of genocide in
the Jasenovac camp.
According to findings from the Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust at the
US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, in the period between
1942 and 1943 the Ustasha regime killed over 250,000 Serbs, several
tens of thousands of which were killed in Jasenovac alone.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles estimates that around
600,000 Serbs, Jews, Roma people and Croatian anti-fascists were
killed in Jasenovac.
The Last Chance project for Croatia, organised by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, states that the minimum number of victims is 85,000.
In his book Horrors of War: Historical Reality and Philosophy1, former Croatian president Franjo Tuman claimed that 30,000 to 40,000
Serbs, 30,000 Jews and 10,000 Croatian anti-fascists were killed in
Jasenovac.
Vladimir Debijer, Yugoslavian historian and Titos biographer, estimated the number of Jasenovac victims to 700,000 to 1.2 million.
Slavko Goldstein, president of the Jewish Community of Croatia, believes that the number of victims was 60,000 to 90,000.
Croatian: Bespua povijesne zbiljnosti; literal translation The Wastelands of Historical Re-
ality, t/n.
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The number stated by the Croatian authorities is 50,002, based on written evidence.
The Belgrade Holocaust Museum has a list of 80,022 names of people
who were killed, mostly in Jasenovac. Of those, 52,000 were Serbs,
16,000 were Jews, 12,000 were Croats and nearly 10,000 were Roma
people.
During the 1980s, analyses by Vladimir erjavi, a Croatian researcher,
and Bogoljub Koovi, a Serbian researcher, reached similar numbers
using demographic statistical methods. According to them, around
80,000 people were killed in Jasenovac (with a 30 margin of error),
while the total number of people who were killed in the NDH was between 300,000 and 350,000 people. According to some people, these
numbers are understated, because for the Serb population they took
into consideration a natality of 1.1 (the same for all of Yugoslavia),
whereas for Serbs it was 2.4 in the period of 1921-1931 and 3.5 in the
period of 1949-1953.
In December 2007 the Jasenovac Memorial Centre announced a list of
72,193 names of victims of Jasenovac. According to this data 59.376
people were killed in camp III (Brickworks) and 12,790 in Stara
Gradika. 19,006 of those were children up to 14 years of age. By ethnicity, the victims were: 40,251 Serbs, 14,750 Roma people, 11,723
Jews, 3,583 Croats, 1,063 Muslims etc. The catalogues include biographic information on the victims, information on the manner and
place of execution and sources where each of them is mentioned. However, this list is not final, but is constantly increasing with new names
of victims, which means it does not represent the final number of people killed, but only those who were recorded up to then. This was confirmed by the management of the Centre after receiving harsh criticism from Serbian representatives at the 2008 commemoration.
The International Commission for the Truth on Jasenovac ascertained
that over 700,000 Serbs, 23,000 Jews and 80,000 Roma people were
killed, including 110,000 children.
It is therefore clear that the Serbian page of this free encyclopaedia equally
states all the different variations, but the impression is made that the most
reliable data comes from the Jasenovac Memorial Centre, which states that
40,521 Serbs were killed in the Jasenovac camp system. This should be kept
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in mind. The so-called Serbo-Croatian version states not only information from the research by Bogoljub Koovi (70,000), Anton Mileti
(77,200), Vladimir erjavi (83,000) but also from the following organisations: The Jasenovac Memorial (80,914), the Simon Wiesenthal Center
(85,000), the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (77,000-99,000) and the absolutely repulsive data from the Croatian Parliaments Commission for investigating the victims of the Second World War and the post-war period from
1999, which state that only 2,238 people were killed in the Jasenovac concentration camp system.
However, it must be pointed out that this article also mentions our estimate
(800,000). In comment to these numbers, the anonymous authors of the article indicate that Serbian researchers have a tendency to overstate the number
of victims and that Croatian researchers tend to understate them.
http://sh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logor_Jasenovac
Now we come to the fully Croatian version. It reiterates everything that is
stated in the so-called Serbo-Croatian version, adding data already familiar
from the Serbian version, by Slavko Goldstein (60,000-90,000) and Franjo
Tuman (60,000-70,000). The allure of the Croatian version comes from
the entry for the New York-based Jasenovac Research Institute, with emphasis on the fact that the director of the institute, Darko Trifunovi, is under
FBI investigation, charged with causing racial hatred. According to latest
information, the Jasenovac Research Institute is now run by Darko Trifunovi, a young Serb who is under FBI investigation for endangering democracy and spreading racial hatred!
http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabirni_logor_Jasenovac
The Slovenian version states already very familiar words, names and numbers (with the addition of information listed in a book called Velikomueniki
Jasenovac by Bishop Atanasije of Zahumlje and Herzegovina), however, with
some nuances. Where the Serbo-Croatian version states that the US Holocaust Memorial Museum acknowledges 77,000 to 99,000 victims of the
Jasenovac camp, the Slovenian version points to other numbers as well. Special prominence was given to the information that out of 250,000 Serbs who
were killed in the NDH, around 10,000 were killed in Jasenovac. (According
to data from the Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust in Washington, in the period
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of 1941-1945 the Ustasha regime killed over 250,000 Croatian and Bosnian
Serbs, of which tens of thousands just in Jasenovac).
The estimates given by the Yad Vashem centre, which are stated in the Slovenian version, are different than the ones in the Serbian version (700,000)
and are quoted to be 500,000. However, Slovenians do emphasise that most
victims were Serbs.
http://sl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koncentracijsko_taborie_Jasenovac
The Macedonian version is quite condensed. The Macedonians note that
the archives had been destroyed on two occasions in 1943 and in 1945. The
article especially emphasises the fact that the government of ex-Yugoslavia
hindered research, because if the numbers that were heard at the Nurnberg
trials (500,000-600,000) were confirmed, it would disprove one of the main
claims by Titoism ideologists the identification of the Ustashas with the
Chetniks.
http://mk.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Having seen the Wikipedia articles written by users from ex-Yugoslavian it
should be noted that, despite the fact that the most extensive articles are in
Serbian and Croatian, these articles give the impression that the issue of victim numbers is highly political, with the number of around 80,000 victims is
imposed as the objective one. And while it is easy to understand the Croats
who do that on psychological bases, it is clear that the authors of the Serbian
text are clearly trying to root out the so-called hate speech stereotypes. I
would especially emphasise the good-natured relation towards the Serbs and
other victims of Jasenovac in the Slovenian article, and the undoubtedly true
remarks of the Macedonian version of the Wikipedia page. We now turn to
texts from countries that used to belong to Hitlers Axis.
The Bulgarian version. The Bulgarians indicate that Jasenovac, one of the
largest concentration camps, became the tomb for one out of ten residents of
Yugoslavia to have died during the Second World War. The numbers are according to the data from the Jasenovac Memorial (80,914 victims, 45,923 of
which were Serbs).
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http://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/_()
The Romanian version is almost identical to the Bulgarian one.
http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrul_de_concentrare_Jasenovac
The Italian version emphasises that the text requires revision. Estimates
of the Ustasha victims in the Jasenovac camp greatly differ and are the subject of bitter ethnic and political dispute between Serbs and Croats, ranging
from 50 thousand to over 500 thousand.
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campo_di_concentramento_di_Jasenovac
The Spanish version goes straight to explicitly stating that the number of
victims is subject to contradiction because the Croats are trying to understate
the number of victims, and the Serbs are trying the opposite. But still, apart
from the already traditional citation of the Jasenovac Memorial, the Holocaust Museum in Belgrade, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, data from
the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Antun Mileti and Franjo Tuman. The Spanish authors also list some other numbers and sources.
They also mention Milan Bulajis data, as well as that of John Cornwell
(478,000 Orthodox Christians, 27,000 Roma and between 20,000 and 25,000
Jews) and French historian Edmond Paris (up to a million victims in total).
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campo_de_concentracin_de_Jasenovac
The Germans also mention the already familiar names and numbers, adding
only the estimate by Adil Zulfikarpai (59,188), and the statement of an Austrian historian named Hans Safrian: The exact number of victims in Jasenovac is impossible to determine, because the written archives were destroyed.
There can only be approximate estimates. A report sent by Glaise Horstenau
in early 1944 stated that by the end of 1943 the Ustashas had killed between
300,000 and 400,000 people in Jasenovac. However, despite the fact that
the German version provides data that supports our own Commission, the closing remarks state the disreputable number of 80,914
(data from the Jasenovac Memorial Centre).
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/KZ_Jasenovac
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This means that the texts prepared by descendants of the Nazis and their allies, for obvious reasons of elementary tact, were written in the spirit of reserved respect in regard to the memory of the victims. They state the variation and data presented by our commission. But still, in Wikipedias pages for
the languages of the countries that used to form Hitlers coalition, the number
of 80,914 victims is presented as the objective estimate.
Let us see what is written by the descendants of the allies from the anti-Hitler
coalition.
The text in Hebrew is a large article describing many atrocities. In the section on victim numbers, we can read the following: There are different estimates on the number of victims, which are objectively caused by a lack of
documentation on registering prisoners. Aside from that, the estimates are
varied because of the diametrically opposed interests of the parties invested
in the subject-matter. The number of victims ranges from a minimum of
30,000 to a maximum of 1,400,000. Estimates for the numbers were either
made by the Serbs, who want to indicate the size of the responsibility of the
Croats, Muslims and the Vatican in this tragedy, or made by the Croats, who,
quite logically, want to decrease the number of victims as much as possible.
The result ranges mostly between tens of thousands (the estimate of the number of victims that has recently been adopted by European researchers), to
hundreds of thousands, which was the general opinion up to the 1990s. European research draws from Croatian sources, which is why Jewish sources
usually quote larger numbers than those accepted in contemporary Europe.
As we can see, the number of victims ranges from 85,000 to half a million.
http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/
The Czechs and Poles write very little on Jasenovac. But the emphases are
not the same. The Czechs list around 700,000 Serbs who have died at the
camp.
However, the Poles list the number of victims in passing, drawing from the
data of the Yad Vashem and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. But in defence of the eminence of the Roman Catholic Church, the
Polish authors point out that Fra Filipovi was excommunicated.
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasenovac_(obz_koncentracyjny)
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http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koncentran_tbor_Jasenovac
The English version
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasenovac_concentration_camp
Historians have had difficulty calculating and agreeing on the number
of victims at Jasenovac. Most modern sources place it at around
100,000.
The Jewish Virtual Library states that the most reliable figures estimate the number of Serbs killed by the Stashes to be between 330,000
and 390,000, with 45,000 to 52,000 Serbs murdered in Jasenovac
sourced to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Historian Tomislav Duli disputes the often quoted 700,000 figure in
Jasenovac, but states that an estimated 100,000 victims still makes it one
of the largest camps in Europe during World War II.
The estimates vary due to lack of accurate records, the methods used
for making estimates, and sometimes the political biases of the estimators. In some cases, entire families were exterminated, leaving no one
to submit their names to the lists. On the other hand, it has been found
that the lists include the names of people who died elsewhere, whose
survival was not reported to the authorities, or who are counted more
than once on the lists. [...]
German generals issued reports of the number of victims as the war
progressed. German military commanders gave different figures for
the number of Serbs, Jews and others killed by the Ustae on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia. They circulated figures of
400,000 Serbs (Alexander Lhr); 350,000 Serbs (Lothar Rendulic);
around 300,000 (Edmund Glaise von Horstenau); in 1943; 600-700,000
until March 1944 (Ernst Fick); 700,000 (Massenbach).
Hermann Neubacher calculates: The recipe, received by the Ustae
leader and Poglavnik, the president of the Independent State of Croatia,
Ante Paveli, resembled genocidal intentions from some of the bloodiest religious wars: A third must become Catholic, a third must leave
the country, and a third must die! This last point of the Ustae program
was accomplished. When prominent Ustae leaders claimed that they
slaughtered a million Serbs (including babies, children, women and old
men), that is, in my opinion, a boastful exaggeration. On the basis of the
145
reports submitted to me, I believe that the number of defenseless victims slaughtered to be three quarters of a million.
Italian generals, who were more overwhelmed by the atrocious
slaughter, also reported similar figures to their commanders. The Vatican's sources also speak of similar figures, that is, for an example, of
350,000 ethnic-Serbs slaughtered by the end of 1942. (Eugen Tisserant)
The Ustae themselves gave more exaggerated assumptions of the
number of people they killed. Vjekoslav Maks Luburi, the commander-in-chief of all the Croatian camps, announced the great efficiency of the Jasenovac camp at a ceremony as early as 9 October 1942.
During the banquet which followed, he reported with pride, intoxicated: We have slaughtered here at Jasenovac more people than the
Ottoman Empire was able to do during its occupation of Europe. Other
Stash sources give more canon estimations: a circular of the Ustae
general headquarters that reads: the concentration and labour camp in
Jasenovac can receive an unlimited number of internees. In the same
spirit, Miroslav Filipovi-Majstorovi, once captured by Yugoslav
forces, admitted that during his three months of administration, 20,000
to 30,000 people died. Since it became clear that his confession was an
attempt to somewhat minimize the rate of crimes committed in Jasenovac, having, for an example, claimed to have personally killed 100 people, extremely understated, Miroslav's figures are evaluated so that in
some sources they appear as 30,000-40,000.
Yugoslav and Croatian official estimates. A report of the National
Committee of Croatia for the investigation of the crimes of the occupation forces and their collaborators, dated 15 November 1945, which was
commissioned by the new government of Yugoslavia under Josip Broz
Tito, stated that 500,000-600,000 people were killed at the Jasenovac
complex.
These figures were cited by researchers Israel Gutman and Menachem
Shelach in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust from 1990. Menachem
Shelach will in his book speak that number, of some 300,000 bodies being found and exhumed is reliable. The Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance also used the same number at some point.
Various Yugoslav officials used the total number of around 1,700,000
victims in all of Yugoslavia in the war reparations meetings between
1945 and 1947. Thus the proponents of these numbers were subsequently accused of artificially inflating them for purpose of obtaining
146
war reparations. All in all, The State Commission's report has been the
only public and official document about number of victims during 45
years of second Yugoslavia. Tomasevich states that these numbers are
indeed exaggerated, but that the original copy of the State Commission
report circulated 400,000 victims. One Vladeta Vukovi wrote in Bogoljub Koovi's 1985 book that, back in 1947, while he was a math student at the Federal Bureau of Statistics, he was tasked with producing
the state's total war casualties estimate by the foreign minister Edvard
Kardelj. Vukovi says he calculated a statistical estimate of 1,700,000
demographic population loss, (i.e., also factoring in the estimated population increase), while actual losses would have been significantly less.
Nevertheless, Kardelj subsequently presented this as Yugoslavia's real
loss at the Paris Peace Treaties. This number of victims has been refused by Germany during war reparations talks.
The conventional estimate of the number of victims of Jasenovac in
SFR Yugoslavia was 700,000. In 1964, the Yugoslav Federal Bureau of
Statistics created a list of World War II victims with 597,323 names and
deficiency estimated at 20-30 which is giving between 750,000 and
780,000 victims. Together with estimated 200,000 killed collaborators
and quislings, the total number would reach about one million. This
Yugoslav Federal Bureau of Statistics list was declared a state secret in
1964 and it was published only in 1989. [...] Beginning in the 1990s, the
Croatian side began publicly suggesting substantially smaller numbers.
The exact numbers were a subject of great controversy and hot political
dispute during the breakup of Yugoslavia. President Franjo Tuman's
1989 book Horrors of War: Historical Reality and Philosophy had questioned the official numbers of victims killed during World War II in
Yugoslavia, which later brought him in conflict with Simon Wiesenthal
and others. The Jasenovac Memorial Site, the museum institution sponsored by the Croatian government since the end of the Croatian War of
Independence, says that the current research allows them to estimate
the number of victims at between 80,000 and 100,000.
1960s forensic investigations. On November 16, 1961, the municipal
committee of former partisans from Bosanska Dubica organized an unofficial investigation at the grounds of Donja Gradina, led by the locals
who were not forensic experts, which uncovered three mass graves and
identified 17 human skulls in one of them. Based on this, and the fact
they enumerated 120 other untouched graves, they extrapolated the
number of victims to 350,800. In response to this, scientists were called
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in to verify the site - Dr. Alojz ercelj started preliminary drilling to

identify the most likely grave locations, and then between 22 and 27
June 1964, exhumations of bodies and the use of sampling methods was
conducted at Jasenovac by Vida Brodar and Anton Poganik from
Ljubljana University and Srboljub ivanovi from Novi Sad University. They examined a total of seven mass graves which held a total of
284 victim remains, and concluded that the entire Jasenovac complex
could have around 200 similar sites. In October 1985, a group of investigators from the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, led by Vladimir Dedijer, visited Jasenovac and made a record of it, in which the
record taker one colonel Antun Mileti mentioned the 1961 excavation,
but misquoted that number of victims to 550,800.
Prior to the breakup of Yugoslavia, in 1989 Serbian anthropologist
Srboljub ivanovi published what he claimed were the full results of
the 1964 studies, which in his words has been suppressed by Tito's government in the name of brotherhood and unity, in order to put less emphasis on the crimes of the Croatian Stashes. In November 1989, ivanovi claimed on television that their research resulted in victim counts
of more than 500,000, with estimates of 700,000-800,000 being realistic,
stating that in every mass grave there are 800 skeletons. [...] Croatian
historian eljko Kruelj publicly criticized ivanovi as an extremist
and a fraud because of this.
Summary. Todays Croatian officials have not only remained along
the lines of Tumans historiography, but have even gone a step further
they have filed a lawsuit against Serbia for genocide! What can be
concluded from everything that has been said? We can conclude that
the Bulgarians, Macedonians, Jews, Czechs and Italians, if nothing else,
exhibit sympathy for the victims, although they do mention disputes.
The English version gives a detailed overview of the estimate of 700
thousand victims and plainly discusses WHO IT WAS THAT DISPUTED that number (Serbian historiographers).
This is why we are constantly faced with a distorted image because the
common knowledge in Russia is formed based on the SERBIAN version
of the Wikipedia article and the Russian page is at the very least
SERBOPHOBIC because it is simply an ECHO OF THE SERBIAN VERSION.
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The Holy Bishop Nikolai of Serbia, in several places in his book A

Necklace of Coral2, speaks of 700,000 murdered Serbs, which is approximate to the viewpoint of our Commission, and he placed a full emphasis on the Roman Catholic clero-Nazism. Late in his life, the Holy
Bishop minded every word he wrote and it is the duty of any self-confident Serb man who has not lost his religious and national pride to
struggle to point out these two most important aspects of the truth on
Jasenovac the struggle for the truth on the number of victims and the
struggle for the truth that the NDH was a clero-Nazi regime supported
by the Vatican, which was a key factor in the horrifying slaughter.
That struggle should include efforts to correct the text of the Serbian Wikipedia page on Jasenovac.
Serbian: erdan od Merdana, t/n.
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Ekatarina Samoylova 1
A PROGRAMME OF SCIENTIFIC
RESEARCH OF THE MASS GRAVES
OF THE JASENOVAC
CONCENTRATION CAMP RELATIVE
TO THE CHANGES IN THE GLOBAL
PARADIGMS IN THE LAST TWO
YEARS
Please allow me not to repeat what has been already published in the
proceedings of our Commission, rather than that, allow me to present the
essence of the theme. I would like to emphasize that the theme of my paper
(done in collaboration with Prof. Eugeny Vasilyevich Chernosvitov, who
holds PhD in Philosophy and Medicine) is logically derived and dwells on the
book Jasenovac by scholar Prof. Srboljub ivanovi, whose content was
highly informative. I believe you all know that I translated this remarkable
book into Russian. I hope that everyone here will correctly perceive the
emotionally trying things I will be talking about. I agree with the conclusion
drawn by the historian Marina Alfredovna Chernosvitova, concerning the
change of the socio-historical paradigm, which became apparent during the
last two years; the change was not only evident in the values and assessment
of specific socio-historical realities but in the attitude towards the past as
Moscow, Russia
151
such. However, what seemed unalterable started to rapidly lose its importance, threatening to sink into oblivion. This was successfully proven by Marina
Alfredovna.
My task is to try to explain once more what we need to do immediately in the
field of specific sciences, in the first place medicine and criminology.
Therefore, I am pleased to share with you what we have recently managed to
do in our, mostly virtual laboratory.
Hence, 1) I will set off with a conclusion reached in 1964 by a group of young
scientists including Prof. Srboljub ivanovi. The conclusion was the
following: 20 of the victims of the Jasenovac concentration camp were
buried alive! However, using the techniques of functional asymmetry (by
Professor Eugenij V. Chernosvitov, see E. V. Chernosvitov. The Formula of
death, M. 2002) and relying on the content of the book by scholar Srboljub
ivanovi, we come to a much larger number of those buried alive. Nonetheless, we do not want to shock you with that number.
The technique of functional asymmetry encompasses the following aspects:
1) anthropological, 2) psychosomatic (soma - body), 3) forensic, 4) anatomical
and pathological, 5) criminological, 6) paleopsychological, and others.
I repeat that the abovementioned theory and its methods were developed by
Professor E.V. Chernosvitov during 1974-1975 the Mikhail Vasilyevich
Lomonosov Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, Moscow State University,
with the help of the Rector of the University, Academician Rem Viktorovich
Kholkhov. From 1975 until 1985, the technique was constantly tested in the
laboratory for psychopathology at the Nikolay Nilovich Burdenko Institute
of Neurosurgery with the help of head of the laboratory, Professor Tamara
Ampliyevna Dobrohotov.
In 1980 in the USSR, thanks to the Institute for Sociological Research of the
USSR, the Academy of Sciences, and a number of other academic institutions
and institutes of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, the aforementioned technique became the foundation of the largest socio-psychological
research in the twentieth century. The research was conducted by Professor
Anatoliy Alekseyevich Zvorikin and Professor E.V. Chernosvitov who later
presented the processed material at the International Congress of
sociologists. The report by Professor E.V. Chernosvitov was one of the key
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presentations at the International Congress of sociologists in Mexico. This

technique has become the basis for the reproduction of anthropological and
psychological images, especially for the clarification of the cause, nature and
time of death. For instance, this technique was used with Vitus Bering,
Sndor Petfi, Sergei Yesenin, the last Empress of Austria, Elisabeth (Sissi),
her son, heir to the throne Rudolf, the Russian Emperor Alexander I,
Princess Anastasia Romanov, with the conclusion about Leonardo da Vinci's
Mona Lisa and so on. You can find more details about this on our website2,
and in the books by E.V. Chernosvitov, A. A. Zvorikin, T. A. Dobrohotov and
in my book Penitential Psychology.
2. We suggest a psychosomatic reproduction of the images of the victims of
the Jasenovac concentration camp (with complete solutions for forensic,
criminological, anthropological and paleopsychological issues). Using the
technique of functional asymmetry, the aforesaid reproduction enables the
revival of the appearance of persons exactly as they were at the moment of
their death, based on their skeletal remains. All this could be shown in 3D
projection. I hope there is no need for me to explain why all this is necessary
on our way to reach the truth on the Jasenovac concentration camp.
3. Surely, this theory (method) did not originate from scratch. It includes
scientifically adapted ideas of the Russian scholar, Academician Alexei
Alexandrovich Uhtomsky, a born uncle of Professor E.V. Chernosvitov,
particularly his teachings about double genes then the ideas of Serbian
scholar Nikola Tesla about induction (the laws of the rotating magnetic field,
asynchronous oscillations), and the teachings of Kabbalah (Zohar, or the
Book of Light).
4. I repeat (in regard to the introductory address given at our previous forum)
that we are ready to start to work productively with the material excavated
in 1964, primarily with the skeletal remains. Also, we will start to cooperate
with the descendants of the victims of the Jasenovac concentration camp,
starting from the analysis of the photographs in order to determine victims
archetype (I believe that the same kind of research is essential to determine
the archetype and psychosomatic characteristics of the executioners in the
Jasenovac concentration camp, which were inherited throughout the
2
http://chernosvitov.narod.ru
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generations). However, we are not even the pioneers in such research. In

England, the similar research was carried out by Arthur Conan Doyle at the
St Bartholomews Medical Centre, where Professor Srboljub ivanovi
worked, and by Francis Galton, who studied the genealogy of English and
Scottish aristocrats; in France, Honore de Balzac studied Samsons clan of
executioners and mile Zola (read about his work regarding the image of Les
Rougon-Macquart; in Austria and Germany, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, a
highly remarkable psychiatric and the last Hapsburg royal physician, who,
having studied the genealogy of German and Austrian aristocracy and the
Hapsburgs, gave incredible predictions regarding the descendants of the last
Austrian emperor (the suicide of the heir to the throne, fascist inclinations of
the daughter of Francis Joseph). An interesting fact was that he never
published his genealogical research. Nevertheless, his masterpiece
Psychopathia Sexualis soon appeared, having 50 editions, 36 of which were
published during his life. In Russia, Peter Vladimirovich Dolgorukov studied
the surnames of Russian aristocracy and wrote Genealogy, a Russian
genealogical book in four volumes. By the way, in his book, Professor
Srboljub ivanovi indicates the need to study social pathology and
psychopathology, and regrets that such research is conducted in Israel, but
not in Serbia. The aspects of social pathology (sociopathy) and psychopathology are included in the methodology that we apply (read articles by
Prof. Chernosvitov, and my article in the Russian Journal Modern Law,
Journal of the Philosophical Society of the Russian Academy of Sciences,
etc, which could be easily found on the Internet). We have been long prepared
to start working on the records about forensic expert evaluations of the
bodies which the Sava River washed ashore. Professor Srboljub ivanovi
spoke about the need for such research and work.
5. We have already proposed to establish a psychological and forensic
laboratory where we could solve the above-stated tasks at the contemporary
level. Due to the new paradigm, such Russian-Serbian laboratory would be
totally in the spirit of the times.
Now, allow me to summarize what I have said:
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WHAT COULD AND SHOULD BE DONE BEFORE

PROCEDING WITH THE EXCAVATION OF THE
MASS GRAVES?
1) Forensic examination of the records of court-appointed medical experts
from the Institutes of Forensic Medicine in Belgrade and Zagreb:
A) Autopsy records and results of the corpses found at the banks of the
Sava River and the Danube during 1941-1945 (we had that kind of
experience with examination of the records of the forensic expert
evaluations composed in Leningrad during 1925-1926);
B) Records of the expert evaluations of brains taken from the skulls of
the victims of the Jasenovac concentration camp, and, if the marbles
were saved, we could turn towards the histological examination of lobes
by using the contemporary methods (not microscope, as it was used at
the time);
C) Records of the expert evaluations of the mechanical skull injuries,
including the repeated forensic expert evaluations of the mechanical
skull injuries;
D) In case the ashes of the victims of the Jasenovac concentration camp
were saved, then, by applying the contemporary methods, we could
determine whether a victim was buried alive or dead (that requires a
special laboratory and instruments, which is entirely feasible within
our domain). Even the ashes of Pompeii could be used in order to
determine whether there existed human remains. Moreover, had the
ashes of inquisition bonfires been saved, one could have determined
whether people were burnt alive or dead.
2) Modern psychological and criminal examination of artifacts found
together with the skeletal remains of the victims of the Jasenovac
concentration camp (with a view to obtaining data of socio-psychological and
criminal nature);
3) Psychological and graphological examination of the statements by twelve
released Serbs submitted to the Commissariat for Refugees in Belgrade on 15
April 1942, including the testimony of Mr Prnjatovi; I will explain why this
155
is necessary at all since we already have the speech by the Patriarch of the
Serbian Orthodox Church and the unanimous vote of the committee
members. The point is that we, Orthodox people, do not believe in Pope's
infallibility; the speech by the Orthodox Patriarch signifies nothing for
Catholics, and scientifically speaking, by voting one cannot obtain the truth.
I will allow myself to paraphrase great Nikola Tesla: We have to think in the
way that every assault against us equals suicide. We, too, have the regrettable
experience with psycho-graphological examination of fifty self-accusations
and indictment that brothers issued against each other in the time of Stalinist
repression, which were done by the Chernosvitovs, the blood relatives of
Eugeny Vasilyevich. The same experience was with the psycho-graphological examination of the last poem by the great Russian poet, Sergei Yesenin, who apparently wrote it with his blood and dedicated it to his friend:
Goodbye, my friend, goodbye! before he hanged himself in the room of
the Angleterre Hotel. How many great singers sang this song without
knowing it was fake.
4) Determining the archetypes of the Jasenovac concentration camp victims
and its executioners: the work on this can start the very next day, for, as far
as I know, many descendants of the victims are alive and their addresses are
familiar, and probably family albums are saved. We carried out thorough
research during the reconstruction of the real images of Vitus Bering and
Sndor Petfi. We are currently working on the genealogy of 120 Japanese
Emperors and Japanese shogun, Hong Minamoto. This research is necessary
in order to determine social pathology of the Ustasha movement, psychopathology of the members of the Ustasha in the Jasenovac concentration
camp which is clearly manifested in the brutal torture of victims, and also
psychopathology of inmates (similar studies were conducted under the
supervision of Professor Chernosvitov E .V. at the Forest correctional
institutions (FCI) of the USSR, including persons who were on death row,
and the results were presented at the International Congress of Sociologists
in the USSR and in Mexico (of which I have been previously talking). The
studies can be found in the collected papers and the books by E. V
Chernosvitov and A.A. Zvorikin: Typology of Personality and Features of
Human Character: Concrete Sociological Research. M. Nauka. 1982. E. V.
Chernosvitov. J. A. Alferov, Psychopathology and patho-characterology in
FCI, 1984. (DSP).
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Social pathology and psychopathology of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust

have been studied extensively on the many institutes in Israel and the United
States.
5) There is an urgent need to establish the archives of our committee and to
take: 1) all records about forensic expert evaluations relating to the Jasenovac
concentration camp, no matter where they might be, and also possible
records of criminal expert evaluations. If we do not do that, someone else will.
It is highly common that archives were the first to issue the documents from
special collections: for instance, the KGB and KPSS archives issued the
documents to the Institute for World Literature; Department of Special
Collections of the Lenin Library gave the records about Schneerson, the same
thing was done by the Library of Congress, USA. Marina Alfredovna had
many experiences with collections that are specially guarded, so she could
assume that task;
2) All documents concerning the Jasenovac concentration camp (or their ecopies) taken from: the Wehrmacht archive, military archives, etc, just the
way the Institutes for Holocaust heritage did.
6) Creating a periodical of TheInternational Commissionfor theTruth on
Jasenovac, which would be a monthly magazine containing the work of the
Commission, laboratory, etc.
We deem that the following should be done before starting with the
excavation of the mass graves: make contemporary aerial photos of
the common mass graves using probes: I will say nothing new if I
say that the same thing was done by the Hassid in the late 1980s in
search for their graves in the USSR, which was aired and reported
on the two channels of the Leningrad TV Channel 5 and 600 Second.
Reports about it were also made by the famous Soviet scholar
Professor Viktor Derjagin in Times. It was reported also from the
Head of the U.S. Library of Congress archives. Prince Alexei
Pavlovich Shcherbatov did it in 1991.
We also consider it necessary to exhume the remains of the people buried
along the banks of the Sava River and the Danube.
Dear colleagues, I hope you realize, based on my speech, that what you are
being offered is a scientific and research PROGRAMME to help you along
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your way to the truth on Jasenovac. Moreover, I would like to draw your
attention to the fact that we are ready to gather supporters (experts and likeminded people) of the Programme in a short period of time (the preliminary
talks with them have already been done).
I would like to say a few words about the things that still disturb me:
1) A question to the President of our Commission: Distinguished Professor
ivanovi, in your book, you frequently mention that in the common
graves containing thousands of bodies, only a few bodies had bullet wounds.
You did not explain why the executioners shot them, instead of hitting them
with a sledgehammer on the temple and slitting their throats. Do You happen
to know why the executioners shot, albeit not often, but still did it? At one
point, You explain that the executioners were sorry to waste the ammunition on their victims!
If you do not have an answer to this question, I do: the Ustashas fired at the
workers digging the pits and burying the bodies, because the workers had
shovels, and it was dangerous to approach them with a mallet or knife! It was
for the same reason some skeletons lay with their faces up or sideways. They
were workers, not camp inmates. Do you remember paying attention to
fragments of the work boots lying beside the bones?
2) Honorable Professor ivanovi, in your book, I did not find an explanation
why thousands of people, standing along the edge of a pit and knowing well
what will become of them never confronted or offered resistance to the
executioners! Namely, the Ustasha gangs were not as numerous as the
inmates. Studying murders and attempts of murders in the past years, I have
come to understand the victims non-resistance to the executioner. I do not
intend to go ahead of the event, since I am finishing a book on that subject,
and I hope it will be a new discovery in the highly controversial science of
victimology!
3) Dear Professor SRBOLJUB ivanovi, You write that the Ustashas,
sensing the end of the war, began to excavate and burn the bodies, in
order to minimise their crimes ... Well, it may have been so. However,
another motive you quote regarding the activities of the modern
Ustashas was even more striking for me. The ancient motto of the
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executioner: KILL THE DEAD TWICE! resurrected (which is a

little harder than control shots).
A modern commonsensical person cannot even imagine that bodies exhumed
from their graves can be tortured and executed again! In fact, almost all
Roman emperors did it with the corpses of their predecessors! So, the first
thing Emperor Tiberius, Emperor Augustus stepson, did was to dig up
Augustus corpse, fasten it to his carriage, chase for couple of hours through
Rome, and then throw the remains to the dogs. In his book Diary of the
Inhabitant of Edinburgh, Robert Darnton, a famous American historian and
Professor at Princeton University, describes the torture, execution and
punishment of human bodies exhumed from mass graves. All this was
practiced in 16th and 17th century in the country you now live in. The
Ustashas probably inherited the archetype of corpse mania delusion of
corpses I would not be talking about it, had the delusion of corpses not
become one of the mechanisms of modern criminal groups and a mental
disease interwoven into the new socio-historical paradigm, very common in
our times!
For any questions or suggestions, please contact me in writing, stating your
name, address and contact information. Should you have any questions after
our conference, write me an email at: e_samoylova@yahoo.com.
159
Marina Chernosvitova, Moscow, Russia
RESULTS OF INVESTIGATION IN
ARCHIVES OF THE FORMER USSR,
THE USA, FRANCE, ITALY, AUSTRIA,
TURKEY, ISRAEL, HUNGARY AND
BULGARIA IN REGARD TO CHANGES
OF GLOBAL PARADIGM IN THE LAST
TWO YEARS
MATERIALS ON JASENOVAC CONCENTRATION

CAMP)
In this paper I will present the information based on which I have reached
the conclusion about qualitative changes in social and political paradigm
having taken place not only in the countries from the title but worldwide as
well. I see the paradigm as a system of prevailing attitudes of social and
historical events, which means that I take into account that revaluation of
values have taken place.
We worked without a break for two years. Let me introduce the results of the
work. First, I would like to say that, like before, I was interested in new and
unexpected information in regard to the change of global paradigm, which
would be useful in the quest for the truth about Jasenovac! Throughout the
two years, this path had become much shorter, according to the interest in
Jasenovac, which had suddenly disappear in different countries. Choosing
the information to be presented to you, I followed one principle: on one hand,
161
not to repeat what I presented last time but, at the same time, to always have
in mind the extraordinary book by Srboljub ivkovi. I know this book
almost by heart. Let me remind you that I am one of the authors of the preface
to the edition of the book in Russian. First I will say that we did not manage
to publish this book in Russia, even for good money! In addition: Forgive me
for unscientific creating of the material (my paper does not contain the
sources, funds or even archives from which I took what I am going to speak
about). Although I had had the reasonable cause for that - I got the
information from the people I had to work with in the future - the reason is
different now: most of the materials which I possessed have simply vanished!
My friends and colleagues gave me the explanation (as if they had conspired
together) that, due to the preparation for the Forum in memory of the 65th
anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp, all materials
on the Second World War had simply been Crepacked.
The archives which were not repacked did not contain anything new on
Jasenovac. On the other hand, the number of documents on the role of
Yugoslavia in WWII has significantly increased. In communication with my
colleagues from different countries, I came to the conclusion that the
estimation of the role of Yugoslavia had changed, which is now ranked much
higher, as well as the view of Yugoslavia which, if I may say, has now become
more positive. According to my colleagues, the demand for archive
documents on Yugoslavia has dramatically increased. I think that Jasenovac
must be viewed now not only as a death camp for hundreds of thousands of
people but also as the old battlefield of new fierce battles in terms of the
recent events in Greece, Hungary, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Ukraine and other countries! I would also put in the same group the incident
by fascistic supporters of FC Hajduk, who threatened to kill off the Serbs
and Jews from Croatia. If you know he details of this, I will skip this
information. If not, I would like to tell you that:
Serbian Orthodox Church in Croatia reported that letters threatening the
Serbs and Jews in Croatia with extermination were sent to its address, as
reported by European Jewish Press.
One of these letters was signed by FC Hajduk fans, one of the most
successful and famous Croatian football clubs from Split.
162
Threatening letters sent to the Serbs and Jews came to the address of our
church in Split - says a press release of Serbian Orthodox Church.
You should be worried about the fact that these are your last days. We will
exterminate you all - says the letter, which also contained the slogans from
WWII: Jews out and Hang the Serbs.
The letter was signed by Hajduk Jugend, as the fans of the club call
themselves with a direct reference to the German Hitler Jugend. The first
time the Nazi football fans declared themselves Hajduk Jugend was in
autumn of 2007, when they staged protests in Split, dressed in black shirts
with the inscription Hajduk Jugend and an eagle very much resembling the
Nazi eagle (22/01/2008). The neo-Nazi incident by Croatian footballer Josip
imuni belongs to the same circle of predictable events I spoke about
quoting the Soviet encyclopaedic vocabulary!
I don't like to give rousing speeches but... we are on the verge of a battle of
global scale! This battle is not related only to the Serbs! Now this is our Battle
of Kulikovo as well! You, the Serbs, say: God in heaven, Russia on earth!
You also say: We and Russians make 300 million! This is as correct as ever!
In the period 2011-2013, we worked on investigating the archive material on
death camps in Jasenovac, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Riga, Tart, Kiev,
Kharkov, Dnjepropetrovsk, Odessa, Transbaikal region (Chita) and Russian
Far East (Khabarovsk) . Moreover, I managed to visit Lviv, Talin, Uzhhorod,
Bucharest and archives of Library of Congress in the USA, the archive of the
Institute I. S. Gagarin in Paris, archives of Oxford University and Salzburg
University... At my request, a colleague of mine searched the archive of
Harvard University.
We worked in archives of periodicals, mass media and sources available on
the Internet.
The randomness of the archives we had selected to examine was really
specific! To clarify: the one who often has to examine an archive, especially
with special collections, knows that the information they need are most often
not where they should really be. For instance, in the USSR, the data classified
OPO (official purpose only), as well as those classified TS (top secret)
were kept in the archive of the city of Chita (in Transbaikal region) and
Khabarovsk (Russian Far East). Both archives were created during the
163
mandate of the Governor General of Eastern Siberia Nikolay Nikolayevich

Muravyov-Amursky. The Chita archive then became the archive of Eser
party (Party of Socialists Revolutionaries) and the Khabarovsk archive
became the archive of the Far Eastern Republic. As from 1923, both archives
were separate archive collection of CK CPSU (Central Committee of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union), which had military sections. In the
Soviet period, the city archive of Riga had the foreign department, which has
survived until today. The documents kept there are military materials from
foreign sources which refer to the Great Patriotic War. As for the archive of
the Library of Congress and the archive of the Institute I. S. Gagarin, I
believe that you are familiar with them.
Other archives we visited in regard to some belong to the most famous
institutions in Europe, where systematic scientific research are done
(Salzburg, Tarta, Kharkov and Odessa). Of course, those archives had been
selected since we have had a very effective cooperation for a long time. This
is why we were also allowed to use the service of inter-archival information
exchange.
I must repeat here: in my opinion, the information taken from a-one volume
edition of the Soviet Encyclopaedic Dictionary (SER) is very intriguing in the
context of the new paradigm as well (Publisher: The Soviet Encyclopaedia,
Moscow, 1980. A-two volume edition was published in the USSR, which
contains a reprint of the foregoing edition.
Namely, this dictionary does not contain Jasenovac concentration camp. The
definition of the term Ustashas is as follows: a fascistic organisation of
Croatian nationalists in the period 1929-1945. It was founded outside Croatia
(with its centres in Italy, Austria, Hungary, Belgium etc.) by Ante Paveli...
In 1934, they assassinated the Yugoslav king, Alexander I Karaorevi in
Marseilles. The king pursued the Greater Serbia, military-monarchist policy
oriented towards France and French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou. In
1941, the Ustashas established the fascist NDH (Independent State of
Croatia)... In the period 1941-1945, Ustashas killed hundreds of thousands of
people in Yugoslavia. Presently, they are active in several countries. You
well know that this is also true today, in the new social conditions!
What I found in SER was purified information - present in all foregoing
military archives of the former USSR. As I have already said, only the
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documents found in the Riga archive contained a different definition of the

term Ustashas; instead of fascists, the definition was rebels against
Serbian dictatorship in Yugoslavia.
In order to accomplish my main task, I singled out the following references:
1) not a word on Jasenovac, including the search in the concentration camp
category; 2) in the beginning, Ustashas were organised as an anti-Serb
terrorist organisation, whose first action was the assassination of the king,
who was a Serb and who pursued the Greater Serbia policy; and 3) Ustashas
killed hundreds of thousands of citizens of Yugoslavia i.e. Serbs. In the USSR,
the number of the victims of Ustasha regime, calculated in 1964 by three
young Yugoslav scientists based on mass graves in Jasenovac, was widely
confirmed, even in SER!; 4) Ustashas are still active in many western
countries. Which means: active against the Serbs!
Later in the text I will tell you a few words about our search and its results. I
will continue now. Although in the last few years in the USA Library of
Congress archive (forgive me for using the names of archives in the form
common with those who spend most of their time there) there has been a real
boom regarding Jasenovac, what we have right now is a real standstill! A
number of publications in different forms - articles, collections, informative
materials etc. - all vanished without a trace! There were a lot of works
regarding the book by the distinguished professor Srboljub ivanovi. In two
colours, of course: black and white. However, it is interesting that the very
book was not in the library. Last year in March I sent them the book titled
Jasenovac but I could not find it there this year in February! There was a
lot of fiction about Nikola Tesla. In the archive of University of Salzburg
there are preserved materials on Jasenovac. However, they are nothing new
in relation to my previous visit! Unless we take into account snitching on
Ustashas to Wehrmacht generals including Heinrich Himmler (by German
agents in Jasenovac) regarding the fact that Ustashas do not kill those
they should..., it is necessary to send a special Wehrmacht

committee to Jasenovac as Ustashas explain their executions to the
Red Cross as 'pressure by Wehrmacht'; (note underlined): Ustashas
scoff at German generals: The Germans are afraid of coming to us;
they fear that our guilt could be ascribed to them!
165
The Italian sources have been kept... in the Cavaletti archives. I will repeat
the information from the follwing sources: 1) Il Giornale (luglio, 15. 1942)
(Novine of 15th July 1942): Italian fascists are hiding in their homes the
Serbs who escaped the Ustasha terror: 2) dizionario tascabile... (poket
handbook...): The Ustashas are a militant organisation of the Catholic
Church against Franco's masons. From another source: The Ustashas
should not be mistaken for fascists; the personal friendship between

Paveli, Mussolini and Franco is supported by the hostility they share
towards Hitler.
In the archive of the library Ivan Sergeyevich Gagarin, there is no material
on Jasenovac. Moreover, I had to explain to my new colleagues what
Jasenovac is at all! There were a lot of things on the Ustashas, and teh
friendship between the Yugoslav king Alexander I Karaorevi and the
former French Prime Minister Louis Barthou. However, this is a separate
topic. Far from the truth about Jasenovac...
Last time I informed you that I had applied to the BBC archive in London. In
the period 1941-1942, the head of the BBC Slavic department was my
husband's uncle, a lord, professor Leo Vladimirovich Chernosvitov. We were
interested in his programmes about the NDH. We have not received the reply
yet. My husband's cousin, Alexandra Lvoyvna Chernosvitova - El Kuri, also
tried to help us. She finally informed us that the department where the
archive had been kept was abolished. The materials were sent off to the
countries for which Leo Chernosvitov had made his programmes.
Practically, the materials are impossible to find, even upon request by close
relatives.
We tried to have Srobljub ivanovi's book Jasenovac translated into
Hebrew languages (Yiddish and Ivrit) and Roma language and therefore we
sent requests to:
European for Roma Rights Centre in Budapest and
Political bureau of Israel Our Home party in Jerusalem.
(we also enclosed accompanying letters by the Jasenovac Committee)
The letters were sent on 6th October 2010. And again in November 2012.
166
We did not get a reply from the European Roma Rights Centre.
We did not get a reply from Israel Our Home either.
Therefore, the only reply we got on 11th January 2011 was via email, from
the head of the Russian department of the Yad Vashem Memorial Centre in
Israel, Mrs Anna Schinder, expressing her gratitude for Srobljub ivanovi's
book Jasenovac in Serbian, which we, as they said, had sent to them.
We informed Mrs Schinder that accompanying documentation (which was
also sent by us) had also been enclosed with the book and asked her to help
us as much as she could. Our letter with the request and documents was
forwarded to Mrs Lea Teithel in the department for receiving requests to Yad
Vashem.
Mrs Lea Teithel did not send a reply.
Results of the search in the archives in Moscow and Saint Petersburg
(you may be familiar with these materials)
Nevertheless, I will list some of them:
In the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), a 1945
photograph was found of victims of the Ustasha terror in Jasenovac
concentration camp. (RGASPI) (F) 588 Op. 11. D. 396. L. 5, file No. 7.
In the Saint Petersburg archive no materials were found.
Results of search in archives of periodicals, media and Internet
sources
Articles in periodicals, media and Internet sources regarding dates and
events in connection to Jasenovac or Nazi crimes in general, as well as
individual crimes committed by Nazi command staff
The most detailed information are those from Wikipedia, for which the
material was taken and translated from the website of the Jasenovac
Committee of the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
In Russia, regarding the period covering the last 14 years, we have found
over 500 sources describing the atrocities in Jasenovac. A vast majority of
published articles and notes refers to newspapers and websites of the
167
Orthodox topics, as well as Russian directories of Serbian websites or

websites on Serbia and Croatia (news mostly).
For example:
The newspaper Izvestia, article from 2009; Ustashas invented a special
knife for slaughtering their victims, nicknamed 'srbokolj' (t/n: Serbcutter;
this knife was originally a type of agricultural knife manufactured for wheat
sheaf cutting. It was a curved, 12cm long knife with the edge on its concave
side).
Website Russian line, article Jasenovac: beyond reason, from 2005, in
memory of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Jasenovac concentration
camp inmates.
The magazine Nova politika, article from 2008: Croatian war criminal
Dinko aki dies: at least 60,000 people were killed in his concentration
camps.
On the Internet portal Srpska.ru, there is a number of articles about
exhibitions in memory of Jasenovac.
A reference to Jasenovac was also found in periodicals and materials from
exhibitions and conferences on genocide against individual ethnic groups Serbs, Jews and Roma.
For example:
Materials from the seminar Extermination of the Roma in Central and
Eastern Europe, TumBalalaika No. 15-16, April-August 2000.
2) Regarding the literature, the book most frequently used as a source on
events in Jasenovac is Branimir Stanojevi's The Ustasha Minister of Death:
an Anatomy of Andrija Artukovi's Crime Moscow, Progres, 1989, ISBN
5-01-001639-7, review and preface by V. K. Volkhov (in Serbian: Branimir
Stanojevi. Ustaki ministar smrti: anatomija zloina Andrije Artukovia,
Nova knjiga, Beograd, 1986).
As seen from my paper, the Russian archives do not contain materials on
Jasenovac concentration camp, apart from the photograph in RGASPI, while
there are very few of them in media archives and websites in comparison
with the material presented in Srboljub ivanovi's Jasenovac.
168
And now I am going to deal with, for me the most incomprehensible and,
frankly, most unpleasant statement. I hope I will be able to find an explanation
of that sad fact, which could at least soothe me. Namely, in the new sociohistorical paradigm, forgive my words, there is no room for Jasenovac as well
as other places soaked in blood. It is enough to mention the way our Russian
film director Fedor Bondarchuk depicted the Battle of Stalingrad! And this is
not my personal opinion. You are probably familiar with the fact that, in
Russia (and not only there), people are petitioning for the prohibition of this
film. However, I repeat, a different paradigm is in place, different values
(everything is for sale), different evaluation scale. The memory of Auschwitz
may be preserved. But, in which form? I have seen the BBC film Auschwitz.
After the scene in which the Slovakian government pays the Germans to
exterminate all Jews and their families, I couldn't go on watching the film!
Nevertheless, the facts on Auschwitz became widely known. Not only owing
to forums and books but also a multitude of films. Then I got the idea of
making a film on Jasenovac! I am not just a scientist and historian but also a
writer. So I thought that, with such a material as Srboljub ivkovi's book, I
could write a screenplay for the film. Besides, there is a man, a genius, an
Orthodox Serb - Emor Kusturica, the director who could make a film about
Jasenovac in such a way that it would certainly become a masterpiece to
enrich our culture. The masterpiece to remain in history for good! I shared
my idea with my husband, professor Eugene Vasilievich Chernosvitov. He
had luck to be a friend of our two great artists - Andrei Tarkovsky and Vasily
Shukshin. My husband met Andrei Tarkovsky during reviewing the working
version of the film The Mirror. Since then, during the making of all
subsequent films and settings of theatre plays (The Mirror, Stalker,
Nostalgia, Hamlet etc.), Tarkovsky had always consulted my husband as an
expert in philosophy and psychology. Eugene helped Shukshin prepare the
film Stepan Razin, the main film in Shukshin's artistic career... We asked
the Serbian management of the Jasenovac Committee to find Emir
Kusturica's address, and we got it from professor Vladimir Luki. My
husband wrote a letter to Emir Kusturica and sent it to two addresses. Here
is the letter: Dear academician Emir Kusturica! I am a very close friend of
Andrey Tarkovsky and Vasily Shukshin, a member of the International
Committee Truth about Jasenovac, Professor Eugene Chernosvitov from
Moscow. For a few years, my group of scientists and I have been actively
involved in the work of the International Committee. On the eve of the
following session of the Committee (in may this year), I appeal to you with a
great hope that you will understand me! My colleague Ekaterina
169
Alexandrovna Samoilova, a psychology doctor and member of the International Committee, upon proposal of the academician Srboljub ivkovi, the
President of the Committee, translated his book Jasenovac (Srpska knjiga.
Beograd - London, 2008.) into Russian. Please find enclosed an electronical
version of the book, as well as its cover pages, illustrated by the Russian artist
Oksana Yablokova. Unfortunately, we did not manage to publish the book in
Russia. The translation of the book Jasenovac, as well as the illustrations by
O. Yablokova, was presented to the Committee and the President of Republic
of Srpska in 2012... In my opinion, the book represents a unique historical
document written in an incisive, colourful style. I believe this is the right time
for millions of ordinary people from different countries to find out about
Jasenovac concentration camp. I am convinced that, provided you agree to
make a feature film Jasenovac based upon Srboljub ivanovi's book, the
historical task would be fulfilled! My wife (the scientific reviewer of the
Russian version of the book), Marina Alfredovna Chernosvitova, a history
doctor and well-known Russian writer, could write a screenplay upon the
book or be a scientific advisor if the screenplay would be written by someone
else. I could also advise writers in terms of issues in connection to the topics
within the scope of my expertise.
I await your reply with impatience. Eugene Vasilyevich Chernosvitov,
philosophy and medicine PhD. P. S. I am sending an electronic version of the
book by post. E. Ch.
Alas, we haven't got a reply! Nevertheless, I do not give up my idea of the film
adaptation of Jasenovac and propose that we address maestro Kusturica on
behalf of the Committee and this conference! I kindly ask you for your
support!
In conclusion, my dear colleagues, I would like to share with you a discovery
I made working on materials on Jasenovac.
I, as well as others in the USSR and also now, in the post-Soviet Russia,
believed in a myth that was greatly exaggerated in the Soviet Union; that
was the myth on mutual hostility between the two fathers of the
nation, Stalin and Tito. However, Jasenovac has put everything in place!
In the USSR, song were composed about the inmates of German
concentration camps. For example, Buchenwald Alarm Bell (56,000 victims
of Buchenwald). My generation hated fascists, perhaps due to the fear of them
or, more precisely, their concentration camps! So many good and terrifying
books were written about Nazi concentration camps! So many good feature
170
films were made about atrocities in Nazi concentration camps. Such films are
still made! However, not a single song, book or film exists about Jasenovac!
Or about the only concentration camp for children in the history of
humankind, which was located in the Independent State of Croatia! No, our
leader and the leader of Yugoslav communists lived in harmony and,
obviously, were secret friends.
In conclusion, I would like to say: I believe that, judging by the reactions of
my colleagues who searched for materials on Jasenovac for me across the
world, Ustashas must be feared! Take notice: Since 1946, Ante Paveli was
a right-hand man of Juan Domingo Peron, the president of Argentina; the
Ustasha leader lived a long life under the auspices of his friend Franco in
Madrid! I have the feeling that Ustashas are all around nowadays! However,
instead of srbokolj, they carry in their pockets governments, policies
and intellectual elites of certain countries!

Let me finish by paraphrasing the great Russian poet Fyodor Sologub:
Jasenovac is our last watchtower! (in Russian - the fortress that must be
protected at all costs, in which nobody will help us!) And we, like always,
are on our own!
171
Paul Isaac Hagouel, Ph.D.
JASENOVAC IN CONTEXT AND

PERSPECTIVE: LESSONS FOR
THE 21ST CENTURY
Paul Isaac Hagouel, Ph.D.

Member, Academic Working Group
Hellenic Delegation International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance
Abstract: The memory and remembrance of Jasenovac is instrumental
in building a lasting peace and friendship amongst the nations and
states of the Balkans. Lessons learned come at the steepest price of all,
the loss, in abundance, of innocent human life. Any sort of prejudice
and/or belief of religious superiority is, unfortunately, an ingredient
that may lead to genocide. Education and upbringing, with the values
of humanity and tolerance, are a must to shield future generations.
Remembrance of Jasenovac is an obligation and stands as a shining
beacon for all humanity. We still have a long way to go but progress is
evident.
Keywords: Jasenovac, Independent State of Croatia, Ustasha, World
War II, Holocaust, Roman Catholic Church, Vatican, Pope, Greece,
German Reich, Croats, Serbs, Jews, Roma, 19th-century and 20thcentury European history.
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I take this opportunity to thank publicly His Excellency Mr Milorad Dodik,
President of Republika Srpska, and the Office of the President, in particular
Mr Bora Radievi, for their kind invitation to this Conference.
173
This is the 6th Jasenovac Conference and I know that the previous ones have
covered extensively details of what transpired in the notorious Jasenovac
Concentration and Extermination Camp in the Independent State of Croatia.1
Thus, with my contribution today, I will attempt to reach conclusions for the
lessons one must draw, pertinent for a lasting peace, tolerance and understanding in our region. I will base my interpretative synthesis on a somber
analytic approach to the past Balkan legacies particular to pre- WWII
Yugoslavia, the Independent State of Croatia NDH (Nezavisna Drava
Hrvatska) and its constitutive element and alter ego, the Ustashas.
The starting point is the Treaty of Berlin signed in July 13, 1878.2 With
Article XXV Bosnia and Herzegovina was to be occupied and administered
by Austria-Hungary. The Orthodox Serbs of the region became a religious
and ethnic minority in the overwhelmingly Catholic Austria-Hungary. In the
same Treaty, Article V stipulated the religious and other liberties to be
incorporated into public law in the newly created Principality of Bulgaria,
Article XXXV stipulated the similar ones for Serbia, and Article XLIV the
same for Romania. However, the dictates of the Powers to others did not
apply to themselves. Keep in mind that, while not mentioning by name the
Jewish inhabitants of those states, the inclusion of such hazily worded treaty
articles, ostensibly for the protection of minorities, was achieved mainly with
Video: Jasenovac The Cruelest Death Camp of all times

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6BkCOtp8O0
Documentary Movie Channel-Documentary Flick, www.documentaryflick.com , 2012
Srdja Trifkovi, USTAA Croatian Fascism and European Politics, 1929-1945, Second
Edition, The Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies, 2011, Chicago-Ottowa-London
Jozo Tomaevi [ ], War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945 _
Occupation and Collaboration, Stanford University Press, 2001, Stanford
2
Dispatch from the Marquis of Salisbury inclosing a copy of the treaty signed at Berlin,
July 13, 1878, Presented to Parliament by Command of His Majesty, House of Commons,
[C.2081] Turkey. No. 38 (1878), 33 pages, London
Correspondence relating to the Congress of Berlin, with the Protocols of the Congress,
Presented to Parliament by Command of His Majesty, House of Commons, [C.2083] Turkey. No. 39 (1878), 284 pages, London
174
the intervention and lobbying of the Jewish Communities from various

nations.3
Simultaneously, it is important to remember the record of the Roman
Catholic Church as it has been expressed over the Centuries by its Clericals
having the Pope at its Head. After all, large numbers of Sephardic Jews
arrived at and populated the Balkans subsequent to their forced expulsion
from the Iberian Peninsula in 14924 by the Catholic Kings Ferdinand &
Isabella whom the Church has wanted to beatify in our days. Moreover, in
1858, in the wane days of the Papal States and only 20 years prior to 1878
Berlin, the papal police intruded into the house of the Mortara family in
Bologna and forcibly took away their son Edgardo whom, supposedly, a
Christian servant had secretly baptized secretly.5 This episode reaffirmed
once more, in a poignant manner, not only the exclusionary attitude of the
Catholic Church but also its persistent and obsessive belief in its supremacy
3
Max J. Kohler & Simon Wolf, Jewish Disabilities in the Balkan States, American Contributions toward Their Removal, with Particular Reference to the Congress of Berlin , American Jewish Historical Society, Publications, 24 (1916), 153 pages (Note: This is a representative article of many)
N. M. Gelber, The Intervention of German Jews at the Berlin Congress 1878, Leo Baeck
Institute Yearbook (1960) 5 (1): 221-248, 1960
4 Paul Isaac Hagouel, The History of the Jews of Thessaloniki & the Holocaust, 2006, West
Chester, Pennsylvania & Thessaloniki (2008)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ozmj8h58j8v8io5/Hagouel_Thessaloniki_Holocaust_n_n-picture.pdf (in English)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yttkjrxyq642k9f/Hagouel_Holocaust_WCUPA_2006_show.pps?m (in English)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/i58leisp25s0ras/Hagouel-Hol_USConsulate_2008_color_show.pps?m (in Greek)
Paul Isaac Hagouel, The History of the Jews of Salonika & the Holocaust
an Expos, Sephardic Horizons (Editor: Judith Roumani) Volume 3, Issue 3, Fall 2013,
http://www.sephardichorizons.org/Volume3/Issue3/hagouel.html
https://www.dropbox.com/s/474zcjhv6z9gzqg/ 282013 29_in_Sephardic_Horizons__TheHistory-of-the-Jews-of-Salonika-and-the-Holocaust-An-Expos C3 A9_f.pdf
5 Cecil Roth, Forced Baptisms: Notorious Case of Abduction of Edgardo Mortara, When a
Child in Bologna, And other instances are Recalled, The American Israelite, January 25,
1929, pg.1
DAVID I. KERTZER, The Popes Against the Jews _ The Vatican's Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism, Vintage Books [Random House, Inc], 2002, New York
175
and its divine right to the absolute truth. The Inquisition was alive and well.
These kinds of events perplexed its believers as regards to what was right or
wrong since its (of the Church) actions diverged from the innate human trait
to distinguish, correctly, amongst the two.
In the wake of the end of the First World War, the final disintegration of
Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire took place. With the Treaty of
Peace signed at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on September 10, 1919,6 the
independence of the Serb-Croat-Slovene state ass recognized (Article 46).
The same day, and at the same location, another Treaty was signed: Treaty
between the Principal Allied and Associated Powers and the Serb-CroatSlovene State.7 In the preamble it stated that the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
of the former Austro-Hungary had decided, of their own will, to unite with
Serbia and form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and that Article
35 of the Treaty of Berlin was effectively abrogated. Suddenly, with Article
4, a new national was created: the Serb-Croat-Slovene. As with all treaties
following the First World War,8 group rights were imposed and artificial
majorities and minorities created with no well-defined criteria but, in the
norm, with the use of the ethnicity as the distinguishing characteristic and
constitutive factor. Then, again, ethnicity was not defined precisely (it could
not be, since it is an abstract notion!). This led to Article 8, which stated that
Serb-Croat-Slovene nationals who belong to racial, religious or linguistic

minorities shall enjoy the same treatment and security in law and in fact as
the other Serb-Croat-Slovene nationals. Note that neither the Article nor the
Treaty define who the other Serb-Croat-Nationals are juxtaposed as the
majority. And, out of the blue, the term race crept onto the scene, long before
the Deutsches Reich used and defined it ad hoc in order to disenfranchise its
6 Treaty of peace between the allied and associated powers and Austria together with the
protocol and declarations annexed thereto signed at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, September 10,
1919.[With map] , Presented to Parliament by Command of His Majesty, House of Commons, [Cmd. 400] Treaty Series No. 11 (1919), 126 pages, London
7 Treaty between the principal allied and associated powers and the Serb-Croat-Slovene
state, signed at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, September 10, 1919, Presented to Parliament by
Command of His Majesty, House of Commons, [Cmd. 46] Treaty Series (1919) No. 17, 10
pages, London
8 Margaret MacMillan, Six Months That Changed the World: The Paris Peace Conference
of 1919, Random House, 2003, New York
176
citizens of Jewish origin.9 With the benefit of hindsight, it is obvious that

these seemingly innocuous terms appearing in the Treaties and their true
meaning left to interpretation or, worse, to imagination, had devastating
effects a few decades later. And, in a separate Treaty between the Principal
Allied and Associated Powers and Roumania, signed in Paris on December 9,
1919,10 Romania, under Article 7, undertook to recognize as Roumanian
nationals, ipso facto and without the requirements of any formality, Jews
inhabiting any Roumanian territory who do not possess any other
nationality.
This was not the first time that Romania was reminded of its obligations as a
modern state, albeit a nation state, towards all of its inhabitants,
irrespective of any distinguishing characteristics vis vis its majorities. Its
sorry record towards her subjects of Jewish religious heritage over the past
decades, and previously, as the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, is
well known and documented.11 Next to Romania, the record of Serbia on
what concerned its Jewish population was not stellar either and is also
documented.12
Simultaneously, Croats felt chocked, rightly or wrongly, belonging in a
state where the Christian Orthodox Serb element was the dominant and
majority one.13 A latent dual irredentism, based on the notions of Croatian
The Nuremberg Laws

http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2010/winter/nuremberg.html
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1f7007pm1mp4ctf/Nuremberg 20Laws.pdf
10
Treaty between the principal allied and associated powers and Roumania, signed at Paris,
December 9, 1919, Presented to Parliament by Command of His Majesty, House of
Commons, [Cmd. 588] Treaty Series (1920) No. 6., 10 pages, London
11
Correspondence respecting the condition and treatment of the Jews in Servia and
Roumania: 1867-76, Presented to Parliament by Command of His Majesty, House of
Commons, [C.1742] Principalities. No. 1 (1877), 372 pages, London
Moldavia. Further correspondence respecting the persecution of Jews in Moldavia.

Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty, House of Commons
Cmds [3890] [3897] [3917], 1867, 33 pages, London
12 Correspondence respecting the condition and treatment of the Jews in Servia, Presented
to Parliament by Command of His Majesty, House of Commons, [Cmd 3829] Servia 1867,
31pages, London
13
JUGO-SLAVIA? IT'S A "MELTING POT" THAT WON'T MELT: Nation Born of World
War Is a Modern Babylon, Chicago Daily Tribune, March 22, 1941, page 8
177
ethnic identity and Catholicism, shaped the mentality of some in a reverse

way, i.e. they were not lamenting lost territories but wanted to extricate
themselves from the fold of the new artificially created state. Thus, they came
to perceive the Serb Serb-Croat-Slovenian national as an impediment to their
national aspirations, always coupled with a good dose of the presumed
superiority of their Catholicism.14
In parallel, the Jew, at least up to World War II, was always the universal
scapegoat and culprit for all ills, real or imaginary. Furthermore, there was
never an ethnic Jewish European nation-state to claim him and/or offer
protection. He was always a numeric minority and never fully incorporated
into the inner fabric of the national corpus.15 Few states had a fully de jure
emancipation: one notable example is Greece, which extended full emancipation to all its citizens irrespective of religious affiliation with the 3d
Protocol of the Treaties of London of 1830.16 But then, Greece, early on, was
founded on the notion of the Hellene as the constitutive element and not on
groups, majorities or minorities, which no Constitution ever recognized or
created. What was always lacking in the Balkans was the notion of civil rights
as opposed to group rights. The endeavors of all nations should have been and
should be to strengthen the concept of the civilian, the individual and not that
of the subject person and of groups.
Finally, it is both interesting and important to point out that two Anti-Semitic
Laws were published in the official Government Gazette of Yugoslavia on
Europe: The Croats Play a Star Role in the Balkan Drama, By ANNE O'HARE
McCORMICK, The New York Times, April 5, 1941, pg. 16
14
Yugoslavian Unity Threatened by Pro-German Croat Millions: Macek, Member of New

Cabinet who Speaks for Millions of Countrymen, Fights Resistance to the Nazis, Los
Angeles Times, March 30, 1941, page 1
15 Carole Fink, Defending the Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the Jews, and
International Minority Protection, 1878-1938, Cambridge University Press, 2006, New
York
16 A _ Papers relative to the Affairs of Greece, Protocols of Conferences Held in London,
Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of His Majesty, House of Commons,
May 1830, 340 pages, London, pg. 316
The London Conferences 1830 No. 25
PROTOCOL, No. 3, of the Conference held at the Foreign Office on the 3rd of February,
1830
178
October 5th, 1940, a full 7 months before the German Reich invaded Yugoslavia.17 So much for either Constitutional and/or Treaty Article guarantees of
equality and freedom of religion!
The above underlying and simmering marginalization of the Jewish
inhabitants was the catalyst for the atrocities at Jasenovac. At the time, few
understood the significance of keeping segments of the population apart and
even persecuting and/or relegating them to second class or, still worse, to
internal enemy status. If we couple to that the presence of prejudicial antiSemitism which, if not outright sanctioned by the various states, was nonetheless tolerated and even encouraged, then it is easy to expect that this
conditioned and accustomed the general populace that it was grata to both
have feelings and act against their Jewish neighbors and, worst of all, believe
that they are internal enemies and treat them as such. Again, with the benefit
of hindsight, in as much as Jasenovac is concerned, the substitution or the
addition of another long perceived enemy, albeit of a different sort, was
facilitated. Thus, the Orthodox Christian Serb shared the same fate, or worse,
as the Jew and the Roma during WWII in the NDH. A Sephardic adage in
Ladino is ironically bitterly true: Malor de Otros, Bonor de Tontos or,
freely translated, Misfortune of Others, Happiness of Fools (Stupid People).
Thus, Jasenovac and the crimes perpetrated during its existence should not
come as a surprise, given the circumstances and the climate and surrounding
carnage occurring all over Europe and the Balkans.18 Respecting the
17
Private electronic communication of facsimiles of the two Anti-Semitic Laws from the
Official Gazette of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, October 5, 1940, from the Jewish Historical
Museum, 2012, Beograd, http://www.jimbeograd.org/eng/
YUGOSLAVIA CURBS JEWS: Forbids Those Not Citizens in 1918 to Trade in Food,
TheNew York Times, September 21, 1940, pg. 4
YUGOSLAVS RESTRICT JEWS: Decree Reduces Number Who May Attend Schools,
TheNew York Times, October 6, 1940, pg. 24
18
Nazis Act to Remove Restraints on Brutality in Serbia, By Ray Brock, The Washington
Post, May 11, 1941, pg. 12
Nazis Held Ready to Crush Serb Guerrillas and Jews: NAZI PLAN TO CRUSH SERBS IS
REPORTED, By RAY BROCKBy, Telephone to The New York Times, May 11, 1941, pg. 1
Pavelic Visits Hitler, Turns Heat on Jews, By the United Press, The Washington Post, June
7, 1941, pg. 4
179
Holocaust, that is, the annihilation of Jews just because they were Jews,
Auschwitz was the final peak, the culmination of the crescendo of the everincreasing-in-ferocity persecution fervor.19 Accordingly, Jasenovac is the
epitome, the climax, of the Ustashas ethnic cleansing endeavor. The
underlying psychological foundation for justifying and perpetrating it was
laid long ago, as we have demonstrated. The spark that was needed to ignite
the inferno was none other than the assembly of the factors reaching critical
mass.
The main catalysts were:
A. Already, the German Reich, which had created the Independent
State of Croatia, had made it perfectly clear that one of its goals was the
THE GROWING UNION OF HATE: As Hitler extends his conquests the Continent is
reduced more and more to primitive Cruelty, By C.L. SULZBERGER, The New York
Times, July 6, 1941, pg. SM3
MASSACRES LAID TO CROAT USTASHI: More Than 300,000 Serbs and pro-Yugoslav
Croats reported slain by Revolutionaries, Special Broadcast to The New York Times,
October 11, 1941, pg. 3
Serbian Prelate Charges Killing Of 180,000 in Nazi-Invaded Croatia: Archbishop accuses

"Quisling" of Wholesale Massacre and Torture -- Post-War Court is Suggested to Punish
the Criminals, By JAMES MacDONALD Special Cable to The New York Times, January 3,
1942, pg. 8
Nazis' Torture Orgies Pictured: Serbian Archbishop Reports Massacre of 180,000 in

Croatia, Los Angeles Times, January 3, 1942, pg. 3
180,000 Croats Die in Torture, By the Associated Press, The Washington Post, January 3,
1942, pg. 4
Berlin Plot to Exterminate 2,000,000 Serbs Charged: Widespread Slaughter Reported by

Yugoslavs; Wave of Atrocities and Suffering sweeps Europe, Los Angeles Times, January
4, 1942, pg. 5
YUGOSLAVS CHARGE AXIS SLEW 465,000: Government in London Reports Wholesale

Executions by the Occupying Forces, Tells of Wide Atrocities, Hungarians Accused of
Killin 100,000 in Northern Areas -- Serbs Homes Burned, The New York Times, May 8,
1942, pg.8
19
Central File: Decimal File 860H.00, Internal Affairs Of States, Yugoslavia, Political
Affairs, April 3, 1946 - October 10, 1946.. Records of the Department of State relating to
Internal Affairs: Yugoslavia 1945-49, 1946, 1149 pages, Collection: Socialism and National
Unity in Yugoslavia, 1945-63: Records of the U.S. State Department Classified Files,
Category: European Studies, Global Studies, Political Science, Library U.S. National
Archives NARA - - http://www.archives.gov/ , Washington, DC
180
annihilation of the Jewish people. Furthermore, it was already murdering or was in the process of perpetrating the physical annihilation of
the Polish Intelligentsia.20 And, with the onset of Operation Barbarossa
in June 1941, the Einsatzgruppen started their genocidal spree on Jews
and other enemy elements of the Soviet society.21
B. Neighboring Romania, another Axis ally, also engaged in th
genocidal binge against its perennial enemy, the Jew, whom it did not
consider Romanian. The numbers of those killed were in the six
figures, thus making large numbers of victims palatable at least to the
local perpetrators and willing potential ones.22
C. The regrettable record of the Hierarchy of the Catholic Church
before and during the War was of paramount importance with regard
to those events.23 Its deafening silence was not only construed by some
(wrongly, as I hope and am sure of) as a tacit neutrality but, even worse,
20
Alexander Brian Rossino, September 1939: The German army and the invasion of
Poland, Doctoral Dissertation, Syracuse University, 1999
21 Hilary Camille Earl, Accidental justice: The trial of Otto Ohlendorf and the
Einsatzgruppen leaders in the American zone of occupation, Germany, 1945--1958,
Doctoral Dissertation, University of Toronto (Canada), 2002
Hilary Earl, Masters of Death: The SS Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust,
by Richard Rhodes, Shofar 22.4 (Summer 2004): 141
22 Radu Ioanid, THE HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA _ The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies
Under the Antonescu Regime, 19401944, Ivan R Dee Inc. & USHMM, 2000, Chicago
300 JEWS REPORTED SLAIN: In One Block Alone 89 Were Said to Have Been Killed, By
Telephone to The New York Times, January 25, 1941, pg. 5
FORCED LABOR FOR JEWS: Rumania Requires Service From Young Folk of Both Sexes,
By Telephone to The New York Times, July 11, 1941, pg. 3
Rumanian Curb on Jews Urged, By Telephone to The New York Times, August 4, 1941,
pg.3
178,000 Rumanian Jews Disappear, The Washington Post, October 18, 1942, pg. 2
RUMANIANS SLAUGHTERED: Swedish Paper Says 120,000 Jews Have Been Executed or
Slain, The New York Times, March 16, 1943, pg. 2
23Confidential Correspondence From Other Offices 1946, Source :U.S. Relations with the
Vatican and the Holocaust, 1940-1950 Collection, 1946, 187 pages, Library, National
Archives and Records Administration (USA) NARA II- http://www.archives.gov/ ,
Category: Italian Studies, Holocaust Studies, Global Studies, Washington, DC
181
as a silent consent and/or approval.24 To that we add the initial support

of the Croatian Catholic Church Hierarchy for Ante Paveli,25 which
added a component of divine destiny to the decisions and actions of the
Poglavnik! Proof of the above is offered, at no cost, by the Vatican itself,
which is planning to canonize Blessed (sic) Archbishop Stepinac26 by
the end of the year!27 How true is the ancient Greek adage

[According to the last event or action, all previous ones are judged].28
D. The complete failure of the multiethnic nation-state, which is an
oxymoron in itself, since the terms multiethnic and nation-state are
24
Menachem Shelah, The Catholic Church in Croatia, the Vatican and the Murder of the
Croatian Jews, Holocaust and Genocide Studies; Jan 1, 1989; 4, 3; pgs. 323-339
Pl Kolst, THE CROATIAN CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE LONG ROAD TO
JASENOVAC, Nordic Journal of Religion and Society (2011), 24 (1): 3756
Ibid. 5 [Kertzer]
25
Statement by Embassy on Trial of Archbishop, Our London Correspondent, The Irish
Times, October 17, 1946, pg. 1

26
Pope Beatifies Croat Prelate Fanning Ire Among Serbs, By ALESSANDRA STANLEY,
TheNew York Times, October 4, 1998
27 War hero is 'closer to sainthood' [Edition 3], Irish Independent, 13 February 2014: 26,
Dublin:
A WORLD War II-era Croatian cardinal considered a hero by many Catholics but a traitor
by some Jews and Serbs has moved a step closer to possible sainthood.
The head of the Vatican's saint-making office, Cardinal Angelo Amato, said experts had
approved a miracle attributed to Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac's intervention.
Stepinac has been praised by popes and ordinary Catholics for his resistance to
communism and refusal to separate the Croatian church from the Vatican during the war.
But many Serbs and Jews accuse him of sympathizing with the Ustasha Nazi puppet
regime that ruled Croatia at the time.
According to Tuesday's Vatican newspaper, Amato said he told Pope Francis about the
miracle and that he "was pleased by this important step."
Francis must approve any canonisation.
http://theorthodoxchurch.info/blog/news/2014/02/roman-catholic-church-to-canonizearchbishop-stepinac-the-mass-murder-of-orthodox-christians/
28 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demosthenes
http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/ D0 94 D0 B5 D0 BC D0 BE D1 81 D1 82 D0 B5 D0 BD
[]
182
incompatible. It is ironic that if the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats & Slovenes, later renamed Yugoslavia in a vain attempt to create and forge a
new ethnic-national identity29 had never been created, then there
wouldnt have been, at least, the Orthodox Christian Serb genocide.
However, the Jew, as well as the Roma, wouldnt have benefited either
way.
The lessons for the 21st century boil down to the avoidance of the repetition
of the failures of the various post-World War I peace treaties. All of those
were based and influenced by (USofA President) Wilsons insistence on
national self-determination, having as a consequence the subsequent
foundation of a multitude of European nation-states which, in turn, contributed seminally to the creation of many artificial majorities and minorities.
Keep in mind that the Constitution of the USofA was (and still is!) based solely
on Individual Civil Rights and Liberties and the terms group or minority
were and still are alien to it. The fact should not pass unnoticed that President
Wilson strongly believed that national self-determination would end the root
causes which were most central in leading Europe to war in the first place.
How little did he know . . .
What is most interesting is the influence of Articles pertaining to individual
civil rights for all citizens, albeit as concomitant to minority rights and not as
bona fide stand-alone ones.30 One such is the aforementioned Article 8 of the
Saint-Germain-en-Laye Treaty. Another example is found in the Treaty of
Peace between the Allied and Associated Powers and Bulgaria, and protocol
signed at Neuilly-sur-Seine, November 27, 1919,31 where, once more, we find
civil rights under the general heading of SECTION IV PROTECTION OF
MINORITIES (of Part III Political Clauses of the Treaty). Again, note how the
term minority is ill-defined, if at all.
Ethnicity, nation, majority, minority are hard to define to everybodys
satisfaction. One does not need to define the individual, the term is self29
Christian Axboe Nielsen, One state, one nation, one king: The dictatorship of King
Aleksandar and his Yugoslav project, 1929--1935, Columbia University Doctoral
Dissertation, 2002, New York

30 Ibid. 15
31
Treaty of peace between the allied and associated powers and Bulgaria, and Protocol,
Signed at Neuilly-sur-Seine, November 27th, 1919 [With Map], Presented to Parliament by
Command of His Majesty, House of Commons, [Cmd. 522] Treaty Series (1920), No.5,
95pages, London
183
explanatory. Citizenship should be based on social contract and not on

ethnicity. The state and society at large have to strive for the de facto
incorporation of all kinds of minorities into the national fabric and corpus.
Simultaneously, the minorities should strive to feel like the majority and
embrace psychologically each other. A litmus test for all our current societies
is how well they have achieved that goal respecting their Jewish citizens, a
transnational and supra-state religious minority with no ethnic basis.
Here in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Republika Srpska, an effort is taking
place in order to overcome the obstacles of the past and forge ahead.32 Our
presence here shows that progress, however fast or slow, is a fact. The
foundations for the future should be based on mutual respect for everyones
customs and traditions and on the acceptance of ones past, however painful.33
It is our duty to remember and keep memory alive. It is also the duty for
whoever is the inheritor of the responsibilities emanating from past actions
to accept and acknowledge the guilt.34 This will only strengthen the mutual
understanding amongst our nations and will also have the beneficial effect of
self-catharsis.
I thank you very much.
Paul Isaac Hagouel
hagouel@eecs.berkeley.edu
32
United Nations, Dayton Accords

http://www.ucdp.uu.se/gpdatabase/peace/BoH 2019951121.pdf
General framework agreement for peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina signed at Paris on 14
December 1995 and annexes with related agreements and conclusions of the Peace
Implementation Conference held in London on 8-9 December 1995, Presented to
Parliament February 1996, [Cm 3154] Miscellaneous No. 6, House of Commons, 101 pages,
London
33 Heike Karge, Sajmiste, Jasenovac, and the Social Frames of Remembering and
Forgetting, [Chair for the history of Southeastern and Eastern Europe Regensburg
University], FILOZOFIJA I DRUSTVO XXIII (4), 2012
34The Jewish Question, The Times (London, England), Saturday, May 08, 1993; pg. 14[S1]
184
Jean Toschi Marazzani Visconti
IN DEFENSE OF THE MEMORY OF

AN OBSCURED TRAGEDY.
The theme of this meeting is the monstrous uniqueness of camp number six,
where only children were jailed, a peculiarity of the death camp of Jacenovac
in the Free State of Croatia in 1941, which sets this place apart from all German extermination sites.
I do not want to dissertate on this horror, I think it is up to those who lived
and witnessed directly the suffering and fear of thousands of poor creatures
at the mercy of cruel jailers, to do it. I want to talk about the importance of
Memory.
There is a photo of a mass grave in camp number six, where naked bodies of
children were lined up, they looked skeletal, they were no longer children,
but ectoplasms. The last one in this long line had his eyes wide open and a
look of astonishment was petrified on his face. This child seemed to ask: why?
It is exactly to answer his question that I want to speak about the need of
defending the Memory and the knowledge of what happened in those death
camps.
Only a few years ago I became aware of the existence of an extermination
camp in Croatia, operating from 1941 to 1945. Jacenovac extermination camp
produced approximately one million victims. It is amazing; the existence of
this place was totally unknown to the majority of the international public and
still is.
185
At that time I gathered some information; to my surprise I learnt this camp

was as large as Auschwitz and was formed by eight sub installations. One of
them, camp number six, was reserved to children up to fourteen years of age.
How could this tragic reality be hidden? Political reasons: Tito, the unifier of
Yugoslavia, wanted to mitigate the tragedy to avoid grudges and revenge preventing the unification of the populations that harshly contrasted under the
German and Italian occupation. He had also tried to minimize the responsibility of the Catholic clergy in Croatia, responsible for the persecution of the
Serbian people.
We must not forget that the command of Jacenovac camp had been entrusted
to a Franciscan monk, Miroslav Filipovi Majstorovi, during his trial he admitted he had sentenced to death forty thousand people.
A shaded madness that allowed Pope John Paul II to beatify Alojs Stepinac,
the Croatian Primate at that time, who had blessed the Ustasha regime of
Ante Paveli and ignored the un-Christian violence of his subordinates.
Time and silence have contributed to the oblivion of the Ustasha death camp.
In 2011, I visited the main Jacenovac number three camp in Croatia, I was
astonished and outraged by the beauty of the place; it looked like a golf
course.
All traces of the prisoners life have been cleared. Peaceful ponds were filled
with reeds and wild flowers, close to them some round and circular grass
shapes marked the site where the brick factory, Ciglana, used to be; hundreds
of bodies became ashes in its furnaces.
No sign of the huts where the prisoners lived, nothing recalls the hard life,
the suffering of the victims of the fascist regime of Ante Pavelic and his Ustasha.
Wide fields of waving grass, a little train on its tracks sinking in the grass, a
huge meaningless monument, those were the only elements faintly recalling
the tragic destiny of a million prisoners. Nothing else!
At that point I had to admire the consistency of the Germans at Dachau extermination camp, although embellishing with geraniums and flower beds
the area, they have kept many signs of the tragedy in order to remember the
186
madness of the torturers and to imagine, and to share the suffering of the
victims.
The courage of a country shows in the acceptance of its errors. It is impossible to reach a catharsis without this force of renewal. It is hard to make peace
with the past and with the heirs of the victims without assuming its own responsibility.
In Berlin, under the immense and poignant memorial to the Jewish victims
of the extermination camps, not far from the Brandenburg Gate, there is a
Jewish documentation center. Inside, on a wall there is a map of Europe
where some lights mark the sites of all the imprisonment and extermination
camps of the Nazi period. Jacenovac does not appear. Only searching on the
computers on hand, Jacenovac finally appears: as a Memorial.
They succeeded in erasing the Memory of the Serbian, Jewish and Roma victims, who suffered and lost their lives in Jacenovac. The Memory of their
sufferance can only survive as long as the survivors will be able to testify and
to tell the truth on the facts that many people want to forget. Whats after?
We live a strange period, some nations are trying to rewrite embarrassing
parts of their past distorting the truth. This is going on in different regions
of Europe. There is a general tendency to revise history and to accuse the
victims of their own crimes. The Serbs particularly, after 1995, are referred
to as the new criminals of the late twentieth century, raising the Germans
from this role.
The Croats tend to minimize the horrors of their death camp, admitting the
killing of Jews and Roma in the number of a few thousands. But their attempt
to complete the ethnic cleansing of the Serb population in the period from
1941 onwards and in 1995 in the Krajnas is justified as a form of liberation of
the Croatian territories. This is total denial of the historical events.
The term genocide is used and misused in these days, giving also an official
recognition to situations that have nothing to do with this meaning. This is
exactly what happened at the European Parliament, where the obscure facts
of Srebrenica have been declared genocide, the Parliament also proclaimed
the 11th of July the Memorial day for the Srebrenica genocide. This term
comes from the Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin verb caedere (to
kill) and indicates the extermination of an entire population, men, women,
187
and children for different reasons: a territory cleansing, destruction of members belonging to a different faith, elimination of a race.
Someone may wonder why a war event that involved only men of military
age, therefore soldiers, was considered genocide. No account was taken of
women, children and elderly people that were escorted to the safe in Muslim
territory, according to their own choice.
While admitting that the Serbs did not attack the city of Srebrenica to kill the
Muslim inhabitants, the ICTY Tribunal in The Hague with an absurd sentence sanctioned that the selective destruction would have a long-term im-
pact throughout the entire ethnic group and the disappearance of two, three
generations of men would compromise the survival of a traditional patriarchal society in a catastrophic way, when the Serbs decided to get rid of all
Muslim men. Their death would prevent any effective attempt to regain territory. The combination of these massacres and forcible transfer of women,
children and old people would inevitably result in the physical disappearance
of the Bosnian Muslim population from Srebrenica. (Michael Mandel, The
Hague Tribunal and the concept of genocide - The case of the hidden genocide in Srebrenica , Verit et Justice , Paris 2005- La citt del sole , Naples
2007)
This judgment justifies the political games between the Bill Clintons administration and President Aljia Izetbegovics government and covers also the
activities of the U.S and European secret services and the massacres committed by the Croats in the Serb-majority Krajnas in May and August 1995.
With this sentence the heirs of the Jacenovac victims have been turned into
criminals.
The latest revelations of Ibran Mustafi in his book Controlled Chaos and of
former commander of the Special Unit of the Ministry of the Bosnian Muslim
Interior, Zoran Cegar, explain how the central government had ordered the
death of many of Srebrenica citizens, because politically unreliable, during
their escape through the woods towards Tuzla.
In May 2011, I walked along the paths of Donja Gradina camp number eight,
where prisoners were ferried beyond the river Sava from Jacenovac to be
killed and buried. I watched the green waves under the trees, each one corresponding to a mass grave, and felt the sadness of the fate condemning those
188
poor people to oblivion for political contortions and I had the impression that
they were also asking: why?
I think all these innocent victims are entitled to an official recognition, their
sufferings should never be forgotten. As the alleged genocide in Srebrenica
has been sanctioned in the European Parliament, the genocide perpetrated by
the Free State of Croatia from 1941 to 1945 must be recognized by the Court
of Human Rights in Strasbourg. It must be done to stop historical manipulation and prevent the inhabitants of the green waves of Donja Gradina and
all the others, killed in the ravines of Jadovno or in Danica, in Kerestinac, in
Gospic, to be deprived of the dignity they deserve.
I know a deep distrust in the institutions of the International justice reigns in
Bosnia. But the Court of Justice in Chicago has accepted the complaint of
some organizations in the USA, Serbian victims of the genocide in Krajina
and Serbs from Krajina, against the U.S. State mercenary agency, Military
Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI) for their intervention. The State of Illinois will be in charge of the process. (Daily newspaper Slobodna Dalmacija ).
This agency trained the Croatian army officers and provided technical support for the Flash and Storm Operations in May and August 1995, becoming
responsible for the ethnic cleansing and killings of the Serbian people in the
former Republic of Serbian Krajina. The two organizations are asking for a
strong compensation for every Serb killed. They might fail, but at least someone will talk about the problem of Serbs ethnic cleansing in their region.
These actions are internationally considered a justified act to free a Croatian
territory.
It is time to react against these lies appealing to international justice. It is time
to do it now, when some of the Jacenovac survivors are still able to testimony
the truth and to ask for a fair judgement against the 1941 Free State of Croatia. It is imperative to fight for the Memory of the Jacenovac victims.
189
Ana Krini Lozica
BETWEEN MEMORY AND OBLIVION:

JASENOVAC AS A DOUBLY
MEDIATED TRAUMA
ABSTRACT
The new permanent exhibition at the Memorial Museum of Jasenovac
is divided into two thematic units, which partly overlap and reveal the
basic problem of relationship between representation and trauma. One
unit concerns the musealisation and commemoration of a site of Holocaust or genocide, while the other deals with the attitude of museological and memorial practice towards a socialist past. Thus, the first thematic unit which commemorates the site of a traumatic event and
shapes the museum collection on the basis of a crime faces various
problems. The issue of (im)possibility of testimony and the consequences of institutionalising memory are intertwined with the interaction between historiography and fiction in transmitting a traumatic
event, the role of various segments of the exhibition (historiographic,
architectural, design-related), artworks, and memorials in mediating
the trauma(s), as well as the attitude of musealisation and commemoration towards (re/forming) the collective identity and collective
memory. Another subgroup of problems is not readily visible at first
glance, but it is nevertheless present in the new permanent exhibition
at the Jasenovac Museum. It refers to the shift in the paradigms of representation and the influence of cultural policies on commemorating
the socialist past. It is a meta-museological and meta-historiographic
issue, which includes a change in museological practices and the reinvention of history, which is characteristic for post-socialist countries.
A diachronic survey of this shift in the paradigms of representation and
191
comparison between the rhetoric of permanent exhibitions and monuments in various social/political/economic systems would reveal
whether these paradigms belong to broader cultural paradigms, such
as modernism and postmodernism, and to which extent the change in
permanent exhibitions can be explained through these broader cultural
paradigms. An analysis of the ways in which collective identity, mechanisms of remembrance, and attitude towards the past influence the
representations of trauma in museums and monuments is bound to offer new insights as to the alterations of the permanent exhibition at the
Jasenovac Museum.
Keywords: collective memory, lieux de memoire, lacunae, trauma, representation, Jasenovac, permanent exhibition
Writings about exhibitions mainly focus on what is exhibited, whereas the

theme of the exhibition is in most cases left to highly specialised museological
texts or art criticism.1 Only when the media become interested in a museum
exhibition, because of the sensitivity of its topic, as is the case with the new
exhibit of the Memorial Museum of Jasenovac, laden with ideological and
political connotations, the debate about it spreads beyond the narrow framework of the profession and reaches the general public. But despite so much
media interest and numerous reactions provoked by the new permanent exhibition of the Museum authored by Nataa Mataui (preliminary design and
scenario), Leonida Kova (art design) and Helena Paver-Njiri (architectural
design), experts have written very little about it. Idis Turato wrote about the
architectural aspect of the exhibition in Oris, Silva Kali2 had a review of
the exhibition in Zarez, and it was elimir Laslo,3Vesna Deli Gozze4 and Lucia Benyovsky5 who raised the quality of polemical writing to the next, professional level, in Vijesti muzealaca i konzervatora, along with Natasa Jovii6 in Review of Croatian History and Julija Ko7 in a paper she presented at
the Fourth International Conference on Jasenovac. The approach to the topic
of the listed authors is an indication the topic goes beyond the scope of the
museological profession.
The topic of the new museum exhibition in Jasenovac concerns two partially
overlapping groups of problems, which boil down to the basic problem of the
relationship between representation and trauma. One group of problems con-
192
cerns the musealisation and commemoration of a site of the Holocaust or genocide, and the treatment of a socialist past in museological and architectural
practice. The relationship between representation and trauma is twofold: on
the one hand, the different methods of representation of trauma (including
such diverse fields as architecture, sculpture, design, historiography, pedagogy, and museology) are used in an attempt to mediate the traumatic experience being commemorated. On the other hand, the latent working of a
trauma or traumas affects the representation and symbolisation strategies,
inscribing itself in the trauma discourse (becoming present not only in the
exhibition, but also in the debate between experts and the general public).
The first group of problems commemorating the place where the traumatic
event occurred and grounding the museum collections on the crime - concerns a variety of issues. The question of the (im)possibility of testimony and
the consequences of the institutionalization of remembrance are intertwined
with the interaction between historiography and fiction in the transmission
of the traumatic event, the roles of different segments of the exhibition (historiographic, architectural, design), works of art and memorials in mediating
trauma(s), as well as the relation between musealisation and commemoration
and the (re/formation) of the collective identity and collective remembrance.
As for the second group of problems, at first sight they are not as noticeable,
but they are still present in the new exhibition of the Museum of Jasenovac
and concern a representational paradigm shift and the impact of cultural policies on qualifying a socialist past. This is a meta-museological and meta-historiographic topic that includes changing museum practices and re-examining history, so typical of post-communist countries. The diachronic consideration of the shift in representational paradigms and a comparison of the
rhetoric of exhibitions and sculptures/monuments in various social/political/
economic systems are needed to see if those representational paradigms belong to broader cultural paradigms, modernism and postmodernism, and to
what extent the successive exhibitions are interpretable by means of such
broader cultural paradigms. By analysing the way in which collective identities, mechanisms of remembrance and attitudes toward the past affect museological and architectural representations of a trauma, I will try to examine
the changes in the exhibitions at the Museum of Jasenovac.
193
The new exhibition of the Memorial Museum of Jasenovac set up in 2006,

similar to many other new museums commemorating the Holocaust or genocide, twists the modernist concept of the white cube, in order to approximate the postmodern museum as a time capsule. The theme of fascism and
genocide testifying to the collapse of the Enlightenment reason (i.e., to its
dark irrational side) is also presented by means of an architectural design
denying the comprehensibility of the Euclidean geometry: like the Jewish
Museum in Berlin and the Holocaust Museum in Washington, according to
the new architectural design of the Museum of Jasenovac by architect Helena
Paver-Njiri, the walls are slanted, with crevices and sharp edges, and dysfunctional and unpredictable architectural solutions that create a sense of discomfort, irrationality and interruption (Fig. 1). Abandoning the concept of
the previous permanent exhibitions staged in 1968 and 1988, which featured
a neutral exhibition room showing the inmates personal belongings, documents and photos, the new exhibition transforms the two exhibition rooms
into a black maze. Its architecture stages the theme of the exhibition: low,
rather stuffy metal boxes with rough sharp edges, exuding a strong and unpleasant smell of rubber and rusty metal, are an imitation of the wood shacks
in which the camp prisoners were detained, thus creating an evocative atmosphere. The neutrality of the modernist mode of representation in which
the exhibition is subordinated to perception of the eye has been taken very
low, to the level of physical reception,
where hearing, smell and tactility govern the perception of the exhibited. Intellectual and physical experience are
intertwined in a way characteristic of
the postmodern mode of representation, while the exhibited is no longer
considered in the context of isolation,
but as a relation, and the visitor, who
was only a spectator in the previous
exhibitions, is now a participant.
1 Jasenovac Memorial Site, Memorial Museum,

2006. Interior of the Museum.
Creating an overlap between the present and the past in the minds of the
visitors is attempted at through some
194
procedures replacing representation with the performative: in one of the

dark corners the visitor finds himself or herself between the projector and
the screen, with his shadow inscribed in the photos of the camp being projected onto the screen, while at another place in the maze Barthes illusion of
communication with the dead is established as the visitors eye meets the frozen look of individual victims posing in family photos before they were
brought to the camp (Fig. 2).
The exhibition as a time machine that takes visitors to a symbolic reconstruction of the events in order to arouse in them certain emotions is characteristic
of the theatrical approach to setting up exhibitions, which began in the early
1990s and culminated after the Expo 2000 in Hannover.8 Since the remains
of the Jasenovac camp were completely destroyed, the Jasenovac Memorial
is in a special position when compared to other memorials of the similar type,
in so far as the material remains of the events being commemorated have
been reduced to a minimum. After presenting his solution for the memorial
complex in 1960, Bogdan Bogdanovi dismissed the idea that the camp should
be
reconstructed,
thinking it would be
unauthentic;9 the authors of the new exhibition have opted for a
solution that creates
images and reconstructs the climate in
the camp. Although an
aspect of the theatrical
structure or framework is inherent in all
types of exhibition,
2 Jasenovac Memorial Site, Memorial Museum, 2006. Victim
scenery and museographotographs projected onto a screen, with a plasma screen in the
background, displaying the names of the victims.
phy are nevertheless in
conflict with one another, as observed by Gottfried Korff.10 While scenery
presents a particular topic without the original object, museography outlines
the subject using real objects (musealia), which are separated from their true
reality through a meaningful selection process and thus become documents
of that particular reality.11 The exhibition of the Memorial Museum of
195
Jasenovac is halfway between the two extremes: the authentic objects

(musealia) found at the site of the Jasenovac camp have been exhibited as part
of a show close to the theatrical approaches to setting up exhibitions (Schmidl
proposes the term semi-scenographic exhibitions for such hybrid types of
shows) (Fig. 3).12
The new museum exhibition clearly breaks with the representation paradigms that were used in the previous two exhibitions. The Memorial Museum
opened in 1968 and had an exhibition hall and a cinema theatre.13 The memorial building designed by Petar Vovk, which still houses the museum, once
had in its exhibition hall the sculpture called For the Victims of Fascism in
Jasenovac by Petar Damonja, which is now located opposite the entrance to
the museum, and the sculpture A Dead Inmate by Stanko Jani, previously
placed alongside the museum building. The first museum exhibition, staged
by the former Museum of the Revolution of the People of Croatia, whose idea
came from and was conceptually and
contextually developed by curator
Ksenija Dekovi, with uka Kavuri as
the author of the interior design of the
exhibition hall, placed too much focus
on the general circumstances in Yugoslavia prior to 1941, and too little on the
Jasenovac camp itself, says Lucija
Benyovsky.14 The glass cabinets
showed the personal belongings of prisoners, original letters of the illegal
camp management of the Communist
Party of Croatia, original documents
written by the Ustashas, and reproductions of drawings made in the camp by
Daniel Ozma. It also exhibited the tools with which the Ustashas killed the
prisoners, and documents and photographs from the time of the NDH and
immediately after the liberation of the camp, arranged into a row along the
lateral walls of the exhibition hall. In addition to the exhibits and thematic
texts and legends accompanying the items, the visitors learnt about Nazism
196
and fascism in Europe and in our region, the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia and the work and happenings in the Jasenovac concentration camp, as well as the organised resistance of the prisoners.
The second permanent museum exhibition was staged in 1988, with Dragoje
Luki and Antun Mileti as authors of the preliminary concept and contents,
and Joa Rebernak as author of the art design. It showed more of the museums paper documentary collection, giving a more credible depiction of the
events in the camp and the fates of the prisoners. The exhibits were arranged
into three layers: the upper level showed a series of large-sized photographs
of the crimes of the Nazis, fascists and Ustashas in the period from 1941 to
1945 in the NDH. The second level exhibited successively copies of laminated
documents and photographs made by the Ustashas, with themed legends, and
glass cases with items retrieved from the mass graves. Below the middle layer
stood glass cabinets, which exhibited the prisoners personal belongings, the
tools they were killed with, as well as part of the equipment of the camp offices.15 Based on the available information regarding the previous exhibitions, it is possible to conclude that they regarded the prisoners as masses
sacrificed in watershed events that were the cornerstones laid in the struggle
for the establishment of the new socialist state, and that they also addressed
the audiences as masses sharing the same collective anti-fascist identity built
on the feeling of empathy with the victims of fascism (the same rhetoric prevailed in the Jasenovac documentaries screened in the Museum cinema theatre).16 The discourse of the two previous exhibitions had a totalising effect,
one that was mythic in that it introduced the fundamental values of socialism,
accenting the revolutionary aspect of establishment of the new order, which
spoke to the masses in the language of a grand narrative that set up universal
values. The mode of representation used balanced or harmonised the individual in order to emphasise the general (which is particularly evident in the
1988 exhibition: the upper layer had a series of large-sized photos showing
the crimes of the Nazis, fascists and Ustashas in the period from 1941 to 1945
in the Independent State of Croatia) and relied on the symbols of sacrifice to
address the cosmic, universal and ideological. This focus on the universal is
evident in the sculptures that remain part of the Jasenovac Memorial Site
after the exhibition was changed. Both the 1968 relief dedicated to the victims
of fascism and the Flower by Bogdan Bogdanovi from the 1966, although
devoid of ideological content, suggest universal human values at a symbolic
197
level: the huge concrete flower raises the story about the suffering of the inmates and regeneration of life to the cosmic level of the cyclical quality of
nature, thereby evoking a strong emotional response in the visitor (rapture
and affection), while the relief, consisting of human bones in wood fettered
in iron chains, symbolically evokes the general human dimension of captivity
and death.
The innovation arriving with the new exhibition, in accordance with the scientific methods of modern museology, is the reduction of the universal discourse to a private story. The memorial sites and museums redesigned or set
up for the first time in the last 15 years, such as those of the late 1990s in
Bergen Belsen, Buchenwald, Flossenburg, Neuengammeu and Dachau,17 as
well as Budapests House of Terror from 2002,18 have incorporated survivor
testimonies into their exhibitions for visual and emotional effects. This individualist approach to victims is at the base of the new exhibition in the Memorial Museum of Jasenovac: the first and last names of all of the known
victims stand printed on glass plates hanging vertically along the entire ceiling of the museum, victim information is displayed on plasma screens, showing each victims name, year of birth and death, and ethnicity, and there are
computers on each visitors can read information about individual victims and
how they died (Fig. 4). While the previous exhibitions presented the victims
as a nameless mass and large numbers (piles of personal items found in the
mass graves, the tools used for mass killings, the row of large-format photographs of massacred bodies from the 1988 exhibition), in the new exhibition
the emphasis is on individual destinies, some of which are presented in the
form of audiovisual survivor testimonies. Leonida Kova, the author of the
art design of the new exhibition, talking about the representational paradigm
changing from the totalising one to that which emphasises the individual, and
the shifting of stress from the general to the study of individual cases, says
198
her intention was to treat the lists with the names of all the victims as a document, not as a monument.19
By shifting the focus of the exhibition from the meta-narrative to individual
stories, the authors also changed its rhetoric. The rhetoric of the previous
exhibitions was simple and easily understandable to everyone, while the neutrality of the exhibition rooms, with the exhibits and texts of the legends accompanying the items displayed traditionally created the illusion of a transparent discourse easily readable by all visitors. The new permanent exhibition resorts to complex symbolic procedures to represent the trauma. According to Nataa Jovii, the Museum Director, glass visually unites all segments of the exhibition (glass panels, cabinets) and is symbolic at two levels,
evocative of the fragility of human life and of potential danger (symbolised
by shards of glass) (Fig. 5).20 The artificiality of film fragments shown in the
exhibition is emphasised with an auditory trick: the films are silent, with the
sound of the film rolls rotated by the film projector subsequently added to it,
199
meant to inform the visitor they are really media-mediated events, not documents showing life as it was in the camp.21
Speaking in Aristotles terms, the lower registers used in the previous exhibitions were abandoned for the sake of a loftier style, i.e., more complex
modes of mediation of traumatic events in the history of the camp. Using the
performative (the museum as a pageant of the happenings it commemorates,
whose purpose is to encourage the visitor to the imaginary participation in
the events of the past, whose shadow becomes inscribed in the photos) and
symbolic representations of the trauma (the role of glass in the exhibition) is
meant to convey, not just describe, the experience of being in the camp. Such
procedures belong to the field of construction of the imaginary and are thus
closer to artistic modes of representation of trauma, which introduces to the
museum practice the extremely important issue of the impact of artistic practice on exhibitions, i.e., of the relationship between facts and the imaginary,
historiography and fiction.
200
A lot of controversy and attacks stemmed from this issue when it comes to
the new museum exhibition. Many have accused the new exhibition of aestheticising death and covering up brutal facts, in light of Jaspers argument
that poetry is an inappropriate means for understanding Nazi crimes, because
it overlooks the banality of evil, and Arendts argument about the mutual
contamination of facts and fiction.22 Thus, the historian Zorica Stipeti claims
that aesthetics must not underlie a museum exhibition commemorating a
place of execution.23 Interestingly, almost none of the participants in the great
media debate about the exhibition tries to justify the use of performative and
symbolic representations in the exhibition as an attempt to convey what cannot be conveyed in the form of clear constatives, i.e., to allow insight unattainable when mere facts are shown. The question is, how understandable
will these modes of representation be to the visitors and how they will be
interpreted. Because of the ambiguities of the rhetoric used (which derives
from the symbolic and performative approach to trauma representation), the
new museum exhibition opens up the possibility that a part of the potential
audience might misunderstand that which is on display. (This is probably one
of the reasons which prompted the then Croatian President Stjepan Mesi to
voice his fear that the new museum exhibition will not make it clear to the
young generations what really happened in Jasenovac.24)
What makes the new exhibition of the Memorial Museum of Jasenovac different from the contemporary museological and historiographic approaches
used by museums such as Yad Vashem in Jerusalem or the Holocaust Museum in Washington, which provided models for the new Jasenovac exhibition in the first place, is the discord between the visual aspect of the Museum
design (interior design of the Museum and the visual aspect of the exhibition)
and the historiographic, or textual component (present in the legends, explanations of the exhibits, posters with a brief description of the structure of the
camp and the wider historical context, and a database covering historical topics related to the operations of the camp). In fact, these two aspects of the
exhibition relate to history in completely opposite ways. The visual part of
the exhibition denies the linearity of the progress of history and the historical
shift away from the subject it deals with in that it functions as a time capsule
in which the past and present overlap.25 At the physical level, there is an effort to create a link between the visitor and the actual experience of being in
201
the camp, to provoke an emotional response and empathy with specific inmates and their destinies.
However, the historical discourse accompanying the exhibition is quite the
opposite the legends are terse, and the events in the camp are described in
a most concise fashion, at the level of historical facts. The approach of historiography is fully positivist,26 its documentarity based on the presentation of
evidence and primary source documents, and in an attempt to achieve absolute objectivity the author of the texts is completely invisible, creating a semblance of transparency of writing as an open window into history. In contrast
to the visual part of the exhibition, the textual part reveals no attempt to correlate the past with the present, or the subject writing the text with the object
the text is about. Such an approach to historiography, based on constatives
and referential statements about a discrete object of research, objectifies the
victim, reduces the possibility of empathy and neutralises the meaning of the
traumatic events. There is no narration linking the exhibits into a coherent
whole. Excerpts from Ustasha propaganda films, documentaries made in the
former Yugoslavia and screened as part of the previous exhibitions, laws and
decrees from the period of the Independent State of Croatia, items owned by
the inmates (clothing, artifacts produced in the camp, watches, recipes and
the diaries they wrote) are exhibited as if they were facts speaking for themselves, without any additional explanations that would put them in a context
(Figs. 6, 7, and 8). The original context of the museum objects has been replaced with an artificial museum context, which renders the original historical circumstances insufficiently clear.27 Understanding them requires an informed visitor, one capable of seeing that the Ustasha propaganda film shows
the camp in a false, better light (by presenting it as a work camp, not a death
camp) and that the photographs of the diplomatic meeting between Hitler and
Paveli and the arrival of the German army in the capital of the Independent
202
State of Croatia, with

their strong rhetoric
and composition, convey messages whose
content is ideologically
distinct; also a visitor
that has to know (and is
able) to read the small
blurry print of the
scans of NDH legislation shown on the display in order to understand their meaning.
6 Jasenovac Memorial Site, Memorial Museum, 2006. An excerpt from the
The different narradocumentary Kula smrti [The Tower of Death] by Vladimir Tadej
tives merely suggested
by the exhibits (from which they were drawn and represent fragments) are
completely ignored by the exhibition, as a result of the authors aspiration to
make it devoid of any ideological background (according to them, that was
motivated by the need to depart from
the earlier exhibitions, which, among
other things, served to promote an
ideology).28 Reading the ideological
background of the documentary films
made by different regimes requires a
visitor who is aware of the fact neither
those documentary films nor the photos provide objective evidence. Rather
than just terse legends, additional explanations are needed to clarify the
heterogeneity of the presented standpoints, as imposed by the juxtaposition
of the victims perspective, in the form
of filmed survivor accounts and childrens drawings, and the execution7 Jasenovac Memorial Site, Memorial Museum,
ers perspective, represented by some
2006. A photograph taken in 1942.
of the exhibited photographs (among
203
other things, propaganda photographs taken by professional reporters of the

NDH photo service have been put on display, such as those taken by the photographer Stoger for the exhibition Concentration camps one year later, held
in Zagreb in 1942).29
The ambivalence between the visual and
textual is what distinguishes the new exhibition at Jasenovac from
many other contemporary exhibitions of museums or memorial sites
commemorating crimes
of genocide, and warns
of a problem that is present not only in the exhibition itself, but also
8 Jasenovac Memorial Site, Memorial Museum, 2006. Prisoners watches in the media controversy surrounding the exhibition, which is not publicly clearly articulated. It
has to do with the trauma of the Croatian War of Independence inscribed in
the discourse of the trauma of the Jasenovac camp, which is latent in the exhibition as well as the texts written by professionals, interviews and media
appearances on the subject.
Avoiding representations and interpretations of the events of World War II
(by referring to the facts that speak for themselves), as well as evading the
construction of narrative frames of the exhibition out of fear they might repeat the grand ideological narratives of the previous ones, is symptomatic of
an unresolved relationship with history, the bipolarity in the public opinion
when the evaluation of the key events in Croatian history is concerned, political and ideological disputes over their interpretation, as well as changes to
the collective identity of the nation after the collapse of socialism. Namely,
there is a rift between the old and new exhibitions, caused by the key events
such as the collapse of socialism, i.e., the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the
outbreak of the Croatian War of Independence, which led to the re-examination of history and the reformation of collective identity. With the transition
204
from the supranational collective history of socialist nations to writing a national history (characteristic of all post-communist countries, according to
Groys30), the Independent State of Croatia, along with the Ustasha movement,
gained a prominent place in the creation of the new national identity. The
Croatian public is divided when it comes to evaluating this aspect of national
history; the public discourse is ambivalent, while history textbooks approach
it in a selective and neutralising way. In this context, too much was expected
of the new museum exhibition:31 to represent a dual collective trauma and
create a unique narrative (clearly positioned in relation to the recent Croatian
history) currently non-existent in the public discourse, which will enjoy the
status of single, unambiguous and official history, resolving all disagreements and tensions related to issues in Croatian history and collective
memory in the political discourse.
Instead, the new exhibition manifests a missing dialogue about the role of the
past in the present, as well as the role of the present in the ways of how the
past is interpreted. Occupying a positivist position that aspires to utter objectivity, the authors disregard the fact historical facts, as seen by Pierre Nora,
are a transfer of actual historical events to cultural memory, which transforms historical events into their copies, which are then used to describe and
define the present.32 Such a position prevents consideration of the selected
method, problematisation of the impact of the social context and ideological
background on ones own position, the relationship between a collective identity, mechanisms of memory and relation to the past, which ultimately prevents the representation of trauma.
With the disappearance of what Groys calls the new, global, socialist humanity,33 as a protagonist of the then new history, the trauma of Jasenovac ceases
to be universal and becomes a trauma which only members of those ethnic
groups whose members were victimised identify with, that is, it becomes the
Others trauma. This is confirmed by the numerous discussions about
whether the new museum was or was not built as a museum of the Holocaust,
as in fact the Jews imprisoned there were in the minority, about whether it
sufficiently stresses the genocidal policy targeting the Serbs, or about how
the exhibition tries to compensate for the fact the Roma victims were previously disregarded, etc. The impossibility of creating a single narrative, as well
as the disappearance of the subjectivity that can tell it, which leads to its frag-
205
mentation to a multitude of unrelated segments removed from their historical context, are not only characteristic of the writing of history in post-socialist countries, but one of the principal characteristics of post-modernity.
The display labyrinth of the new exhibition shows just that: since there is
glass everywhere, the exhibits are reflected in each other, and the voices of
witnesses addressing the visitors from the screen come from various directions, merging with one another. Looking at an inmates watch, somebodys
glasses or a piece of clothing, the glass of a display case reflects the face of a
surviving inmate projected from a display set in another corner, while the
screen showing moving images reflects the sequences from the films shown
on the screen across (Figs. 9, 10). The grand narrative of socialist modernism
has thus been shattered into a multitude of pieces of the post-transition postmodernism. Some critics of the new exhibition, like Julija Ko,34 have interpreted its positivist objectivity and neutrality as an attempt to mitigate and
normalise a crime. They interpret the fact that the photos showing piles of
dead bodies of tortured
and slaughtered prisoners,
which are part of the museum collection but have
not been exhibited in the
permanent exhibition, as
re-styling and harmonising the real, harsh face
of the camp, which borders the suppression and
denial of the traumatic
event. In her article about
the exhibition, Natasa Jo9 Jasenovac Memorial Site, Memorial Museum, 2006. A woman
survivors account, reflections.
vii, the Museum Director, explains that emphasising piles of bone and blood (as was the case in the
previous exhibition) emphasises the atrocity from the executioners perspective, while the intention of the new exhibition is to shift its focus to the victims and their individual stories, and to give the survivors the opportunity to
206
speak, rather than

speak on their behalf.35 A parallel
can be drawn with
the Eichmann trial,
where witness testimonies were favoured instead of
legal documents, in
an attempt to reconstruct the facts
from the point of
view of the victims,
and recreate his10 Jasenovac Memorial Site, Memorial Museum, 2006. The interior, reflections
tory based on how it
is seen by the victims, rather than the victors. However, to tell the story of
totalitarian crimes against humanity, according to Arendt, it is necessary to
focus on the criminal, not on the victim.36 Shifting the focus from victim to
executioner means avoiding talking about the crimes, or the reasons that led
to them.
The hidden reason for removing the pictures depicting violence from the
permanent exhibition is the trauma of the Croatian War of Independence,
which significantly permeates the new exhibition, and the resulting debate.
In fact, the Museum Director considers the explicit display of violence in the
old exhibition the cause that generated the new violence. She quotes the example of a travelling exhibition organised by the Museum, which was shown
to soldiers at the Yugoslav Peoples Army barracks from 1986 and 1991,
which had a strong propaganda role: photographs of slaughtered bodies were
accompanied by texts describing in detail the suffering in the camp and the
ways in which the prisoners were killed. Jovii believes this kind of approach produces hatred and calls for revenge and aggression, causing the
repetition of crimes, which happened in the recent war.37 What is symptomatic about the attitude of the Museum Director is that the traumatic event
(specifically, images of horror) is not treated according to the Freudian principle, as something which should be recalled and reconstructed in order for
207
the trauma to be resolved, but rather as something to be suppressed, censored, forgotten. The traumatic event (images of it) is considered dangerous,
since its showing causes the generation of new trauma. This approach seems
to claim the opposite of the usual that it should be remembered in order not
happen again in order that it is not repeated.
There are multiple ways in which oblivion has been inscribed in the Jasenovac Memorial Site. The physical aspect of this oblivion concerns the fact there
are no material remains of the camp complex, as the Ustashas mined and
burned the camp while withdrawing from Jasenovac in order to destroy any
physical evidence of its existence. Today, the Jasenovac Memorial is based on
the celebration of gaps (which began in the early 1960s): the places where the
camp buildings once stood were marked by deepening the ground in the
shape of shallow inverted pyramids; shallow cones of packed earth mark
some graves and sites of torture; some graves, completely overgrown with
trees and bushes, are marked withboards (or monuments). Commemoration
is based on emptiness, on marking that which is no more. The Memorial Museum was built on scorched ground; it does not show the camp, but rather
evokes what is not; it does not represent, but rather symbolises.
The purpose of destruction of the material remains of the camp was not always a pragmatic one, in the sense of evidence destruction; in some cases,
this purpose was symbolic. For example, the memorial plaque put up in 1989
by the Municipal Committee of the Federation of NOR Veteran Associations
Novska to mark the mass graves in the village of Jablanac, whose population
has since been displaced, was smashed and thrown into the grass during the
Croatian War of Independence. The broken memorial plaque has been retrieved and re-exhibited, in an attempt meant not only to reconstruct the past,
but also to reconstruct the commemoration of the atrocity (its re-commemoration), with a double cut inscribed in it (doubly attempted oblivion). The
physical break in the continuity of the museum exhibition, which is also
somehow related to oblivion in the sense of loss of the museum collection,
was caused by the Croatian War of Independence, when the museum collection was taken away,38 a part of which has been lost, and a part (about 70 of
it) returned to the museum in 2001. Beside the aspects of physical destruction
of evidence of the crime and the symbolic act of erasure of memory and the
loss of part of the museum collection and archives, oblivion is present in how
the new exhibition relates to the previous ones, as well as to their ideological
208
background. Apart from adapting to the spirit of the epoch by changing the
representation paradigm, the new exhibition, according to curator Leonida
Kova,39 also negates the concept of the old exhibitions, thus breaking with a
part of history and declaring it irrelevant, suppressing the socialist interpretation of history, as well as the corresponding representation paradigm.
Each permanent exhibition is susceptible to obsolescence, and the development of museology, as well as changes in the cultural and social context, require constant revision. However, the media controversy that developed
around the alleged intention of the exhibition authors to remove Damonjas
relief due to its obsolescence raises the issue that inevitably comes up when
a museum changes its exhibition; this is the question of what should be kept
and what should be removed, and what elements of memory created after the
camp liberation are worth mentioning, and which are not.40
Although the main purpose of the Jasenovac Memorial Site and Memorial
Museum is the production and storage of memory, it is built on cuts and lacunae. Therefore, Jasenovac is not a place of memory as defined by Pierre
Nora (according to Nora, this will is the main constituent factor of a place of
remembrance41); apart from the will to remember, Jasenovac is marked by
the will to forget. Nora defines places of remembrance as places that are
simultaneously material, symbolic and functional, in which history is mixed
with memory, where time and oblivion stop, and things become fixed; they
are also places where old meanings are revived and new ones created,
through the creation of ever new and unpredictable connections. Although
this term implies oblivion in the sense of disappearance of living memories
(and the introduction of historical thinking), a disappearance after which
memory goes through a process of reconstruction, leading to changes in the
collective memory, oblivion and reincarnation of some moments in history,
what constitutes places of memory is the will to remember. When it comes to
Jasenovac as a place of commemoration (part of which is the work of the new
trauma inscribed in the old one, among other things), the will to forget coexists with the will to remember. In the case of Jasenovac, we are not dealing
with a mere case of the incidental falling into oblivion as a result of the flow
of time, as implied by Noras definition of the term (nor are we dealing with
the absence of the will to remember, as is the case with archaeological sites,
which Nora cites as places that do not belong to the category of places of remembrance), but the will to forget which suppresses and censors.
209
The kinds of gaps Libeskind based his Jewish Museum in Berlin on, both in
the physical and symbolic sense, are also inscribed in the Jasenovac Memorial
Site, at various levels. They have not been materialised by the design of the
museum itself, but they have certainly been present in the history of the area
since the end of World War II to the present day, in the decisions and solutions on how to mark the graves / places of execution and the demolished
camp facilities, as well as in the relation between the visual and textual parts
of the new exhibition, pointing out the complexity of interweaving historiography, architecture, design, art objects, collective memory and the institutionalisation of memory. The gaps reveal a fundamental problem shared by
not only the new exhibition, but also the history of the Jasenovac Memorial
Site, as well as the discourse of the professionals and the general public about
the musealisation and commemoration of events in the recent Croatian history, which is the existence of oblivion and suppression as the reverse of remembrance and commemoration.
This text is an extended version of a previously unpublished paper read on 9th September
2010 in the High and Low Congress, organised by the EAM (European Network for AvantGarde and Modernism studies) at the Department of Art History of Adam Mickiewicz
University in Pozna, Poland.
2
Silva Kali, Memoriranje zloina, in: Zarez, 18 April 2007.
elimir Laslo, Jasenovac, in: Vijesti muzealaca i konzervatora, 4 (2005), pp. 34-38.
Vesna Deli Gozze, Stratite kao prirodna nepogoda, in: Vijesti muzealaca i
konzervatora, 4 (2005), pp. 39-40.

5
Lucija Benyovsky, Muzej u Jasenovcu, in: Vijesti muzealaca i konzervatora, 1-4 (2007),
pp. 52-57.
6
Nataa Jovii, Jasenovac Memorial Museums Permanent Exhibition: The Victim as an

Individual, in: Review of Croatian History, 1/2 (2006), pp. 295299.
Julija Ko, Concentration Camp Jasenovac Today: History Rewritten. Tudjman`s idea
ultimately realized? Fourth International Conference on Jasenovac, 3031 May 2007,
Banja Luka.
Martin Schmidl, Postwar Exhibition Design: Displaying Dachau, Koln, 2010, p. 14.
210
9 Nataa Mataui, Jasenovac 1941.-1945.: Logor smrti i radni logor, Jasenovac, Zagreb,
2003, p. 151.
10
Schmidl, ibid., p. 33.
11
Ivo Maroevi offers a definition of the term musealia in Uvod u muzeologiju, Zagreb,
1993, p. 102.
12
Schmidl, ibid., p. 34.
13
The basic information about the previous two exhibitions is given by Mataui, ibid., p.
152.
14
Benyovsky, ibid. p. 52.
15
The descriptions of the 1968 and 1988 exhibitions were taken from the official web page
of the Jasenovac Memorial Site (http://www.jusp-jasenovac.hr).
As requested by the visitors, the museum screened Jasenovac by Bogdan ii, Krv i
pepeo Jasenovca by Lordan Zafranovi, Evanelje zla by Gojko Kastratovi, Jasenovac by
Fedor Hanekovi, and Jasenovac by Gustav Gavrin and Kosta Hlavaty, based on the film
and photographs taken on 18 May 1945, incorporating parts of authentic Ustasha
propaganda films. Mataui, ibid., p. 154.
16
17
For more on the recent shift in the representation paradigm of commemorating

memorial sites in Germany, see: Schmidl, ibid., p. 261.
18
The House of Terror in Budapest is an example showing that the incorporation of

survivor testimonies in an exhibition does not guarantee the avoidance of an ideological
meta-narrative integrating such individual testimonies to fit its own promotional purposes.
The extremely suggestive scenery of the exhibition, as well as the aggressive musical
background, combined with the emotionally elevated discourse of the narrator taking the
visitor through the exhibition through headphones, are meant to directly influence the
visitors emotions. The House of Terror is the only museum I have visited which controls
the movement of the visitor: the keepers of the exhibition prohibit the visitors to return to
the rooms they have already been in, thus forcing them to stick to a set itinerary, which
ends in the dungeon in the basement of the building, representing the emotional climax of
the exhibition, which every visitor who enters the building must pass through to reach the
exit.
19
The response of curator Leonida Kova published in Vjesnik on 20th December 2005 to
Damonjas accusations, also published in Vjesnik. Quoted by Kali, ibid.
20
Jovii, ibid., p. 298.
21
Silva Kali, op. cit., writes about the addition of the sound of a film projector to the
silent film. When visiting the museum, I was not able to hear that sound, perhaps because
of the other sounds present in the room. It seems to me that such a way of alerting to the
artificiality of the shown is too discreet, because it can easily go unnoticed. The permanent
exhibition of the Jewish Museum in Berlin solves the same issue, the issue of
211
deconstruction of the illusoriness of the documentary films screened, in an explicit way:

editing was used to add extracts from the testimonies of the camp survivors, to the effect of
direct contradiction between the images and text.
22
Shoshana Felman, Pravno nesvjesno: Suenja i traume u dvadesetom stoljeu, Zagreb,

2007, pp. 168, 175.
23
Adrijana Pitea, Vlado Vurui, Jasenovac opet posvaao ive zbog mrtvih, in: Jutarnji
list, 14 January 2006.

24
Tomislav Klauki, Brutalnost i uas premalo prikazani, in: Slobodna Dalmacija, 28

November 2006.
25
The visual aspect of the exhibition has a lot in common with the radical constructivist
approach to historiography as described by LaCapra in Writing History, Writing Trauma:
the presence of the aesthetic in the historiographic and the use of the performative; the
structural similarity between fiction and historiography; historiography presented as a
closed window reflecting the historians (or visitors) distorted image Dominick LaCapra,
Writing History, Writing Trauma, Baltimore, London, 2001, p. 8.
26
According to LaCapra, the positivist approach used in historiography is an extreme form

of the documentary, that is, of a self-sufficient model of research rejecting the possibility of
entering into a discussion with the Other, who is denied a voice of its own or a perspective
that might question the position of the observer / researcher, as well as his or her
assumptions and values. The pronounced referential component of historical research is a
criterion used to separate history from fiction LaCapra, ibid., pp. 26.
27
Writing about the role of museality in protecting memory, Ivo Maroevi says that the
memory of heritage stored in objects or complexes, in addition to their material and form,
also relates to their context: As a rule, musealised objects typically lose its original context
or a part of their primary historical context. The actual circumstances of their life are
preserved only in the documentation and the conceptual approach of those people capable
of imagining such circumstances. As for those visitors who are not able to imagine such
circumstances, the need for additional explanations, not present in the exhibition (some
more information about the camp is available to the visitor if he or she decides to sit at the
computer and explore the database, undeterred by the smell of rubber and stuffy air hoped
to evoke the atmosphere of the camp). Communicating the messages of material cultural
heritage is a special kind of protection of its memory. Although this process implies a
selection of relevant information about the objects or complexes being presented, (...) it is
of fundamental importance in the dissemination and interpretation of preserved and
perceived values. Otherwise, these values would be available only to a narrow circle of
people who know how to read the materials and shapes of items without mediators.
Mediation in the identification and detection of memory in the physical world around us
(through publications and video) allows its tangible and intangible participation in the
knowledge, perception and life of many people. Memory of cultural heritage is thus
gradually incorporated into human consciousness and becomes collective memory. See
Ivo Maroevi, Uloga muzealnosti u zatiti memorije, in: Informatica museologica, 3/4
212
(1996), pp. 57-58. Lucija Benyovsky also warns of the lack of a narrative framework that
would encompass the exhibition: The visitor expects the museum exhibition to tell a
story on a given topic. Most visitors cannot accept a symbolic reading of history before
they get a sufficient amount of information and explanations. Lucija Benyovsky, ibid., p.
56.
28
Jovii, ibid., pp. 296-298.
29
Benyovsky, ibid., p. 56.
30
Boris Groys, Back from the Future, in: The Art of Eastern Europe: A Selection of
Works for the International and National Collections of Moderna galerija Ljubljana, Wien,
Bozen, 2001, p. 12.
31
In his text Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma, Jeffrey C. Alexander explains how
reliving a trauma can be understood as a sociological process that determines a painful
injury caused to a collectivity, determines the victim, attributes accountability and
distributes the ideal and material consequences. Once a trauma has been lived in that way,
and also conceived and represented accordingly, a collective identity will be significantly
revised. After such a reconstruction of a collective identity, says Alexander, comes a period
of appeasement. Only after the calming of emotions and the disappearance of the exalted
and easily moved discourse of the trauma, the lessons of the trauma are objectified in the
monuments, museums and collections of historical artifacts. (Jeffrey C. Alexander,
Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma, in: Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity,
Berkley, Los Angeles, London, 2004, pp. 22, 23.). Although the museum exhibition in
Jasenovac deals with a trauma from 70 years ago, because of which we are to assume the
period of appeasement began a long time ago, problems arise due to the latent effects of
the new, still unresolved trauma, inscribed in the old one. I believe that the commotion
about the new museum exhibition and the heated discussions held in relation to it are
largely due to this new trauma, whose latent action has not been identified and articulated
in this specific case.
32
Pierre Nora, Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire, in:
Representations, 26 (1989.), pp. 7-24, 23, 24.

33
Boris Groys, Beyond Diversity: Cultural Studies and Its Post-Communist Other, in: Art
Power, Cambridge, London, 2008, pp. 155-157.

34
Ko, ibid.
35
36
Hannah Arendt, Eichmann u Jeruzalemu, Zagreb, 2002, pp. 12, 14.
37
38
The website of the museum states the information that at the beginning of the war the
museum collection and archives were packed in cases, ready for evacuation, which was not
done in time. As a consequence, some of the materials were confiscated and transferred to
213
archives in BiH, and in 2000 also to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington,
eventually returned to Jasenovac in 2001.
39
Kali, ibid.
40
In his text about the new exhibition of the Jasenovac museum, elimir Laslo draws
attention to the problem of selection of the criteria defining what should be kept, upgraded
or eliminated when it comes to memorials and memorial complexes today. Asked if we
should preserve the type of marking or commemorating we had between World War II and
the establishment of Croatia in 1990, Laslo responds that that which is valuable in both the
artistic and symbolic sense should be preserved and the rest should be removed (although
he then asks an ironic question, who is the one to decide on this). Laslo, ibid., p. 36.
41
Nora, ibid., pp. 11, 18-21.
214
Prof. Dr. Marko p. Atlagi

mr Dalibor m. Elezovi 1
FRANJO TUDJMAN AS THE FIRST

FORGER OF OVERALL NUMBER OF
TOTAL SERBIAN VICTIMS IN THE
JASENOVAC CONCETRATION CAMP
(1941-1945) IN FUNCTION OF
HISTORICAL GENOCIDAL CROATIAN
VERTICAL
Croatian have, throughout their long standing history, committed many

crimes in various wars, and especially committed crimes of genocide against
the Serbian people. Crimes of the Croats towards the Serbian people were
such, viewed through the historical vertical, that they become an integral
element of the Croatian national identity. There is no nation on European
soil, whose historical vertical is filled with crimes of genocide, as the Croatian
people.
The continuity of Croatians crimes against the Serbian people can be traced
to the times of the uprising of Ljudevit Posavski 819-822. During that time,
Ljudevit Posavski, fleeing from the Franks, took refuge among the Serbs in
Faculty of the University of Pristina With a temporary headquarters in Kosovska

Mitrovica
215
Dalmatia, in a village located in the vicinity of Imotski2.Ljudevi, instead of

thanking his Serbian host for his hospitality, beheaded him. This type of
Croatians crimes against the Serbs became a vertical of the Croatian
"history", since the 9th century to the present day.
Croats did not only committed crimes against the Serbs, but also against the
other European nations. It is enough to illustrate just a few examples of
Croatian crimes in the Thirty Years' War to understand all the cruelty and
inhumanity, which Croatians had towards the people of Europe. In their
rampage, they have committed crimes of mutilation like chopping fingers
and cutting throats. Group of Croats tried to break away a child from a
woman's arms, only because they wanted to burn the child alive (...), but since
she clung tightly, they chop off her fingers and cut the throat to her
husband.3 In the same Thirty-year war, the Croats had done atrocities as
such: Croatians had, after looting and other inhumane acts, ravaged
everything, enslaved some men and woman, to some people they torn off
noses and ears, and to one man they dug both eyes and skinned his
hands.4 "In particular, the Croatians had committed mindless acts in that war
on the streets of Magdenburg" When the Croats withdrew from Magdenburg
in May of 1631 one could hear just the pitiful cries and yelling of the
remaining children, who constantly shouted for their fathers and mothers,
and because of insanity were unable to say to whom they belong. Some were
sitting next to their slain parents, which were lying in the blood on the streets
and are always calling and shouting: O Mom, O Dad. Some of the children
sucked their dead breasts, and at the same time used to scream so sadly that
even the stones in the land would have mercy5. Croats were particularly
noted in the Thirty Years War for their crimes against weak children. It was
their specialty: "Two Croatians in Magdenburg have found a small child that
cries recumbent in the street, each of them grabbed him by the leg and
splintered it down the middle. " 6Also German writer Johann Christoph
22
, , 15. , .
-, 2002, 130-132.
3 , , , 1953, 8.
4 Ibidem.
5 Ibidem, p. 10.
6 Ibidem, p. 13.
216
Schiller described all of the misdeeds of Croats in the Thirty Years War,
seeing them particularly as bandits, savages and robbers. Schiller gives the
following description of Magdenburg tragedy: "When the horrible gangs of
Croats surged in the unfortunate city, now only occurs the scene of
destruction, for which history does not have the words or the art paint
brushes. Neither the innocent time of childhood, nor helpless passion,
neither youth, neither gender or class, or beauty, nothing can disarm the
anger of the victors. Women were abused in the arms of their husbands,
daughters under the feet of their fathers, and the gender which could not
defend itself had only the advantage to serve as a double rage victim (...)53
women were found decapitated in a church (severed heads)."7 History of
Europe does not recognize such a bestial oppression of innocent children, as
they were conducted by Croats in Magdeburg. Croats threw children alive
into the fire with great pleasure. The constant frenzy extends the atrocities
on, until finally the smoke and fire create boundaries of greed. Already at the
beginning, in numerous places in the city they sparked the fire. Horrifying
was the crowd through sobs and corpses that flashed through the ruins,
through the blood that flowed in streams."8
The first major Vatican-Croatian-German genocide against the Serbs
occurred between the 1914-1918. This has been committed against the Serbs
in several ways. Firstly, the mass anti-Serb demonstrations, followed by the
beatings and killings of Serbs and the destruction of everything that is
Serbian. Secondly, through the execution, slaughter and by taking
respectable Serbs as hostages among whom were Ivo Andric and Vladimir
orovi and others.9 Third, through the hanging of Serbs, especially in
Trebinje and Gacko. At the head of every Serb that was hanged, they were
putting torn painting of Serbian King Peter or King Nicholas of Montenegro.
The fourth form was sent Serbs to concentration camps. Thus, in a camp in
Doboj were closed around 50,000 Serbs, and the several thousand of them
died of starvation. Within the camp called Arad in Romania around 35,000
Serbs died there from starvation, disease and winter. Inside the camp called
Ibidem, p. 31
Ibidem.
9 , ,
1999, 379.
8
217
Neider in Hungary, died because of torture about 7000 of Montenegro

women, children and the elderly. The fifth way, the destruction of the
Orthodox in the first genocide was staged arrests and trials with false
witnesses. Thus, just in the year of 1914 in Banja Luka and Zagreb they held
two "high treason processes in which they condemned to death and long
prison term several hundred Serbs.10 The sixth way of destroying Orthodox
was forcing Serbian civilians in front of the Austrian army against the Serbs.
Austrian and Croatian troops kill them from behind if they did not want to
go ahead. Croats, immediately after the creation of Yugoslavia in the 1918,
managed to create their Catholic religious organizations: "Eagles", "Catholic
Action", "Crusaders" and others, from which emerged the biggest criminals
of World War II, various congregations, and finally, the Ustashas as a
criminal organization with criminal leaders at the forefront as Ante Pavelic.
Other major Vatican genocide, of the Croatian Ustasha clerical fascist, by
Archbishop Stepinac and the Catholic clergy, had been committed against
Serbs during World War II between1941 to 1945. At that time they killed
about two million Serbs in the most brutal manner. Most Serbs were killed
in the Jasenovac concentration camp. It was the largest concentration camp
in the so-called Independent State of Croatia. Estimation of the number of
inmates killed in the Jasenovac concentration camp ranges over 700,000.11 In
the territory of the Independent State of Croatia from 1941 until 1945 most
of the victims were Serbs, followed by Jews and Gypsies. As early as
11/05/1945. the State Commission of Croatia informed the Nuremberg
Tribunal in writing, that the number of victims of Jasenovac concentration
camp was between 500,000 and 600,000.12 After that, the Association of
Veterans of Liberation called Bosanska Dubica, started in 15.11.1961. excavations in the area of Donja Gradina (the largest execution site within the
Jasenovac) and located a total of 120 mass graves of similar size. They
excavated the first three and determine the number of victims. However, it
was undesirable work, for Josip Broz Tito, and the work had to be suspended.
10
Ibidem, 378-379.
. , ,

, , , 20011, 15.
12 . , 1941-1945, , 1976, 1090-1100.
11
218
The Commission has estimated, based on the number of victims in the three
excavated mass graves, that the number of buried victims was about
55o.8oo.13
And Dr. Nikola Nikolic, a Croat from Bosnia, he spent part of the war in
Jasenovac himself, estimates that the number of people killed in the Jasenovac concentration camp was about 700,000.14 Former member of the Franciscan Catholic Jesuit order and one of the commanders of the Jasenovac
concentration camp Miroslav Filipovic said 06/25/1946 at the hearing as
follows: "According to the allegations of Max Luburi, which is likely to lead
evidence that concerns the slain Serbs, in four years, there has killed around
500,000 Serbs."15 How horrible and bestial crimes were committed against
Serbs by Croats, which is unprecedented in the history of Europe is best
shown by the fact: "Soon Ustashas came in Dubrovnik, adorned with chains
around their necks made of strung Serbian tongues and with baskets full of
Serbian eyes."16
However, the German representative Benzler, who reported to the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs in Berlin, 16.09.1942. the following: "Since the
establishment of this state (the ISC), until today (...) they paid with their lives,
with a very precise estimate, hundreds of thousands of Serbs."17And
commander in chief in command of the south, Lieutenant General Ler, in
27/09/1943. says this:"The most important element of the political situation in
Croatia, that the Croats were at this moment unprepared to govern
themselves (...), the police are merely an observer in terrorist acts against the
Orthodox population by the Ustashe, of which-according to the Ustasha400,000 were killed. " 18However, even Josip Broz Tito was forced to admit a
large number of victims (Serbs) in the Jasenovac concentration camp even
during the war. That is why Tito in a telegram from 04/04/1942. writes to the
Comintern: "That the Ustashas admit themselves (....)that around 500,000
13
. , , . 2, 1988.
. , , 1986, 190.
15 . , , . 2, 1988.
16 R. Mitchael, The Serbs choose to fight, New York, 1943, 148.
17 . , 20. , , 1994, 115.
18 Nrnberg documente, Nokw 376, . , 20. , 115.
14
219
people, mainly Serbs, were slaughtered."19 Also, the brigade commander,

Major General Ernst Fix gives his commander in chief Heinrich Himmler,
his brief assessment of Croatians: "Croatian Ustasha party group is Catholic,
undisciplined, poorly trained, in terms of combat unreliable, and known for
the fact, that between 600,000 and 700,000. of theirs religious and political
opponents were slaughtered in Balkan style, (....), they call themselves the
Croatian SS."20
Likewise, the German special commissioner for South Eastern Europe,
Herman Neubacher says: "Recipe of the Ustasha leader and leader of Croatia
Ante Pavelic, in relation to the Orthodox recalls the bloody religious wars of
the past: one-third of the Serbs must accept Catholicism, one-third must leave
the country and one third must die. This later point is met. When leading
Ustashas claim that around 1,000,000. Orthodox Serbs were slaughtered, I
think that this is an exaggeration. Based on the reports that I received, I
estimate that the number of defenseless and slaughtered is around 750,000."21
Likewise, the German Plenipotentiary General in Zagreb, Edmund
Horstenau speaks about the great wrongdoing of Croats: "Hose (Oster) was
telling me about the great courage by von Horstenau who because of
outrageous crimes against the 1.8 million of Serbs by the Croats, not only in
the most severe form called the Marshal Kvaternik responsible, but he
reports about everything he wrote, which is of even greater importance. He
said Kvaternik that during the last year, unfortunately, been through a lot,
but nothing that could compare to the wrongdoings of Croats ."22
Another German general, an eyewitness to the events in the ISC testifies,
"while German troops were stationed in a small number of places in Croatia
at the time, started the persecution of Orthodox Christians by the Croats
(......), wherein the killed as claimed at least 500,000 people (Serbs), I am
convinced that it would be even tens of thousands of of Orthodox killed, if I
had not intervened. "23Also SS commander of the Fifth Corps stationed in
19
, , 684.
Abskript in Archiv VII, NA, Mikrotek, Belgrad, NAV-T-175,R70, 888-890.
21 N. Neubacke, Sonderaustral Sdasten, 1941-1945, Bericht eines sligeenden Diplomaten,
Gtingen, 1958, 31.
22 . , , 56.
23 Lothar Rendulic, Gokampst Gesigt, Geschagen, Heidenburg, 1951, 160.
20
220
Sarajevo, Arthur von Fleps recalls the destruction of Orthodox Christians by

the Croatian Ustasha, "The main thing for the Ustasha, from the very
beginning was to destroy the Orthodox, to slaughter hundreds of thousands
of men, women and children."24 Ernst Nolte says that half the population of
the the ISC were baptized into Catholicism or executed by the Ustasha, and
adds: "For centuries, Europe has not seen such a religious struggle (....),
almost half of the population must either convert to Catholicism or get killed
(....).Thus Croatia was during the war actually a huge church for baptism and
at the same time a giant slaughterhouse.25 About the figure of 700,000 victims
at Jasenovac also indicate Harlnicka Karl, who said: "The net result of
merciless struggle against undesirable Serbs committed by Ustashi is based
on very reliable sources, about 700,000".26And another eyewitness shared his
assessment of Croatian war crimes against Serbs, it was an Italian officer
Enzo Cataldo, who said: "The slaughter of Serbs by the Croatiansis apparently
just in 1942. resulted in 356,000 Serbian victims."27 In the words of this
eyewitness in just the first two years of the war they killed more than 356,000
Serbs, and since the war lasted more than two years, then a figure of 700,000
Serbs killed in Jasenovac is quite realistic. As shown from the here presented
relevant historical sources from the first-hand historical truth is that in the
Jasenovac concentration camp around 700,000 Serbs, 35,000 Jews and 25,000
Gypsies were killed.
Falsification of the number of victims at the Jasenovac concentration camp
occurs immediately after the war, and in two ways. The first way was to
destroy all possible traces (remains) of the Jasenovac concentration camp,
and second, to reduce (minimize) the number of Serbian victims in historical
and other literature. Immediately after the war, the remains of the Jasenovac
concentration camp were destroyed, as follows: camp wall, which was
preserved in 1946 and early in 1947. on 80 of its length, followed by the walls
24
, 15. , 1956.
. , 650.
26 Karl Hrlnizka, Das ende auf dem Balkan 1944/45 Die militarische Raumung Jugoslawiens
durch die deutsche Wermacht, Studiendokumente zur Geschichte des II. Weltkriegs, Bd. 13
Gttingen, 1970, 31.
27 Enzo Cataldi, La Jugoslavia alle Porte Tra Cromaca e documenta una Stona che Nessuno
Raceonta, Club die Autori, 1968.
25
221
and watchtowers who were just partially collapsed when the war ended,
Ringhof brick factory, converted for crematorium was available until the
1950s. , the walls of the power plant, carpentry, chain factory and sawmill
were able to be successfully conserved and preserved. A wooden platform
called Granik over the Sava river, for the killing and throwing the victims
into the Sava River collapsed in the year of 1948, wire fence and field wells
from the circle of former Jasenovac camp existed until 02/05/1945. What is a
notorious truth, is that someone ordered these preserved remains of a
concentration camp to be demolished, to plant a forest and forget about it.
Instructing party of this monstrous act were Andrija Hebrang, Stevo (Ivan)
Krajai and Josip Broz Tito. Stevo Krajai personally, immediately after
the war, said from Zagreb that there will be no marking of Jasenovac. Ivan
Gosnjak replied to him that he may protect the Ustashas, butt the Army and
the Federation will take matters into their own hands and mark the
concentration camp of Jasenovac.
The report of the Yugoslav State Commission for the Investigation of the
Crimes of the Occupiers and their supporters was submitted to the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, 12.26.1945. It states that: "Notary
Public of the municipality Jasenovac Duzembli Milan, said that the report
shows that by the end of 1943. at least 600,000 people were executed in this
place. Most of the victims were Serbs, followed by Jews and Gypsies.28 The
results are available from the list of victims of the war between 1941 and
1945. of the Federal Bureau of Statistics from 1966. which distanced itself
with clause for internal use. " The list is completed based on the decision of
the Federal Executive Council by 06.10.1964. and made in August of 1966.
Having applied the wrong method with the three variants of adding data, and
with the little financial assistance organizations, the organizer itself came to
the conclusion that the data were a failure, and therefore further work needs
to be stopped. However, these data are incomplete and totally unexplored
(because of research with a very small sample) still great counterfeiter Franjo
Tudjman used and manipulated them. Tudjman said: "The data we have,
shows that in all the camps in Croatia 50,000 prisoners were killed, and not
12 or 15 times more." This Tudjman's view was also supported by Bogoljub
Koevi in his book, "Victims of the Second World War in Yugoslavia",
28
. , 999.
222
London, 1984. Even the Croatian professor of the University of Zagreb,

"famous" Rudi Supek will impose unscrupulous and unfounded conclusions,
although he is not an "historian" and would say: "The Jasenovac
concentration camp was the largest place of execution in the ISC. According
to the Statistical Office, there were 50,000 prisoners executed, mostly
Croatians left wing, and then the Serbs, Gypsies and Jews."29 These are the
monstrous constructions. Imagine, for the first time that someone states that
is in the Jasenovac concentration camp Croats were the most common
victims, although it is well known that they had suffered least, an
insignificant number, and often, when talking about the victims of Jasenovac,
not even mentioned.
However, the greatest and the first forger of Jasenovac victims was Dr.
Franjo Tudjman. Before we point out the fake number of Serbian victims in
the Jasenovac concentration camp by Tudjmanit is necessary to present some
information about it, in order to understand the essence of his forgeries
regarding the number Jasenovac victims. Franjo Tudjman general Josip
Broz, confidential person in the General Staff of JPA(JNA), who, according
to General Paul Jaksic, chased to Goli Otok approximately 7,000 Serbian and
Montenegrin officers. Tudjman was doctor of historical sciences, but he
plagiarized his doctorate, he stole from another author, as in 1974 proven by
Croatian historian Dr. Ljubo Boban. By the way, Tudjman was a Pavelic man,
and then partisan colonel and general, together with General Kadijevic and
Broz Colonel Dusan Bilandzic. Following the example of Pavelic, Tudjman,
found the right support for his anti-Serbian ideology and genocidal practices
of the Catholic Church. Tudjman claimed that genocide is "the right thing if
it is done in favor of what true faith, such as Catholic, and in the name of the
selected nations, such as the Croatian That is why Tudjman will be the first
"historian" and the first Croatian politician and statesman, who will falsify
the number of Serbian victims in the Jasenovac concentration camp. He will
do it in his book "Wastelands of historical reality" published in 1987. in
Zagreb. Tudjman writes, "that in Jasenovac died about 30 to 40,000 people, in
particular due to disease and malnutrition."30 Tudjman, not only intentionally
minimize the number of victims in the Jasenovac concentration camp, but
29
30
, 651.
, , , 1989, 316.
223
said for victims just "persons" and not mainly Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, and
even said that they died from disease and malnutrition. The word (Serbs)
Tudjman rarely used in a positive sense. Therefore, he will never say that
they were killed, but died and not by knives, guns, less "Serbo Cutters" and
other subjects. These Tudjman's claims cannot be, without relevant historical
sources, presented by nobody who is normal, except one crazy schizophrenic
person, as he was himself.
After that, Tudjman will once again present a similar argument and
arbitrary claims in 1990.: "In the Jasenovac died between 30,000 and 40,000
people. Casualties of Croatian and Serbian people are approximately the same
(....).The myth of Jasenovac has developed into one outrageous madness. "31
Simply a man cannot believe that a doctor of historical sciences makes
unprecedented constructions and forgeries. So, for Tudjman in Jasenovac
Serbs, Jews and Gypsies were not killed, but only the people. Furthermore,
only for him the number of Croatian and Serbian victims were roughly the
same. That could claim just, which would Tudjman say "a fool" Tudjman, this
time argues not just the minimization of the number of Jasenovac victims,
but also the "mindless" claim that the number of Serbian and Croatian victims
were roughly the same. These Tudjman's claims not just that they do not have
any scientific foundation, based on relevant historical sources, but as such
they can not even seriously be considered, since they are the product of
imagination, hatred, wickedness and unprecedented arrogance unknown to
the civilized, scientific circles. Tudjman scientific lack of seriousness, and
unsubstantiated scientific foundation does not stop but still amounts to the
claim that the majority of the Croatian home guard and uistaa from Bleiburg
(and especially the Chetniks) abducted and killed in Jasenovac. That is why
Dr. Tudjman said: "... that the majority of the Croatian home guard and
Ustasha, that Englishmen in Bleiburg extradited Tito firing squad, took them
right in the Jasenovac, where they were executed and buried."32 According
to him, it turns out that the Serbs in Jasenovac are not killed, but the Croats
were killed. Tudjman often alluded to that. He often quotes Stevo Krajai
( his favorite character), just because he is known as a major Serb hater.
When a memorial park on the territory of the Jasenovac concentration camp
31
32
, 235, 8.6.1990, 65.

, . 66.
224
was opened on 06/03/1966, Srevo Krajai then President of the Croatian

Parliament, at the celebration in that honor, welcomed the delegation of all
the former Yugoslav republics.33 When the Serbian delegation was announced, Krajai addressed them, saying: Herein you've been insufficiently
killed by us. He was punished with the withdrawal from the position of
President of the Croatian Parliament. However, it is important to notice that
the number of victims, especially Serbs in Jasenovac concentration camp is
constantly melting. They simply disappear without any valid arguments and
evidence. So will Mladen Ivezi continue after counterfeiters Dr. Tudjman,
and will say: "In the Jasenovac concentration camp (.....) life, of all causes, lost
1,000 or 2,000 people, perhaps 3,000 people, and it is impossible that it had
more than 5,000."34 After these statements, the brain simply has to stop. These
are outrageous insults of all victims at Jasenovac, their families, the victims
that history does not remember. An insult to all the anti-fascists, not only in
the former Yugoslavia, but all over Europe. These are the biggest insults of
the entire Serbian, Jewish and Gypsy people. This statement speaks of
frustration, not only of Mr. Ivezi, but the entire Croatian nation, as nobody
from that nation did not react about these heinous and planted by falsehood
statements, let alone distanced itself from them. But therefore on Ivezic
shameless "scientific" evidence followed up, believe it or not, none other than
a member of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences Joseph Pecari. He
said: ".. In concentration and labor camps of Jasenovac therefore in all the
camp workshops and subcamps, on the work in the woods, and such, and in
Stara Gradiska,life of all the possible causes, most likely lost between 1,000
(one thousand ) and 2000 (two thousand) people, and it is impossible that it
has died more than 5,000."35
After these outrageous offenses, forgery and provocation of the dead
victims, I invite all Croat historians, if you have a little bit civilized culture
and scientific dignity to speak. If not in the name of that, then in the name of
the dead victims. These statements are a new killing of innocent victims. The
"chase" on Jasenovac victims, mainly Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, includes of
course, the Church in Croatia, through its media Voice of Council. The list at
33
. , , 668.
, , , 1993, 200.
35 , , , 2010, 192.
34
225
the time since 17.3. to 21.4. 2013 launched a series of articles entitled "Ignored
facts in the Jasenovac concentration camp", written by Igor Vukic. Please
note that the Zagreb Morning newspaper refused to publish this series of
articles, because it is not positively evaluated from Slavko Goltajna, personal
advisor to the President of the Republic of Croatia, Zoran Milanovic, because
the feuilleton minimizes the number of victims at Jasenovac. Vuki said: "In
the concentration camp of Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska lost their lives
82,129 people."36 So, Igor Vukic speaking from the mouth of Franjo Tudjman.
Another Zagreb historian, this time, Josip Jurcevic in his book "The Origin
of the Jasenovac myth" with an arbitrary and uncertain claims of citing
suggests to us "... that the Jasenovac has been just a labor camp, and not a
place of mass atrocity."37
And Dr. Stephen Reason, head of the Archdiocesan Archives in Zagreb,
included in the "hunt" to minimize the number of Serbian victims in the
Jasenovac concentration camp. He was interviewed for the Zadar Croatia
newspapers on 9.8.2012 and said: "... There is no evidence of mass crimes of
the Ustasha in Jasenovac, but there are those from partisan" and denies the
number of victims in the Jasenovac concentration camp reducing them to
"under 81,000".38 Furthermore, Razum said that the Jasenovac has been just
Greater Serbianmyth, not a camp where during World War II were killed
Serbs, Jews and Gypsies. I must mention that Razum, and many other
Croatian "historians", was educated in Jesuit benches, and in every way tried
to deny 40,000 Serbian victims in Jadovno and 700,000 in Jasenovac. Razum,
unreasonable, he would have known, and does not know, or pretends not to
know that deliberately reducing the number of Jasenovac victims is terrible
and inevitable stain on Croatia "history." His claim, although with no
evidence, is a continuation of anti-Serbian actions of the church in Croatia.
Foolish Razum does not know that Kozara area for 25 years has not given
36
, ,
, 11/2013, 17.3.2013, 21.
37 , , , 1998; ,
,
20. , , ,
. . , , 2007, 188.
38 , , 9.8.2012.
226
soldiers for the army after World War II because crimes of genocide
committed against Serbs in the area. Razum pretends to does not know that
they carried out such killings, that in the area Kostajnica in World War II in
one day were killed 3,600 Serbs, and that one Croat testified, who was himself
a participant in the crime. Razum does not know that the evidence is
contained in archives, as well as in Croatian State Archives in Zagreb.
Jelena Lovric in 2003 writes: "Tudjman's nationalist government in Croatia
implements rehabilitation of the Ustasha movement. Fascist salute was
practiced even by the ministers, the symbols of NDH are used as patriotic
ones. Almost the entire decade the people were brainwashed, and young
people are brought up that way (....). With the change of government four
years ago even in this respect, nothing has been done. Monument to Franceti
has not been removed (....) textbooks have not changed "39 Croatian writer
Vedran Rudan said: "In Croatia, have lived people obsessed with hatred
towards others who are different. The Catholic Church, which gave their
blessing for the most disgusting Croatian crimes of NDH, continued their
filthy and bloody business even when democracy began. Priests were armed
and have been on the battlefield and sprinkled the holy water on soldiers,
tanks and guns to the horror of the civilized world. Croatian general shot his
wife in the head in the name of Croatian democracy and freedom. Most of the
citizens of my country do not blame him. He is a hero to them, not a criminal.
"And what on earth is that nation? And the Croatian peoplehavent criticized
not even Stepinac for his misdeeds, even fra Miroslav Filipovic for his
criminal acts in the Jasenovac concentration camp - and what kind of people
are they?40
Tudjman on 17/09/1990 has banned laying a wreath at the monument to
victims of the Ustasha terror at the camp of Jasenovac. Likewise, the
Tudjman government in 1992. made a decision to turn Jasenovac into a
central memorial park for all the victims of the Second World War in
Parliament of the Republic of Croatia in Croatia, which is absurd. So Tudjman
decided that this monument features also victims of communism (the
transfer of the remains discovered from caves, especially the victims' of the
39
40
, , , 2.12.2003.
, , 3.12.2013.
227
Homeland War from 1991 to 1995) so that for every fallen for freedom of
Croatia there is a memorial stone or a cross with the name. This was his vision
which was put forward and explained in the report on the state of the
Croatian state and the nation for 1995, at a joint session of both houses of the
Parliament of the Republic of Croatia, 15.01.1996. In fact, it is the mixing of
bones from fascists and anti-fascists, shared by a large cemetery, the ones of
partizan with the ones from ustashas, as well as those killed in the war, from
1991 until 1995. on the territory of Croatia. In Croatia, there was no
opposition to the idea of Tudjman. Only in America, the U.S. Congress,
Warren Christopher expressed his lack of understanding for the Tudjman
initiative. Then the director of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in
Washington, Valter Rick said that Tudjman's plans must be stopped. Plans for
to stirred bones of victims of the Holocaust in Croatia, Tudjman seeks to
reclaim the history with the shovel, noted Rike.
The crime of genocide Croatians carried out against Serbs in Croatia during
the war from 1991-1995. The crime was committed by Tudjman's most
prominent intellectuals, primarily Tito's generals, and his loyal communist
staff from the National Liberation Struggle-e, holders of "partisan memorials
in 1941," national heroes, commanders of the military branches and the most
prominent figures of the JNA and Yugoslavia. Among the best known are:
Franjo Tudjman, General Janko Bobetko, communist general, Antun Tus,
member of the Headquarters of the General Staff of the so-called. Croatian
army in Zagreb, Martin pegelj, Lieutenant General, the Communists and the
Minister of Defence of Croatia Zvonimr Cervenko, taking command of the
Republic of Serbian Krajina offensive "Storm" in August of 1995, a former
general of the KOS and a JNA. Of course, the Croatian Communist generals
could not expel the Serbs from the Republic of Serbian Krajina and commit
crimes against them, that there have not been on their side, NATO, Germany,
USA, England and France. Even towards poorly armed Serbs in the RSK they
could do nothing, but they had to use other means: domestic betrayal, the
aviation force of NATO, which has for 15 days, in around 3,000 flights poured
the bombs some filled to receive nuclear material. In Yugoslavia, from 19411945. the Catholic Church was working in collusion with the ISC and
constituted itself as the main spiritual leader in the massive crimes committed
in the camps, especially in the Jasenovac concentration camp. The Vatican in
Croatia in the case of the Jasenovac concentration camp, in every way, and
228
to this day, tries through official authorities in Croatia, to hide and to destroy
all written documents that disclosed the Vatican's involvement in the murder
of hundreds of thousands of people. In an anthology of human freaks and
mass and moral misery, Croatian history, through the centuries, especially
through the last two centuries, ranks high. In this "stuff" Tudjman was the
most successful, and as a theorist and as a practitioner. It is true that historical
circumstances went up to him, but his personal contribution cannot be
ignored. Tudjman has proved that the plan of Ante Starcevic and Ante Pavelic
(the destruction of the Serbs) can be achieved. Tudjman was able to fit in
Croatian history of lies in the value system of globalization. With the help of
the Vatican, Tudjman has achieved in the role of continuity of Jasenovac
genocide and initiator of a large exodus of Serbian with the help of Americans
and Western Europeans. Wherein failed Franz Josef and Adolf Hitler, that
realized John Paul the Second and Franjo Tudjman. They created the NDH,
which is based on anti-Serb hate and intolerance against Serbian victims of
crime. Such State, which was built on the bones of another nation may be
short-lived, even if it was called Croatia.
Franjo Tudjman will remain, certainly in recorded history as the first to
minimize the number of Serbian victims in the Jasenovac concentration
camp, and not only that, but the first Croatian statesman who has the Serbs
in Croatia, using the crime of genocide, reduced to 2 , so as not to never be,
as Tudjman said, the political factor in Croatia.
229
Vladislav Jovanovi
WE MUST FORGIVE BUT NOT

FORGET *
My participation in todays 6th International Conference on Jasenovac differs

greatly from the participation of the majority of other participants. In fact, I
am neither a historian by profession nor somebody who has dealt with
historical studies as a layman. Neither do I come from the area of ex NDH to
be able to be the witness of the tragedy of the Serbian people in the NDH
factories of death or many other places of executions. I was neither able, as a
citizen of ex-Yugoslavia in all its forms, to get close to archives and other
documentary material about the fate of the Serbian people in the NDH.
My participation in this Conference may be explained by specific reasons. I
was not an eyewitness or first-hand witness, I was rather an indirect witness
from a distance of several hundred kilometres.
Already at the end of the 1941, with the arrival of the first refugees from the
NDH, we in Serbia received the first news about the suffering of the local
Serbs. Although refugees were taken care of, within the limits of its
capacities, by occupier government of Milan Nedi, it did not talk much about
their suffering in order not to harm German occupiers, who were war allies
of the NDH. More details about what happened to the Serbs in the NDH were
conveyed to us through the refugee Serbs in Smederevo county. One of them
was a colleague of my father D. M. whom he met during the pre-war teaching
period in a Croatian village. Her narratives were such that they gave me the
creeps. But neither she nor the government of Milan Nedi went beyond a
Words of Patriarch Pavle
231
whisper, it was that much that the atrocities of the NDH were not allowed in
the public.
Taboo on the treatment of Serbs in the NDH was dispersed a year later, when
my family moved to Smederevo in the summer of 1943. While we, the
children were swimming in the Danube, arrays of countless human cadavers
of both sexes were almost constantly floating from Belgrade. Tangled in the
branches or connected by wire, with puffed up bellies in an advanced state of
decomposition in the bright sun floating on the waves as the water flows were
taking them. We, the little swimmers were threatened by such images,
escaping quickly to the banks, expecting this image to disappear quickly. But
the horrible sight of hundreds of unidentified corpses floating was not
disappearing fast, it was rather repeating at short intervals, occasionally even
more terrible and painful. Even the German soldiers who supervised and
urged the prisoners and workers to load the pyrite more quickly, as it was
needed by the German war industry so much, were affected by the constant
images of the hell brought down by the Danube. When the bodies were
floating closer to barges threatening to anchor between them, they pushed
them away by long boat hooks to the water stream, not hiding the discomfort
or even outrage.
Judging by the clothes and shoes, those were obviously peasant man and
women massively and brutally murdered by executioners of the NDH and
thrown into the Sava that was taking them to the Danube and its rapid flows.
One should bear in mind that the bodies that passed by Smederevo were only
one part of those who fit the long bank of the Sava and Danube rivers or were
intercepted and stored in mass graves on the banks of Belgrade. Continuous
rows of corpses with almost no break were floating the Danube until the
middle of 1944. I do not know if they were floating the Danube before my
family moved to Smederevo, i.e. in 1942, and the first half of 1943, but it can
be logically assumed that the mass procession of dead Serb bodies were daily
images in these early years of the war.
Much later, I learned from Belgrade people, eyewitnesses of those war years
that many of the bodies of the Serbian martyrs based on the orders of the
German invaders, who feared of an outbreaks of infectious epidemics, were
taken out of water and buried in a wide pit near the Neboja Tower as well as
on the Belgrade side of the Ratno ostrvo island. I do not know whether a
232
memorial service for the unknown victims of the NDH was ever held, but our
national shame is the fact that holy places obviously have no sign of
recognition. The slogan brotherhood and unity taught us to forget mass
crimes of the NDH against Serbs not allowing that marking of such mass
graves allude to the Republic of Croatia as an important link in the chain of
building the brotherhood and unity.
Thanks to these slogans, after the Second World War Croatia did not face
seriously and honestly its Nazi past. As well as Austria, it has never been
really denazified and the Serbian people have not received any compensation
or reliable guarantee that genocide will never happen again. Therefore, for
the duration of socialism in Yugoslavia the apparition of Nazism and the
Croatian Ustasha movement lay low, but was never eradicated. That it was
not a coincidence was proven by a boastful statement of the former President
of the Presidency of Yugoslavia and later president of the Croatian Ustasha
emigration given in Australia and Switzerland in 1991, saying that only
Croatia won two victories in the Second World War: once on the side of the
Axis Powers, and the second time on the side of the Allies. He failed to add
that it was the only Nazi creation and most faithful ally of Hitler's Germany,
which after the victory of the Allies got expanded territorially.
The statement of S. Mesi, one of the leaders of Tumans HDZ was not the
only one confirmed by F. Tuman at the time, that the NDH was not only the
criminal creation but also an expression of historical aspirations of the
Croatian people for acquiring their own state. The way the Independent
Republic of Croatia was created has confirmed both of these statements were
neither a rhetoric whim nor a passing tactics to win over the Croatian
emigration in the West for the HDZ goals. The independent Republic of
Croatia, from the very beginning was created on the basis of antagonising
and discrimination of its Serbian population, the revival of Ustasha symbols
cancelling the previous provisions of the Constitution on the constitutionality
of the Serbian people and its reduction to a mere minority as well as physical
abuse and threats and abuses by police. Open revival of Ustasha ideology and
goals would not have been possible if immediately after World War II Croatia
had undertaken fundamental denazification, as it was done in Germany. That
way, the world would not have had to listen to such statements of S. Mesi
that Croatia had won two victories in the Second World War. Given that it
has successfully avoided denazification, S. Mesi could have subsequently
233
added that Croatia won a third victory, because it turned a blind eye to the
Independent State of Croatia being a faithful ally of Hitler until the very end
of the Second World War.
As a result of the policy of brotherhood and unity, the outside world has
remained almost unacquainted with horrible and mass killings of Serbs in the
NDH. Almost nothing in todays Croatia or in the international community is
said about the ethnocide of Serbs. It is a paradox that senior officials were
disgusted by the atrocities against Serbs in the NDH much more than the war
allies and winners. Nazi documents mention the execution of hundreds of
thousands of Serbs in the NDH only in the first two years of the war. The
final sum of the number of genocide victims reaches 700,000. Keeping silent
about what was done represents a great injustice to the truth, making the
victims of genocide killed twice in that way.
Conviction for the silence is deserved by all the Serbs who held leading positions in the party and the state in the socialist period of the joint state. None
of them questioned why Jasenovac and other factories of death in the NDH,
undisturbed, performed their genocide activity without partisan units
intervening. Also, none of them objected to the monument Stone Flower,
which was built in Jasenovac, an anthem to life after death, and not a worthy
tribute to the victims and saving them from oblivion. Stone Flower replaces
past for the future. How grotesque and offensive it is to the innocent victims
of genocide is proven by an example of a Jewish state. By building the
monumental memorial Yad Vashem, it took the victims of the Nazi genocide
out of the past and built them into the daily life of the new generation. In this
way, it protected their victims permanently from oblivion.
One of the main tasks of this generation and the best way of protecting the
Serbian victims of NDH Jasenovac genocide from being forgotten is to follow
Israels example and build some type of a Serbian Yad Vashem. A real
contribution in that direction is made by the recently established association
for the establishment of a memorial centre in Belgrade dedicated to the
sufferings of the Serbs in the 20th century, highlighting the genocide against
the Serbs in the NDH.
Another way to make international community more directly aware of the
genocidal annihilation of hundreds of thousands of Serbs in the Nazi NDH is
to follow the example of the Armenians, who, in Yerevan built their version
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of Yad Vashem. In addition, they have managed to achieve through the

decades of action that more than twenty countries including some large and
significant ones officially condemn the genocide that the Ottoman Turkey in
1915 committed against a million and a half of its Armenian vassals.
The often stressed argument states that genocide has been standardised and
punishable only since 1948, when the International Convention on Genocide
was adopted, or since 1951 when it came into force. However it does not
provide forgiveness for similar genocides before 1948. The Nuremberg
Court in 1946 sentenced the national leadership of the Nazi Germany for
crimes that fall under the description of the crime of genocide particularly
the Holocaust.
Explanations of the judgments of the Tribunal were the inspiration and a call
for an accelerated harmonisation and adoption of the international
convention on genocide. Moreover, the fact that more than 20 states found it
morally and politically justified and appropriate to condemn the genocide
that was committed by Ottoman Turkey against their Armenian compatriots
in 1915, in special resolutions or declarations, means that the International
Convention on Genocide in 1948 does not exclude or relieve of responsibility
the states which committed such crimes in the twentieth century before that.
The fact that the Croatian state has slipped and avoided international
condemnation of genocide committed against Serbs in the NDH is not, cannot
and must not be a reason for staying passive. On the contrary, as long as
todays Croatia is not called for and morally condemned by the international
community for the NDH genocide against Serbs in Croatia, the apparition of
Ustasha intolerance toward Serbs will be around and will remain potentially
dangerous.
Croatias membership of the EU, where it enjoys special support from
Germany and Austria complicates the prospects that the parliaments of some
EU member states will follow the analogy of condemnation of genocide
against Armenians and adopt a similar resolution condemning the genocide
against Serbs in the former NDH. We will have to go a long and difficult path
to reach the goal. However, we must not give up this goal. We need to follow
the famous idea that: in order to reach our goal that is thousand miles away,
we have to make the first step.
235
eljko Vujadinovi
RACIAL POLICY AND RACIAL

LEGISLATION IN
THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF CROATIA
Abstract: Racial policy is one of the main characteristics of the

Independent State of Croatia. It is founded on the ideology of inequality
of races (the existence of upper and lower races), which was
developed in the 19th century as part of the European culture.
Philosophy of racial inequality was inspired by some ideas of social
Catholicism. In the Independent State of Croatia, racial policy achieved
its manifestation in the racial legislation according to which the Serbs,
Jews and Roma as lower races were denied basic rights and general
legal protection. Racial legislation, on the other hand pursued the
ethnic, linguistic and religious purity of the Independent State of
Croatia. The racial policy of the Independent State of Croatia resulted
in massive suffering of Serbs, Jews and Roma, who can be fully
subsumed under the principles of the Convention on the Prevention
and Punishment of Genocide, which was adopted by the UN General
Assembly in the form of a resolution in 1948.
Keywords: racial policy, racial legislation, social Catholicism, Catholic
action, Pure Catholic Action, Crusaders, genocide, Independent State
of Croatia
Origin of the ideology of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) is complex

and reaches way back into the past. In an essay Nejednakost ljudskih rasa
(Inequality of human races) (1853), the writer, sociologist and diplomat
Arthur Gobino (1816-1882) elaborated the theory that a nation is not a
237
community of languages, but a mixture (wedding) of unequal races. The

races are polygenetic (of different origin), and all other social hierarchies
result from their inequalities. Modern racism was introduced as a political
ideology. Since 1860, with the return of political life in Croatia and Slavonia
(post-Bach absolutism), the party of eternal Croat separatism and anti-Serb
action evolved and developed, The Party of Historic Croatian Rights of
Ante Starevi (1823-1896) and Eugen Kvaternik (1825-1871). The strongest
support was found in the intelligence, primitive peasantry and the Catholic
Church. This ideology was not the original one. It was explained by Ante
Starevi in the book Ime Serb (1868) by taking some ideas of a Hungarian
politician Jzsef Etvsh (1813-1871). Starevi believed that Croats were
not native Slavs but the ruling race of Scandinavian origin. Unlike some of
his successors he did not mention the Gothic origin of the Croats, the theory
that has not disappeared yet. According to Starevis learning, Bosnian
Muslim beys were the only real, authentic heirs of the Croatian ruling race.
He did not know that Islam has no hereditary nobility and the Bosnian
Muslim bey area of his time, mostly, had nothing to do with bey families from
the early history of Islam in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). For Serbs, he was
saying that they were a slave race, prisoners of Croatia. The origin of the
Serbs (Slavoserbs) comes from the former Roman slaves (both sclavus and
servus mean slave). Their slavery is dual, both physical and religious.
Except in the period of socialist Yugoslavia, Starevi was and still is
considered the father of the nation in Croatia.
Ideology of the NDH (which is not restricted only to the period from 19411945), as seen in the Second World War, was based on the theories of Ante
Starevi. Later, party-of-rights ideologist and the father of Croatian
geopolitics, Ivo Pilar (1874-1933) upgraded these ideas. Trying to prove the
character of BiH as a Croatian country, he argued that Serbian presence in
BiH was not proven scientifically. Serbs, according to Pilar, are an offshoot
of non-Slavic Vlachs that were raised in the Orthodox spirit by the
Orthodox Church. Elaborating on this theory, Dominik Mandi (1889-1973),
a Franciscan and a historian, found the origin of Vlachs in North Africa.
They were brought as slaves from Nubia by Roman legions to Pannonia. Pilar
and Mandi concluded that due to the non-Slavic and non-European racial
origin Vlachs had dark complexion. This story would not be worth any
serious attention if it was not included into appropriate political projects.
238
Ottoman and Austrian sources are the best confirmation of the social rather
than the ethnic character of vlachs (therefore, this word should be written
in small letters) of the central and western Balkan region. Eugen Kvaternik
moved the eastern border of ethnic Croats up to the Neretva River, and later
to Bulgaria and Albania; On the other hand, the western border would be in
Soa, so the Slovenian areas would be encompassed in the Croatian territory
too. He too denied the existence of the Serbs as a nation. At this time the
theory of the superior Western and inferior Eastern civilizations emerged,
whose borders matched Theodosiuss division of the Roman Empire in the
year 395.
The ideology of social Catholicism became dominant on the Croatian
political stage in the year 1867. Social Catholicism as a programme and a
movement that appeared in the German Catholic environment in the second
half of the 19th century. It was a response to liberal social tendencies and N
intent of Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898; Premier of Prussian Kingdom 18621871; Chancellor of the German Empire, 1871-1890) to place the Catholic
Church in Prussia and later in the reunified Germany under the control of
the state. As a social movement, social Catholicism spread to AustroHungary. It evolved in Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia and Bosnia and
Herzegovina as the Croatian Catholic movement. The society was developed
on religious intolerance by which the national movements in the Yugoslav
space transformed from a linguistic into religious type. After making Popes
encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891), in which the Catholic Church expresses
its anti-secular views on the organisation of the entire society, gradually,
political parties were created on religious catholic basis. Participation of
Catholic laymen (laics) in the hierarchical apostolate, which aims to defend,
disseminate and apply Catholic principles to life is known as Catholic Action.
A strong momentum to persistence of these theories is given by the first
Catholic Eucharistic Congress in Zagreb (1900), which was the first
affirmation of political Catholicism in Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia and BiH.
Resolutions of the Congress strengthened the clerical movement, the SerboCroatian agreement disabled and created a deep gap between the Catholic and
Orthodox people. Catholicism in the southern Slavic area was equalised with
Croatianhood. After the introduction of the 6th January Dictatorship in 1929,
the Catholic Action, led by a prominent Catholic ideologist and thinker Ivan
Merc (1896-1928, he was proclaimed blessed in 2003), was a leading
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institution of the Croatian people. Zagreb Archbishop Stepinac (1898-1960)

created a totally Catholic Action in the 1936, in which secular influences of
Catholic creators were disabled. It discontinued cooperation with the
Croatian Peasants' Party of the Radi brothers, and established it with a
political emigration in Italy gathered around Ante Paveli and thereby
accepted fascism as a political tool of its operations. Unlike the leader of the
Croatian Peasant Party (HSS), especially Stjepan Radi (1871-1928),
Archbishop Stepinac was thinking outside-Yugoslavian terms. Certain
assumptions of the events in World War II were created even during the
Austro-Hungarian rule of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1878-1918). Habsburg
authorities, by creating Catholic agrarian colonies on the fertile soil of
northern BiH, among other things sought to deny demographic prevail of
Orthodox Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This population of different
ethnic origins was partly Croatised by the year 1918. Crusaders whose
creator was Ivan Merc, a Croatised son of a Sudeten German, later merged
with the Ustasha movement. In the Annexation crisis (1908-1909) the idea of
organising a volunteer Black Legion was created for the purpose of
disabling any Serbian actions. The idea of establishing a Schutzkorps unit
composed of Muslim and Catholic volunteers, that was known in the First
World War for its evil acts, was older than 1910. And the attempt of Benjamin
Kalaj (1839-1903) to create a Bosnian nation in BiH (1883-1903) was part
of the efforts to put an end to the Serbian ethnic majority in BiH. The most
intensive attempts of a radical demographic decomposition of Bosnia and
Herzegovina were made in the First World War. In addition to the opening
of the camps, there were mass executions conducted, high treason
proceedings were opened and a number of other actions that Vladimir
orovi (1885-1941) summed up as the suffering of the Serbs of Bosnia and
Herzegovina during the World War.
So the roots of genocide against Serbs, Roma and the holocaust against the
Jews in the NDH in 1941-1945 were rooted deep in history. In World War II
among others the intent of the Catholic Church was to establish a border of
their civilisation on the Drina River. Basically, it can be said that with the
support of the Axis Powers, the Catholic Church created the Independent
State of Croatia.
Although it is known, it should be reiterated: on 10 April 1941, via Radio
Zagreb, former Austro-Hungarian army Colonel Slavko Kvaternik (1878240
1947) in the name of Ante Paveli (1889-1959) announced the formation of

the Independent State of Croatia. Vladko Maek (1879-1964), after the death
of Stjepan Radi (1928), a HSS president, called on the people of Croatia to
respect the new government that had also received support from the Catholic
Church. In the famous pastoral letter (April 28) Archbishop Stepinac prayed
the Lord to inspire our leader of NDH and to make him aware of the fact
that he can use his prudence that will enable him to carry out the mission in
honour of God and the salvation of the people full of justice and truth. Paveli
was received by Pope Pius XII (1876-1958, pope since 1939) on 17 May, and
Switzerland Guards at the Vatican extended the same honours to him as the
ones normally extended to heads of states. Sometime later, on 15 June,
Paveli signed a protocol on the accession of the NDH to the military alliance
of Rome-Berlin-Tokyo, and on 16 June, in Berchtesgaden he met with Hitler.
Like in any authoritarian state, the freedom of the press was immediately
abolished.
The NDH included historical Croatia, Slavonia, Western Srem, Dalmatia and
BiH. The invisible line of demarcation separated it into two zones the zones
of Italian and German control. It was recognised as a member of the Tripartite
Pact, as well as Manchukuo-puppet state that was created by Japan in
Manchuria in 1934. Except for the Croatian aspirations for independence and
calling upon the ideological and religious integral Catholicism, Ustasha
movement did not develop any precise political agenda. This emptiness was
filled by the so-called Programme of Intents, which was enacted by the
head A. Paveli acting as the Prime Minister. The programme included:
Croatia as the homeland of the people pure in body and religion without racemixing and without those who do not belong to the Catholic religion
(Gravity Centre of moral strength of the Croatian nation is in a good
religious and political life ... religion and family are foundations of an orderly,
healthy and happy life). The NDH had approximately 6.5 million inhabitants
in 1941, out of which more than two million were Orthodox Serbs
(schismatic), and a little less than 90,000 the Jews. Partly due to this fact
and - a relatively small number - the issue of Jews in the NDH Ustashas
government was not a major racial problem. It can be said that antiSemitism of the NDH was part of pleasing their powerful Nazi patron. The
essential problem for the self-realisation of the NDH was the Serbian issue.
Because of their location, status, abundance, Serbs were the only ethnic
241
group that was able to make the clean Croatian race dirty; Those Orthodox
schismatics were the old opponents of unity that had been previously
carried out by the Roman Church for centuries. Even at that time (and after
1945) they were accused that as hegemonist they were undisputed oppressors
of other people in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
On 30 April 1941, a decree with the force of law called The Croatian nationality came into effect, according to which the right to citizenship of the NDH
belonged only to those who are of Aryan origin ... Jews and Serbs are not
citizens of the NDH, they are rather members of the State. Only Aryans enjoy
political rights. Serbs, Jews and nomads (which mainly considered Roma),
are prohibited from visiting public places, shops and restaurants, and signs
on public transportation would certainly represent the culmination of it: No
Serbs, Jews, Roma and dogs. According to the decree to defend the people
and the state adopted by the Government on 17 April, everyone who in any
way harms the honour or vital interests of the Croatian people, or in any way
endangers the existence of the NDH ... even when the act is only an attempt,
it means that a crime of treason has been committed, for which there was
only one penalty, the death penalty. So the establishment of extraordinary
courts to judge by the law were just a formality. Viktor Guti (1901-1946),
Commissioner of the NDH for the former Vrbaka Banovina, announced in
Banja Luka on 26 May 1941 that all undesirable elements will be quickly
exterminated.
This scenario was realised on the next day, in Bosanski Brod: I made a drastic
decision that Serbs must be destroyed, first economically and then in every
other sense. There is no mercy for them ... Gods blessing and my approval
will be with you. In Donji Miholjac, on 27 July 1941, later Minister of
Foreign and Internal Affairs, Mladen Lorkovi (1909-1945) stated: The
Ustasha movement insists on energetic solutions for the Serbian issue in
Croatia... It is the duty of the Government to make sure that Croatia belongs
to Croats. Our duty is to silence the elements that contributed most to
Croatias fall under the Serbian rule in 1918. In short, we must exterminate
the Serbs from Croatia... Croatian government also took solving the Jewish
problem into its own hands... They have always been and remain friends and
servants of the enemies of the Croatian people. Jews, who are most
responsible for this war, because they conspired against Germany and its
major ally Italy, cannot expect anything other than that they are treated in
242
accordance with what they deserve. Croatia has to be cleared of all these
elements that constitute disaster for our nation...
Already on 18 April, 1941, the first decrees of racial kind were made: the
appointment of civil commissioners in state enterprises owned by Serbs and
Jews was anticipated. Commissioners will have the right to dispose their
assets. Ministerial order of 18 April declared all sales contracts, concluded
between Jews, non-Jews and others null and void. Also, on 18 April, a
decision was made by the General Ustasha Office (the future MoI) which
envisaged the arrest of all Serbs and all the Jews, who are known as
Communists, even on the basis of suspicion. Decree of 25 April 1941 prohibits the use of the Cyrillic script, both in private and public life. A Commission for racial politics was established by the decree on the defence of the
Aryan race and the honour of the Croatian people on 30April, which was
authorised to confirm or deny any decision in cases of suspicious race. The
decree required a public racial and religious identification - Serb population
had to wear blue button with the letter P (Orthodox) and Jewish - Star of
David on their arms, and later on their back. Racial provisions had to be
related to the marital rights, too. In that way Minister Andrija Artukovi
banned marriage between Aryans and non-Aryans, by the Decree reserved
for Jews on 4 June. The illegitimate sexual relation between non Aryan men
and Aryan women... In addition, it forbids Jews and Serbs from showing a
Croatian flag... Jewish surnames are outlawed... the Jews are forbidden from
engaging in literature, press, art, music, architecture, cinema and theatre...
presence in cultural, sport associations... etc.
The NDH was carrying out exclusive religious policy, as well: the religion of
the Catholic Church was declared the official state religion. Command of
the Italian Second Army concluded (31 October 1941) that the Croatian
government resolutely oriented towards the next religious policy, which has
full approval of the Holy See: convert the largest possible number of
Orthodox Christians to Catholicism, as well as the Jews. It remains an open
question - whether the Pope was a collaborator or an observer of the NDH
politics. It did not stop there. This was the basis for deleting Serbian name
from the name of the Orthodox Church the Croatian Orthodox Church was
established by the decision of the Croatian Parliament on 7 April 1942, and
Paveli appointed a Russian emigrant Germogen (1861-1945) to be the head
243
of the church, while in four dioceses (Zagreb, id, Sarajevo and Zenica)
bishops were appointed again out of the Russian White Guardists.
Thus, these first laws and decrees were a terrible premise of ethnic-religious
crusade war with the epicentre, as per Paveli's visions, of the Serbian problem. As there were over two million people, or one third of the population
of the NDH, it would be neither appropriate nor possible to exterminate them
all: to save the other part of the race, it was supposed to deport one part, and
the other part to convert to Catholicism (just to note again: with 3.5 million
Catholics and about 2 million Orthodox Christians, there were about 700,000
Muslims, about 90,000 Jews, and about 70,000 Protestants that would not be
prosecuted, because they were protected by the occupying German units, in
the NDH in 1941). In line with the slogan: Either in the Drina river or over
the Drina river, the only option for Orthodox Serbs to avoid persecution was
to accept Catholicism, which again did not necessarily mean safety in line
with the slogan: You saved your soul, but your body belongs to us
(according to a journalist Alfije Rousseau). Serbs are accused of historical
atrocities and crimes against the Croatian people. Thousands of them were
sentenced to death by the courts established for this purpose. But it was just
a cover - the main method of extermination was non-judicial, hideous,
physical extermination, complete destruction of their villages, and of course
mass deportations to concentration camps with quite certain destiny. Mass
destruction of the Serbian Orthodox people was accompanied by a heavy
destruction of SOC - the priests and churches. By the end of the war, six
bishops and 222 monks of SOC were killed in a hell of terrible death, and 299
churches destroyed. On the road of performing ethnic-religious purity of
the NDH, there was semi-nomadic Roma population. It is estimated that out
of about 30,000 Roma people, 28,000 were killed during the war, which is
about 12 percent of the total Romani victims in Europe during World War II.
These people did not carry biblical guilt, did not have their churches or
synagogues, and had no social importance or influence. For the Ustasha
government, their guilt was reflected in the fact that as such they were the
social trouble-maker, but also because they were semi-pagans and in this
respect the followers of religious syncretism, inappropriate for Catholicism.
Between the years 1941 and 1945, around 50,000 Jews were executed in the
NDH (even more according to some estimates). This violence based on
religious intolerance was known to German and Italian occupying forces.
244
Their occasional condemnation of these crimes, which in real terms did not
generally exceed the declarative level was the result of the knowledge that
these crimes encouraged a Serbian rebellion movement. The NDH plan
(Jesuss Association of Croatian nationalism, as described by an Italian
journalist), to complete the execution of the Serbian Orthodox population by
6 September 1941, and their properties to be given to Muslim or Croatian
families, was known to Italian military authorities.
Specifically, eradication except in direct actions was restricted to the concentration camps. Concentration camps are the invention of the 20th century.
They were firstly introduced by the British in the war against the Boer in
South Africa (1899-1903). Shortly thereafter, Austria-Hungary at the
beginning of World War I opened concentration camps for suspicious
Serbs - in Doboj, Arad, Neider, Sopron. In World War II, the following
concentration camps stayed in the shadow of incomprehensible horror of
Jasenovac in NDH: Jadovno, Jastrebarsko, Pag, Rab, akovo, Tenja, Sisak,
Caprag, Lobograd, Lepoglava, Gornja Rijeka, Kerestinec, Kruica... their
shared feature is that they primarily killed Serbs, Jews and Roma, and again
primarily because of their religious and national identity and for the sake of
creating an ethnically and religiously pure NDH. The area of todays Bosnia
and Herzegovina was part of the NDH, where the greatest sufferings
happened. Here, in Ustashas attacks, entire villages disappeared, and victims
were not even recorded after the Second World War. In addition to Donja
Gradina, the execution site of epic proportions, there are numerous other
grounds, as well as pits (especially in Herzegovina) with their terrible stories.
By opening some pits, two decades ago, those stories were also opened.
Jasenovac (1941-1945) was the largest concentration camp in the Nazioccupied Yugoslavia, which was established by the government of the
Independent State of Croatia in the summer of 1941, modelled on the Nazi
concentration camps for the mass murder of people. The scales of suffering
of primarily Serbs, Jews and Roma in the Jasenovac concentration camps are
so big that this paper must highlight them, too. The first detainees of
Jasenovac were brought to camps of Krapje (Jasenovac1) and Broice
(Jasenovac 2); then they were moved to a camp in Ciglana (Jasenovac 3). The
camp of Koara (Jasenovac 4) was established in the village of Jasenovac in
January 1942, and penitentiaries in Stara Gradika (Jasenovac 5) acted as part
of a complex of the Jasenovac concentration camp since February 1942. The
245
camp was active throughout the war, until the beginning of May 1945 when
an already abandoned place was entered into by the predecessor of the 21st
Serbian Division. The inmates (men, women and children) were humiliated,
terrorised and murdered by different weapons and arms, starved to death
(Zvonara), hanged and burnt in the Picilli furnaces; there were mass
killings on Granik where the tortured victims were thrown into the river.
The largest scaffolding with the known poplar of horror was located on the
right side of the Sava River Donja Gradina (now the memorial area located
in the Republic of Srpska). Dragoje Luki in ascetic efforts registered 19,432
children (under the age of 14) martyrs, victims in the Jasenovac
concentration camp. The official commissions of the Government of the
Peoples Republic of Croatia (Venceslav Celigoj - President; Ante toki Secretary) in late 1945 concluded that the exact number of victims of
Jasenovac had never been established because the records were destroyed
and a substantial number of those who were killed was not buried in mass
graves but thrown in the river. The Commission at the time estimated that
about 600,000 victims were murdered in the Jasenovac camp. This task was
not completed in the socialist Yugoslavia either, which recently opened the
way for an unprecedented historical and graphical revisionism, not only in
relation to the victims of Jasenovac.
The phenomenon of genocide requires comparative research, which includes
a study of the conditions under which the genocide as mass murder was
possible, while not punishable. The NDH and its crimes were not a historical
coincidence that would allow drawing the line and forgetting the crimes.
Normalisation of the past is not possible through conservative historicism the cessation of researching the history, which only burdens the future.
Genocide of the NDH cannot be made relative by comparing the crimes of
others (as it is the case with some theories of totalitarianism). This gathering
should be a warning about the normalisation of any patriotic genocide.
246
Eli Tauber
DEPORTATION OF JEWS OF BOSNIA

AND HERZEGOVINA TO
COLLECTION AND CONCENTRATION
CAMPS, WITH THE CHRONOLOGY
OF DEPORTATION TO THE
JASENOVAC CONCENTRATION CAMP
The first deportations of Jews in the NDH started on 29th April 1941. Around
5 p.m. on that afternoon, the first transport of around 300 people arrived at
the camp Danica. Some time later, Jews from Sarajevo, Bijeljina, Tuzla and
other places in Bosnia and Herzegovina were brought to this camp, but also
from Bjelovar, Karlovac, Oglulin and Varadin. Rotten fruit was usually
written across the train wagons.1 Already in July 1941, the camp was disbanded and its prisoners (1600) were transferred to another collection camp,
in Gospi, and later in concentration camps Jadovno, Pag, Jasenovac and
Stara Gradika. When the order came to send all unsuited elements from
all parts of NDH to Gospi, large groups of people started to arrive. In June
and July 1941, one 1000 of men, women and children arrived at Gospi every
day.
Most of them were Serbs, then Jews, but there was a certain number of progressive Croats.
Mirko Peren, Ustaki logori, Stvarnost, Zagreb, 1966.
247
The first two groups of Jews who were taken from Sarajevo in September
1941 were sent to Kruica near Travnik.
The first group of women prisoners with children, from the concentration
camp Metajna, arrived at Kruica on 28th August 1941. That group consisted
of about 1,100 people. Already on 3rd September 1941, around 500 men,
women and children were sent from Sarajevo. They were taken out of their
houses and were allowed only to take the clothes which they had on them.
The next group of Jews from Sarajevo was sent on 9th September 1941 and
there were about 500 people in it, and about 300 Serbian women were
brought from Herzegovina.2
At the beginning of October 1941, Ustasha authorities ordered the disbandment of the camp in Kruica. The prisoners were loaded in two transport
trains and taken to concentration camps in Croatia. The first transport, which
took the men, started toward the camp in Jasenovac on 5th October 1941,
while the second one, which took women and children, on 6th October 1941,
was headed toward the camp in Loborgrad, from where they were later
transported to Auschwitz. First women prisoners in Loborgrad were brought
from the camp Kruica. Among them were about 1350 Jewish women and
children and also several dozen Serbian women.3 The first group of women
prisoners from Loborgrad was sent to Auschwitz between 13th August and
28th August 1941 and the last in October 1942. Serbian women were mostly
taken to Germany for forced labour and some older women were sent to Serbia.4
Peren, Ustasha camps, p. 43.

AJO Sarajevo, no. 147/41, A letter from the Jewish religious community Brod sent to the
Jewish religious community Sarajevo on 7th November: Concerning the telegram we sent
to you yesterday, we would like to inform you that all transports of Jewish internees
started from Kruice, across Slavonski Brod, toward Lobor. There were about 1600
people, 1350 of which were women and children and the rest were men. In the local train
station, the women and children were supplied with: milk, tea, bread and water.
4 Peren, Isto, p. 46.
3
248
Jews in Sarajevo were picked up every month, but some transports were not
recorded or there was no accurate documentation about them. Still, there is
a document for the large transport of 27th and 28th October from Sarajevo.5
It is assumed that, in these transports, there were also 42 Jews from Travnik.6
In that way, thanks to the correspondence of the Jewish religious community
Brod na Savi and the Jewish community of Sarajevo, we find out that, on 1st
November, a transport of 40 internees passed through Brod and another one
on 2nd November. One more transport was recorded thanks to this
correspondence: Today, 6th November 1941, at 11 o'clock, your telegram was
delivered. At midnight tonight, a transport of 150 men who are being taken
to Jasenovac is coming. Prepare food and drink within your possibilities; as
that train could already arrive at 11:30, food for 150 people was quickly
prepared. However, nothing was known about that transport at the railway
station, nor the railway police station.7 That was, of course, a mistake, which
was confirmed by a letter from Sarajevo from which it can be seen that a
transport with 150 men left Sarajevo on 3rd November 1941 and another
group of 71 men, between the ages of 16 and 60, was taken on 7th November.8
However, from the letter of the Jewish religious community Brod, we find
out that, on 8th November, a transport with 120 mostly very young men from
Sarajevo went through Slavonski Brod to Jasenovac.9
Everyone who was rounded up on 17th November in Sarajevo was taken to
Jasenovac during the following night. They were loaded into the wagons, 40
AJO Sarajevo, no. 4/1941 of 28th October, A letter from the Jewish religious community
Brod na Savi sent to the Jewish religious community Sarajevo: We would like to inform
you that a transport of 400 Jewish internees passed through here yesterday, and after that
another, smaller, transport of 30 Jewish internees, all men. Today, another transport of 360
men passed through here. They came from Bosnia and we don't know their destination, but
it is probably Jasenovac. The transports were welcomed and supplied with good food by
our community.
6 AJO Sarajevo, no. 819/41, Pinto A. and Pinto D., Documents on the suffering of Jews in
NDH camps, A letter from the Jewish religious community Sarajevo sent to the Jewish
religious community Brod na Savi.
7 AJO Sarajevo, no. 36/1941.
249
or 50 people in each (those wagons were closed from the outside), and the
only way for the prisoners, who were crammed tightly in those wagons, to
get some air was through small bars on two sides of the wagon. This was the
only transport with Jews in which wagons came by day to the collection site,
in this case the town hall, where they were loaded into the wagons and continued their journey toward Brod.10 A group of 20 Jews from Olovo was
added to this transport.11
For the entire length of the journey, the prisoners did not get any food or
water and they even had to go to the toiler in the wagons, because the wagons
were not opened at all before arriving to Brod. Considering that there wasn't
enough space in the wagons for everyone to stand properly, it can be
concluded how much the prisoners suffered before they reached Brod, and,
then, it is understandable that many did not even make it alive to Brod. The
transport escort, Ustashas and police agents, were in the passenger cars and
they entertained themselves during the entire journey by playing cards and
drinking, while the Jews were crammed in one cattle wagon, freezing,
without any food or water. Later on, one of the police agents who escorted
that transport, which carried a total of about 3000 people, told Bujas that the
prisoners reached Jasenovac. When Bujas asked how large Jasenovac was
when it could take in so many people, the agent replied that he did not know,
but in the case that too many prisoners arrived, they would simply kill the
excessive ones. We find out the details of these transports from the
correspondence of Jewish communities. In that way, we find out that a large
transport of men passed through Brod on 18th November and a large
transport of women on 19th November, all headed for camps.12 The trasports
continue. Around 8 o'clock in the morning of 22nd November, a large
10AJO
Sarajevo, Pinto, The suffering of Sarajevo Jews under the Ustasha regime - Excerpt
from a report of Sreko Bujas, commissioner of the Sephardi Jew community in Sarajevo.
11 AJO Sarajevo, no. 169/41, A letter from the Jewish religious community Brod sent to the
Jewish community of Sarajevo on 17th December 1941: one male transport from Olovo
which had 20 men and older male children, and the prisoners travelled in closed wagons...
In the male transport there was a certain David Majerovi, a 78-year-old man...
12 AJO Sarajevo, no. 96/41 According to the information we received today at the railway
station in Slavonski Brod, the transport from 18th of this month had 700 men, most of them
over 60 year of age, and the transport from 19th of this month 800 women. Today, around 2
o'clock in the afternoon, a transport with 25 men from akovo passed through here.
250
transport of Jewish women from Sarajevo passed through Brod. According

to information we got, the transport had about 600 women and children. We
meet them and supplied them with food.13
The set plan for systematic execution, along with overpopulated imprisonment facilities, speeded up the deportation of the prisoners. Internees transports were formed which were then sent to camps being formed, newly
formed and other camps around NDH. Euphoria for mass destruction of everything in contrast with the idea and legal concept of the Ustasha state, in the
context of the current racist policy, in individuals who defended those ideas,
was consciously accompanied by weak organisational preparations during
operations of deporting internees. Some of those transports were returned to
their point of departure because of overpopulation of prisoners or the incapablity of camps, to which they were sent, to take them in.
Thus, the Committee of the Jewish community of Sarajevo informed the Zagreb Jewish community, on 26th November 1941, that the transport of the
600 women, which returned to Sarajevo, spent full 7 days in wagons without
movement, without washing and mostly without food. The state they were in
needn't be described.14 The poor physical and mental state of internees, who
were returned to collection centres with minimum hygienic conditions, resulted in individual cases of infections.15 Because of the tendency of rapid
spread of disease and a potential epidemic, Ustashas were forced, as a preventive step, to temporarily send prisoners home, until adequate collection
centres were formed. Therefore, it was concluded (in order to avoid the
spread of infectious diseases that could endanger the entire population) that
all prisoners, who are seriously ill and contagious, needed to be immediately
dispatched to hospitals and others should return to their homes in Sarajevo,
13
AJO Sarajevo, no. 106/41, A letter from the Jewish religious community Brod sent to the
Jewish religious communityof Sarajevo on 24th November 1941.
14 AJIM, k. 65, folder 11, documents 140.
15 AJIM, k. 65, folder 11, documents 146. There is already one case of Erysipeloid of
Rosenbach, several cases of scabies, one case of insanity and the general opinion is that,
very soon, an all-round epidemic of infectious diseases will break out.
251
until competent state authorities made suitable camps for their imprisonment.16 This decision was dispositionally different in an array of features
which determined the character of future camps.
It was very clearly emphasised that all internee women and children immediately had to be deported to Osijek. It was clear that Ustashas intended to
turn a camp in the founding into a collection centre for women and children
of different religions and nationalities. In support of that conclusion was the
fact that, in the first transport, there was a small number of Serbian women
and children along with Jewish ones. The added amendment of the exemption of the infirm, elderly and sick was hypocritically formulated and falsely
compassionate, and it was supposed to cover up the cruelty and true goals of
the Ustasha actions. That came from the necessity to urgently deport the elderly and infirm from Sarajevo for fear of a possible epidemic.
In a letter from the Jewish community of Sarajevo sent to the Jewish community in Osijek, we find out that, on 21st December, two transports were
sent from Sarajevo to akovo.17 Only one day later, on 22nd December, as it
was suspected, another transport was sent to akovo.18 In the letter sent to
the Jewish community of Osijek, on 27th December, we find out that the Jewish community of Sarajevo still had no news about the new transport of
women and children who were sent from Sarajevo to akovo during the
night between 23rd and 24th December. Send us the list of all women prisoners
in akovo.19
As early as spring 1942, the Germans expressed their dissatisfaction with the
fact that in the NDH, in their opinion, despite Ustashas drastic measures,
there was still a large number of Jews alive. The Reich Security Main Office
16
AJIM, k. 65, folder 11, documents 1-63.

AJO Sarajevo, no. 1061/41 Two transports are going to leave Sarajevo tonight: women
and children headed for akovo and the other transport has men who are headed for
Jasenovac. There are about 500 women and there will be around 100 men. There is still a
tendency to round up internees in Sarajevo; the internees are mostly women and children
and for them the only option is akovo, because there are no other female camps.
18 AJO Sarajevo, no. 1070: Last night, a new transport of Sarajevo Jews was sent to akovo
and there were about 800 women and children in it. There are over 200 very old women
and severely ill people.
19 AJO Sarajevo, number 1101/41.
17
252
in Berlin, via the so-called Section IV B4, which was in charge of the Jewish
question, in the summer of 1942, expanded its field of action to NDH. That
was preceded by the report The position of Jews in NDH, which was made
in May 1942 in the Gestapo office in Zagreb. In a cold and rational way, the
report described the repression, deportations and mass executions of Jews
north of the Italian-German demarcation line in NDH. Ustasha authorities
are criticised for unjustified cruelty (it took weeks and months to round up
the prisoners). So many Jews have simply disappeared... it remains unclear
why so many human lives have been wasted, and still are, when there is a
need for cheap labour. This objection of the Germans about mass killings
being committed without a rational cause cannot be understood in any other
way but as cynicism.20 The general estimate was that the Jewish question
was, for the most part, dealt with in the German sphere of interest, but the
Nazi offices conclude that Ustasha authorities were not thorough enough.
The report, rightly, stated that a certain number of Jews was spared from
arrests and deportations, thanks to personal and family connections,
corruption and advocation of the Catholic church in Zagreb for
intermarriages and their children and also for some individuials.21
Taking part in the preparation were Ustasha authorities, which, this time,
received direct instructions from the Germans. The term relocation itself,
which the Ustasha authorities began using at that time, was an obvious use of
German terminology: in German, the term used was Aussiedlung or
Evakuierung.22 Relocation became a euphemism for deportations: up to
then, Ustasha terms were quite clear sending Jews to camps and so on.23
As an expert for those kinds of jobs, an officer of the Reich Security Main
Office (RSHA), Haupsturmfhrer Franz Abromeit, from the Eichmann's
Section IV B4 came from Berlin to Zagreb: then, the Ustasha administration
was under direct pressure to improve its organisation in capturing and
deporting Jews. Support was given by the administration in the Zagreb
20
HDA, fund of the National Committee of Croatia for the investigation of the crimes of the
occupation forces and their collaborators (ZKRZ), no. 306, box 10 62-79.
21 Goldstein, Holocaust in Zagreb, Deportation in August 1942, p. 424.
22 HDA, fund of Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Socialist Republic of Croatia, 013.065
part 3 223.
23 HDA, fund 252, Directorate of Ustasha Gendarmerie (RUR) - Jewish Department, 29836.
253
surroundings - so, from Pisarovina in the Kotarska area, at the end of July,
they asked for the Jews to be relocated, because some were fleeing into
Slovenia and others were a burden to the local population.24
On 3rd August, the Croatian government sent a circular letter and in it for
the concentration and placing people who are to be relocated in temporary
collection centres named Ivan Tolj, who was Head of the County Police
District, and for the organisation of railway transports it named Vilko
Khnel, who was the Director of the Jewish Section of the Directorate of
Public Order and Safety. Khnel was appointed the head of the operation
of relocating Jews from the territory of NDH.25
Extensive preparations for arrests were made. It was necessary, among other
things, to create a mongering atmosphere in which the public would accept
these events easier. In that period, at the beginning of August 1942, a certain
Ivanevi from the Press section of the Directorate of Ustasha gendarmerie
sent a circular letter to all newspaper editors. In it was stated that it is
necessary to again start writing about Jews these days. Writing about them
needs to be associated with rebellious activities on Kozara and so on, and also
emphasise that all actions of the rebels were initiated almost exclusively by
Jews. To that end, newspaper editors will be provided material with exact
information, names and so on, at the beginning of the following week. Until
that material is delivered, one or two general articles can be written, which
will portray the activities of Jews as Partisan squad leaders and political
commissars in Soviet Russia.26
On 7th August, Eichmann's deputy, Sturmbannfhrer Rolf Gnther from
Berlin, informed Abromeit in Zagreb that the NDH authorities have provided
seven freight trains which, from 13th August, can be used for transporting
Jews from Croatia across Maribor to Auschwitz, taking two days for each
transport.27
24
HDA, fund 252, Directorate of Ustasha Gendarmerie (RUR) - Jewish Department, 28322.
fund 252, Directorate of Ustasha Gendarmerie (RUR) - Jewish Department, 29059,
About Khnel, 29833 On the approaching operation - fund of ZKRZ.
26 HDA, fund of the National Committee of Croatia for the investigation of the crimes of the
occupation forces and their collaborators (ZKRZ), no. 306, box 10, 283.
27 Hilberg, Destruction, 714-715.
25HDA,
254
Close cooperation between Ustasha authorities and German representatives

was proven from 13th August all up to the end of the month. Even though the
trains were provided by the State railway company, the police escort and
everything else concerning transportation was organised by the German
police force. In that way, the Nazis took from Zagreb to Auschwitz the
arrested Zagreb Jews and also the Jewish women prisoners from camps in
Lobor and Gornja Rijeka: they were joined by camp prisoner from Tenja, as
well as all other Jews arrested in other places in NDH. Most Jews came from
Sarajevo, after which this city was cleansed from Jews. The Jewish
Department informed the State railway company that the cost of
transporting from the loading place to the unloading place will be paid by the
State Treasury of NDH.28 Upon the request of German representatives, that
cost, in accordance with a previous agreement, was to be paid by Ustasha
authorities.
Chief Statistician of the SS, Dr Richard Korherr, submitted to the office of
the SS Reichsfhrer, Himmler, on 23rd March 1943, a supplement report (7
pages) on the final solution of the Jewish question, in which he numerically
summarised everything that had been done about that by the end of 1942.
According to that report, in four large transports during August, a total of
4972 Jews were deported from NDH to camps in Poland.29
Dominik Mandi claimed that, during August 1942, almost all Jews were
relocated from Zagreb and other areas to Germany and Poland; everyone,
even small children.30 Approximately one month later, in September,
Paveli met with Hitler in Ukraine and very clearly said that the Jewish
question was practically dealt with in most of Croatia.31 Paveli was
completely right, because the part of the territory of NDH which was
controlled by Ustashas and Germans, except the city of Zagreb and partly
Sarajevo, was truly cleansed from Jews.
28
HDA, fund 252, RUR - Jewish Department 29769, 29817, 2985, 29861.
Hilberg, Destruction, 717, 1204.
30 Mileti, Jasenovac, book I 489.
31 Sobolevski, Jews, 112.
29
255
DEPORTATIONS TO JASENOVAC CHRONOLOGY

19th August
The camp Krapje (Jasenovac I) was formed - bringing the first group
of Sarajevo Jews
20th/21st August
The first camp prisoners started to arrive at the Jasenovac groups of
camps.
August
Bosanska Gradika - deportation of Jews
Sanski Most - deportation of Jews
10th September
-Camp near the village Broice (Jasenovac II) was formed
20th September
Zenica - deportation of the first group of Jews
September
Graanica - deportation of Jews

-Prijedor - deportation of Jews
-Teanj - deportation of Jews
- Mostar - Passing the Resolution of the Muslims of Mostar
Autumn
Sarajevo - The old community (Sephardic) yearbook Pinkas was
seized.
2nd October
-Kiseljak - deportation of Jews
-Camp near the village Jasenovac (Jasenovac II) was formed
16th/17th October
Sarajevo - mass interning of Jews
256
26th/27th October
Sarajevo - deportation (400+30+360 in two transports) of Jews to
Jasenovac
13th November
The Directorate of Ustasha Gendarmerie of NDH in Zagreb informs
the Great County of Dubrava in Dubrovnik: All Jew refugees, men
between the ages of 16 and 60, who are temporarily settled in apljina
must be sent to the camp Jasenovac.
16th November
Sarajevo - arresting 2200 Jews and taking them to the concentration
camp Jasenovac and akovo (700 men and 800 women)
Sarajevo - arresting 35 Jews, members of the Communist Party of
Yugoslavia, the Youth Communist Party of Yugoslavia and their
sympathisers and taking them to the concentration camp Jasenovac
25th November
The legal provision on sending undesirable and dangerous persons to
forced detention in concentration and labour camps, which formally
legalised the camp system.
16th/17th December
Olovo - a transport of 20 men and older male children sent to Jasenovac
27th December
Zavidovii - the second group of Jews sent to Jasenovac
1942
January 1942
Around 1200 women and children (from the group which was returned
from the camp in Loborgrad) were sent to the camp in Stara Gradika
Tuzla - arrests and deportation of Jews to the concentration camp
Jasenovac
Bosanski Brod - arrests and deportation of the remaining Jews (women
to akovo and men to Jasenovac and Stara Gradika)
1st February
257
Bosanski amac - the second and last group of Jews was taken
17th February
The camp Stara Gradika (Jasenovac V) was formally established
24th February
Travnik - 17 men were sent to Jasenovac and 89 women and children
from Zenica and Travnik were sent to the collection camp Stara
Gradika
11th March
epe - deportation of Jews
Visoko - deportation of Jews
Begov Han - deportation of Jews
25th March
Modria - deportation of Jews
27th March
Zenica, Kiseljak, Fojnica - taking 23 Jews to camp for forced labour
April
Zenica - taking the third group of Jews (16) from Zenica to the camp
Stara Gradika
9th May
Jewish refugees (58) from Slatina near Banja Luka were taken to
Jasenovac
13th May
Jajce - deportation of 13 Jewish women to Stara Gradika
19th May
Sarajevo - deportation of 22 Jews to Jasenovac, that is Stara Gradika
29th June
Derventa - all Jews have been arrested
27th/28th July
258
Banja Luka - deportation of the remaining Jews (170)

1st August
Bijeljina - deportation of Jews (the last transport)
2nd August
A special circular letter of the Government of NDH which announced
the action of relocating Jews to the eastern parts of the Reich.
8th August
Derventa - deportation of Jews (men to Jasenovac and Gradika and
women to akovo and Loborgrad)
10th August
Banja Luka - deportation of the remaining 13 Jews from Banja Luka
and surrounding towns
13th August
Travnik - deportation of 20 Jews to Jasenovac and Stara Gradika
18th/19th August
Sanski Most - all Jews (27) were taken to Jasenovac and Gradika
19th August
Banja Luka - deportation of 20 Jews to Jasenovac and Stara Gradika
23rd August
Banja Luka - a group of 23 Jews was sent to forced labour to Jasenovac,
that is Stara Gradika
Autumn
Tesli - deportation of Jews
1943
12th May
- Bosanski Novi - deportation of Jews

- Bosanska Gradika - deportation of Jews to the camp Stara
Gradika
1945
22nd April
A breakout from the camp Jasenovac took place.

259
PhD uro Zatezalo
FATHOMLESS PITS - PLACES OF

MASS EXECUTION IN THE
COMPLEX OF JADOVNO USTASHA
CAMPS
Jadovno camp and multiple fathomless pits are the places witnessing the
biggest crime against humanity and international law, the law against
newborn babies, grandparents, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, whose
screams of horror resounded helplessly from fathomless pits of Velebit (t/n:
the largest though not the highest mountain range in Croatia) and in places
of mass execution on Pag (t/n: a Croatian island in the northern Adriatic Sea).
The Ustasha camp in Velebit Jadovno is a symbolic place, a place of death,
horror, fright, screams and painful memories.
This was one of the first beastliest and most brutal concentration camps places of mass murder in Europe.
The Croatian Ustasha camp of Jadovno was a forerunner of the Jasenovac
camp, an Ustasha factory of death, the largest complex of camps for
extermination of ethnic Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croats and other
peoples in Yugoslavia in the period 1941-1945.
However, Jadovno is a place about which no complete literary or scientific
work has been published for more than 68 years. The truth about this
complex of Croatian Ustasha death camps was carried away into fathomless
pits and abysses by its inmates, whose voices of horror helplessly resounded
261
for days across rugged Velebit, places of execution on Pag and in the waves
of the Adriatic Sea.
The majority of people know something about Jasenovac death camp, which
existed for four years; they also know of Auschwitz and Treblinka, whose gas
chambers were put into operation on 4th July, where the Nazi industry of
murdering was started on 23rd July 1942. However, very little is known
about the complex of Croatian Ustasha death camps of Jadovno, which
existed for less than four months, from 11th April to 25th August 1941.
The camps in Velebit and on Pag were started earlier than the majority of
death camps in Germany. The Ustasha regime in the Independent State of
Croatia (NDH), led by Ante Paveli, was more effective at racial persecution
than Nazi Germany.
As soon as he came to power, with the help from Germans and Italians,
Paveli did everything to create the pure Catholic state of Croatia through
the extermination of the Serb and Jewish population. Unlike his Nazi
masters, in order to commit mass murders in Velebit, the Ustashas did not
spend money or build death factories with gas chambers for poisoning their
victims; they simply used the natural pits. They would bring tied men,
women and children over the pits, hit them with mallets or stab them with
knives - mostly several of those helpless who were the first in line so as to
pull down the others who, according to the slaughterers themselves, would
precipitate into the darkness of the pit. Others were killed over pits they had
had to dig themselves or were pushed into the sea, a stone tied to their neck.
Ustashas found a great joy in the sadistic torturing of their victims - the
raping of women and little girls in front of their grandmothers, grandfathers
and husbands, afterwards throwing their victims still alive and covered in
blood into the fathomless pits. If Auschwitz is said to have been a death
factory, in the Jadovno complex of mass killing fields death was dealt
manually, as if on a production line.
In the places of mass murder in Jadovno and on Pag, Maks Luburi set the
foundations of the Jasenovac hell, becoming the head of all Paveli's camps
in the NDH.
There are no words to describe the agony of victims in the Jadovno complex
of Croatian Ustasha-Home Guard camps. It surpasses the human fantasy. In
262
1941, Jadovno complex consisted of the following collection camps: The

building of District Court Prison, its corridors and courtyards in Gospi,
Ovara camp1 near Gospi, Stupanievo near Bake Otarije, camps near
Risova Glava in Velebit, the extermination camps Slana and Metajna on the
island of Pag, the collection camps in Gospi railway station, the
extermination camp in ai Dolac, Jadovno in Velebit and 32 fathomless pits
which I discovered by searching through original documents and walking
across Velebit crags and its surroundings for years to describe them in
detail.2
The camps in Gospi were collection and transit camps, which started as early
as April 1941, much before 2nd June, when Ante Paveli issued an official
order for the establishment of the camps.
Jadovno camp was situated 22 kilometres north-west from Gospi, deep in a
dense forest of the Velebit mountain range, at 1200 metres above sea level,
with very cold nights and hot and dry days. The inmates were kept outdoors,
unsheltered. Far away from civilisation, deep in the unsettled remote area of
Velebit.
Guarded by Ustashas and Home Guard, the inmates had to put up a fourmetre high, 50 x 25-metre barbed wire fence around the camp in May 1941.
The camp expanded over time until 24th July, when it got its final shape of
188 x 90 metres in area, so that day was taken as the official date of the
establishment of one of first places of mass execution in the Independent
State of Croatia in 1941.3
Ovara: The barns of a Serb merchant named Matija Maksimovi, who, apart from a
printing house, library and reading room in Gospi near Novica River, owned three big
barns where he kept sheep, cows and several horses used to provide services for other
merchants. As early as May 1941, Ustashas plundered his estate, murdering him and
several members of his family in a cruel way. The Ustashas turned the barns into a
collection camp for Jews and Serbs, named "Ovara" by the inmates themselves.
2 For more information see: Dr uro Zatezalo Jadovno Kompleks ustakih logora 1941,
knjiga I, Muzej rtava genocida, Beograd, 2007, pp. 169.189.
3 Ibid, pp. 112 - 125
263
The first fathomless pit, 1,880 metres away from a small Croatia village
Jadovno, which the camp in Velebit was named after, was aranova pit.4
The aforesaid Ustasha camps were formed by the NDH state bodies with the
aid of a part of the Catholic clergy. They were established by the NDH
Ministry of Interior, led by Andrija Artukovi, Eugen Kvaternik, Chief of the
Ustasha Internal Security Service, Juco Rukavina, an Ustasha colonel,
emigrant Jurica Frkovi, the Great District Prefect of Lika and Gacko,
Stjepan Rubini, Chief of the Ustasha police in Gospi, Rudo Rico and
Dragutin Pudi Paraliza. The camp chief was a notorious Ustasha, teacher
Rude Ric.5
The camp was secured by 200 Ustashas and 50 Croatian Home Guard soldiers,
some of which were in fezzes (t/n: The Croatian Home Guard, Domobrani,
was part of the armed forces of the Independent State of Croatia which
existed during World War II).
Jadovno camp was under the direct command of the Ustasha Police Battalion
in Gospi, commanded by major Stjepan Rubini.6 The battalion included a
special unit, whose members' task was to take Serbs and Jews from the camp
to the nearby places of execution and pits and kill them there. They were
commanded by four Ustasha officers who were in charge of Ustashas and
Home Guards who kept guard around Jadovno camp. The Gospi prison
warden was the notorious Ustasha Milan Staraeh, who had absolute
authority in the whole prison.
Ante Paveli, accompanied by about 250 Ustasha emigrants, arrived in
Ogulin on 13th April 1941. They were escorted by a group of Italian officers
and sitting beside him in the car was an Italian general. Ustashas, led by
parish priest Ivan Mikan and lawyer Lovro Sui, gave Paveli ceremonial
Until 1939, the pit was called Vodena jama (Water pit). The pit changed its name into
aranova pit after a young man named Buba, whose parents were nicknamed aran, had
lost his life after an unsuccessful attempt to jump over it.
5 The Ustasha 40-year-old First Lieutenant, well knew the territory of Lika and Krbava,
which he used in arresting and murdering Serbs. He was a great supporter of the
Yugoslavian idea, thus skilfully hiding his hatred towards the Serbs; Historijski arhiv
Karlovac (HAK), Zbornik 20, 1989, pp. 148, 155, 189, 191, 202, 205, 798, 800, 806, 816.
6 Dr uro Zatezalo, pp. 112-113.
264
welcome in Ogulin. In his impassioned speech, priest Ivan Mikan called for
cleansing all non-Croats, while Paveli, in his speech to a crowd of locals,
publicly announced terror and carnage as well as absolute obedience to their
fascist masters. He exclaimed the Ustasha slaughterers' slogan Bjee psine
preko Drine! (Serbian bastards are fleeing across Drina River!), which
only a month later the Ustasha government vice-president (doglavnik) Mile
Budak, in his speech in Karlovac, turned into the horrible slogan Srbe na
vrbe! (Hang Serbs from the willow trees!)
As early as 10th April 1941, five days before the arrival of poglavnik Ante
Paveli in Zagreb, Vlatko Maek (t/n: a Croatian politician active within the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the first half of the 20th century) issued a
proclamation in which he invited his numerous supporters and all Croats to
support the new Croatian government.
The same support to the new Ustasha government was given by the highranking Catholic clergy such as archbishop Alojzije Stepinac, Sarajevo
archbishop ari and many others, all with the blessing by the Holy See and
notorious fascist Pope Pius XII. As early as 11th April 1941, archbishop
Stepinac visited Dr Milovan ani, the Ministry of Interior, on his own behalf
and on behalf of the Catholic Church.7
On Holy Saturday, he made a return visit to the NDH military commander,
general Slavko Kvaternik, who, on behalf of poglavnik Ante Paveli,
proclaimed the Independent State of Croatia in 10th April 1941 and
congratulated Paveli on the establishment of the NDH, which also meant
establishing a close cooperation between the Ustasha regime and the highest
representative of the Catholic Church in the NDH.
In Ustasha press, the visit was given a special attention by Alojzije Stepinac,
which he paid to Ante Paveli on 16th April 1941, three days after his arrival
in Zagreb, as well as a ceremony he hosted in his palace for Ustasha emigrant
officers. Thus Stepinac showed the course of himself and the Catholic Church
during the period of Ustasha regime.8
Hrvatski narod, 14th April 1941.

See photo in: Dokumenti o protunarodnom radu, 156; Viktor Novak: Magnum Crimen, p.
544
265
After that, cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, in his circular of 28th April 1941, saluted
the Independent State of Croatia as the son of Croats and representative of
the Holy Church and appealed to the Catholic clergy for sublime
devotedness to protection and improvement of the NDH.9 What ensued were
hate speech and calls for ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Jews by Ustasha
ministers, certain bishops, parish priests etc. instituted in genocidal laws,
orders and provisions.10
The first day of the establishment of the NDH they clearly showed that ethnic
Serbs and Jews would be treated in atrocious manner. They were considered
outlaws.
Regardless of their age, the Jews had to wear the Jewish mark (t/n:
stands for idovi, Croatian term for Jews). The Serbs had to wear a blue
ribbon around the arm with capitalised letter P, which, besides political,
also was the religious mark (t/n: P stands for pravoslavac, which means
Orthodox). They had to convert to Catholicism, the faith of forefathers
and become Croats or vanish from the NDH by expulsion to Serbia or
murdering.
On 3rd May 1941, the Religious Conversion Law was passed, which was
signed by the Minister of Education and Faith, Mile Budak, m.p.11
After that, the Instruction for Conversion was issued.12
Religious conversion of Serbs was the common goal of Croatian bishops and
the NDH authorities. It was conducted by the Council of Three, led by
cardinal Alojzije Stepinac and the Working Committee for Croatia and Bosnia
and Herzegovina in agreement with the Ministry of Education and Faith.13
Ustashas gathered Serbs in various ways by summoning them to certain
places to receive new documents or telling them that Catholic priests would
9 Dr uro Zatezalo, ibid. p. 44; Cvitkovi Ivan, Ko je bio Alojzije Stepinac, Sarajevo, 1966.
73 87; Viktor Novak, ibid. Jeli Buti Fikreta, Zagreb 1977, p. 59
10 Katoliki list 1941. No. 17, 197, 198.
11 Narodne novine, 27th May 1941.
12 Uputstvo o prelaenju iz jedne vjere u drugu, Ministarstvo bogotovlja i nastave, br. 178,
Zagreb, 27th May 1941.
13 Viktor Novak, ibid. p. 16.
266
come to convert them to Catholicism, so that they could live and work in
peace as Croats. In many places, the Ustashas succeeded in assembling even
several hundreds of Serbs. However, instead of the priests, Ustashas would
come in trucks, surround the Serbs, tie them and take them to death. The
conversion campaign was an easy way for Ustashas to gather as many Serbs
as possible so that they could arrest and murder them instantly or take them
to Orthodox churches and slaughter them bestially.14
The genocide in NDH was committed in public places through sadistic
torturing: in Serbian Orthodox churches, schools, houses, gardens, fields,
forests, places of mass executions, fathomless pits etc. Since 11th April 1941,
Serbs, Jews and anti-fascists had been brought to Jadovno complex of
Ustasha camps, before any kind of resistance to the NDH even started. That
represented the beginning of meticulously planned and committed crime of
genocide against the Serbs and holocaust against the Jews.
From mid-May to 18th August 1941, trains would arrive to Gospi railway
station on a daily basis, consisting of stock cars carrying 250 - 370 Serbs and
Jews tortured by thirst, starvation and beating, whom Ustashas and Home
Guard captured across the NDH at home, in towns, villages, workplaces,
churches, fields etc. Wherever they would find them, day and night. They
sent them to collection camps in Gospi every day. When the camps were full
of inmates, the Ustasha criminals would herd them, tied in twos and all
together by a longitudinal chain, to Jadovno death camp in Velebit and the
camps on the island of Pag.
They would often transport the inmates in trucks or herd them on foot only
to the nearest pits by the road to execute them by blunt objects or to throw
the tortured prisoners into fathomless pits, without getting to the aforesaid
camps and many pits inside them. The inmates who were not killed in the pits
by the road would be further tortured starved, thirsty and cursed by the
Ustashas who beat them with stakes and gun stocks or stabbed with knives
all the way to the camps in Velebit or Pag, where they would be finished off
after brutal torturing to a great joy of the Ustasha butchers.15
14
15
Ibid.
Dr uro Zatezalo, ibid. p. 298.
267
Since the first day of its establishment on 10th April 1941, the Ustasha,
quisling and clerical-fascist creation of NDH carried out the previously
devised plan of genocide against the Serbian and Jewish people consistently
and comprehensively on a daily basis, with the aim of their complete
extermination in Croatia.
Jadovno camp in Velebit, with its subcamps and fathomless pits, was the first
mass execution camp in the NDH. The Ustasha regime systematically
tortured innocent people in indescribable ways.
Ustashas were notorious for incomprehensible and unimaginable cruelties,
unprecedented in the modern human history. It is easy to conclude that
Ustashas, in their sadism and cruelty, overdid Nazis in holocaust and the
Young Turks in the genocide against Armenians.16
German Nazis and Italian fascists were also appalled with the beastliness of
the Ustasha atrocities. They were disgusted at the Ustasha blood-thirstiness.
They had the reason to be, as there were no similar crimes in whole Europe
during the Second World War. The German head of defence in Zagreb,
general Artur Heffner, informed Berlin on 24th April 1942 of horrible
atrocities against the Serbs, who had lived there for centuries, and
plundering of their property. In his letter he said that he could not
understand that the carrier of the Ustasha crimes are also a large number of
Catholic clergy. He quotes the Sarajevo archbishop Sori, who wrote the
following in a Catholic newspaper on 11th May 1941: I visited our Ustashas
in North America. I sang our Ustasha hymns from the bottom of my heart
and with tears in my eyes. We have always been loyal and devoted to the
fatherland of Croats! More Catholics! God and Croats! - he exclaimed,
declaring himself as an Ustasha. Heffner mentions Franciscan Franceti,
who ordered a primary school teacher to separate Serbian children from the
others for Ustashas to kill them in front of their teacher and school mates.17
16
Addressing Ustashas, poglavnik Ante Paveli would often say: "A good Ustashas is the
one who can use a knife and take a Serbian child out of the mother's womb."
17 Saint Ante Herald, No. 7 - 8 pp. 88 ,81,1941.
268
The same general mentions some other Catholic priests with atrocious
intentions and instructions as to how to ethnically cleanse the Independent
State of Croatia from Serbs, Jews and Roma.
The German historian Walter Gerlock says: Unfortunately, one of the first
measures taken by the Catholic Ustasha regime was the horrifying military
campaign of extermination aimed against the Greek-Orthodox population.18
Colonel Giuseppe Angelini, commander of a regiment of the 13th Infantry
Division Re [English: King], says in his memoires: Thousands of Serbs
have been blinded and brutally tortured, and whole families have been
massacred regardless of the sex or age whatsoever. The organisers and
executors would often celebrate the carnage, eating and drinking cheerfully.
One example is the Ustasha celebration in August 1941, when they celebrated
the murdering of Gospi secondary school principal's son, who was their
thousandth victim.19
Similar accounts were recorded by many other Italian and German soldiers
and officers during or after the war. The Germans and Italians alone were
stupefied by the atrocities of Croatian soldiers under the command of the
NDH leader, Ante Paveli.
All members of the Axis alliance and their satellite states had death camps
where innocent people lost their lives. However, the camps founded and
organised by the NDH in the period 1941-1945, in their monstrousness and
inhuman drive for extermination of the Serbian, Jewish and Roma inmates,
surpass the animal cruelty of extermination in the Third Reich death camps.
Based on many years of field research and numerous original archive
material of different provenance, I came to the conclusion that, in this
Ustasha death camp complex, which did not exist for long (11th April - 21st
August 1941), Ustashas interned 42,246 Serbs, Jews and anti-fascist Croats
from the whole NDH, out of which they executed 40,123 in just 132 days of
the camp existence.
Due to the Italian re-occupation of the Croatian Littoral and Lika province,
which begun on 15th August caused by the uprising in the provinces of Lika,
18
19
Marco Aurelio Rivelli, The Archbishop of Genocide, Jasen, Niki, p. 121.

Ibid.
269
Kordun, Banija and Kninska Krajina, Ustashas, concerned about the reaction
of the Italians, instantly liquidated the camps Jadovno, Slana and Metajna. In
Jadovno camp alone, the Ustashas quickly executed 763 inmates, 256 of
which over the pit which was only 40 metres away from the camp fence.
Hurriedly, before the Italians came, the Ustashas packed the remaining 2,123
inmates from the camp on the island of Pag and other camps onto the same
railway stock cars on which they had been brought to the camps and
transported them to the Ustasha camp Jastrebarsko near Zagreb on 19th, 20th
and 21st August. In the last transport, on 21st August, there were 900 Serbs
who were transported the same day from Jastrebarsko camp to Jasenovac
camp. The remaining inmates brought from Gospi were transported in a few
following days to the camps in Kruica, Lepoglava, Jasenovac and some
other camps. The Ustashas executed 200 inmates in Jastrebarsko camp.
Out of 40,123 executed inmates in the complex of camps in Gospi, Jadovno
and Pag, there were 38,010 Serbs, 1,988 Jews, 88 Croats, 11 Slovenes, 9
Muslims, two Czechs, two Hungarians, one Russian, one Roma and one
Montenegrin.
The aforesaid data show that the Ustashas in Jadovno executed the average
of 304 inmates per day, almost the same number of inmates trasnported from
Gospi.20
For the last 68 years, the truth about the places of execution in Jadovno camp
in Velebit have remained undiscovered and without a written record. The
tendency was for the evidences to be destroyed of atrocities committed by
Croatian soldiers, Ustashas and Croatian Home Guard in a planned and
organised way against the Serbs and Jews. The crime was to be hushed up
and forgotten over time. All of that was being done under the slogan of
brotherhood and unity of the peoples of Yugoslavia. Ustashas were
destroying the traces of their crimes even during the war, as well as at the
time they were committed and afterwards. The truth about the cruelty of
Ustasha crimes was carried away into fathomless pits and abysses by the
victims, whose voices of horror helplessly resounded for days from the pits
of rugged Velebit, places of execution on Pag and in the waves of the Adriatic
Sea.
20
Dr uro Zatezalo, ibid. pp. 382 - 384
270
They have not been exhumed, counted or decently buried yet. It was said that
it should not be done for the benefit of brotherhood and unity, so may their
bones rest in peace where they are.21 It is not time for that yet, it takes 50
years to wait so that the feelings of the people Ustashas belonged to would not
be hurt. All that evil should be put aside until some better time. The horrible
Ustasha atrocities should not be investigated, recorded or published. Why
recording mass graves and places of execution or discover fathomless pits
and exhume the victims? This period will remain in memory forever for the
evil plan to exterminate a whole nation.
Many things were kept secret. Instead, all crimes committed in the Second
World War in the period 1941-1945 should be thoroughly investigated and
publicly presented by experts for our posterity to know about the human evil
so that such atrocities never happen to anybody again.
And thus, a new evil sprang from the old one, having been hushed up.
The year of 1991 came. The Serbs in Croatia were deprived of their status of
constitutive and nation-building ethnic group in their home land. The Serbs
were transformed into a national minority and, out of 12.16 of the total
population of the Socialist Republic of Croatia, according to the 1991 census,
the Serbs were reduced to the mere 4.54 of the total population of Republic
of Croatia according to the 2001 census.
Serbian places in Croatia have almost totally disappeared. Their inhabitants
have been expelled from their centuries-old hearths. Their houses and estates
have been plundered and mostly burnt or inhabited by Croats, not only by
refugees but also those from towns and places in Croatia unaffected by the
conflict. Humble monuments erected in memory of the victims of Ustasha
regime have been destroyed. Thus, their names disappeared - they hav ebeen
killed for the second time. The names of streets, places, schools and
institutions have been changed.
21
Of all fathomless pits and places of execution in Kordun, Banija, Lika and parts of Gorski
kotar, I have recorded 337. The majority of them have still remained unknown. Almost all
places of the legalised Ustasha crime are unmarked and inaccessible. Dr uro Zatezalo:
Radio sam svoj seljaki i kovaki posao Svjedoanstva genocida Srpsko kulturno
drutvo Prosvjeta, Zagreb, 2005. pp. 332 - 357.
271
For example, the Memorial Centre, together with commemorative plaques

with the names of victims, was built in the place where the Serbian Orthodox
Church of the Nativity of the Holy Mother (built in 1826) was in Glina, where
Ustashas and Home Guard slaughtered 1,564 Serbs in late July and early
August of 1941. On 25th, 26th and 27th September 1995, the plaques were
shattered and removed, while the Memorial Centre was renamed into the
Croatian Centre.
Today's picture of the complex of Ustasha death camps in Jadovno, both in
Velebit and the island of Pag, is more than outrageous. Contemporary
negators of the truth falsify even their own biographies, while the effort to
reveal the truth and provide evidences has been made totally impossible.
Nevertheless, the indestructible and unchanged womb of the fathomless pits
and places of massacre has remained together with the mortal remains of
countless victims. They still have not been exhumed, counted or given a
decent burial.
Karlovac
6th March 2014
272
Jovan Pejin
AN INSIGHT INTO THE GENOCIDE

COMMITTED AGAINST THE SERBS
IN THE REGION OF SREM DURING
1941-1945
The occupation of the region of Srem by the Croats during 1941-1945 is a

historic event in the recent Serbian history. After living in the Kingdom of
the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/Yugoslavia for 22 years, the Serbs of Srem,
united with Serbia in November 1918, found themselves facing the spectre
of genocide.
Due to its geostrategic position, the so-called Osijek Gate, located between the
Fruka Gora Mountain in the east and the Slavonian hills in the west and
bounded by the rivers Sava and Danube, Srem has always been the target of
invaders. The position of Srem made it possible to control the regions of
Slavonia, Semberia, Mava, Baka, Banat and the city of Belgrade. Therefore,
Srem became a point of interest of Croatias hegemonic plans. Such plans had
been threatened by the Serbs living in the region of Srem since the dawn of
their times, thus the Croats, or more precisely their ultra national elites,
included the region of Srem in the programme of ethnic cleansing. Their first
strategy was to rename the Orthodox Serbs into Croats and Catholics, and if
the Serbs rejected the offer, their second strategy was biological
obliteration. The Croats tried to carry out both strategies in the fragmentstate of the Kingdom of Croatia, and in the region of Slavonia in the 19th
century, as well as during 1941-1945 in the NDH (the Independent State of
Croatia).
273
After the occupation of Srem by the German Wehrmacht in 1941 and

Croatian paramilitary groups, and then the annexation of it to the
Independent State of Croatia, the decision of the Serbs from Srem made in
Ruma in November 1918 to join Serbia was repealed.
On 10 April 1941, the German units entered the region of Srem and were
enthusiastically greeted by the okci, that is, the new Croats, the Ustashas,
members of the Croatian Peasant Party (CPP) and the Volksdeutsche.1 The
okci and the Volksdeutsche disarmed Yugoslav soldiers in the towns of
Vukovar, id, Inija, Pazova, Ilok and Sremska Mitrovica. After the
proclamation of the Independent State of Croatia, Srem became the Great
Vuka Parish based in the town of Vukovar. The Ustashas and the local leaders
of the CPP took control over the parish, and the Ustasha and Croatian
identities became equivalent.2
The Great Vuka Parish consisted of 10 counties, and it was mostly part of the
previous Srem Parish.3
Deeply affected by the effective Croatian propaganda as being the new
Croats, the okci from Srem together with the Volksdeutche showed
disloyalty to Yugoslavia and the Serbs. The paramilitary units of the CPP
called the Protection assumed authority, and then persecuted and disarmed
the Yugoslav army.
After the establishment of the authorities, the Croatian military garrisons and
the Ustasha organizations were formed. The Ustasha Movement was the
most important Ustasha organization, and it became responsible for the mass
genocidal crimes against the Serbs and Jews.4
The authorities of the NDH sought to destroy any symbol of Yugoslavia,
which was supported by the new laws and regulations, and on 25 April, the
Cyrillic alphabet was prohibited.
Ethnic Germans, t/n.

Drago Njegovan (ed.), Zloini okupatora i njegovih pomagaa u Vojvodini 1941-1944, Vol.
II, Novi Sad, 2013, p. 11.
3 Ibid., p. 14.
4 Ibid., p.15.
2
274
The Serbs were immediately treated as enemy of the state, and as a result of
that, Orthodox Christian churches and Jewish synagogues were closed.
Orthodox Christian priests were persecuted and the robbery of churches and
monasteries began.
The basis for such activities of the NDH formed without the knowledge of the
Wehrmacht was the pure fiction of the Croatian state law, which
disregarded all political, ethnical and denominational facts, hence the claims
on the region of Srem, where the Croats, that is, the okci, in relation to the
Serbs, were a minority. There were more than 50 of the Serbs, 16 of the
descendants of the colonised Germans, about 5 of Hungarians, 3.5 of Slovaks
1.5 of Ruthenians, about 2,000 Jews and 23 of the Croats.5
From 21 June 1941, the Volksdeutche were treated as a legal entity and made
a special community; together with the Croatian language, the German
language became the official language in the authorities and courts.6
The strengthening of Croatian authority was followed by mass arrests of the
Serbs in June 1941, who were deported to the Jadovno camp near the village
of Gospi and later were killed there. Around 300 persons were murdered
then. The mass executions occurred also in the locality of Sremska Mitrovica,
Cerevic and Beoin. The executions were followed by the expulsion of the
Serb colonists, volunteers in the Serbian army, and combatants in the wars
during 1912-1918, who settled in the region of Srem after 1920.
After the ethnic cleansing, the Croats, and to a lesser extent the Volksdeutche,
were settled on their property, as implemented by the State Directorate for
Renewal in charge of abandoned property.7
Violence followed the pressure for the purpose of Catholicising the Serbs.
The pressure presented the position of the Croats as a national collective. Paul
Ritter, a German born in Sinj, or Croat Pavle Vitezovi, gave the definition
of the solution to the Serb question in Croatia, presently the NDH which
included countries and regions which Croatia had never before had within
its territories, in a pamphlet Croatia rediviva printed in Vienna early in the
Ibid., p. 16.
Ibid.
7 Ibid., p. 17.
6
275
18th century on the propagation of Croatia from Istria and the Alps to the
Black Sea! All subsequent Croatian political programs relied on his vision!
The aggression against the Serbs in the NDH was an extension of the policy
of the Croatian feudal and clerical elite of the 18th century defined in stand
taken by the estate trustee of the Zagreb Archdiocese Ambroz Kuzmi that
all Serbs, or the Vlachs, should be slaughtered instead of given abode.8
The stand of Ambroz Kuzmi became the alpha and omega of politics of all
parties in Croatia, the feudal fragment-state within Hungary, without any
impact on Hungarian politics, and implemented whenever the opportunities
were allowing to do so in the Monarchy, and after 1868 in the AustroHungarian Empire.
Backward, economically and culturally, the fragment-state of Croatia, to
which Slavonia was adjoined, with its Parliament in Zagreb, was constantly
in conflict with the Serbs in the Military Frontier until its abolition in 1881,
and then afterwards, as citizens who had national institutions within the
Karlovac Diocese Mitropolia based on the privileges granted in 1690. The
Serbs had a developed national awareness and were aware of their status in
the Monarchy. As such, the Serbs had been and remained an obstacle to the
Croatian national and political megalomania and fantasies about the size of
Croatia in the past, and the role of the Croats in the first feudal Hungary, and
in the construction of Austrian power in the southeast of Europe. This is
clearly visible from the leaflet that was circulated in Srem in the fall of 1941:
To all the honest people of Srem of the Greek-Eastern denomination.9
The leaflet written on a typewriter, in Cyrillic, in which the Sremian
addresses his Brothers Sremians, was a synthesis of the idea of Croatian
politics that lasted from the statements by Ambroz Kuzmi in the late 17th
century, through Ante Starevi, Stjepan Radi, Vladko Maek, up to Ante
Paveli in 1941.
The contents of the leaflet was the formulation of the Croatian political
thought as anticipated, determined and implemented by the Ustasha leaders:
Ante Paveli, Milovan Zani the legislator, Viktor Guti, Milan Budak
8
9
Vasilije . Kresti, Genocidom do Velike Hrvatske, Novi Sad, Beograd, 1998. p. 19.
Njegovan, ibid., p. 255.
276
Minister of Teaching and Religious Worship, Dionizije Jurkovi a priest,

and Mladen Lorkovi Minister of Foreign Affairs. The solution to the Serb
question in the NDH could only be achieved through the disappearance of the
Serbs!10
According to the contents of the leaflet, the Sremians had belonged to the
Triune Kingdom of Croatia through centuries, and faithfully served in the
Croatian Home Guard, though it had not really existed until the introduction
of the compulsory military service in the Monarchy, and constituted the
Croatian political nation and ... we ourselves considered us to be the Croats
of the Greco-Eastern denomination ...11
It further read: agents of Serbia interpreted to ... our children that they are
not Croats but Serbs. This idea, as further explained by the Sremian, was
adopted by our priests and thus caused discord. The Serb propaganda was
such that the Sremians believe that they were Serbs. And not only that, but,
when Yugoslavia was established, they realised that they were not Serbs, that
they were second-class citizens, that Belgrade gents used them for the
destruction of Croatia, and that they were paying double taxes ...
Now, with the declaration of the NDH, in order for them not to be the secondclass citizens they should return... in the lap of our mother Croatia ... Not
only this, but the Sremian further continued with the nonsense that during
the Ottoman rule there were no Catholic priests, and that their ancestors
converted to Orthodoxy, so, nowadays, the Sremians need to convert to
Catholicism and to ... live peacefully and honestly as true Croatian peasants
and artisans on their homeland of Croatia. This was already done by the
brothers in Slavonia, who, after visiting the Principal looked into the future
with clarity. The Sremian ended with a call threatening that the Sremians
should decide until it was not too late for it.12
It was already too late! The Ustashas, the storm-troopers of the Croatian
people, did not wait for someone to change their mind and accept Roman
Catholicism and Croatism. The executions and persecutions of the Serbs in
NDH were in full swing from May and June along with the destruction of
10
Biko Lalovi, Knjiga o Diani Budisavljevi, Svet knjige, Beograd, 2013, p. 24-25.
Njegovan, ibid., p. 255.
12 Ibid.
11
277
churches and monasteries, and the genocidal crimes were followed by the
deportation of Serbs from their property and the colonization of Croats onto
the stolen property.
In addition to being sent to Jasenovac, the execution by shooting in Dudik
near the town of Vukovar and in the town of Sremska Mitrovica, the peak of
the genocide against the Serbs was the action by Viktor Tomi in August and
September of 1942. Theses cases show that the truth about the genocide
cannot be killed or forgotten.
The initiative for the massacre in Srem was given by Ante Paveli himself on
August 15, 1942, as a part of a programme implemented simultaneously on
Mount Kozara. He stated in his statement that in areas where there was an
enemy, the enemy was to be destroyed ...13 and that they shall leave no trace
of them. He ended his speech with: There will be no stone left unturned,
and the Croatian state will be cleared and secured.14
In the action by Viktor Tomi, 1,212 people were murdered, while 422 went
missing. In other crimes, 2,548 people were hurt, while the damage amounted
to 236,076,714 of the pre-war value dinars.15 However, as the lists of victims
from the districts of Zemun, Stara Pazova, Sremska Mitrovica, Ruma, Irig
and Sremski Karlovci were missing, the total number of people killed and
missing was assumed to be about 6,000, and hurt in other crimes to about
10,000 people.16
The crime by the NDH, which was created as an expression of the historical
tendency of the Croatian people in Srem, and in other areas that were
occupied by the Croats behind the Wehrmacht and the Italian Royal Army,
in addition to being the state crime, was a crime of the people. This is an
eternal fact that stretches onwards from the 16th and 17th century, when the
crime was announced, to the modern day.
13
Drago Njegovan (ed.), Zloini okupatora i njihovih pomagaa u Vojvodini, Vol. V, Novi
Sad, 2009, p. 29.
14 Ibid., p. 30.
15 Ibid., p. 121.
16 Ibid.
278
The slaughter of the Serbs executed in April 1941, and later in that year, and
then in the fall of 1942, committed by the Croats with the great help of the
Volkdeutsche, served the destruction of the biological substance of the
Serbian people in Srem, alongside with the destruction of their cultural
monuments and spirituality, as well as written traces on the existence of them
as people.
Victims have not been listed ever since, not even today, and the only thing
that reminds of them are tomb stones in cemeteries, a memorial plaque here
and there on the buildings in which the victims resided before destruction,
and monuments to Partisan fighters against fascism, which actually hide a
history of genocide against the Serbs in Srem, and it was similar in other
areas that came under the Croatian occupation.
These monuments are an attempt at creating ideological awareness of antifascism in the Yugoslav peoples and nationalities, including the Croats, and
they are somewhat vague and certainly do not indicate the passionate Greater
Croatianism and the movement of the knife towards the throats of the Serbs,
as well as the aim to create an ethnically pure Roman Catholic Croatia.
Hiding the genocide against the Serbs in Srem, which was completed under
the influence and ideological pressure of the Croatian-Communist leadership
of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia/ Communist Union of Yugoslavia, is a
subsequent murder of the victims.
Undeserved oblivion of the genocide against the Serbs in Srem during the
Croatian occupation and annexation of the Serb territory by the NDH served
the purpose of hiding the atrocities for national and political reasons, very
important for the Croats. We emphasise that Yugoslavia continued the war
against the Axis powers to which the NDH belonged, also after the
capitulation of its army on April 17, 1941. This means that Yugoslavia was at
war with the NDH and its legal army in the field fulfilled its responsibilities
in terms of occupation and the imposed civil war.
This raises the question of re-examining the role of the Partisan movement
led by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia during the war against the Axis
powers, and the NDH along with them. What is the role of the Communist
Party of Yugoslavia in hiding crimes against the Serbs? What is the role of
the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in hiding crimes in Srem and how does
279
this affect the identity of Srem and the Serbian people who have lived there
from the very beginnings, and who have enriched it with their civilization
characteristics? Does this hiding of the crimes of the Croats as a people, and
the Roman-Catholic church represent the permanent acceptance of the
results of genocide? The answer to these questions still has not been given!
According to the Act by the Ordinariate of the town of akovo of 8 June 1942
addressed to the State Commission of the Croatian National Museum, the
Serbian Churches were turned into the Roman Catholic Churches in Srem in
the following places: Tenja, Dalj, Markuica, Belo Brdo, Borovo Selo, Trpinja
and Paetin.17 This is not the final number. To the said number there should
be added the churches in the localities of Bobota, Brsadin, Budimci, Dopin,
Koprivna, epin, epinski Martinci and Markuica.18
The destiny of the Serbs in Srem is permanently bound with its spiritual
development in the area from Vukovar to Zemun and to the destiny of its
national and political unity. It is important to emphasise this when discussing
the genocide against the Serbs in Srem and the results of this Croatian crime,
since that nowadays the state union of Serbia is being interfered with, and
local history separatism is being encouraged which cuts the artery of its
national development and the entire cultural heritage.
We have listed the physical destruction of the Serbs, and then the
Catholicising and the abduction of the Serb shrines, churches and spiritual
heritage. That is why we say that we cannot be the Serbs if we continue to
reject the national stand, the same as during the time of the CroatianCommunist dictatorship, and talk about the genocide as the deed performed
by the fascist occupiers without the stating exactly the full name of the people
who committed the genocide against the Serbs, as a national collective, and
in the case of Srem, the deed performed by the Croats and Roman Catholic
Church!
The Jews, when they speak about the Holocaust, name the Germans and the
Croats, and also some other nations as the Nazis, with full respect of those
who more or less rescued individuals and groups of those who were
17 Veljko . uri, Prekrtavanje Srba u Nezavisnoj Dravi Hrvatskoj. Prilozi za istoriju
verskog genocida, Beograd, 1991, p. 110.
18 Ibid., p. 111.
280
designated for extermination. The Jews clearly designate the Croats,

Hungarians, Uniats and Roman Catholic Ukrainians, who acted the same way
the Croats did against the Serbs. They are not timid or hesitant to point a
finger towards the criminal national collective.
The investigation of the tragic destiny of the Sremians, and also of the Serbs
from other areas who ended in the Jadovno camp, the island of Pag, the
Jasenovac camp, the Stara Gradika camp and other places of execution such
as wells in Slavonia and karst caves in the region of Lika and Herzegovina,
under the Croatian occupiers, present a challenge to civilisation. The answer
needs to be provided without disregarding the views of what has contributed
to waiting so long to establish the truth about the Croatian genocide against
the Serbs from 1941 to 1945. Of course, the research should be extended, and
it should give the answer why this genocide has not been systematically
studied after 1945, and who has been hiding it!
Truth be told, the genocide was not defined legally and ethically at the
international level until 1946, although the term appeared in the international
community during the time of the Serbian-Turkish wars in 1876-1877 as a
description of the conduct of the Turkish military against the Serbian population in the area where military operations took place. The lack of a
definition as it was determined in 1946 does not mean that a crime of
genocide cannot be talked about, before it is officially defined, in terms of
what constitutes it.
Genocide is followed by conviction and sentence, however, the conviction
and sentence never reached the Croatian national collective, much less the
Roman Catholic Church in Croatia, nor was the process of de-Ustashasation
of Croatia completed, that is, of denazification, as in the case of Germany.
The Serbs of Srem were victims to Roman Catholic proselyte policy and
Croats as a national collective. The congregation for the propagation of the
faith since 1622 determined the destiny of the victims!
But what happened after 1945? The Serbs, in the imposed CroatianCommunist regime, which was named for the social revolution, suffered a
denial of the legitimacy of their survival on the Serb territories in the most
catholic Monarchy, and the contribution to its destruction from 1914 to 1918
in which the Sremians participated! In order to elaborate more let us add the
281
following here: The Communist Party of Yugoslavia, which was created

shortly after the liberation and the unification of the South Slavs in 1918,
imposed on Serbs the guilt for Greater State ideas on the grounds of the antiSerb propaganda by the Austrian and German Socialists until 1914, just
because they wanted to do so, and implemented the national unification so
that they would be equal with others, as a nation, the equals with equals.
The position of Austrian and German socialists was shown in October 1912
by Leo Trocky, as a correspondent of Vienna newspapers, in his reports
during the Balkan War, and depicting the Serb soldiers in Skopje as arsonists,
robbers and murderers. He repeated this view in his collected works
published before he was deported from the Soviet Union in 1929.
Leo Trocky, the key figure of the Russian Revolution, introduced the standpoint of the Austrian social-democracy on the Serbs in the Cominterna,
which fought against the imperialism, first the Russian one, and then the Serb
one! His attitude was fully embraced by the Frankists Croats who happened
to be in Russia during the revolution, and who, as noticed by writer Stanislav
Vinaver, all became Bolsheviks!
The Serb communists never questioned the unification of the Serbs as a
people; rather, they accepted the Great Croatian programme to the solution
of the Croatian and Slovenian national issues. By accepting the Communist
Party programme for solving the Croatian and Slovenian national issues, the
Serb communists extended the life of the Austrian-German propaganda on
the Greater Serbia, and adopted it as their Marxist, principal, class and
ideological stance.
This lack of interest in the solution to the Serb national question allowed for
Srem to be for a while in the jurisdiction of the General Headquarters of the
People's Liberation Army of Croatia, during the NDH and the movement for
the defense of life and property of the Serbs from the Croatian army and the
Ustasha of Srem. Thus, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, in addition to
the tacit recognition of the subjugation of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers, also
performed the cancellation of the decision on the unification of Srem with
Serbia in 1918.
The situation staged in the above manner made it easier for the Croats to
continue with ethnic cleansing after the cessation of the war operations, first
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by the Germans, who were designated by allies as collectively guilty for the
sufferings of the war in Europe, and then by the Czechs and Poles, whose
colonies existed in the region of Slavonia. The Croatian communists generously offered, and the Croatian-Communists leadership accepted that the
Czechs and the Poles return to their country of origin. These migrations
affected the Czechs and Poles living in Srem. After calming the war activities,
the Roman Catholic Church continued its Croatian-centered pressure on all
Roman Catholics in Srem, in Serbia, for their Croatisation. The crime of
genocide continued with the ideological pressure, and it can be concluded
that the tragedy of the Serbs in Srem from 1941 to 1945 has not been
overcome yet, and will be overcome only when the Serbs as a nation come
clean out of their affair with the Croatian-Communism, carry out an
analysis of the National Liberation War and all aspects of the civil war that
followed it, and finally reject Titoism.
283
PhD Michael Pravica
WHY JASENOVAC STILL MATTERS
I have been an activist for over 22 years seeking to tell the world the truth
of the genocide of Serbian Orthodox Christians, Jews and Gypsies that was
perpetrated within the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during WWII
commencing in 1941 when Yugoslavia was invaded and subsequently
occupied and dismantled by the Nazis. This real genocide was judged as such
as Nuremberg and was one of the most savage in human history [1-7]. The
Serbs were second to only the Jews in the proportional loss of their
population during 1941-1945. There are few Serbs alive today who did not
lose a family member during this genocide, and it is the memories of this
genocide that continue to haunt the Balkans as the single most unresolved
issue there. It is this unacknowledged and unresolved genocide, more than
anything else (including Western efforts to breakup Yugoslavia), that
resulted in the rapid collapse Yugoslavia: once a picturesque, peaceful and
multiethnic anchor of stability in the Balkans as the largest and most
populous nation in Southeast Europe.
As a Serbian-American whose grandparents and great-grandparents immigrated to North America from Yugoslavia, I too lost relatives in this genocide
of Serbians. My parents, however, chose not to discuss the genocide with me
perhaps because they perhaps didnt feel that I was mature enough to
understand the idea that human beings can kill other human beings for the
sake of their religious orientation and culture, turning into animals
overnight. [In fact, animals dont even do what the Croatian Ustashe and
Bosnian Muslims Handzars did]. Perhaps, too, as it is with many Serbians,
endeavoring to explain this horrible episode of human history was much too
285
exhausting (as writing this piece was for me) especially for inquisitive
children.
It was when I first traveled to Yugoslavia in 1988 as a Paul Studenski
Memorial Scholarship recipient from Caltech that I really learned about the
genocide of Serbians. I visited Jasenovac, the third largest concentration
camp in Europe [2-7]. I visited Kraguejevac, where some 500 schoolchildren
and their teachers were massacred in cold blood by the Nazis. I saw a
memorial to over 68 members of my Mothers family in Lika, Croatia. I saw
a destroyed Serbian Orthodox Church near there which, I was told, was left
in ruins, untouched, as a reminder to the Croatian Serbs of what befell them
during WWII. I learned that the Serbians had endured untold suffering and
punishment for resisting the Nazis and realized that few outside of
Yugoslavia knew of this tragic reality. As an American, acclimated to the
notion of freedom of cultural expression and freedom of religious
orientation, witnessing these remnants of the effects of fascism impacted me
so deeply that I will never forget them for as long as I live.
When civil war engulfed Yugoslavia, catalyzed by the illegal and premature
recognition of Croatia and Slovenia by Germany and the Vatican, I quickly
realized that the entire story of the fratricidal bloodletting was just not being
accurately told by the Western corporate-controlled mainstream media.
Worse yet, whenever mention was made of the unacknowledged genocide of
Serbs in WWII, along with the fact that the Croatian government was
resurrecting the fascist and racist symbols, and rhetoric of this most
shameful period in Croatian history, pseudo-intellectuals would say: thats
ancient history! However, as one who grew up in a very Jewish
neighborhood in the Chicago suburbs, I knew enough that the WWII-era
genocide was not considered ancient history to them and no one would dare
to diminish their Holocaust with this insult especially as there are extant
survivors. Thus, observing that something was fundamentally wrong in the
reporting of the Yugoslav civil wars and that there was much ignorance
(whether willful or not) amidst policymakers, journalists, and members of
the Western public [8], I embarked on a journey to tell the story of the
suffering of Serbs both in WWII and in the recent wars to the Englishspeaking world as an activist.
286
Based on the many people I have met on all sides of this story and based on
the stories associated with my confronting and seeking to expose this
genocide, I could write a book. However, for the sake of this short conference
paper, I will merely discuss a select few of my experiences in the hope of
provoking debate and public interest in this largely unknown Balkan
catastrophe. I also hope to share some of my strategies for defeating antiSerbian lies.
Many Western organizations and governments have sought to minimize and
play down this genocide starting with the Vatican. The Vaticans early
support of Ante Pavelic and his Ustashe are well documented [3-4, 9-11]. The
Vatican has yet to acknowledge its role in the mass slaughter of up to one
million Serbian Orthodox Christians let alone open up its archives. The
ratlines established after the war that helped dozens of Catholic clergy,
many of whom were Ustashe war criminals, and the Ustashe leadership (such
as Dr. Ante Pavelic, the Croatian Fuhrer) are slowly being exposed [9-11].
This historical fact is proof that the Vatican had and continues to have much
at stake in hiding its role in one of the worst religiously-inspired genocides
in human history. The fact that the Vatican illegally and prematurely
recognized Croatias independence before issues of minority rights in
Croatia and Slovenia could be satisfactorily addressed, as well as the fact that
the Vatican openly supported intervention against the Serbs [12] is definitive
proof of the Vaticans hatred and jealousy of Orthodox Christians just as Cain
was jealous of Abel. The fact that Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, the WWII leader
of the Croatian Catholic Church. has been beatified by Pope John Paul II [1314] speaks volumes about the Catholic Churchs desire not to heal past
wounds and not come to terms with the past. Beatifying Cardinal Stepinac,
who was tried as a war criminal in Yugoslavia and at the very least did
absolutely nothing to save Serbs let alone speak out against the atrocities, is a
direct slap in the face to Orthodox Christians and will forever prevent
reconciliation between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Christian
Church. This insult is often used as a reason for true Christians to disdain
ecumenism. There is even a high school in New York and a Catholic Church
in Chicago shamefully named after this war criminal [15-16]! Imagine how
the Jews would feel if there were an Adolf Hitler or Heinrich Himmler
High School? When I brought up these issues on a national Catholic radio
program to a Catholic Bishop, he had no answer for me he literally told me
287
that he didnt know how to respond to my question. This is the problem when
you try to debate this issue. No Western mainstream leader wants to talk
about it because the truth of this genocide is so sinister, so vile, and so
damning that it would shame even the most corrupt and hardened criminals
as even the Nazis were shocked by the sheer brutality of the mass slaughter
of Serbs in the NDH. Thus, it has been suppressed and whitewashed. It has
been relativized. It has been denied. It is in this spirit that I embarked on an
effort to expose the truth. It is the disdain for and unwillingness to confront
the truth in societies that has been a prime reason for their downfall in the
past and endless conflict.
I have publicly (via written letters [17-19]) asked the Vatican to acknowledge,
apologize for, and compensate the victims of this genocide but have not
received any response and of course dont expect one. It took the Catholic
Church some 500 years before apologizing for nearly burning Galileo at the
stake. I hope that Serbians will not have to wait this long for their apology.
With so much anti-Serbian propaganda and so much hatred instilled in the
Balkan people to divide and conquer them, we need to go to the root causes
of this fratricidal violence to resolve them. This must begin with the Vatican.
I thereby, yet again, publicly call upon the Vatican to open up its archives and
acknowledge the role that Pope Pius XII and others had in initiating and
fomenting this anti Orthodox Christian pogrom. I also wish to caution my
fellow Orthodox Christians who are being tricked by the false promises of
Ecumenism. We Orthodox Christians have nothing to compromise
nothing to change about our Faith, which was handed down to us by Jesus
Christ. It is the Catholic Church that has strayed from Orthodoxy not vice
versa. We also should be wary of false leaders who try to surreptitiously and
forcefully convert all humanity to believe in one all encompassing world
religion so that they can enslave the world via a globalist one world
government. Beyond this, how can Orthodox Christians serve with Catholic
leaders who a mere 70 years ago slaughtered up to one million Serbian
Orthodox Christians and forcibly converted some 200,000 of them to
Catholicism [2-7]? Forgiveness can be granted but only once it is honestly
sought. I do not condemn Catholics but am merely asking millions of good
Catholics to learn about this horrible genocide of Orthodox Christians, Jews
and Gypsies and call upon them to pressure the Vatican to admit the truth of
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its role in inciting this anti-Christian genocide, which was a classic case of
Cain slaying Abel [20].
Next, I will move onto the problem of the denial of this genocide amongst a
large fraction of Croatian society [21-23]. Recent news of a member of the
Croatian soccer team shouting WWII slogans Za Dom, Spremni! [24], and a
Croatian rock star named Thompson singing songs glorifying the
Croatian Ustashe slaughtering Serbs [25] at his lackluster concerts
demonstrates the sickening and amazing state of denial that many Croatians
are in their unwillingness to acknowledge the fascist past of Croatia. This is
of course not true with all Croatians but where are the voices of dissent in
Croatian society? Are they censored or persecuted and bullied into silence by
the ruling majority as dissenting voices are often treated here in the US?
With any other targeted ethnic group, the Western nations that purport
tolerance would have arrested these clowns but not with the persecuted
Serbs. In the Western press, racism against Serbians is accepted and even
encouraged. One letter I had published in the Washington Times some years
ago pertaining to the Holocaust of Serbians [26] and it created such a stir that
the Croatian Ambassador to the US responded to it with his own letter
entitled: Historical myth-making about Croatia serves the Serbs [22]. So
what exactly about this genocide was a myth? When the Croatian
Ambassador and other Croatian leaders such as Dr. Franjo Tudjman
desperately try to deny reality and try to change history, it should come as
no surprise that a large fraction of Croatian society will continue to deny that
500,000 1,000,000 Serbians perished in the NDH during WWII. So, my
story begins with a letter that I had published in the New York Times [27]. I
was unaware of the attempt at historical revision until a vicious response to
my letter was published by C. Michael McAdams [21] which claimed that I
tried to tar all Croatians with the shame of this genocide. The letter also
took issue with my claim (backed up by many historical references) of
750,000 Serbian victims (an average between 500,000 and 1,000,000). The
letter was published on Orthodox Good Friday. Many Serbians and nonSerbians who were aware of the Holocaust of Serbians were very upset at
this blatant attempt to revise history and a large campaign was waged to
refute this letter, which was successful [28]. It was during this effort that I
read much on the Holocaust and realized even more the need to speak out
289
about it whenever possible. The key strategies employed by revisionists are

as follows:
1. Minimize and question the numbers of victims. Anything that dares
to criticize Croatia is called a myth.
2. Speak only of Jasenovac and not the other dozens of concentrations
camps throughout the NDH to give the impression that most of the
murders occurred there.
3. Call anyone who dares to challenge these revisionist claims a Serb
propagandist telling myths.
4. Try to claim that the Serbian Chetniks (Royalists) were fascists just
as the Ustashe and also committed genocide. Bring up the
executions at Bleiburg as an example of moral equivalence.
5. Whenever anything is published on the genocide, attack it and insult
the messenger. Use the fear of lawsuits claiming defamation of the
entire Croatian people such as the recent lawsuit against Bob Dylan.
6. Claim that the Croats fought as partisans as well and thus paint the
Ustashe as a fringe organization that did not embody the aspirations
and feelings of the vast majority of Croats.
7. Serbia had a Nazi-quisling government led by Milan Nedic and
Dimitrje Ljotic.
8. Always discuss the alleged genocide of Bosnian Muslims in
Srebrenica to distract attention away from the real genocide of WWII.
9. Anything that happened in WWII is ancient history.
10. Never let Serbs speak. Always find a non-Serb to posit the Serbian
point of view.
Under normal, fair, and properly intellectual circumstances of true debate,
these immature and wholly pseudo-intellectual arguments can be easily
demolished. However, tragically, the Serbian voice and for that matter, the
truth, have been largely censored and assassinated in the Western corporatecontrolled mainstream media. There is no debate about this issue in the West
only censorship of the Serbs, highly controlled release of information, and
historical revisionism. Thus anti-Serbian voices are quickly promoted in the
spirit that a lie told one thousand times over and over again becomes the
truth. To give but one example of this, the New York Times organized a
forum for Bosnia and various Croat activists would conduct multiple post
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hits barbarically insulting anyone who dared to speak the truth. They
would rapidly make five or so of the same attack posts which the New York
Times staff never removed. However, I once accidentally posted a comment
twice and, almost immediately my second repeat posting was removed!
Despite this massive unprecedented censorship of any points of view that the
US State Department didnt want Americans to hear, we were modestly
successful in getting an alternative point of view expressed in radio,
television, and print media all over the English-speaking world.
I will now defeat each of these strategic/propaganda points one-by-one:
To address the first point, I typically explain that even the bloodthirsty Nazis
estimated that at least 350,000 Serbians who perished at the hands of the
Croatian Ustashe [28]. They were fearful that these slaughters would drive
Serbs into the ranks of the Partisans which is exactly what happened and this
ultimately led to Hitlers demise. The key point is that many of the victims
did not perish in concentration camps. They were slaughtered in the villages
where they lived tricked by formerly friendly neighbors out of hiding or
into disarming. Many were thrown into pits deep caverns such as in
Medjugorje [29] which, magically, became a money-making fraud [29]. Many
victims were buried alive and crushed with tanks afterwards. Only God really
knows how many Serbians were massacred by the Croatian Ustashe and
Bosnian Muslim Handzars, but every Serbian I have ever met has a story to
tell about some close relative a grandfather, uncle, etc. who were
murdered. Im sorry to Croat leaders but thats not a myth and that will
someday provoke yet more tragic wars in the Balkans. At the very least,
hundreds of thousands of Serbians were slaughtered by the Croatian Ustashe
and their fanatical helpers.
The second point relates to the first. By focusing solely on Jasenovac, antiSerb revisionists have sought to remove discussion of the hundreds of
thousands of Serbs who were murdered throughout the entire NDH. Dozens
of concentration camps existed outside of Jasenovac in places such as Stara
Gradista, Donja Gradina, and Jadovno. Even Jasenovac was not just one camp
but a network of camps such as the Sisak concentration camp dedicated solely
for children where thousands of children perished. To have formerly
communist Dr. Franjo Tudjman claim that only 70,000 inmates perished in
Jasenovac [23] demonstrates the desperate state of denial that many Croat
291
leaders are in. and their pathetic attempts at revisionism. How one could have
essentially a nation defined in its hatred of Serbs and dedicated to eradicating
all Serbs from its territory without so many ordinary Croat helpers is
completely illogical.
The third point needs very little introduction. This is a standard propaganda
trick to try to dehumanize and discount any legitimate arguments from your
enemy. I personally heard Croatian professor Ivo Banac from Yale University
call a friend of mine (who questioned some of his immature and pseudointellectual arguments about how many Croats were partisans) a Serb
propagandist at a Serb-bashing conference at Wellesley College. This
conference (organized by Thomas Cushman), was so anti-Serb that when we
made this point publicly, an American professor of anthropology there who
had been asked to give a Serbian point of view felt sorry for us and agreed
that the conference had no intellectual merit whatsoever. That sums up all of
my interactions with Croat extremists they just dont know how to debate
and try to give emotional, insulting, distracting, and threatening arguments
instead of properly deal with the truth.
For the fourth point, I will say the following: War is always hell and bad
things happen to good people. Whatever rogue units of Draza Mihailovics
armies committed out of revenge or whatever atrocities were falsely
attributed to the Chetniks, there cannot be any comparison between the
Chetniks and the Ustase as Serbia was forcefully and brutally Nazi-Occupied.
Few Serbs dared to open their shutters when Hitlers armies entered
Belgrade where as Croatia was a Nazi-puppet. There is footage on Youtube
showing Croats fanatically greeting the Nazis with flowers and oranges in
Zagreb. People such as Slavko Goldstein, shamefully, have made arguments
trying to equate the Chetniks with the Ustashe [30] and this is deeply insulting
and completely ridiculous. Serbia was under the Nazi jackboot, locked in a
horrible civil war. Croatia, on the other hand, fanatically served Adolf Hitler
and was highly absorbed with a fanatical principle set forth by Mile Budak:
forcibly convert one-third of the Serbs in the NDH to Catholicism, ethnicallycleanse one-third, and wipe out the remainder [2-9]. There is plenty of
evidence that Draza Mihajlovic fought the invading Nazis and was
posthumously awarded the Legion of Merit for saving over 600 Allied pilots
and support staff (gunners, etc), 500 of whom were Americans. Croatia, on
the other hand was at war with the Americans. Serbs never killed Americans
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even when they were being viciously and illegally bombed by them in 1999.
Croatians and Bosnian Muslims, on the other hand, have slaughtered
Americans [31-33]. In fact, as far as I know, Croatias declaration of war
against America from WWII was never rescinded. It was Draza Mihailovich
who was betrayed by America and the West when Churchill decided to
support half-Croat/half-Slovene communist dictator Josip Broz Tito [34]. The
victor has done a great job in wrongly portraying his enemy here and thereby
desecrating/rewriting history. The truth has merely been assassinated.
Whenever I would present these points of view, I would often hear of people
mentioning Bleiburg as again some sort of bizarre equivalence where
innocent Croats suffered at the hands of the Serbs (vis a vis the Partisans). Of
course, the vast majority of the refugees who were stopped at Bleiburg in the
wake of the advancing Partisans were Ustashe soldiers, many of whom had
slaughtered Serbs, Jews and Gypsies. Im sorry that some innocent civilians
may have been executed but war, as I said, war is a horrible thing. But to
compare the alleged execution of some 10,000- 30,000 Ustashe troops and
their followers to the genocide of hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews and
Gypsies demonstrates the complete lack of reality that many revisionists live
in.
Related to point five, the recent frivolous lawsuit brought against Bob Dylan
for merely stating that: Serbs can sense Croatian blood [30] is a pictureperfect example of the sensitivity that many Croats have pertaining to the
genocide conducted in the NDH. Just as half-Croat Yugoslav dictator Tito
forbade discussion of this genocide in Yugoslavia, many Croat leaders simply
hope that by preventing discussion of this largely unknown genocide (outside
of Yugoslavia), it will be forgotten as Adolf Hitler once remarked: who
remembers the Armenian genocide. Thus, the effort to somehow
desperately claim that by discussing this real and documented genocide of
Serbs, you are defaming all Croats is ludicrous and immature. The only way
to heal these ever deepening wounds and chasm between Serbs and Croats is
to openly discuss this tragic issue, come to terms with what happened,
apologize and beg forgiveness of the families of the victims. Dylan is 100
percent correct: Serbs fear Croats [27]. Of course, not all Croats are bad just
as not all Serbs are good, but the fact remains. Croatia has yet to come to
terms with it s fascist past and until this tiny, internally tormented nation
does, Serbs will be fearful of Croats.
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A blessed friend of mine, Julia Gorin remarked to me that when she had an
op-ed published in the Baltimore Sun on the genocide in the NDH [35], and
my letter thanking Julia [36], the editor there had never had so much vicious
and vitriolic response from Croats ever in the history of that newspaper [37].
This is what denial is all about.
Revisionists try to cover up Ustashe crimes by claiming that there were antifascist Partisans (point six). Of course, this is true. However, two issues need
to be raised here The first is how many of these Partisans joined after 1943
during the Nazi defeat at Stalingrad where Hitlers demise was inevitable.
Second, there couldnt have been that many Croatian Partisans as the Ustashe
wouldnt have had so much success slaughtering nearly one million Serbians,
Jews and Gypsies. The Ustashe movement may have started out as a fringe
movement that was coddled and nurtured by Mussolini and the Vatican; but
it would never have been so successful if a majority of Croats didnt resent
Serbs. Thats a fact! Im sorry to be so brutally honest! On top of that, Serbs
(even after the genocide of them) constituted over 43 percent of Yugoslavias
population. Josip Broz Tito would never have succeeded to control
Yugoslavia without the majority of his forces comprising Serbs. Yes, there
certainly were Croats, Bosniaks, Jews and others who were Partisans and
who contributed to the anti-fascist struggle. But the majority of Partisans
were Serbs, my distant relatives included. The Ustashe were not a fringe
group but controlled the NDH period!
Related to this issue,, many revisionists repeatedly bring up the fact that
General Milan Nedic declared Serbia Judenfrei (point seven) [21-22].
Again, we have revisionism here as it was the Nazis who instituted the
genocidal pogroms against Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies. Nedic, though a
collaborationist on paper, was working under a highly distressed situation
where Serbia was occupied by the Nazis and trying to save his people from
annihilation considering the Nazi edict that 100 Serbs would be murdered
for every Nazi soldier killed and 50 Serbs would be murdered for ever Nazi
soldier wounded. There were no similar edicts in Croatia against the Croatian
people or against the Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims). The Serbs had absolutely
no power in Serbia and thus had no control over the deportation of Jews. In
fact, numerous Serbian families suffered heavily for protecting Jews. The
key here to the strategy of the revisionists is to somehow desperately try to
294
equate Nazi-puppet Croatia, a willing waterboy for the Nazis with Nazioccupied Serbia which suffered greatly from resisting the Nazis.
Notice here that when convenient, revisionists use the Partisans as a cloak
to claim that they helped fight the Nazis but then they claim persecution from
those very Partisans at Bleiburg! So which is it going to be? As we commonly
witness with revisionists, the truth is distorted and twisted to conform to a
particular agenda. When the truth cannot be bent it is merely discarded,
ignored, and censored.
Points eight and nine are of deep significance because the West has been
trying to hide the shameful crimes (organized in the name of fascism)
committed against the Serbian people in WWII by calling it ancient history
and by distracting the greatest unresolved issue by focusing on the alleged
massacre of Bosnian Muslim men, teenage boys and imported Mujahadeen
fighters.. That these fighters massacred hundreds if not thousands of Bosnian
Serbian civilians in the many picturesque hamlets surrounding Srebrenica
and that they did not surrender to the Bosnian Serb troops has been severely
censored in the West. How the Bosnian Serb neutralization of the safe
haven of Srebrenica was judged as genocide by a kangaroo court
established to blame the Serbian people for everything bad that happened in
the breakup of Yugoslavia is honestly beyond me. Did the Serbs do terrible
things in the name of revenge? Probably. Does this constitute genocide? I
dont think so. On top of that, new revelations indicate that many of the
victims were murdered by their own fighters []. In the case of Srebrenica, at
least the women and real children were spared. In the NDH, children
(including unborn infants literally cut out from the womb), mothers,
grandmothers and Grandfathers were all mercilessly slaughtered by the
inhuman and anti-Christian Ustashe many were even skinned alive. This
was a true genocide and true savagery. Though the Srebrenica issue is still
very much unresolved with far less bodies discovered (even more than 10
years) than the incessantly figure of 8000 desperately parroted by the
corporate controlled media. And even if this figure is ultimately found to be
accurate some centuries from now, it will never compare to the roughly one
million Serbians, 70,000 Jews and some 26,000 Gypsies all murdered in cold
blood by the Croatian Ustashe and Bosnian Muslim Handzars. This
relativization of the Holocaust cheapens the true human suffering that
occurred a mere 70 years ago by seeking moral equivalence and
295
comparison with one of the most bloodthirsty episodes in human history

(WWII) and a highly contained (even if nasty) civil war that broke up
Yugoslavia. Past crimes of course never justify current ones. However, if we
are to understand why Yugoslavia fell apart so easily and so violently, we
must start with the genocide of WWII, which lingers in the mind of every
Serb to this day.
The final point (ten) is one that I have been fighting against for over 22 years:
the censorship of the Serbian people, Serbian-Americans, and all those
human beings whose viewpoints differ from what the US State Department
wants you to hear [38]. In todays era, heavily influenced by Goebbels, the
story is spun, manufactured, and paid for. We do not live in an era of debate
and true intellectualism but rather, in an era of highly controlled
information. Similarly to controlled media in communist societies, the West
has been systematically filtering out information that shows the culpability
of Western institutions and nations (such as the Vatican and Germany) in one
of the most horrific genocides of human history. As a result, history is
repeating itself in Europe because of historical amnesia. The victim is called
the victimizer and vice versa. The Holocaust has been used for political and
emotional purposes and, as a result, its singular uniqueness has been
cheapened. Revisionists in Croatia and elsewhere in the world desperately
hope that we will forget the Holocaust of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies in the NDH
by using dirty and deceitful tricks. Communist dictator Josip Broz Tito
deliberately and severely suppressed any discussion of Jasenovac, and, as a
result, WWII is still unfinished in the Balkans which may lead to WWIII soon.
This unresolved business was the plan all of Western elites all along as it is
in their interest to divide and conquer the Balkans by pitting the ethnicallyrelated factions comprising Yugoslavia against one another and keeping them
at one anothers throats. In my opinion, a truth commission comprised of all
of the different warring factions in the former Yugoslavia should be formed
with its mission being to decipher and discern as much truth of this horrific
genocide as possible. I would personally be happy to debate anyone who
wants to resolve this issue in the spirit of encouraging reconciliation between
people but we will have to go the distance. The debate should be open, safe,
civil and should continue for as long as it takes. No insults, no savagery. No
yelling. Only the truth, please. The Balkans continues to be haunted by the
296
ghosts of WWII and this will make the region unstable for decades if not
centuries to come if we cannot resolve this genocide.
The fact remains, in the words of my good friend, John Ranz, President of
the Buchenwald Holocaust survivors, Croatia was never de-Nazified. The
Vatican and other Western organizations made certain of that by spiriting
many of the upper echelons of the Ustashe leadership (including Ante
Pavelic) and Catholic priests who slaughtered innocents. These criminals
have returned from exile to the scene of their crimes only to repeat them.
This is what happens when a day of reckoning is delayed. Croatia stands as
Europes most ethnically and religiously pure nation (excepting the
pseudo-nation of Kosovo) to the shame of the West. Whitewashing and
sanitizing the history of the Independent State of Croatia was necessary by
those who seek to continue where they left off 70 years ago and finish off the
job that was started by Mile Budak and others to make Croatia (and Bosnia)
Serbien- and Juden-frei. This is unacceptable! As we are witnessing a
repetition of history with the resurrection of fascism in Europe, we would all
do well to remember and document what transpired in the NDH starting with
Jasenovac. Never before has the slogan never again been so relevant for the
entire world.
REFERENCES:
A Short History of the Yugoslav Peoples, Fred Singleton, Cambrige University Press
(1985).
The Vaticans Holocaust, Avro Manhattan Ozark Books; First edition (1988).
Genocide In Satellite Croatia, 1941-1945: A Record Of Racial And Religious Persecutions
And Massacres, Edmond Paris and Lois Perkins, Literary Licensing, LLC (2011).
The Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican, Vladimir Dedijer, Prometheus Books (1992).
Ustasa: Croatian Fascism and European Politics, 1929-1945, Srdja Trifkovic and Thomas
Fleming, The Lord Byron Foundation (2011).
Visions of Annihilation: The Ustasha Regime and the Cultural Politics of Fascism, 19411945 (Pitt Russian East European), University of Pittsburgh Press (2013).
Magnum Crimen (Magnum Crimen: half a century of clericalism in Croatia, Volume 1 & 2),
Viktor Novak, 1st Ed., Gambit publishers (2011).
297
Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting. Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia, Peter Brock,
Graphics Management Press (2005).
Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, The Nazis, and The Swiss Banks , Mark Aarons, John Loftus,
St. Martin's Griffin (1998).
Ratline: Soviet Spies, Nazi Priests, and the Disappearance of Adolf Hitler, Peter Levenda,
Ibis Press (2012).
Vatican Ratline: The Vatican, the Nazis and the New World Order, Mauri, BookSurge
Publishing (2006).
http://articles.latimes.com/1993-01-17/news/mn-2203_1_unjust-aggressor
http://www.juliagorin.com/wordpress/?p=2647
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/travels/documents/hf_jpii_hom_03101998_croazia-beatification_en.html
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Blessed-Alojzije-Stepinac-Croatian-ChurchChicago/64426528729
http://www.stepinac.org/index.php
Letter: Vatican Gold, Michael Pravica, US News and World Report (4/98).
Letter: Popes Grave Mistake, Michael Pravica, Irish Examiner, 6/8/11.
Letter: Remembering Pius XII as a saint or a sinner, The Times of London, 10/24/08.
Will the Catholic Church apologize for the genocide of Serbian Orthodox Christians?
Ivan Simic, Pravda 1/18/13 (http://english.pravda.ru/history/18-01-2013/123513catholic_church_serbian_christians-0/
Letter: Serbia's Suffering in Holocaust Is Exaggerated, C. Michael McAdams, The New
York Times, 4/29/94.

Letter: Historical myth-making about Croatia serves the Serbs, Petar Sarcevic (Croatian
Ambassador to the US), The Washington Times, 9/26/94.
http://www.serbianholocaust.org/Denial 20Watch/denialwatch.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/12/16/sport/football/simunic-nazi-chant-ban-football/
Nazi salutes to Croatian rock star Thompson, The Telegraph (London), 9/28/07.
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1564506/Nazi-salutes-to-Croatian-rock-starThompson.html).
Letter: Serbs' concerns are the `missing link' in the Yugoslav conflict, Michael Pravica,
The Washington Times 9/3/94.
LETTER: HOLOCAUST MEMORIES MAKE THE SERBS FEAR THEIR NEIGHBORS,
Michael Pravica, The New York Times, 4/17/94.
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Letter: World War II Serb Holocaust No Fiction, Nils Horner, The New York Times,
5/12/94.
Vatican Crackdown on Medjugorje, Satanic Ustashi Cult, Deconstruct.net, 9/11/08
(http://de-construct.net/e-zine/?p=2612).
Bob Dylan's Croatian Error, Op-Ed, The New York Times, 12/16/13.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Greyhound_bus_attack
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zvonko_Bu C5 A1i C4 87
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_Square_shooting
The Rape of Serbia: The British Role in Tito's Grab for Power 1943-1944, Michael Lees,
Harcourt publishers (1990).
Opinion Editorial: Croatia's ghosts stalk the Balkans still, Julia Gorin, The Baltimore Sun
1/16/07
Two Letters: Saturday Mailbox, Michael Pravica and Christopher Deliso, The Baltimore
Sun, 1/20/07.
Furor of the Undead, http://de-construct.net/?p=373 1/27/07.
Letter : Serbian genocide, Dr. Michael Pravica, The Independent (London), 1/30/01.
299
Mila Mihajlovi
ARCHIVES RECORDS ON THE

MASSACRES OF SERBS IN LIKA AND
DALMATIA ACCORDING TO ITALIAN
SOURCES FROM 1941
Italy entered World War I on 24th May 1915 having signed, on 26th April of
the same year, with France, England and Russia the so-called Treaty of
London on reciprocal guarantees of safety. The Treaty, among other things,
stated that, after the war, Italy would get Istria, central Dalmatia with the
cities Zadar and ibenik and the islands. However, things did not unfold as
predicted, so Italy, a victorious country, had a so-called mutilated victory.
The territories that had been promised to it by the Treaty of London were, in
1919, in a complex game of interest and upon the intervention of U.S.
President Wilson, assigned to the new State of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
Italy was only given the Zadar municipality - 50 square kilometres of
territory and the island Lastovo.
However, Italy had never renounced territorial and political claims to
territory which was part of the Venetian Republic uninterruptedly for four
centuries all until 1796. An opportunity arises in 1941, so in agreement with
Germany and in order to finally resolve the Adriatic issue in its favour, on
April 11th at 12.00 a.m., Italy started the invasion of the Kingdom of
Yugoslavia.
At the start, it could be noticed that something was wrong, because the
German invasion of Carinthia and Styria began 2 days earlier than the agreed
date. However, Italy was in for a far bigger surprise. On the same day, the
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Italians find out that the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) has been
declared, completely out of the blue for the Italian Government. The
establishment of the Croatian state was the result of a secret agreement
between Germany and some Croatian leaders led by Colonel Slavko
Kvaternik, who proclaimed the NDH on Radio Zagreb on 10th April, at 5:00
p.m. This event was a surprise even for Paveli, who was still in Rome at the
time, where he spent the last 12 years in exile. However, three days later, on
Catholic Easter which, that year, was on 13th April, Italy declared Dalmatia as
its territory in the entire military occupied territory. While Paveli rushed
to Zagreb to take over power from his rival Kvaternik, who was loyal to
Germans, negotiations between Berlin and Rome about the occupied territory
and its distribution were in progress. They reached a compromise in which
Italy, under certain conditions, agreed to the existence of the NDH. After
final consultations, on 15th April at noon, via radio stations, Germany and
Italy simultaneously declared their recognition of the new Croatian State.
Paveli hurriedly returned to Rome from Zagreb and, on 18th May, signed an
agreement on borders with Mussolini, the so-called Treaties of Rome, which,
however, was never ratified by Italy, so it never became binding. In the same
way, the demarcation line was never formed.
This is what the first territorial demarcation looked like. A part of Yugoslavia
was determined as the Italian occupation zone, west of the so-called
demarcation line with the German occupation territory, which, on the whole,
went along the line Breice, Jastrebarsko, Pazin, Rovinj, Topusko, Ravnice,
aine, Jajce, Donji Vakuf, Gorade, Viegrad. This zone included territories
Italy directly annexed, a part of territory of the NDH and the territory of
Montenegro. The territory under Italian control within the NDH, which is
outside the territories which Italy directly annexed, was divided into two
zones: from the coast to the co-called demilitarised zone and from the
demilitarised zone to the demarcation line. The first stretched from the
border between the Kingdom of Italy and the demilitarised zone and went
about 50 km inland east from the Italian border and it was under Italian
military control. NDH was not allowed to form nor to keep military units of
any type or form in that zone. In the other zone, which stretched between the
demilitarised zone and the demarcation line, NDH could form and have
military units at its discretion. However, in both zones, civilian and military
302
authorities were that of NDH and Italian troops were to be considered as

foreign troops stationed in a friendly country.
This was the political distinction. In practice, it was a whole different story.
There was a power struggle and the situation was utterly confusing. Ustasha
persecution of Serbs began immediately and after the Treaties of Rome (18th
May) an uncontrolled and massive exodus of Serbs and Jews toward Italian
occupation territory began, as it was reported on 19th May by the
Headquarters of the Sassari Division in Knin. This was written in connection
to those Italian documents:1
a) On 21st May, the Commander of the Sassari Division in Knin was
approached by three people, one of which was father imi, a friar, and they
informed the commander that the government in Zagreb authorised them to
take over civil authorities in Knin. After being asked what kind of policy they
had, on behalf of all three, friar imi replied: To kill all Serbs as soon as
possible. After the severity of that kind of statement and idea was
emphasised to him, all the more so because it came from a clergyman, all
three individuals started to laugh cynically.
b) In the village Veljun, in the Slunj county, Ustashas arrested an Orthodox
priest, a Serb, father Branko Dobrosavljevi and ordered him to dig a grave
for his son, who still went to secondary school. When he finished digging the
grave, Ustashas brought to him his son, so tormented that the young man
expired in agony in front of his father and his tormentors. Seeing that,
Ustashas ordered the father to give his dead son a funeral service, since he
was a priest. While giving the funeral service, father Branko passed out three
times, but Ustashas would hit him with their gunstocks and made him finish
the service after which they killed him, there, next to his son.
c) In the village Nai, on 17th June, Ustashas killed the Orthodox priest
ore Boki. The execution was witnessed by a man called Pejanovi from
the village Breica and this was how he described the priests death. The
Ustashas tied priest Boki to a tree and started to torture him. They cut off
A document of the Italian government made in September 1945 for the Peace Conference
at Versailles. The content of the documentation was taken from official military sources.
303
his ears, nose, tongue and chin, stabbed his eyes and, when they realised that
he was still alive, they cut open his chest and then shot him.
e) On 1st and 2nd July, the villages Srb and Suvaja were completely destroyed
and about 3000 Serbs, residents of that area, were killed. The Ustasha
massacre in Suvaja was described in detail by the Second lieutenant of the
bersaglieri Zara battalion, Salvatore Loi, in a report, which he, together
with photographs, published in the book Jugoslavija 1941 in 1946. Second
lieutenant Loi, together with rebels and Veljko Budimir, was one of the first
to enter the devastated village. Everything was literally levelled to the
ground. Where houses used to be, there were only piles of burnt stone and
ash through which, in the gaps that the wind made, the colourful beauty of
the flooring could be discerned. The only thing left upright were chimneys.
This slaughter was only survived by one old woman. Second lieutenant Loi
took her testimony: It was night, we heard the rumble of trucks from which
Ustashas got out. They surrounded the village, blocked all the roads and
started going from house to house taking out all the men over 15 years of age:
inspection of documents - they said. They seemed serious, so no one
suspected anything. Very soon, Ustashas gathered all of them there and
grouped them - she indicated to several places where the ground was freshly
dug - and lined them up. They were first ordered to take off their shoes and
clothes. One of the Ustashas shouted: 'Are there any Catholics among you?'
About a dozen people said that they became Catholic a long time ago. 'Alright'
- replied the Ustasha - 'you are our Catholics, so you will have the privilege
to be killed last!' All the Ustashas laughed at that. Our people realised what
was about to happen to them. Lit by a few torches, the slaughter began. Those
who reacted in any way were shot in the head. Most of them had their throats
cut. The Ustashas made them shout: 'Long live Paveli!', but nobody did that.
They died calling out the names of their loved ones, screaming to us, who
were in our houses, their last words. When the women realised that all the
men of the village were killed, they knew what was in store for them and
their children. They waited for the butchers calmly, clutching their children
in their arms. The Croats came quickly. They raped the women, young and
old, and tortured the children. For them, it was amusing to kill a mother and
child, held tightly on her chest, with only one bullet. They broke children's
Salvatore Loi, Jugoslavia 1941, editor Nastro Azzurro, Torino, 1946, p. 131.
304
skulls with gunstocks and the smallest ones they would grab by their legs and
smash their heads hard against the ground. Then they doused everything
with petrol and set it on fire. As they were leaving and singing, the whole
village was in flames. In the yard of my house, there was, and still is, a large
haystack. When they reached our house, I crawled and hid inside it. I could
barely breathe. I heard shots, our people wailing and moaning and also the
Ustashas' shrieks and laughter. Then, I felt the smell of smoke and I started
to suffocate. I passed out. When I regained consciousness, I started to scream
and our people, Serbs, found me. They arrived a few hours after the
massacre. It was too late. I survived because the fire didn't reach the haystack
I hid in. It couldn't get over large puddles of water. In the yard there is a well
from which many families took their water. Now, I am alone and I had a
family with around one hundred members. Veljko Budimir took Second
lieutenant Loi to the house which the fire caught partly, so it remained whole.
This is the house of the priest Dr Spavo Lavrnja - he told me - Second
lieutenant Loi continued to write down. They entered the house. On one wall,
there was a clearly visible bloody child's handprint. Exactly in this spot, the
priest's three-year-old daughter was killed. They first hanged her and then
they stabbed her with bayonets. After that they killed the priest, they broke
his skull. In the end, they killed his wife. She was heavily pregnant. While
she was alive, they ripped open her stomach, took the child out of her stomach
and threw it into the ceiling. On the ceiling there was a stain of clotted blood
- Salvatore Loi continued to write in detail and documented the slaughter
with photographs.
h) In the evening of 6th July, Italian soldiers, who were patrolling the fields
near Graac, noticed the stench of decaying flesh. They discovered that there
was a pit nearby on whose bottom there were many corpses and one man who
was still alive. Quickly, they pulled him out of the pit and put him in the
Italian military field hospital. The man told them about how Ustashas arrested
him in the evening of 1st July on the railway station in Graac, together with
9 other Serbs. During the night Ustashas took them to the pit, tied two and
two, shot them and threw them in the pit.
j) In Gospi, in August, Ustashas arrested a man called Duki, a wealthy local
Orthodox man, together with his 16-year-old son. After a few days, the
Ustashas came to Duki's wife and asked her who she liked best: her husband
or her son. Having replied that she liked her son more, the Ustashas asked
305
the woman whether she would be willing to give them everything she had
and in return they would return her son to her. The woman immediately
prepared a written statement about the cession of all property. Then,
Ustashas asked her to give them her 14-year-old daughter. When the woman
objected and started to shout, Ustashas showed to the woman her son's
gauged out eyes and asked her if she recognised them.
In such circumstances, only the Italian military headquarters, especially the
headquarters of the Sassari division in Knin, were able to monitor and
document the situation which was turning into a savage massacre of the
Serbian population.
At the beginning of June, the massacre started in Knin and the surrounding
area, after the arrival of a group of Ustashas in blue uniforms which called
themselves the Execution unit.2 At the beginning of July, in a regular
logbook of the Headquarters of the Sassari Division, the following was
written: Eight Serbian peasants were taken out (by Ustashas) from a train in
the station in Zrmanja. After that the Ustashas tied them and took them to the
railway station in Graac and then to the Mountain Velebit where they were
thrown alive into a deep pit called 'Tui'. Only one of them managed to save
himself.3 The event documented in the Italian military archives records
completely coincides with the testimony of the only survivor, Nikola Kostur
from the village Vrlike, and is mentioned again in another Italian military
document which a few days later documented the testimony of an Orthodox
priest:4 The priest described the Ustasha massacre in detail. The only person
who survived is the peasant Nikola Kostur, son of Spiridon from Vrlika. The
priest also claimed that out of 43 Orthodox priests from the Bosna-Lika
Diocese only 14 were alive, that is the ones who managed to cross to Italian
territory.
US-SME (Ufficio Storico dello Stato Maggiore dell'Esercito - Historical Archives of the
General Staff of Italy) - Envelope 580 - Headquarters of the 6thArmy Corps - Report 30 V.P.39 - 31st May 1941.
Ibid., Envelope 580 - Headquarters of the 6th Army Corps - Report 30 - V.P.39 - 31st July
1941.
Ibid., Envelope 240 - Headquarters of the Sassari Division - Report of Captain Carlo
Perusino on a conversation with a priest - V.P.86 - 3rd June 1941.
306
A few days later, in Knin, Ustashas took 34 Serbs from their houses. In order
to calm them down, Ustashas told their families that they were taking them
to labour in Germany. They were taken to a bauxite mine near Drni, all tied
up with a single rope, and killed with a bullet in the back of the head.
Miraculously, three men survived. They had deep and bloody wounds on
their wrists. One of them was shot in the back. It continues: The three
survivors are Todor Novakovi, son of ore, Tode Novakovi, son of Ilija,
and Ilija Mari, son of Marko. A few days later, the latter joined the Serbs
who fled to the mountains in the Golubi area. Among the killed are: Stevo
Radi, Duan Radi and Ratko Radi - three brothers, owners of a cafe near
the railway station ipad; Mihailo Popovi, a priest in the village Polaa; Mile
Medakovi, an innkeeper from Knin; Laza Vojnovi, a salesman in a shop;
uro esi, the bother of the meat supplier for the Italian army; Ivan kari,
a postman in Vrbnik (3 km from Knin); uro Mlinarovi, a Banovina
representative; Milan ulakovi, a tobacco merchant in Knin; Ilija Orlovi;
Lazar Jegina; Spase Mitrovi, a confectioner in Knin; Boko Babi; Duan
Mari; three peasants from Kninsko Polje: Tode Kosarad, Mirko Kosaras and
ime Kalat; Nikola Olstaski, an officer of the Serbian army of Russian
descent; Jovan Cvjetkovi, a lawyer in Knin; Milan Klikov, a peasant from
Strmica; Nikola upeljak, a railway inspector; Mirko etnik, a peasant from
etna (Vrlika); Branko Bjedov, an innkeeper in Knin.5
In another document, the following is stated6: On 9th June, the news arrived
about Ustashas arresting of thirty people and taking them to an unknown
location, besides arresting thirty people in Knin and taking them to the court
prison in Gospi. The ones who, while waiting for trial, were not so lucky to
be forgotten in the hell of that prison, were taken to Velebit and thrown into
pits.
Murders were committed everywhere. An officer of the Sassari Division,
through a train window, watched Ustashas kill a young man near Gospi.7 A
day later, the Italian army recorded one event in Drni: About fifteen
Ibid.
Ibid., Envelope 582 - Headquarters of the Sassari Division - Regular logbook n. 30 - V.P.
39, 11th June 1941.
Ibid., n. 41 - V.P. 39, 12th June 1941.
307
arrested Serbs, among which there were three priests, were all beaten up and
during the night taken somewhere by truck and they were never heard of
again.8
In order to clarify to Rome the unimaginable chaos which arose in the NDH
and the slaughter of the Serbian population of unprecedented proportions,
the Commander of the 2nd Army, General Vittorio Ambrosio, sent a report to
the General Staff in Rome.9 In the letter, he stressed that in Lika, where there
was the largest number of Serbs, the political-religious battle is beginning
to take gruesome aspects, because Ustashas are taking revenge and retaliation
that only existed in the darkest periods of the Middle Ages. Following the
orders of the Government and the General Staff to the Italian troops on the
ground not to intervene, general Ambrosio asked for clear instructions to
specify the line of conduct when faced with ... crimes that are currently
occurring before the eyes of all the Headquarters and troops of our army.
In Graac, Knin and Drni, numerous families of the arrested people come
in large groups every day to Italian military Headquarters, stand in front of
them and beg for the protection of their loved ones.10
In this situation, it was inevitable that a strong animosity of the Italian army
towards Ustashas and the NDH authorities developed, and even a threat of
rebellion of Italian troops on the ground, severely frustrated by the role of a
silent observer. Such a widespread feeling of Italian troops was described and
conveyed by general Monticelli, Commander of the Sassari Division, in an
in-person-only report sent on 16th June to General Renzo Dalmazzo,
Commander of 6th Army Corps. General Monticelli first described the conditions in Knin, Ustasha arrests and also his certainty that none of the arrested
people survived. Then, he went on to say that the murders were ordered
by a pseudo tribunal in Gospi only based on information of local madmen
Ibid., Envelope 582 - Headquarters of the 6thArmy Corps - Report n. 42 - V.P. 39, 13th
June 1941.
Ibid., Envelope 724 - Headquarters of the 2nd Army, General Vittorio Ambrosio to for the
Chief of General Staff - Regular logbook n. 31 - V.P. 10, 11th June 1941.
Ibid., Envelope 583 - Headquarters of the 6th Army Corps - Phonogram n. 6924 - from
the Headquarteers of the 2nd Army to the Headquarters of the 6th Army Corps - time 12.11
- V.P. 39, 3th June 1941.
308
and most of those were vengeances of a personal nature. The General

described the inevitable response of Italian soldiers which in all officers and
soldiers instilled contempt and disgust for this scum unfit even to control
neither themselves nor others, or know how to govern in a manner worthy
of the civilized world. Every feeling of sympathy for the Croatian people is
gone since we were forced to witness such acts. Being forced to be a mere
spectator, creates a feeling that you are an accomplice of this violence and
brutality which history will, most certainly, severely condemn - General
Monticelli went on. The situation which General Monticelli described was
absolutely true, as was his prediction, which was even more dangerous for a
commander: the risk of mutiny in the troops. Your Excellency, I wish to
clearly present to you my impressions, as a man and as a soldier, because I
feel that, despite the deep-seated sense of discipline in me and my officers
and soldiers, as well as our will to always honour the orders of our superior
officers, I am not able to guarantee that it will be so in the face of violence
that is committed in our presence, to guarantee that my soldiers will not
intervene vigorously to the massacres, which could hurt the Croatian
hypersensitivity and their sense of being local 'masters'.
Commander of the 6th Army Corps, General Renzo Dalmazzo, together with
his own approving comment, forwarded the report to the Headquarters of
the 2nd Army and the Governor of Dalmatia. In his letter to Governor
Bastianini, to what General Monticelli wrote, he added: Old and proven
battalion commanders, soldiers of proven abilities and character, are asking
to be, together with their units, sent to any other front line, to the most
difficult preparation and duties, the worst places, only not to stay there and
be forced to helplessly watch, as they do now, crimes of all kinds.
The Governor immediately forwarded General Monticelli's report and
General Dalmazzo's letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Along with that,
he also added several significant Carabinieri daily reports about Ustasha
exploits against Serbian civilians and warned that passiveness in regard to
the slaughter of innocent people will lead to questioning the prestige of
Italian authority and the reputation of the Italian Army.11
The report on the slaughter is in the report of the Carabinieri Headquarters in Zadar of
19th June 1941. The synthesis was sent with the letter to the Governor of Dalmatia protocol
309
The Sassari Division Headquarters also reports in another synthesis: Many

children were slaughtered only because they were Serbs. Horrible news
spreads in our ranks: Ustashas ask children to make the sign of the cross and
then slay the ones who do it in the Orthodox way.12
Arrests are taking place in Graac where the Serbian employees at the
railway station were replaced by Croatian employees.13
In Drni, during the night of 21st June, 16 Serbs were loaded onto a truck
and, later, the truck returned empty, with large blood stains.14 Also in
Drni, a dead body, already put in a bag, which Ustashas failed to take out of
prison because of the unexpected intervention of Italian soldiers, was cut to
pieces and carried out hidden in several suitcases.15 During the afternoon, a
group of women from Podablje came begging for help and protection:16
during the night, all the men in the village were taken by trucks to the
Runovi zone and, with their hands tied, thrown into a pit. Since they said
that, in the pit, men were dying, but still alive, the Commander of the station
ordered to immediately send doctors and ambulances there (...). And indeed,
two men were taken out of the pit with severe wounds, but alive (...); Ustashas,
having thrown people in the pit, discharged heavy fire from their weapons
into it.
What form and level of revolt was reached in Italian soldiers for Ustasha
crimes was clearly summed up in the following military report: Deep
dissatisfaction can be seen on faces of our soldiers, partly because of the
discontent caused by the awareness that Croats here can barely stand them
and, on the other hand, the received orders which oblige them not to react
with military force against those who cause disorder, terror and bloodshed.
no. 454/confidential - to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome on 24th June 1941.
US-SME - Envelope 582 - Headquarters of the 6th Army Corps - Historical logbook no.
51 - V.P. 39, 22th June 1941.
Ibid., no. 50 - V.P. 39, 21th June 1941.

Ibid., no. 41 - V.P. 39, 28th June 1941.
Ibid., no. 51 - paragraph Drni - V.P. 39, 26th June 1941.
Ibid., 28th June 1941.
310
The morale of our troops, which was high at the beginning of the war, is now
even higher, but out of revolt.17
However, the orders from Rome remained the same as received on 19th May:
keep to yourselves, mind your own business and do not intervene. However,
one Italian soldier, although in his own way, disobeyed the orders. Secretly
at first, but after seeing that they did not get any warning or prohibition from
their senior officers, that the officers did not only avoid punishing them for
such conduct, but they themselves joined the initiative, working to help and
protect the Serbian population has expanded. Ustasha protests poured into
Italian military Headquarters at all levels. The reply they got was that we do
not have the authority nor the will to stop these protection initiatives which
are approved by disciplinary rules of our army.18 However, the Croats did
not give up and, a few days later, the number of Ustashas in Bukovica
increased and Ustasha armed attacks against the Italians who were protecting
the Serbs were becoming more frequent. This was confirmed by the
following entry in an Italian military report: From the Ustashas'
indiscretions, it is clear that reinforcements are focused on armed response
against Italians for every possible intervention in favour of the
Serbs.19 Vjekoslav imi, a friar of the Franciscan order, a known instigator
and leader of the Ustashas in Knin and active participant of night-time
expeditions against Serbian civilians, obviously feeling strong and powerful
as an Ustasha and thinking that the priest's robe protects him, started to
publicly agitate against Italy after more massive the Italian interventions to
protect Serbian people. One night, he was beaten up by an unknown group of
soldiers.20
The situation was getting worse every day. Croatian protests to the Italian
Government did not cease. Ante Paveli himself wrote to Mussolini, on 23rd
June, complaining about misunderstandings between Croats and Italians.
Ibid., Envelope 523 - Headquarters of the Sassari Division - Regular logbook - V.P. 86,
16th June 1941.
Ibid., Envelope 582 - Headquarters of the 6th Army Corps - Report no. 49 - paragraph 2 V.P. 39, 20th June 1941.
311
He could not imagine that, already on the following day, another

misunderstanding would occur, a far more complex and specific one, when
the Commander of 6th Army Corps issued orders to all commanders and units
to form a field provisional control line, with the justification that it was
needed to maintain order and security of Italian Dalmatia. This initiative
caused dismay in Croatian ranks and soon the Army of General Dalmazzo
found itself in a storm of telegrams, phone calls, repeated orders from Rome
that checkpoints needed to be moved to their previous positions, that is back,
toward the coast. General Dalmazzo flatly refused to do it, replying: Obvious
misunderstanding, please inform me of the line to which to move the
checkpoints, considering that I only have information on future borders from
newspaper articles.21
However, at the beginning of July, the Italian troops based in friendly NDH
are ordered to retreat.22 Italian military field reports inform that Serbian
families in Graac are simply terrified and horror of the Orthodox
population and the fear that the Italian army will certainly soon retreat could
be seen in Knin. It was justified. Around 8000 Serbs from two villages near
Plitvice, who were forced to leave without anything, were taken to an
unknown location.23 Around Graac, several Serbian villages were burnt
down, and the Serbian population from the surrounding villages also fled, so
in the direction of Knin and in the direction of Gospi, villages were
completely empty.24 The same report noted that Ustashas killed a local bank
managed and two women in Graac. The report of the Headquarters of the
Fifth Army Corps from 2nd August said: More than 600 camp prisoners, Serbs
and Jews, went through Gospi on foot and were headed toward Karlobag
with most of them tied in pairs. Others were in prisons and were waiting to
continue their journey. A report of the Headquarters of the 2nd Army from
11th August stated: On 3rd of this month, 400 Serbs, brought from the Zagreb
area, arrived at prisons in Gospi. On the previous day, 500 were taken in the
Ibid., telegram without a protocol number from General Dalmazzo to the Headquarters of
the 2nd Army - time 10.40 - V.P. 39, 26th June 1941.
Ibid., Envelope 523 - Headquarters of the Sassari Division - Regular logbook V.P. 86, 15th
and 18th July 1941.
Ibid., 27th July 1943.
Ibid., 28th July1943.
312
direction of Karlobag. It is expected that a group of 300 Jewish prisoners will

arrive from Zagreb to Gospi on 4th August. It was reported that two more
transports of prisoners are coming from Zagreb, one with 50 and the other
100 people, the latter has the elderly, women and children 1-8 years of age.
One prisoner was strangled by the guards during the trip and his body was
thrown out of the train car as soon as it had arrived in Gospi. On the 6th of
this month, in a house near Gospi, an officer of the 1st Infantry Regiment
found two dead women, aged 30 and 17, with gunshot wounds and a dead
child, about 6 months old, that was slain with a gunshot wound in its chest, as
well as and a few burnt corpses. On 4th of this month, 110 Serbs were taken
from prison to the neighbouring hills and killed there... In Otoac, on 4th of
this month, 39 Serbs, aged between 15 and 70, were arrested in the Klanac
zone and imprisoned. Ten of them were slain by Ustashas on the same night
and thrown in the manhole in the prison building.
The report of the Headquarters of the Fifth Army Corps from 15nd August
stated: Many Serbian houses in the village Studenci and its surroundings (7
km northwest from Perui) were torched by Ustashas and the people were
killed. In Otaac, in the evening of 7th of this month, Ustashas arrested and
locked up about 30 Serbs. During the night, around 10 p.m., 10 Orthodox
people were killed in the prison. Their corpses were taken away by truck to
an undisclosed location... On 7th of this month, 200 arrested Serbs were taken
from Gospi on foot toward Karlobag; it seems they never reached their
destination, but were killed along the way. During the night, on the same day,
taking out an unknown number of dead bodies from the same prison
buildings was noticed; the dead bodies were loaded onto a truck which went
down the road leading to Karlobag. On 10th of this month, 80 Serbian
prisoners, held in local prisons, were taken toward Perui on foot. On the
same day, 220 Serbs and 60 Jews arrived from the area around Zagreb. The
first were taken to Gospi prisons, while the latter were taken to the local
concentration camp. On the same day, 350 Serbian prisoners were taken, on
foot, from those prisons in the direction of Karlobag. On 11th of this month,
700 Serbs from the area around Zagreb were brought to Gospi and put in
prisons there. Another 600, among which there were 30 Jews, arrived at
Gospi from an unknown location. Also, on the same day, 650 Serbs,
including 30 women and 30 children under the age of 12, were taken out
from Gospi prisons and taken toward Karlobag; it is suspected that none of
313
them survived. The report of the Headquarters of the Re Infantry Division

from 17nd August stated: Long columns of Serbs and Jews are being taken,
for a whole month now, from Gospi towards Karlobag and there is no
evidence that they ever arrived at their destination. However, it has been
established that, about half way there, more precisely in the village Otarije,
there is a deep pit in which the people from those columns have been thrown,
previously killed with knives and bayonets... Similarly, in the report of the
military station Tribanj of 21st August, the pit Jamina was mentioned,
something the Italians researched and photographically documented, the
Ustasha massacre of the inhabitants of the village ibuljine.
The news that arrived from zones in which there were no Italian troops was
horrible. In Gospi, Kula, Srb, Smiljane and other villages, the Ustashas
killed all Orthodox Serbs that they found.25 The report further stated that in
the concentration camp Debela Glavica (5 km from Gospi) there were about
2000 people, of which 500 were killed with machine guns on 31st July and 1st
and 2nd August (...) the village Divoselo was completely destroyed, 12 elderly
people were locked in a house which Ustashas had mined and then blew up.
In Senj, about 800 Serbs were buried alive with around ten people put in each
hole. Again on their own, without waiting for anyone's permission, the 6th
Army Corps, on 3rd August, sent the bersaglieri Zara Battalion with units
of the 73rd Blackshirts Regiment to the centre of Graac. Two days later, the
military command in the city was taken over by Colonel Umberto Salvatores.
With the arrival of bersaglieri to Graac, Colonel Salvatores estimated that
at least 1500 Serbs were saved from execution. This is how Second
lieutenant Salvatore Loi, one of the bersaglieri, described the situation on 4th
August 1941 in Graac, which was full of Ustashas in a ring of Serbian rebels:
We walked through the city centre, headed to the southern edge of the city,
where, disturbingly near, an outpost of the rebels was located. Suddenly, on
the roof of a multi-storey building, we saw a dozen Ustashas throwing, from
the verandah and onto the square, bodies of several tortured but still alive
Serbs. Then, other Ustashas appeared on the balcony, dragging four children,
the oldest one could have been eight years old. The children were crying and
calling for their parents who were massacred before their eyes. One Ustasha
grabbed the oldest child by its hair and threw it off the balcony and onto the
Ibid., 16th August 1943.
314
pavement. The Ustashas in front of the building were shooting at the child's
body as it flew through the air and dropped to the ground. Satisfied hoarse
roars welcomed the feat like howling of wild beasts, which in these Croats
had nothing in common with their human form. At that time, the Ustashas
on the balcony grabbed the second child. Everything after that happened with
great speed. The bersaglieri use their guns to attack the Croats in the square.
Corporal Gubelini and soldiers Citadini, Borgati and Paginati rushed up the
staircase to those on the verandah and started to beat them with their guns as
they would with sticks. Appalled by the unexpected intervention of their
allies, the Croats start to indicate that they would like to respond, but
immediately give up before bersaglieri guns pointed at them. The bersaglieri
leave with the crying children who were holding on tightly around their
necks. The Ustashas are left in the square, spitting blood, teeth and bile.
During the first days of August, the situation in Knin - even though difficult
- it was idyllic in comparison to what was happening in other nearby areas.
Serbs continued to seek refuge in Italian territory. In the village Biliani
(near Obrovac), 321 refugees gathered, nearly all women and children; in
egar (...) on 6th August, many women and children arrived with several
thousand head of cattle and their furniture.26
Recording and documenting all the events on the ground, the Italian
Headquarters recorded the uprising of the Serbs, a nationwide uprising of
the Serbian people against the Ustasha terror. As the date of the uprising 26th
July was recorded, when, during the night, an organised and simultaneous
attack on all logistically and tactically important checkpoints took place in the
area between Gospi and Bosanski Petrovac in the north and ibenik - Livno
in the south. The uprising of the Serbian people broke out almost
simultaneously in Dalmatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and it was carefully
and thoroughly documented by Italian archives records. The uprising of the
Serbs was done parallelly in the military and diplomatic-political sphere,
primarily through diplomatic skills of Serbian leaders: Dr Niko Novakovi,
brother of the future Chetnik vojvoda Vlado Novakovi, and a former
Member of Parliament and Minister without portfolio in the government of
Ibid., Envelope 583 - Headquarters of the 6th Army Corps - Report no. 100 - V.P. 39, 11th
August 1941.
315
Dr Milan Stojadinovi, then lawyer Boko Desnica from Obrovac and Stevo
Raenovi, also a former Member of Parliament in Belgrade. At the same
time, strong action of the military formations of Serbian rebels who
managed, to the amazement and admiration of Italian troops in the field, to
organise and perfectly execute actions which, in only a few months, led to a
complete collapse of the military armed forces of the NDH. Large and
successful operations of Serbian rebels in the siege of Graac and Knin and
also in battles near Donji Lapac and Kulen Vakuf, led to the formation of free
Serbian territories, a country within a country. This would lead to Italian
military and political moves which were coordinated and programmed with
the Serbs. The existence of a previously made diplomatic-political agreement
between Serbs rebels and Italy is proven by the fact that not a single shot was
fired on the Italian army by the rebels. The result was the Italian occupation
of Serbian liberated territory in the Independent State of Croatia, where the
Italian military authorities immediately banned entry to all military
formations of NDH, and guaranteed the safety of the Serbian people.
The situation would be definitively and officially resolved on August 13th,
when Mussolini gave General Ugo Cavallero, the Chief of the General Staff,
the following instructions: a) the Italian army will occupy the entire
demilitarised zone; b) to enlarge, as much as necessary, the number of Italian
troops currently deployed in that zone; c) to remove Croatian troops from
that zone; d) to give over all power, only in Croatian territory, to Italian
military authorities.27
By order of General Vittorio Ambrosio, the Commander of the 2nd Army, by
5th September, all Ustashas unquestionably had to leave the entire
demilitarised zone. That marked the end - until the capitulation of Italy, on
8th September 1943 - of the Ustasha massacre of Serbs in Lika and Dalmatia.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Archives - Yugoslavia 1941 - Envelope 108 - Folder 10

(Document protocol no. 21395 - confidential - 14th August 1941.
316
Vasilije Karan
SORROW FOR A LIFETIME
At Pete Kozarske Brigade Street number 11 in Banja Luka I was about to hear
the story of Mrs. Dobrila who is not unknown in the city where she lives. A
calm and composed Dobrila Kukolj remembered the horrors and unending
inhumanity she witnessed as a ten-year-old in the Second World War.
I recognised in Dobrila something more than kindness and forthrightness,
which are distinguishing traits of my Kozarans; it was something stronger,
deeper. Dobrila enchanted me with her careful choice of words, as though
she were a pedagogue, an expert storyteller. Quiet and moderate, her choice
of the spoken word strikes to the core, to the core of a most difficult time.
Whenever this quiet woman closes her eyes, before her she sees Jasenovac.
She managed to survive what most could not; they died of hunger, of beatings
and illnesses, of disorders and ill-treatment.
Sigh follows sigh, story succeeds story. The tangle of truth and history
unravels. Dobrila doesnt know where to begin, what to relate first. I listen
and memorise her words, note down particulars; before me is a blonde lady,
a lady of an expansive memory. Half her relations she lost in concentration
camps, in Jasenovac and in Sajmite in Zemun. As she talks and looks me in
the eyes, I see tears welling up. Dobrila, however, refuses to cry. She has cried
for at least half a century. I listen to her as words depart her lips strong,
expressive and truthful words. The truth unfolds, full of pain and madness. I
shudder, yet I continue to listen to Mrs. Dobrila Kukolj.
Dobrila was only ten years old when she was put in a concentration camp, in
a circle of death, of lawlessness and exceeding madness. She crossed from the
right bank of the Sava River to the left in Croatia. Hunger and nothing but
317
hunger! As she plucked the grass under her feet for food, she gazed from the
camp at the villages of her Bosnia. Pounje [land adjoining the Una River]. She
fixed her gaze on Meea, on all those bluish Kozara slopes, and listened to
the echoes of heavy guns and machineguns firing. Kozara was defending
itself still, but could not prevail. She dreamed of peace, and expected a
benefactor to take her by the hand and lead her out of hell, but her hopes
were dashed. So many times did she evade the butchers in the camp, escaping
here and there, evading their grasp! The butchers in the camp would grab a
young woman or full-grown girl and take her to the camps brickworks, there
to rape her and afterward shove her yet alive into the ovens of the crematoria.
Death and nothing but death!
There is one moment, a startling sight that still ices Dobrilas blood. When on
one occasion she was running away from her would-be butchers, she, quite
accidentally, stepped on a newborn baby. That sight still haunts her, frightens
her, leads her into a difficult state! She remembered, and she sees it still, just
as though it has just occurred.
I listen to cascades of painful remembrances. Dobrila is adept at speaking;
every word of hers is truthful, convincing, forceful and painful. Every sight
from the camp she recollects; she would always gaze across the right bank of
the Sava, towards her Meea, towards home, towards her lost liberty. She
was a butterfly, a girl coloured gold. Yet she had to suffer hunger, and watch
as her peers crawled on the ground, crying and dying of hunger. She
laboured with pained effort to walk the hellish circuit of the camp, her every
step heavy and hard. Her Pounje was densely dotted with houses, appearing
to her childs imagination as though a starry tapestry. A spell. Now all of this
was snatched away from her. Day-in-day-out she watched the wagoner
driving his wagon, it filled with the bodies of dead inmates. He was taking
them somewhere to common graves. On the other side of the Sava, in
Gradina, Ustashas were making soap from the bodies.
Harsh reality became mixed with a childs imagination. What the young
flaxen-haired girl thought of in those wartime years, not even she can now
say. She wished for peace. In the girls mind, freedom was a jewel, something
invaluable. Who has not gone through war, cannot know the value of
freedom.
318
Sleep for the little girl in those painful days was the dearest mercy. In sleep,
she would forget herself, and so return to her pre-war years. She would see
her father, Rade, and her mother, Savka. Both her parents would cuddle her;
she was the apple of her fathers eye. So many times did she lie in her fathers
lap listening to beautiful and exciting stories, stories of far-off and unknown
lands. Her mother did not lag behind. She would play with the golden-haired
girl, laugh at this and that; happy days passed in succession, keeping boredom
at bay for Dobrila. Peace, games, parents, her bother Boko, sister Jagoda, her
cousins, all of them for Dobrila represented a big and immeasurable world
which she loved. But, then came the war, and with it the black Ustashas who
killed innocent civilians. The people of Kozara were the first to come under
attack because of their heroism. Pavelis Ustashas butchered people,
deported them to concentration camps, torched their homes and stamped out
every sign of life. Dobrila remembers all of this to this day. What she wouldnt
give not to have seen such a world, not to have suffered it. She would give
much, too much!
These killers cut down many innocent lives. Dobrilas father Rade went that
way too. He died in the Staro Sajmite [fairground] concentration camp in
Zemun. And her brother Boko she lost in the same camp. Her beloved
brother was only 14 at the time. The Germans stripped him and left him in
the sun. The boys skin blistered, and the hungry inmates stripped pieces off
and ate them. Man eating man. The agony was great, greater than reason! Her
sister Jagoda survived the camp, as did her mother Savka. Dobrila
remembers all the exhaustion in the camp. In walking around it, Dobrila
would hold her sisters hand. They helped each other walk. Dobrila also
remembers her grandfather Simo. Pavelis soldiers stabbed him to death, he
died in severe pain.
Word follows word as the former concentration camp inmate, tapping her
inner strength, relates her story in a quivering voice. Again I see tears
welling up in her eyes, but she will not cry. She cried herself dry in years
past, remembering her father, her brother and relatives great in number, too
great.
A mans life always accommodates the times he lives in. As to whether Dobrila
was able to adapt to those evil days, she certainly wasnt. She suffered all the
evils of evil men murderers, butchers, haters. Well she remembers her
319
good uncle Milorad, who also died in the Zemun concentration camp. He was
there, while his children died in Jasenovac the four of them, Rajko, Milja,
Slobodan and Simo! Death cut them down just as they hoped they would leave
the Jasenovac concentration camp. She also remembers her good uncle
Mirko. He too was deported to the Sajmite camp. He died of hunger and his
other tortures, while his family died in Jasenovac. Hunger, more hunger,
then death. Aunt Marija also died, together with her children Bosiljka, her
daughter, and Slavko and Gojko, her sons. They all went to eternity in the
greatest suffering, went to forgetfulness, yet they hoped to be liberated soon.
Memories. Sad memories can grind a man as though wheat between mill
stones. Dobrila fights through her work, resisting in every possible way. On
the other hand she wants to tell her sorrowful tale, for there is no greater sin
than to forget. However, every telling of it requires strength, patience and
composure. With every sigh she continues her story. She mentions uncle
Ilija. He too starved to death, together with his wife Nevenka and their five
children. Five little birds died Koviljka, Milan, Bosiljka, Radojka and Duan.
They were crying before they died, calling out to their mother, but all this
was in vain. The war in the hellish 1942 was in full swing. In full force and
woe, in charred homes and ruins, in madness. But those who hungered in
concentration camps knew little of the battles being fought between the
partisans on the one hand and the Germans, Ustashas, Croatian Home Guard
and others, on the other. Hunger had beat them down, making all stories of
possible victories seem unreal in their eyes. The inmates would turn their
gaze to the heights of Mount Kozara, wishing mightily for someone to
liberate them, to remove them from the camps. That they did not live to see.
But the end of the black year 1942 was approaching. By some happenstance
maybe it was the International Red Cross Dobrila and her sister and
mother left Jasenovac. Their journey ended in Toranj near Gaj. The landlord
the three of them were assigned to was not poisoned by hatred. Their good
landlord Stevo Peterli managed to protect these inmates. He took care of
their nutrition, of appropriate conversation, always finding words of
comfort. His wife, Elza, behaved towards the exhausted inmates as though
she were their mother. Dobrilas life, and those of her mother and sister, was
transformed. Hunger stopped sapping them.
But, the year 1943 brought Dobrila many joys. With her mother Savka and
sister Jagoda, she left Slavonia and returned to her home village. To Meea,
320
to heroic Potkozarje. The battles in 1943 were fought the fiercest. She lived
in freedom, but without freedom. The war still raged on many fronts, but the
fact that she was no longer in a concentration camp was truly a great thing;
nothing could be greater or better. However, Ustashas kept coming from
Dubica, Jasenovac and Gradika; they raided villages and killed civilians.
Because of that Dobrila had to flee; once to Prosara and a second time to
Kozara. She would hide in the brush, and in animals lairs, and wait for the
killers to depart. The villages of Potkozarje looked like a most horrible dream
all craters and ruins and charred houses. Madness had overwhelmed sanity,
inter-human harmony and the respect due others. The armies fought each
other still, and the civilians lived in-between their battles. The road to
freedom was long, too long. Anti-fascism had to defeat the fascists; there was
no other choice. The Serbs then had as allies the Russians, English, French,
Americans, Greeks and many others. Croatian pro-fascism had to fall on its
knees. And Ustashas saw that day come. Killers, less than human with
bloodied knives!
Dobrila tried to remember this and that, word by word. Haunted by her
thoughts, she is forced to open up, to talk, to reveal in detail what her childish
eyes had seen. She remembers Joco Ruii, and his brother Savo. Joco lost
his life as a soldier in the First World War. Dobrila visited his grave when
she travelled to Greece. She lit a candle for him at the Zeytinlik Military
Cemetery, bowed before his grave and went away teary-eyed. Always the
tears, just always; but a man must live, create and be joyous.
History is occasionally a good teacher of life, but sometimes it becomes
forgetful. What do young people today know about the past, about the two
world wars, Dobrila wonders. Little if anything. I notice her face twitch, but
she will not give up. Even age demands patience, prudence and peace. She
was born into the great circle of the Bataji family, and when she grew up
and finished her education, she married a lawyer, one Milan Kukolj, and with
him had a very nice and comfortable life. After Milan died, she went to live
with her son, Ratko, daughter-in-law Radenka, and grandson Saa. They
abide in her heart as a great flower for which she lives and she remembers
the sad times. She is always active. She is presently as I write this president
of the Banja Luka branch of the Association of the Second World War
Concentration Camp Inmates. Her work gives her the strength to go on; she
meets onetime sufferers and unfortunates, and with them she exchanges
321
memories and so passes the time. She preserves her memories of persons who
with no guilt were guilty; who lost their lives in Croatian concentration
camps, though few of them returned to freedom as living skeletons. Dobrila
preserves a time which for todays man ought to serve as a warning.
Gradina, near Jasenovac, is the biggest city of dead Serbs, Jews and Gypsies.
Is there justice? Is there a man in the world who by his actions could push
into oblivion such a world as existed in 1942? As long as she walks, thinks
and has the strength to meet people and talk with them, Dobrila Kukolj will
be the woman, the witness that has to and will testify about those hellish
years, of a time when madness overpowered reason.
322
Milan Bastai
CROATS BETWEEN JAZOVKA AND

JADOVNO
The Croatian political leadership marked the European Day of Remembrance

of the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, in their Croatian
way. It was Jazovka first and then Jadovno.
Serbs were insulted and the diplomatic representatives and the international
public deluded. With great explanations of how it has civilization and
historical value (of which Europe reminded them), they said that after
seventy years they came to the pit Jazovka on umberak into which the
Partisans, upon their arrival in Zagreb in 1945, threw the wounded Croatian
Home Guard soldiers and Ustashas, after taking them from Zagreb hospitals.
This was supposed to evoke sympathy in the diplomatic corps when they
failed to mention that the Ustashas killed here were captured by Partisans in
the attack on Krai. For many years, that was the only interpretation of the
Partisan action. The story of the wounded soldiers is of a newer date.
First, everyone went to commemorate Jazovka, even though the mass
monstrous crime committed by Croatian Ustashas at Jadovno, which was two
hundred times greater, took place five years before Jazovka. The first
impression is important, it has its meaning even with diplomats - so they
thought, it might work. Two photographs were taken there and, most likely,
iconography was carefully chosen. When places of execution are mentioned,
and historiography is referred to, then certain principles should be adhered
to. The events on Jazovka and Jadovno are not the same and there are no
equalising parameters, especially when calling on reverence for the victims.
323
In history, causes and effects have their place and a timetable of events,
which the Croatian aggression against the truth and the revision of the truth
systematically ignore and take out of all contexts. In an article, it was stated
that the commemorative procession was also at Jadovno, but there was no
photograph. The mentioned order of visits to places of execution and the
attitude toward the site Jadovno is a great and reasonable insult to the living
descendants of the victims of the Ustasha camps Gospi, Jadovno, island of
Pag (Slana and Metajna). If someone was comfortable with the presence of
the military part of the commemoration (Minister of War Veterans and the
Commander of the Croatian Ground Army), for us, descendant Serbs, it was
an insult and a regrettable action on behalf of the victims. Because, at the
time, those victims were killed by official uniformed people and with
weapons and tools of Croatian state authorities. To make the cynicism even
greater, the present Minister of War Veterans and the Commander of the
Croatian Ground Army, who both got their positions in the civil war on
Croatian territory, by actions of soldiers they led, were no less militant than
those militants in Jadovno and Jazovka. We, the many descendants of victims
in Jadovno and World War II in Croatia, perceive that cynicism as a grave
and deliberate insult of the organisers of these commemorations. No less of
an insult was endured in various ways by witnesses and descendants of
several thousand of killed and hundreds of thousands of banished Serbs, who
were also thoroughly looted using brutal methods, in the civil war which took
place in this region between 1991 and 1995. Certainly, by a no less militant
Croatian army than the aforementioned army in 1941 - 1945.
Now, someone from the invited and uninvited Croatian institutions will say,
nonchalantly as President Josipovi did, that this is watering and a desire to,
from those place of execution, sprout. . . That is simply an audacious and
inappropriate refusal of the Croatian political leadership to take responsibility for the calamitous past of Croatia and Serbs in it in the 20th century.
Find the strength and responsibility to answer this question: WHY HAVE
YOU DONE THAT TO US? Only admit that you had done that and then
repeated it. Because that is the only way to reconciliation. Everything else,
like this inappropriate commemoration, are delays with attempts to conceal
and diminish the truth, which is, as you know and see, an ungrateful task.
The entire Croatian aggression against the truth about known events is quite
understandable. Genocide, atrocities and the number of execution sites and
324
victims are so great that it is hard to acknowledge them, and your only
(temporary) hope is that the world cannot really comprehend and believe
such deeds. The following was posted on the Facebook profile of the
President of Croatia concerning the Day of Remembrance of victims: We
cannot change history, but we must learn from it. Nicely put, and it is a very
bold statement because its author knows very well what children learn in
official textbooks, especially history textbooks. In the context of learning
from history, I have to mention one of a number of historical truths of the
President of Croatia, such as the one stated when Croatia joined the European
Union. The largest, most powerful anti-fascist movement in enslaved Europe
was the resistance of Croatian people! The President of Croatia stated that
without flinching, let alone blushing, even though he knows the real truth. I
would be lying if I said that this was anything else but an outright lie. The
President knows very well that, starting in April 1941, after tens of thousands
of massacred Serbs across NDH, on 27th July, Serbs of Lika and Drvar stood
up to the further planned and organised slaughter of Serbs by the
Independent State of Croatia. That compelled resistance grew strongly and
remained monoethnic, Serbian, with very few and honourable exceptions
until the second half of 1943. The same was true in Herzegovina and Bosnia.
Well, President, here's to your and Croatian teaching of history!
Regardless of everything known in history, the Speaker of the Croatian
Parliament presented the following idea: Commemorations like the one today
at Jazovka should become a tradition for all victims of totalitarian regimes!
Then, the individual who came out as a hero after the civil war, the Head of
the Government Committee stated: Jazovka and Jadovno are two symbols
which have divided the Republic of Croatia for all these years. We would like
to commemorate them from a historical and humane aspect and everything
beyond that is a matter for the State Attorney and the police! All things
considered, everyone there agreed that executors, bloody Croatian
mercenaries and their victims, among which Serbs were by far greatest in
number, should be equalised. A well known formula of the totalitarian Franjo
Tuman! I must, rightly, say that this shameful and disrespectful idea of the
Croatian state officials deeply offends all victims of the totalitarian NDH and
its militant army - Ustashas.
Regarding Jadovna and Jazovka (I hereby officially apologise to the
standpoint of Croatian state leaders at commemorations for, unlike them,
325
putting Jadovno before Jazovka!) as a symbol of a deep division in the

Republic of Croatia for "all these years", it is unclear which years, what deep
division and a division between who. It is simply horrible, unheard of in the
world in its cruelty, that the first mass place of execution of innocent Serbian
and Jewish civilians and Jewish families, actually, a entire system of Ustasha
camps called Jadovno, came out of anonymity for the population of Croatia,
Yugoslavia and the world only in 2010 when the two-volume book Jadovno
by Professor Dr uro Zatezalo was published. Immediately after that, a
Citizens Association - comprising of descendants and honourers of the
victims of the system of Ustasha camps Gospi, Jadovno and island Pag was
founded with its main office in Banjaluka. Upon the initiative of this
association and in cooperation with the Serb National Council in Zagreb and
the Diocese of Gornji Karlovac, the first commemoration and memorial
service for the victims of NDH camps was held, with great attendance of
descendants and honourers of Jadovno victims. In the following year, the
Association organised the First International Conference Jadovno '41 and
the second commemoration at the pit aranova Jama with international
participation and a memorial service. That year, 24th June was determined to
become the official Memorial Day of Jadovno, and on the island of Pag the
previously broken memorial plaque was restored, only to be broken the
following day. In 2012, after the memorial service and commemorative
program at the pit aranova Jama, around 200 honourers of the victims
carried a consecrated cross to the site of the camp Jadovno, 6-7 kilometres
from aranova Jama, where they placed it and an Orthodox priest
consecrated it. The commemoration was attended by around 2000 people,
about the same as previous years. The Croatian state heads were at all
commemorations and one year the President of the Republic attended it.
Already on 2012, some reactions from Croatian officials could be heard. They
were reflected in obstructing the efforts of the Association to organise a
memorial service and commemoration, as in previous years. There were
serious hindrances of descendants and honourers who were coming from
Serbia, Vojvodina and Bosnia and Herzegovina through border crossings in
the Republic of Srpska. A large number of descendants who wanted to visit
the location of the camp on the island of Pag were hampered to go there and
attend the placing of a memorial plaque, which was previously shattered. This
one was, for the third time, broken only after a few days. To date, a large
326
number of presentations of the Proceedings of the Round Table Jadovno

41 with the slogan Moje Jadovno were held, including the Holocaust
Memorial Park in New York.
It turns out that Jadovno 41 could not have been the cause of deep divides
in the Republic of Croatia for all these years since it had been anonymous for
seventy years and it is well known why. The best example of such a large
Croatian execution site of, firstly, innocent Serbian and also Jewish and
Roma civilians and entire families was Jasenovac. Despite all the efforts and
concrete actions of Croatian and even Yugoslav authorities until the end of
the sixties to neglect it, failed to hide Jasenovac. Even though it was a
forerunner of Jasenovac, it was easier with Jadovna. It is evident that, now,
the Croatian leadership, together with certain institutions, is alarmed because
of the disclosure to another homo sapiens about the incomprehensible mass
atrocities of the Croatian homo sapiens.
Upset gentlemen, you should refrain from interfering with victims'
descendants paying reverence to the victims. Much has been revealed to the
world about Jadovno in the last four years. Let's hope that truth will be
contributed by research announced at the commemorations which are the
subject of this article. In the presence of Croatian leadership it is unbefitting,
in such sad places, that some unknown man determines who of the
descendants of innocent victims can and who cannot come, here or there, to
inappropriate places of execution, these inappropriate graves, such as
karst pits around Jadovno.
327
PhD. Mladenka Ivankovi
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE

WORLD, CHILDREN IN DEATH
CAMPS
Abstract: This paper talks about children, victims of genocide and the
Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia. The paper also talks
about the Aryanisation of the superior Croatian national organism
and its consequences on the youngest non-Croatian population, i.e.
children.
A healthy nation could be built by destroying, primarily physically, the
enemies poisoning the Croatian nation. The first step in cleansing
the nation was to annihilate children as a hope for life of the enemies
of the Croatian nation the Serbs, Jews and Roma.
Keywords: Children, camps, genocide, Holocaust, Independent State of
Croatia.
Leaders of the Ustasha movement did injustice firstly to the people from
which they descended. To their ancestors, to their national tradition, to their
national identity.
The eagerness of the Independent State of Croatia for cooperation and
readiness to implement on its territories all the provisions of the racial law
had deeper roots that reached into the projected picture of a repeated
establishment of the real origin of the Croatian nation. The new political
elites were saying of the Croats that they were not of Slavic but of Gothic
origin.1 The population was supposed to be introduced, from the very basics,
1The
essence of such views was that the key role in the human society and history of
mankind was that of races, and the task of the XX century was to ensure the purity of
329
to the new and modified national identity and was forced to act in accordance
with the model of the projected nation.
Aryanisation in the creation of the Croatian national identity2 as an angle at
which accomplishment of the idea of a healthy national collective was to be
viewed was a result of making connections with the ideology of fascism and
Nazism of the Third Reich.3 In their eagerness and readiness for achieving
success in realising such ideology, leaders of the Ustasha movement were
trying to create a strong and Aryan people, who should not submit to any
of the previous principles of civilization, which governed the Croatian
territories in the earlier times.
Apart from this, it was necessary to redesign the state religion to justify the
moral motives of behaviour of the projected nation and implementation of
the Independent State of Croatias policy.
Soldiers of the Independent State of Croatia, the Ustashas, were in charge of
protecting the states territories and borders, as well as of the process of
cleansing the nation.4 In reality, they were physical fighters for achieving
the new national identity. Since they were deprived of their own self and
mankind. The racist totalitarian revelation claimed that the universe was ruled by a
victory of better over worse. The Germanic race was the one that represented the highest
form of the best human race and that was why it was entitled to the leading place in the
world. They were supposed to establish their own empire. Contrary to this, the Slavs, Jews
and Roma were a lower race and they tainted the Germanic race. The great goal, racial
purity, was total, most valuable, the only one even. According to Ernst Nolte, Faizam u
svojoj epohi, Beorad 1990.
2Mladenka Ivankovi, Jevrejski intelektualci i studentska omladina meu prvim rtvama
masovnih egzekucija u NDH, Tokovi istorije 1, Beograd 2014, pp. 117-135.
3Intolerance towards differences and emphasis on monolithic unity were defined by the
term race or nation. Boko Telebakovi, Osobine nacizma, Godinjak I, 2007, Beograd
2007. p. 161.
Thomas Mann believed fascism was an omnipresent disease of time, while proudly
obedient Germans were slightly ill. Boko Telebakovi, Osobine nacizma, Godinjak I,
Beograd 2007, p. 170.
4Removing of the non-Croatian and non-Catholic population (the term expulsion or
persecution would better suit the process that was applied), was encouraged by measures
of state terrorism towards its non-Aryan citizens. In: Milan Ristovi, U potrazi za
utoitem, Beograd, 1998. p. 24.
330
their own entity, their tradition, which explained to them who they were,
they had to find a new way to create a real Croatian soldier. As they assumed
a new identity, in their life experience they did not have any role models that
would explain how a real Croatian soldier behaved in enforcing the new
regime.
These people, stripped of their national identity and the notion of humanity
which they had in their peoples tradition, which they had to surrender by
force, were convinced it was best to express loyalty to their Aryan identity
by showing great dedication to the implementation of penal measures. The
penal measures were implemented by treating the prisoners with hatred and
cruelty. Showing hatred and cruelty was encouraged by the superiors. This
constant encouragement to a cruel treatment of prisoners and giving awards
for coming up with the cruellest ways to torture prisoners caused bestiality
in actions and inhumanity in treating the unable. These men and women, who
joined the Ustasha movement upon a call or voluntarily, who exceeded the
limit of humanity in punishing the prisoners, became assailants and
criminals, and their prisoners became their victims. Bestiality was most
prominent towards the least able victims, the children.
Children, those tender creatures, were left without any clothes on, they slept
on a bare floor, they were starved and tortured by thirst, they would get
scarlet fever, typhoid or dysentery. They were living skeletons from which
bowels hung due to bloody diarrhoea. They had strength neither to walk nor
cry and died in large groups or were gassed. Four hundred children, gassed
with Zyklon! One thousand and two hundred... were killed by hammers and
gas in the space of several days, if they had not already died of exhaustion.5
Ustashas celebrated Catholic religious holidays by having bloody feasts and
committing evil deeds against their feeble victims: Anyone who was in a
concentration camp in late 1942 surely remembers the Christmas execution
of some 500 Jewish women and their children. Ustashas squeezed them into
two or three cells in Kula and closed them down. For several days, they gave
them neither food nor water... A few days later, Ustashas brought them
5According
to the testimony of Ilija Jakovljevi in the book by Dragoje Luki, Bili su samo
deca, Jasenovac, grobnica 19.432 devojice i deaka. Beograd, 2000, p. 92.
331
greasy food (and we suspected it was poisoned too). Several hours later, the
ones who had not already been dead, died suffering from cramps.6
The Independent State of Croatia was trying to be a legal state. In order to
create a legal basis for the cleansing of Croatian territories and create a
clean Aryan state, decrees were instituted soon after the state was established.7 Whatever was not Aryan Croatian or Catholic had to be eradicated
respecting the legal norms.
The decrees banned the use of Cyrillic8 and introduced a ban on attendance
of Orthodox Christian schools and the use of the Julian calendar.9 The
position of the Jews and Roma was defined by the Decree on Racial
Origins10 and the Decree on the Protection of Aryan Blood and Honour of
the Croatian People.11
The Decree on Citizenship,12 published 30 April 1941, specifically emphasised that a citizen: ... is a member of Aryan origin who has proved with his
behaviour that he has not worked against the liberation aspirations of the
Croatian people and who is willing to serve the Croatian people and the
Independent State of Croatia readily and loyally.
Those who were not of Aryan origin were not citizens and did not enjoy the
legal protection of the state and were treated as disgusting, i.e. as the
enemies of the government. The Decree on the Defence of the People and
State13 published on 17 April stipulating that any attempted violation or
6According
to the testimony of Marijana Amuli Buca in the book by Dragoje Luki, Bili su
samo deca, Jasenovac, grobnica 19.432 devojice i deaka. Beograd, 2000, p. 49.
7
See article by Jovan Mirkovi, Hronologija zloina (april-avgust 1941). Prilog dokazima
o genocidnom karakteru Nezavisne Drave Hrvatske, u Prilozi istraivanju zloina
genocida i ratnih zloina, Beograd 2009, pp.11-77.
8 Legal Decree Banning the Cyrillic Script, 25 April 1941, in Narodne novine, Zagreb, 25
April 1941.
9Legal Decree Abolishing the Julian Calendar, 4 December 1941, in Narodne novine,
Zagreb, 4 December 1941.
10 Zbornik zakona i naredaba Nezavisne Drave Hrvatske, edited by Josip Junaevi, PhD,
Miroslav antek, PhD, Zagreb 1941. Vols. I-XII, year I.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
332
attempt at violating ... the honour and life interests of the Croatian people or
[who] in any way jeopardises the survival of the Independent State of Croatia
or state authority, even if the act is only an attempted act, he shall be deemed
a perpetrator of the crime of high treason... (who is the perpetrator of the
crime from the previous item)... shall be sentenced to death.
The legal position of children was fully dependent on, i.e. the same as the legal
position of their parents. In reality, however, the position of children was far
worse.
Contemporary law strictly forbids any criminal sanctions against underage
persons under the age of 14, and the NDH made sure to be portrayed,
formally, as a legal state, because it was presumed that they were not mature
and that they were incapable of doing any evil.
Ustashas were nevertheless allowed to exert violence against children.
Ustashas instinctively perceived them as a real threat to their Aryan nation.
They perceived them as a hope for life of the disgusting brood (the term
that the Aryan Croats used to describe the Serbs, Jews and Roma) and aspired
to destroy such hopes, that is, to execute them or, as the culmination of their
disgrace, make them their janissaries.14
On the NDH territory ... according to the data established so far, 74,762
children lost their lives. In the genocide, according to the results obtained so
far, 60,234 children were killed, 32,054 boys and 28,012 girls. It was
impossible to determine sex in 168 murdered children. The biggest number
of murdered children were Serbs, 42,791.15
In the execution sites of the Jasenovac concentration camp, 11,888 Serbian
children and 7,544 Jewish and Romani children were murdered.16
14A
person without his identity, without his nationality, who has been taken away from
parents at a very early age and brought up to be a soldier who wages wars blindly and
obediently for the needs of those who took him away. Statements of eyewitnesses, camp
inmates, testify to this.
15According to the data of the Museum of Genocide Victims. Said number refers to children
aged 0-14, who were killed by Ustashas, Germans and all others.
16 Data from the book by Dragoje Luki, Bili su samo deca, Jasenovac, grobnica 19.432
devojice i deaka. Beograd, 2000.
333
Just like their parents, the children in the Independent State of Croatia were
placed in camps. Children also had their childrens camps. Forming special
concentration camps for children was a unique example in the history of
humankind. Such camps were usually called Transit Camps (or Collection
Points) for Refugee Children.
The Ustasha-German camp in Sisak was founded on 3 August 1942 after the
completion of operations on Mount Kozara and amarica. The camp also
included a special camp that was officially called the Transit Camp for
Refugee Children. The transit camp was actually the first concentration
camp for children. The childrens camp in Sisak was the biggest of its kind in
the NDH and was under the auspices of the Female Line of the Ustasha
Movement and the Ustasha Supervisory Service. Direct management of
the children transit camp was in the hands of Ustasha Dr. Antun Najer.
Between 3 August 1942 and 8 February 1943, 6,693 boys and girls, Serbs
from Kozara, Banija, Kordun and Slavonia were detained in Sisak.17
Camp Jastrebarsko was a childrens camp outside Jastrebarsko, founded on
12 July 1942. It detained 3,336 children mainly from the area of Kozara and
Kordun. The childrens camp at Jastrebarsko was under the supervision of
the Congregation of Sisters of St. Vinko.
Childrens camps existed in Gornja Rijeka near Krievci and in Loborgrad.
They were managed by the Ustasha Supervisory Service.
A childrens camp was founded in a womens camp in Stara Gradika, which
belonged to the complex of Jasenovac camps.18 Ustasha Ante Vrban was in
charge of them. He treated the children with cruelty.
17According
to coroner Dr. David Egis data, there were 1,152 children buried in Sisak.
camp was founded in mid August 1941, and the first inmates arrived on 20 and 21
August to build shacks in camp Broice. The first inmates were mostly males, Jews and
Serbs, who were executed after the closure of the Ustasha camps of Jadovno, Gospi and
Pag. The camp complex was built between August 1941 and February 1942.
German captain Artur Hefner, transport officer at Jasenovac Camp, wrote: The term
Jasenovac Concentration Camp represents a complex of several camps kilometres away
from each other, grouped around Jasenovac. Regardless of the propaganda, it is a camp of
the worst kind, equal to Dantes Inferno.
18The
334
According to the testimony of camp inmate Mirjana Almuli Buca from

Osijek: Children were lying helpless, starving; they were losing weight
visibly, they did not even have strength to cry. Only at night, delirious, they
would call out to their mothers, fathers, sisters or brothers. Around 20
women were taking care of them ... What the children had gone through was
sweeping them away like a most terrifying disease. They withered away and
died. One day, Ante Vrban ordered that all sick and feeble children be
brought away and taken to a nearby building, where he simply crammed
them into two rooms, with the help of Ustashas. They were gassed with
poisonous gas.19
Jasenovac and Stara Gradika, like numerous testimonies have proved, were
the biggest concentration camps for children in this part of the occupied
Europe, and they lasted as long as the camps in the Nazi Germany did.20
The Ustasha policy did all in its power to deprive the children of their ethnic
identity. They separated children from their mothers by force and by
performing acts of barbarism. They famished the children to such a degree
that as a result they were in a state of numbness. The children would forget
who they were, they would forget about everything and in the end, they
would only want a piece of food and some water.
Ustashas would take the healthiest children in camp and take care of them,
wishing to turn them into little Ustashas. ...When those kids are washed, fed
and given a change of clothes, when they gain a little weight, they will be just
like any other children. Admittedly, they are of the Vlach blood, but who in
their right mind could care about that? Thats just for papers and promotion.
The movement must have some kind of ideology.
... And who is going to prove that they are in fact Serbian children who can
even imagine that when they are being saved by the Ustashas and our
wonderful leader! All things aside, the Serbs indeed have hearts of borderguards, these little Serbs could be raised to become excellent janissaries. No
19
Dragoje Luki, Bili su samo deca, Jasenovac, grobnica 19.432 devojice i deaka. Beograd,
2000, p. 51.
20 According to the data from the book by Dragoje Luki, Bili su samo deca, Jasenovac,
grobnica 19.432 devojice i deaka. Beograd, 2000, p. 37.
Childrens bodies were buried, thrown into the Sava River or cremated.
335
one knows who either their fathers or their mothers are; the state will
embrace them and turn those little boys into excellent non-commissioned
officers and policemen. One should just get it through their heads that their
parents gave their lives for the leader and Zvonimirs crown, and youll see
how they defend Croatia like lions. Orthodox Christian girls will forget about
the priest and the priests wife, they will marry Croats and give birth to many
babies; no one procreates like Orthodox peasant women, and when they
conceive with the Goths, it will be an offspring for show.21
Yet, help arrived to the little ones in camps from humane people. Mrs Diana
Budisavljevi22 organised and led the operation. Through her personal
connections with high-ranking officials of the German military administration and her friends from Zagreb itself, together with the brave nurses
and doctors of the Red Cross, she invested an effort in rescuing as many
children as possible.
Action Diana Budisavljevi ... until 1943 relied on the Jewish Religious
Community in Zagreb, and from then onwards on the Zagreb Archdiocese
21
According to the testimony of Ilija Jakovljevi (born 1898, died 1948). He was a lawyer,
novelist, short story writer, poet and publicist. He was arrested in October of 1941 for
refusing to collaborate with the Ustasha regime. Having spent a short time in jail in the
Savska Cesta in Zagreb, he was sent to Jasenovac and then to Stara Gradika where he
stayed between late October 1941 and December 1942. Thanks to his specific status,
Jakovljevi could communicate with the camps senior officers and commanders. In an
effort to win him over, they allowed him to make notes on which his book Konclogor na
Savi would later be based.
22 Diana Budisavljevi, ne Obexer, was born in Innsbruck on 15 January 1891 and died in
Innsbruck on 20 August 1978. She was married to surgeon Julije Budisavljevi, chief of the
surgical clinic of the School of Medicine in Zagreb. He was one of few Zagreb Serbs who
were spared the penal measures of the Croatian state in the Second World War.
During the Second World War, Diana Budisavljevi rescued 12,000 children from the
Ustasha death camps. It was one of the most difficult operations by the number of the
rescued and the most comprehensive relief effort related to the Second World War
concentration camps. More than 3,200 children died after the rescue from the results of
staying in those camps. In order to save the identity of the rescued children, she kept a
card-file during the war. The card-file kept by Diana Budisavljevi could only be used for a
short period of time. At the request of the new government in Zagreb, the Department of
National Security (OZNA), the card-file of Kozara children and photo albums of Ustasharun camps were confiscated from Diana Budisavljevi.
336
branch of the Caritas (in terms of buying foreign currency for the
procurement of milk from Switzerland, and in terms of the placement of
children into the care of families).23
She led the relief effort that rescued the little ones from the camps, i.e. saved
children from the certain death or becoming the Ustasha janissaries. There
are testimonies of the action24, and its admirable actors who were led by
Diana Budisavljevi and Dr Kamilo Bresler25, as well as of the constant efforts
of Ustashas to prevent the action.
A brief excerpt from Diana Budisavljevis diary:
10 July 1942, Stara Gradika: Some of the children had already been
identified to be transported to Gornja Rijeka, but then they had to stay
because of illness. Some of them died there, and some of them died
while in our care later, just like so many other little martyrs, as
unknown, nameless children. And each of them had a mother who cried
bitter tears over them, they had had their own home, their own clothes,
and now they were thrown naked into a mass grave. Their mothers
were pregnant with them for nine months, their parents welcomed
them with joy, cared for them and raised them lovingly, and then
Hitler needs warriors, bring the women, take their children away from
them, let them rot; what an immeasurable sadness, what pain (...)
Luburi arrived in the morning. He was angry that he had to give the
children away. He said there were enough Catholic children in Zagreb
growing up in poverty. That we should take care of them. Then he
warned us again that it was only up to his good will whether he would
set us free from the camp.26
The testimony of Jana Koh, the then secretary of the Croatian Red
Cross:
23
Jasmina Tutunovi-Trifunov, Akcija Diana Budisavljevi 1941 1945, Istraivanja i

memorijalizacija genocida i ratnih zloina, Beograd 2012, p. 57.
24 See in Jasmina Tutunovi-Trifunov, Akcija Diana Budisavljevi 1941 1945, Istraivanja
i memorijalizacija genocida i ratnih zlona, Beograd 2012, pp. 53-95.
25
Dr Kamilo Bresler was employed with the Ministry of Social Affairs.

Dragoje Luki, Bili su samo deca, Jasenovac, grobnica 19.432 devojice i deaka. Beograd,
2000, p. 123.
26
337
The shacks were connected with corridors where Ustashas stood

guard. A little farther away from the infirmary, you could hear
children crying from another shack. Four hundred children were
housed there on the bare floor: newborns, babies only several weeks or
months old, and children up to ten years of age. There was no way to
find out any longer how many children had arrived or where they were
deported to. Children in the childrens shack were crying inconsolably
and calling out to their mothers, who were only a few steps away...
Older children told us fighting tears that they could not calm the little
ones for they were hungry, there was no one to change their diapers,
they told us they were afraid they were all going to die. ... We sent off
a train with 550 children to Zagreb27 and the only thing we could tell
those mothers to console them were the addresses where they could
look for their children once they came back from the foreign country.
They were all deported to Germany that very night.28
Children nurslings were taken over by a shelter (Childrens Home
Josipovac) run by Dr. Bei and Dr. Olga Bonjakovi. As early as the
following day, many Zagreb women took the nurslings home to rescue
them. Unfortunately, neither the warmth nor the love of the new home
could keep many alive. Children over the age of one, two or three we
placed in the shelter of the Institute for Deaf and Dumb Children.29
Fortunately, dozens of women collaborators, volunteers from the city
responded to our call for help. We used a Red Cross ambulance for
transport and we loaded four or five children on each of the four
stretchers on the vehicle and quickly took them to the Institute for
Nurslings, escorted by two women. As there was not enough room or
beds, we were forced to put three or four children on one medium-size
child bed across. Some women ran right after the first vehicle, carrying
diapers, cloths, bottles and all imaginable kit for little babies. A circle of
unselfish and hard-working women (wife of Prof. Beci, a formally
trained painter, Baja Omikus, a salesman, D. Vidakovi, an architect,
etc.) formed around Diana Budisavljevi. They would fetch anything
27
Risking their own lives, over 100 Zagreb residents managed to rescue 10,536 little
hostages from the clutches of Ustashas and so write one of the brightest pages in the
Second World War history.
28 Dragoje Luki - roditelj pokoenog narataja, Beograd, p. 179.
29According to the testimony of Jana Koh, the then secretary of the Croatian Red Cross.
338
we were unable to get hold of. They would sew little shirts, hem the
diapers, and help day and night to look after the children together with
the Red Cross nurses. Those who never had a chance to set up a
childrens home with over 250 nurslings within just a few hours can
never understand what kind of challenge lied ahead of us.30
According to the List of children affected by the war, 25 trains with 12,861
children, who were in the care of the Croatian Red Cross, i.e. the team of
Action Diana Budisavljevi activists, were taken to the Disinfection Station of
the Zagreb Railway Station between 27 March 1942 and 8 January 1943. The
convoys of children showed all the drama of the rescue of 10,536 boys and
girls.
Upon the completion of Action Diana Budisavljevi, the people who had
assisted Mrs. Diana Budisavljevi kept helping the children in camps, but
with the refusal of assistance from the Ustasha camp authorities and with a
high degree of personal risk.
The children who were not rescued, neither in the five trains organised by
the Action nor with the help of good people, continued to live in the camp
routine, under impossible conditions that were in no way acceptable in a
normal and civilised world. They were tortured by violators. They were
brutally killed. They served as toys in their murderers game of death.
In the Independent State of Croatia, all child prisoners indeed were on the
other side of the world. They were children in death camps.
30
According to the testimony of Kamilo Bresler, in the book by Dragoje Luki, Bili su samo
deca, Jasenovac, grobnica 19.432 devojice i deaka. Beograd, 2000, p. 125.
339
Radovan Jovi
SUFFERING OF CHILDREN IN
JASENOVAC AND OTHER
CONCENTRATION CAMPS IN NDH
If it has to be so and cannot be avoided, then a dead man is better than

a living beast. For before the living God no man is ever dead, and a beast
is dead even when he treads this earth. It has for centuries been a lesson
of our mothers, not of just one mother Jevrosima: do not, son, speak or
do any wrong I had better lose my head than do one wrong!
That same thing represents the commitment of the knights of Kosovo:
the earthly kingdom is here today, gone tomorrow, and the Kingdom
of Heaven is forever and ever.
Both commitments derive from the same Gospel: And fear not them
which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him
which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. (Matthew 10:28)
Patriarch Pavle of Serbia
Introduction
This paper is a monument of sorts to all the innocent victims and an
everlasting memory of tens of thousands of children of the Serbian, Jewish
and Romani ethnicity, who were murdered most brutally by the Ustashas of
the genocidal state, the Independent State of Croatia, during the Second
World War.
Establishment of special death camps for children, from newborn babies to
children under 14, which were designed by the Ustasha regime of Ante
Paveli, represents a unique and never before recorded case in the history of
341
humankind. This paper actually represents our modest contribution to

keeping alive the memory of more than 750,000 innocent victims of the
Serbian, Jewish and Romani population killed in the Ustasha death camps,
particularly the memory of the horrific and mass slaughters of little angels.
The first part of the paper contains the specific data collected from the rich
historical collections as well as from the literature published so far. The paper
recalls and teaches us about the criminal character of Slavko Kvaternik and
his Croatian Militia, whose formations never in the four years of the
Second World War engaged in direct battle with the enemy army but rather
raided the unprotected Serbian villages and towns where they arrested
civilians en masse and took them to concentration death camps, which were
formed exclusively for the extermination of the Serbs, Jewish and Roma on
the territory of the criminal Ustasha creation, the NDH. On the basis of mass
slaughters and executions in camps, it can be concluded that Ustashas marked
the children in diapers as their main enemies.
However, despite the multitude of historical collections, authentic war-time
documents, testimonies, books and other works, a very small number of
publications have been devoted to mass executions and slaughters of children
in the Ustasha monstrous creation, the NDH. Nevertheless, the biggest credit
for returning the names and surnames to a huge number of innocent child
victims goes to Belgrade publicist Dragoje Luki, who was a camp inmate
himself, who was zealously collecting the personal data on the number of
innocent murdered Kozara children in Ustasha [part of sentence missing, t/n]
for 30 solid years after the war.
The Banja Luka-based Krajike novine in its special April 2005 edition,
marking the 60th anniversary of the last Jasenovac camp inmate groups
breakthrough, published the names of over 20,000 murdered children.
This paper was made as a necessity too because, as time goes by and as we
move further away from the Second World War events, some new truths
constantly emerge interwoven with lies and most disgusting manipulation.
We can testify that even today, at the beginning of the second decade of the
21st century, there are attempts to label and declare the nation that made the
greatest sacrifices and gave the biggest contribution to the National
Liberation Struggle the main culprit of all the wars in the Balkans in the past
century.
342
Nonetheless, we should recall that even the German Nazis were shocked by
the mass slaughters, barbarian acts and prisoner executions in death camps,
which were carried out by the Ustasha regime. Hitlers intelligence officer,
Artur Hefner, in his report dated 18 November 1942, described the Jasenovac
camp as follows: It is a camp of the worst kind, equal to Dantes Inferno.
When in late 1990 the third, expanded edition of the book Rat i djeca Kozare
by Dragoje Luki was published, the renowned Serbian poet Dobrica Eri,
learning about the slaughter of a huge number of Kozara children in
Jasenovac, Jastrebarsko, Sisak, Stara Gradika and other execution sites, in
an article for the Belgrade-based Politika wrote a few disturbing lines:
If they were ants, bees, butterflies, ears of grains in the fields or flowers in
the meadows, it would be too much, but they were neither ants, nor bees, nor
butterflies, nor ears of grains in the fields nor flowers in the meadows, but
children, almost all of them, and it can be said all of them Serbian children!
Forty thousand boys and girls that is an entire big childrens town. But now
they make an entire big cemetery.
If those children had lived to grow up, it would now have been a town of
nearly 100,000 inhabitants and it would have been resounding with life, with
childrens clamour and song. By every next 100 years, that town would have
been bigger by 100,000 new lives; but this way, this cemetery will be bigger
by 100,000 deaths after every 100 years.
This means that this unspeakable crime does not decrease with time, but
grows, the sin is becoming heavier and the debt ever longer, and a thousand
years later it will be multiplied by at least 1,000 times...
Many execution sites and death camps where small Serbian children were
killed still await a poet to erect in every place a monument that will overpower oblivion. People in Herzegovina too are waiting to see if a poet will
emerge to celebrate in verse mother Ljubica Bulut, whom Ustashas brought,
together with her three underage children, to a pit in urmanci. But, while
the slaughterers were sharpening curved knives and preparing a bloody
feast, the mother gave a strong hug to her three little ones: Milenko, aged 9,
Miladin, aged 7 and one-year-old Milena, and mustered the strength to say:
Come on, my angels, lets fly away.
343
uro Zatezalo, a longtime director of the Historical Archives of Karlovac, in

his book Radio sam svoj seljaki i kovaki posao and publicist Dragoje Luki
in his book Bili su samo deca [They Were Only Children] wrote down all
names and surnames of 33,209 children killed in the most brutal ways by the
criminal Ustasha regime.
However, the former Federal Statistical Institute of the Socialist Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia published the names and surnames of 74,360 children
killed in the NDH. Unfortunately, neither this figure of innocent child
victims is final since, during a years-long research, Srboljub ivanovi, a
researcher from London, gathered the data on 110,000 boys and girls
murdered in death camps throughout the former NDH territory.
Apart from the due reverence towards the innocent children killed, the task
of this paper is to reveal, to the extent possible, and bring closer to the reader
the truth about the crime of genocide committed against the Serbs, Jews and
Roma on the territory of the former criminal creation, the Independent State
of Croatia.
JASENOVAC A FACTORY OF DEATH

Only four days after the German Nazi forces marched in and occupied the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia, meeting almost no resistance at all, Zagreb saw the
proclamation of the Independent State of Croatia on 10 April 1941. The duty
went to Slavko Kvaternik, who read out the declaration on the establishment
of the criminal Ustasha creation, together with a German envoy Edmund
Veesenmayer, on a Zagreb radio that afternoon. Even though the original

plan was that power in the NDH be taken over by Vladko Maek, leader of
the Croatian Peasants Party, it was no coincidence that Adolf Hitler, the
leader of the Third Reich, opted for Ante Paveli, who at the time was an
Ustasha emigrant in Italy.
In order to justify the trust in the position of the president of the genocidal
state NDH, Ante Paveli surpassed his ideological mentor Adolf Hitler by the
brutality of crimes and mass slaughters.

As soon as he came back from Italy, Paveli declared a big number of laws
and appointed an interim government. Immediately after its formation, the
344
Ustasha regime started carrying out mass persecution and brutal executions
of the population of other ethnic, religious or racial background. In fact, the
Ustasha government in the NDH legalised the racist and fascist laws on the
basis of which the severest form of genocide against the Serbs, Jews and
Roma was committed. The first ones bearing the brunt of the crimes were
Orthodox Christian priests, distinguished heads of Serbian households,
intelligentsia and rich people. As early as the first half of May, an order was
published that all Serbs had to wear a white band on their right arm carrying
the symbol of their faith. By the same rule, the Jews had to wear a yellow
band with the Star of David, and, just like the Roma, they were subjected to
special racist laws, whereupon they were arrested en masse and taken to
concentration camps, where the most brutal executions were taking place
along with acts of severe torture.
On 17 April 1941, the Ustasha leader Ante Paveli published the Decree on
the Defence of the People and State introducing the state of emergency in the
NDH because of the Serbs. As early as 25 April, the use of the Cyrillic script
was banned. Eradication of all traces of the Serbian culture, tradition and
history ensued. Churches, reading rooms and buildings of Serbian
associations were burnt down. The Serbs, as well as the Jews and Roma, were
outlawed: they were removed from the civil service, their freedom of
movement was restricted, names of settlements were changed, Orthodox
Christian schools were abolished and Serbian books, even those in the Roman
script, were burnt down.
Apart from the two existing concentration camps in Lepoglava and Kruica
near Travnik, with the aforementioned decree Paveli ordered the expansion
of camps for as many prisoners as possible. In late April 1941, the so-called
labour camp Danica was opened in Koprivnica, which incarcerated
approximately 5,000 Serbs and Jews, and a few Croats, who were allegedly
members of the antifascist movement. Also, on 18 May 1941, the camp
Kerestinec, which existed also during the Banovina of Croatia within the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia, was reopened.
However, the first formula for the solution of the Serbian issue in the
Independent State of Croatia was first published by the Ustasha minister of
propaganda Mile Budak, who on 11 June 1941 at a rally in Lovinac near
Graac, made a frightening threat that was part of the criminal Ustasha
345
arsenal: Some of the Serbs we will kill, some we will move to Serbia, and
some we will convert to Catholicism and to Croats, and whatever remains of
them will only be a bad memory of them. During the same event, as one of
the Ustasha ideologists and a Croatian writer, Budak pronounced the
criminal slogan: Hang the Serbs from the willow trees! This threat,
recognisable for its malice and the display of pathological hatred, Mile Budak
bequeathed as his biggest literary achievement to the most extreme followers
of the Ustasha ideology.
But, before the rally in Lovinac, on St. Georges Day in 1941, Budak
announced a national programme in Krievci according to which the NDH
was the state of two religions Catholicism and Islam, whose territory
included the former Banovina of Croatia, Krajina, Slavonia, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, as well as a part of Srem, all the way to Zemun.
By their ethnicity, the then Muslims in the genocidal state NDH were treated
as Croatian flowers. Accepting the Ustasha ideology, many Muslims took
part together with the Croats in the most brutal executions and mass
slaughters of Serbs, Jews and Roma.
Among some of the important functions in the NDH performed by the
representatives of the Muslim group we should mention that Osmanbeg and
Daferbeg Kulenovi from Banja Luka were deputy prime ministers of the
Ustasha government, and that Hilmija Belagi, Mehmed Alajbegovi and
Meho Mehii were loyal government officials. The position of the president
of the NDH Supreme Court was entrusted with Asim Ugljen, while others
who also held high-ranking positions in the Ustasha authorities were
Ademaga Mei and Alija uljak. Ismetbeg Gavrankapetanovi was the
deputy speaker of the Croatian Parliament and head of the Vrhbosna County
in Sarajevo, while Husein Ali was the head of the Great County of Sana and
Luka in Banja Luka.
The brutal implementation of Pavelis criminal plan, i.e. ethnic cleansing of
the Croatian territory turned into the biggest pogrom of the Serbian, Jewish
and Romani population in the Second World War. As regards the Serbs as
the biggest population, at a rally in Graac, as the best recipe for the
reinforcement of Pavelis state, Budak stated: As for the Serbs, it is not
enough to just cut the tree; its roots must be pulled out as well.
346
The Ustasha minister thus announced mass slaughters over children, the goal
being to totally root out the traces of the existence of the Serbs, Jews and
Roma in the NDH. Only evil persons could cook up and carry out such a
genocidal plan in line with which great many Serbian, Jewish and Romani
children were incarcerated, tortured and killed in death camps. Not even
newborn babies were spared, they were taken out of their cradles and taken
away from their mothers arms, whereupon Ustasha torturers would take and
slaughter them in special camps for children. That is how the criminal NDH
remained recorded in the darkest pages of the history of human madness as
the only state in the world that formed special death camps for underage
children.
As early as mid April 1941, the Ustasha regime formed the first complex of
concentration camps Gospi Jadovno Pag, which was known as the Gospi
group of camps where the most severe form of physical destruction of Serbs
in the NDH was conducted. The complex included the camps Gospi,
Jadovno, Slana and Metajna on the island of Pag, Stupainovo, the
Maskimovi stables and the Gospi railway station. Apart from these, the
biggest execution sites used by Ustashas were numerous Velebit pits, into
which they would throw the bodies of half-slaughtered and half-dead victims,
having stabbed them violently or having dealt them a blow into the back of
the head with a mallet. Some of such bottomless pits where the biggest
number of innocent victims were killed were the pits aran, Badanj, Jamina,
Macolina jama and Jarja jama. At the same time on the island of Pag, since
mid June 1941 there was a concentration camp for men and a camp for
women and children in Metajna.
Apart from the first concentration camps for children in Sisak and
Jastrebarsko, through which 33,000 little ones went, of whom the Ustasha
beasts killed nearly 20,000 girls and boys in the most brutal way, there were
seven other childrens camps: Lobor, Jablanac near Jasenovac, Mlaka,
Broice, Utica, Stara Gradika and Gornja Rijeka.
One of the many and at the same the most distressing testimonies about the
methods of torture and physical destruction of children in Ustasha camps was
described by Avro Manhattan (America) as follows: At the time, new
inmates women and children were brought into the camp in Stara
Gradika every day. Only two weeks later, camp commander Ante Vrban
347
issued an order that all children be separated from their mothers and placed
in one room. Ten of us males were ordered to carry them over there wrapped
in blankets. When the room was filled up, Vrbas released poisonous gas that
killed all the children.
According to the data gathered and processed so far, between April 1941 and
May 1945, as many as 74,762 children under the age of 14 were murdered on
the territory of the Ustasha NDH, of whom 14,528 are recorded as victims of
war, while the most severe form of the crime of genocide was committed
against 60,234 children by Ustasha slaughterers.
It has also been established that 30,054 boys and 28,012 girls were killed by
slaughter or other cruel ways, and for 168 children it was impossible to
determine their sex. As for their ethnicity, the biggest number of murdered
children were Serbs 54,723, Roma 5,541 and Jews 3,414.
In fact, the number of murdered Romani children is higher since the Roma
were frequently listed as members of the Muslim people. Statistically, in the
four years of the genocidal state NDHs existence, on average, more than 49
children were killed every day, according to the book Deca na lomai rata u
Nezavisnoj Dravi Hrvatskoj 1941 1945, offprint Jasenovac, sistem
ustakih logora smrti.
Jasenovac youngest victims were brought to the execution sites from 1,074
settlements situated on the territory of the criminal NDH. The children were
collected from 155 municipalities mainly inhabited by the Serbs. The number
of children murdered in Jasenovac included 6,299 children from the wider
Banja Luka Krajina, 6,181 from Slavonia, 1,624 from Banija, 1,216 from
Kordun, 1,159 from Srem, 1,019 from eastern Bosnia, 922 from northwestern Croatia, 157 from Dalmatia, 101 from Herzegovina, 74 from Gorski
Kotar and the Croatian coastal region and 32 from Lika. The biggest mass
crime was committed against the children of Kozara. From this small area,
6,149 little ones were killed. Those were mostly the children from the area of
Gradika, 3,837, and Dubica, 1,825.
Mostly Serbian children were killed in Jasenovac, 12,113, followed by
Romani, 5,312, and Jewish, 1,927. Among the murdered children there were
127 little Croats, 55 Muslims and two Slovenians. Ethnicity of seven children
has never been determined.
348
In the Jasenovac execution site, which spread across approximately 200

square kilometres, over 11 children were killed every day. In Gradina,
Jasenovacs biggest grave-mound, and in the waves of the rivers Una and
Sana, the lives of 14,244 boys and girls were extinguished. In Stara Gradika,
4,950 children were killed, in Mlaka 138, in Jablanac 122, in the Dubica
limekilns 52, in Cerovljani 22, in the forests of Veliki Strug 14 and in
Koutarica 12.
Duan Bursa in his book Aneli u paklu states that, between April 1941 and
May 1945, several tens of thousands of Serbian, Jewish and Romani children
lost their lives throughout the Ustasha NDH. It was established that 74,360
children aged between 1 day and 14 years, listed by name and surname, were
killed on the territory covered by the then Croatian monster state.
In the vicinity of Glina, Ustashas captured 25 Serbian children, tied their
hands behind their backs and lined them in a circle round a hay-stack with
their feet facing inside the circle. They set the hay-stack on fire and
childrens legs burnt up to their knees, whereupon Ustashas threw them onto
the road where they died in great pain. In the written statements, witnesses
recounted what the Muslim Ustashas in Maglaj often sang: Hey Paveli,
when will you tell us/ to go roast the Serbian children? a quote from the
aforementioned book by Duan Bursa.
Besides the cruel crimes against children that a normal human mind cannot
grasp, the same author recalls that, researching the genocide in the NDH, he
stumbled upon a shocking story from Livno, when a Croatian Ustasha, a
butcher, hung in his shop-window a newborn cut in half and on the halves
wrote: A Serbian nursling!
As regards the Ustasha slaughters against Serbs in the area of the former
Livno county, numerous pieces of evidence were collected that the State
Commission to Investigate Crimes Committed by Nazis and their Allies got
hold of during an investigation. According to authentic documents and
witness statements, which authors Joa Horvat and Zdenko tambuk
collected in the book Dokumenti o protivnarodnom radu i zloinima jednog
dijela katolikog reda, and published in Zagreb in 1944, six Catholic friars,
namely: Borivoje Ma from Vido, Boo Simlea from Litane, Bono
Greberarovi from Podhum, Viktor Balti from Ljubuni, Sreko Peri
from Livno and Vlado uri from Bila, sent a letter on 10 May 1942 to Ante
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Paveli in Zagreb, asking for a more forceful intervention of the Italian army
to cleanse the surrounding mountains of communist gangs. Even though
the communist authorities after the liberation tried to ascribe all the blame
for war crimes on the occupying forces, it has to be said that in their
occupation zone, Italian soldiers did not commit a single crime against the
civilian population in the county of Livno. What is more, many witnesses
from the Dinara Mountain villages in the Lower Livno Field even today recall
the kindness of Italian soldiers who not only never persecuted or maltreated
the Serbs, but used all possible ways to help the civilians and often gave
chocolate and sweets to children.
Marija Bogunovi from Livno and Ljubo Crnogorac, an innkeeper from
elebi, in their statements dated 24 June 1942 testified to the Commissioner
for Refugees about the ghastly deeds of Ustasha slaughterers in the Livno
area, and commended the Italian occupying troops who protected the civilian
population as much as they could.
Ustashas spiritual leader in that part of the NDH was friar Sreko Peri in
the monastery of Gorica near Livno. Before the slaughter in the Livno area,
standing at the altar of the Gorica church, he ordered the gathered Croats to
start the slaughter of the Serbs, saying: My Croat brothers, go out and
slaughter all the Serbs. Slaughter first my sister, who married a Serb, and
then all other Serbs without exception. When you finish that work, come see
me in the church, where you will confess to me and then all your sins will be
forgiven.
By 20 August 1941, in the area of the former Livno county (Livno, Duvno,
Grahovo, Glamo and Kupres), according to the exact data collected, 5,600
Serbs, men, women and children were killed or slaughtered. In those crimes,
friar Sreko Peri took a prominent placed as an Ustasha. Prior to the
occupation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, he spent some time in Ni as a
Roman Catholic priest reads a witness statement, which was published in
the aforementioned book Dokumenti o protivnarodnom radu i zloinima
jednog dijela katolikog reda.
As for the territory of the Municipality of Livno, 1,533 Serbs were killed in
Ustasha slaughters. On the Day of Margaret the Virgin-Martyr (30 July
1941), at the beginning of August and on St. Elijahs Day in 1941, Ustashas
committed mass slaughters of Serbs in the villages of elebi, Donji Rujani,
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aprazlije, Golinjevo, Livno and Prolog. In those slaughters, 613 children

were killed, 374 of them under the age of 10, and 249 under the age of five.
The list of the children killed includes the victims personal data, such as
name, surname, fathers name, year and place of birth and execution sites
where they were murdered. It was thus established that 20 one-year olds, 13
newborn babies, one just a day old, were murdered.
Ustashas would cut off the little childrens heads and throw them into their
mothers laps. Dobrila Bajilo from Livno, wife of the murdered Ugljea, a
salesman, was pregnant. An Ustasha approached her, put her arms on her
chest and told her to hold them like that, because he was intending to nail
her arms to her chest. When the Ustasha was about to commit this brutal
crime, Dobrila started defending herself. The Ustasha called another Ustasha
to help him and they ripped Dobrilas stomach with a knife. The Ustashas
took out an unborn baby from the ripped pregnant woman. This crime was
described in the book Ognjena Marija Livanjska by Budo Simonovi.
The most severe crime that Ustashas committed was on the Day of Margaret
the Virgin-Martyr in 1941 in a classroom of an elementary school in the
village of elebi near Livno, where women and children were incarcerated
and from where men were taken away and thrown in the Bikua pit. In the
elebi slaughter, 403 victims from this and the neighbouring village of
Bojmunte were killed. In Livno itself, 137 Serbs were killed: the men were
killed in the Prolog pit and women and children were slaughtered in the
Koprivnica Forest outside Bugojno. In the village of Golinjevo near Livno,
where the great Serbian poet Jovan Sundei was born, in just one day
Ustashas seized all the Serbs who happened to be in the village and murdered
231 residents; men were thrown into the Prolog pit, and the women and
children into the Kamenica abyss alive. In Donji Rujani, 204 Serbs were
killed, most of whom were thrown in the Ravni Dolac pit on Mount Dinara,
and in the neighbouring Gornji Rujani 143 Serbs were killed and thrown
intwo the pits Razvala and Provalija on Mount Dinara.
All other victims were identified, most of whom came from Veliki Guber
(116), followed by Litani (55), aprazlije (28), Potok (26), Smrani (24),
Bojmunte (24), Potoani (22), Glavica (23), abljak (19), Zastinje (15), Priluka
(13), Radanovci (10), Sajkovii (10), Komoran (8), Rapovina (8), Odak (7),
Mali Guber (6), Bila (6) and Podgreda (4). During the NDH rule, in the area
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of the Municipality of Livno, Ustashas slaughtered 219 children in the village

of elebi, 183 in Donji Rujani and 118 in Golinjevo.
A dreadful destiny of teacher Angela Lali from Livno was described by
Muslim Ismet Duran, a post-war witness, who was a driver of a bus by which
Ustashas transported mothers and children to slaughter in the Koprivnica
Forest near Bugojno. Her two-and-a-half-year-old son Zdravko suddenly
started crying on the bus, which angered Ustasha Smajo akar so he cut the
childs head off and threw it in his mothers lap. In shock and great pain, the
mother mourned her child and would not let the head of her first-born out
of her hands until the same Ustasha slaughtered her too on the bus. Even
though the post-war authorities in Livno were aware of this most cruel crime
of slaughter of a and child and his mother, the first one to speak out about it
was Ismet Duran, an Ustasha driver who had been employed in the
Municipality of Livno for years also as a driver. A harrowing testimony of
Ismet Duran to this brutal crime was published by the Belgrade-based
Intervju weekly in 1990.
There is almost no place in the Ustasha genocidal state NDH inhabited by the
Serbs where there was no site of execution of a small or a great number of
people. Numerous witness statements and notes speak of the methods of
crimes and torturing of people. By monstrosity, manner and brutality, by the
number and scope, the crimes in camp Jasenovac surpass any human fantasy.
As a foreign correspondent Swiss writer Jacques Isar published in his book
Vieno u Jugoslaviji [Seen in Yugoslavia] harrowing testimonies and

evidence of Ustasha crimes during the Second World War.
What the surviving witnesses told us about the torture and murders in
camps, the human mind cannot understand, it cannot believe it. The Spanish
Inquisition, the German atrocities against the Jews in Poland, and even the
Chinese torture seem like childs play in comparison to what the Ustasha
bestiality did against the Serbian, Jewish and Romani population.
One of the countless crimes occurred in Glamo, where the women and
children were allegedly spared and received an approval to leave town.
Having gone one kilometer away, all those women and all the children who
believed they were free from horror, were shot dead.
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A new wave of savagery is splashing against Croatia. Serb refugees who

came to Split are giving horrifying testimonies. Isolated cases aside, for
instance, that of the Serbian physician Duan Mitrovi, who had practiced
medicine for 25 years in Livno and treated so many Croats. He was murdered
after being forced to help kill his two children and wife, on 25 May 1942.
USTASHA SLAUGHTER OF THE ENEMY IN

DIAPERS
The criminal regime of the Nazi-fascist state called the Independent State of
Croatia killed in Jasenovac 19,554 children of the Serbian, Jewish and
Romani ethnicity in most brutal ways between 23 August 1941 and 22 April
1945. No crime on Planet Earth can compare to the mass slaughters of
children committed in most brutal ways by Ustasha executioners, especially
those committed in the Jasenovac death camp. Ustasha beasts attacked and
plucked the children from their mothers wombs, shot small children dead,
prodded them with bayonets, slaughtered them with knives, broadaxes and
axes, killed them with mallets and iron levers. They incinerated underage
boys and girls in Jasenovac crematoria and in the Picilli Furnace in
Gradina, threw the victims into deep pits, gassed them with potassium
cyanide and slaked lime, poisoned them with contaminated injections and
caustic soda, tortured them with hunger, thirst and extreme cold.
The Jasenovac concentration camp is the lowest the humankind can sink to.
It is the most horrific torture site in the history of mankind and the greatest
hell on earth. It is a product of pathological hatred, a work of evil, a work of
the devil himself. Anything anyone could ever write about Jasenovac would
only be a pale copy of all the horrors that happened there.
This is what ore Mili, who is one of the rare survivors of Jasenovac
camps, wrote in his book Pakao Jasenovca.
Jasenovac, the third biggest concentration camp in the then occupied Europe,
falls among the worlds most monstrous factories of death, where more than
750,000 Serbs, Jews and Roma were murdered during four war years. What
is the most painful wound in the history of mankind is that every tenth victim
in Jasenovac was a child, from newborn babies to children under 14 years of
age. In only four years of its existence, the Independent State of Croatia wrote
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the darkest pages in the history of human dishonour, as this genocidal state
established special death camps for children too. Immediately upon its
establishment, many women and their children were brought into the
Jasenovac concentration camp. The neighbouring village of Mlaka was
turned into an alleged labour camp for women, who were forced to do the
most difficult farm work, and after the war they were killed en masse near
the villages of Mlaka and Jablanac. Children were killed together with their
parents, even the babies that were still breastfeeding. Ustashas murdered
more than 70,000 girls and boys by slaughter and in other most brutal ways,
mostly in Jasenovac and Stara Gradika.
Publicist Dragoje Luki, who by some accident managed to survive many
horrors in the Second World War, spent his whole working and private life
diligently gathering the data and photographs of the children murdered in
the Ustasha death camps. As a prominent writer and researcher, as well as
cultural and political worker, born in Miloevo Brdo in Podgradci near
Gradika, Luki managed to collect, until his death in his late seventies, the
personal data and numerous photographs and determined the identity of
more than 25,000 girls and boys murdered by the genocidal Ustasha regime.
- Researching and determining the truth about the murdered children, and
the biggest number of them were from the Kozara Mountain, from
Potkozarje beneath it, and many other of our areas, I obtained information
on such shocking events that it was impossible that those men-monsters
could do something like that to innocent little children. I managed to establish
the basic data on 25,104 children, give them back their identity, discover their
family origin, where they were from and so forth, and when the first such
list was published, many claimed that I had made it up.
Of course I hadnt because I discovered even the children who were
converted to Catholicism, whose names and surnames were replaced with
new ones; where they were from and what they did was kept secret. In this
effort I had the help of numerous associates, and one of the closest ones was
a writer and journalist, late publicist Marino Curl who at the time launched a
campaign in the Zagreb magazine Arena entitled Arena is searshing for
your loved ones and in that way discovered the identity of more than 300
murdered children and gave it back to them.
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Jovo Jovi from Grbavci, who went by the name of Nihad Gradii for years,
learnt about his origin and his real identity only at the time of this campaign,
which was then also conducted by the Banja Luka newspaper Glas, Dragoje
Luki said once.
Neither Luki nor anyone else managed until this day to find a least bit of
reason, let alone a sensible reason for such horrific and mass slaughters and
killings of innocent children. Apart from the self-imposing and the only
correct conclusion that it was part of the genocidal plan of the Ustasha
doctrine and the sick impulse of executioners for the total destruction of the
Serbian, Jewish, Romani and other populations.
- Such were their killing methods that it was totally unthinkable to a healthy
human mind. What possible harm could have children done to them? Nothing
else but their nationality was wrong, because the majority of the killed
children were Serbs, Jews, Roma, and so on. They would go to such lengths
that, by murdering pregnant mothers, they would take out unborn children
from their wombs to finish them off or kill them even while they were still
in the womb. Such mental derangement is simply inexplicable, even when it
comes to ideological blindness, belonging to another nation and faith, and
above all, to the Nazi-fascist movement. And so nowadays, whenever
someone mentions fascistoid quality, or fascism in general, it makes peoples
hair stand on end recounts the surviving camp inmate Milica Bradari, who
ended up in a camp at only six, and as a nine-year-old girl she left the hell
which she fortunately evaded and lived to testify to the horror and atrocities
in a childrens camp.
Stojanka Unanin from Utica near Jasenovac, also one of the rare former
camp inmates who managed to break from the Ustasha death factory and on
25 January 1944 testify before the Commission for Refugees and Emigrants
in Belgrade about the horror and suffering that numerous camp inmates
were subjected to daily:
Of the Ustashas that stood out for their persecution of Serbs in Jasenovac
and Utica during the existence of death camps, I can name the following:
Nikola Vidakovi, a farmer from Utica, Petar imii, a farmer from Utica,
Martin Jugovi, a farmer from Utica, Stipe Jugovi, a farmer from Utica,
ura imii, aka Fildan, a farmer from Utica, his brother, Nika imii, a
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farmer from Utica, Tunja imii, aka Began, a farmer from Utica, Ivan
Dragi, aka ljuka, a farmer from Jasenovac, Ivica Pajor, a barber from
Jasenovac, Rad Dragi, a farmer from Jasenovac, etc.
Unfortunately, these and many other Ustasha slaughterers have never been
brought to justice to answer for the most severe crime of genocide. Not even
Pavelis minister of interior affairs Andrija Artukovi, who was tried in
Zagreb, though not before 1986, or Jasenovac camp commander Dinko aki
were convicted of genocide but of usual murders of civilians.
That was how attempts were made to cover up enormous atrocities committed in death camps Jasenovac, Jastrebarsko, Jadovno and many other
execution sites, such as Donja Gradina, unjari, Garavice, Drakuli, Drakseni, Glina, Jadovno, Sisak, Gospi, Jastrebarsko, Stara Gradika, Kragujevac,
Sajmite, urmanovci, Prebilovci, Golinjevo, Donji Rujani, elebi, etc.
The Jasenovac concentration-camp system was designed by Vjekoslav Maks
Luburi, who was its first commander. What kind of a torture chamber it was
is best shown by the data that the role of the camp warden was taken over by
Catholic Friar Miroslav Filipovi-Majstorovi, a criminal who organised and
directly participated in the slaughter of 2,300 Serbs in Drakuli, Motike,
argovac and Rakovac Mine near Banja Luka, in early February 1942. Father
Devil was then replaced in the position of the Jasenovac camp warden by
Ustasha criminal Dinko aki, whose 20-year prison sentence was confirmed
by the Croatian Supreme Court.
Should a war criminal guilty of many innocent peoples deaths be given a
chance to publicly state his views, especially when, in this case, it is clear that
ideologically he has not changed since the time he ordered executions?
This dilemma was faced by a journalist of the Zagreb weekly Nacional, who
upon the instructions of the editorial board led an interview with Dinko aki
at Remetinec prison in early December 2000. He noted that the public should
become acquainted with such people and their views, because it was the best
form of fighting fascist ideas, negation of crimes and glofirication of Ante
Paveli.
Dinko aki is undoubtedly one of the biggest Croatian war criminals of the
past century, even though thanks to the present regimes influence on
judiciary, the former commander of the Jasenovac concentration camp stood
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trial for usual war crimes instead of genocide. After all, how much an
important prisoner is languishing and will languish for 20 solid years at
the Remetinec prison, is shown by the data that Dinko aki is the worlds
only living commander of a death camp, reads an introduction to the
interview. Here is akis answer to the question of what he though of the
Croatian authorities at the time, being in a prison cell.
Even though they are constantly trying to erase four years of the most
glorious recent Croatian history from the Croatian past, the re-establishment
of the NDH on 10 April 1941, after 839 years, they will not succeed. This is
not the place to dissect the historical events from the Second World War but
I believe that the present-day Republic of Croatia is a continuation of the
NDH. Even the Belgrade street politics is constantly proving that to us, aki
said.
aki died while serving his sentence in prison on 21 July 2008, and before
him, the Ustasha Minister of Interior Affairs Andrija Artukovi died in
prison on 16 January 1988.
SLAUGHTER OF PUPILS IN ARGOVAC

In just one day, on 7 February 1942, Ustasha slaughterers killed 2,300 Serbs
in the Banja Luka villages of Motike, Drakuli, argovac and Rakovac Mine.
The climax of the crime was when the Serbian children were taken out from
their school classrooms for a ritual slaughter. According to the data collected
by publicist and writer Jovan Babi from Banja Luka and on the basis of a
research of Dragoje Luki, a publicist from Belgrade, 551 children aged
between 1 day and 14 years were killed in this gruesome slaughter. 294 little
ones were killed in Drakuli, 207 in Motike, and 50 in argovac. The names
of the innocent children were published in the book Drakulii by Jovan Babi.
Babi also collected the personal data on 52 slaughtered Orthodox Christian
elementary school pupils on the basis of the school attendance register.
However, according to some Italian data, 56 children were killed that day,
while the German sources claim it was 53.
Average age of the little martyrs was only 6.7 years!
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Nevertheless, one must admit that the Ustasha government had never hidden
its inhuman intentions towards Orthodox Christian children. Like Father
Devil, Miroslav Filipovi-Majstorovi, who was one of the planners of the
slaughter of Serbs in the vicinity of Banja Luka, the infamous Friar Dionizije
Juriev and a high-ranking Ustasha officer in Zagreb publicly called to
slaughter of the Serbian children in the NDH. No other people can live in
this country but Croats. Those who do not want to convert, we know what to
do with them. It is not a pity nowadays to kill even a seven-year-old, who
disturbs our Ustasha order. Do not think that the fact that I am wearing
clerical clothing forbids me to take a machine gun in my hands when
necessary and kill everyone, all the way down to babies, everybody who are
against the Ustasha government and state, Friar Juriev said.
Viktor Guti, the main organiser of slaughters in the NDH, was somewhat
more generous towards the children, sending Ustashas instructions for
genocide: We will kill all Serbian scum aged 15 and older, and we will put
their children in monasteries and they will make good Catholics...
Thousands of Orthodox Christian boys, converted into Catholicism, dressed
in Ustasha uniforms, subjected to re-education and prepared for future
Ustasha-jannisaries were classified as such good Catholics.
The report of the BiH Commission to Investigate Crimes Committed by Nazis
and their Allies on the crimes at Rakovac Mine and in the village of Drakuli,
dated December 1944, states as follows, among other things:
The culmination of savagery represents the slaughter of 60 schoolchildren,
who they found at school and cut their heads off in front of a female teacher
who went insane seeing all the horror.
Lazar Milin, PhD, an Orthodox priest and a professor at the Faculty of
Orthodox Theology in Belgrade, quotes the following words of Doctor Nikola
Nikoli: Today (i.e. in 1943) I learnt about some details about this horrific
and unprecedented, savage slaughter of Orthodox schoolchildren in the
village of Krivaja outside Banja Luka. A teacher in the village was Mara
Mila, a sister of Stipe unji. I know her personally. Dressed in a monastic
habit, Filipovi, better known as Father Devil, entered the classroom,
wearing an Ustasha cap, followed by several Ustashas.
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He told the teacher to separate the Orthodox children from the Catholic and
Muslim. When she did so, not suspecting the crime, he slaughtered all the
Orthodox children in sight of and among screams of the children.
According to a preserved school attendance register for the school year
1942/1943 from the then Peoples School in argovac near Banja Luka, a
special note died was made next to the names of Orthodox pupils on 7
February 1942. In fact, on that tragic day Ustashas slaughtered 52 pupils from
the area:
Radojka Glamoanin (fathers name ura), born 1931, enrolled in school in
1938, Simeun Kuruzovi (fathers name Duan), born 1931, enrolled in 1938,
Jovan Kuruzovi (fathers name Jovo), born 1932, enrolled in 1938, Jelena
Kuruzovi (fathers name Petar), bonr 1931, enrolled in 1938, Duan
Stijakovi (fathers name ura), born 1930, enrolled in 1938, Duan
Stankovi (fathers name Milan), born 1930, enrolled in 1938, Jovanka
Stijakovi (fathers name Stole), born 1929, enrolled in 1938, Dragomir ui
(fathers name uro), born 1931, enrolled in 1938, Mara ei (fathers name
uro), born 1931, enrolled in 1938, Milan ei (fathers name Duan), born
1930, enrolled in 1938, Radmila Glamoanin (fathers name Jovan), born
1932, enrolled in 1939, Ostoja Glamoanin (fathers name Kosta), born 1932,
enrolled in 1939, Mileva Glamoanin (fathers name Milan), born 1931,
enrolled in 1939, uro Mitrovi (fathers name Trivun), born 1932, enrolled
in 1939, Milan Smiljani (fathers name Mlaan), born 1932, enrolled in 1939,
Duan Stankovi (fathers name Jovan), born 1930, enrolled in 1939,
Vidosava Stankovi (fathers name Luka), born 1931, enrolled in 1939,
Gospava ei (fathers name uro), born 1930, enrolled in 1939, Dragica
Koi (fathers name uro), born 1931, enrolled in 1939, Radmila Kuruzovi
(fathers name Milan), born 1930, enrolled in 1939, Milorad Mitrovi
(fathers name Ilija), born 1931, enrolled in 1939, Anka Stijakovi (fathers
name Stevo), born 1931, enrolled in 1939, Ostoja Stijakovi (fathers name
Stojan), born 1932, enrolled in 1939, Slavko Stijakovi (fathers name ura),
born 1932, enrolled in 1939, Duan Stoli (fathers name Risto), born 1932,
enrolled in 1939, Zorka Zebi (fathers name Mirko), born 1931, enrolled in
1940, Gojko Kamber (fathers name Cvijo), born 1933, enrolled in 1940,
Zdravko Piljagi (fathers name Milan), born 1933, enrolled in 1940, Milan
Glamoanin (fathers name ura), born 1933, enrolled in 1940, Ostoja
Stankovi (fathers name Rade), born 1933, enrolled in 1940, Branko
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Smiljani (fathers name Nikola), born 1933, enrolled in 1940, Dragica

Kuruzovi (fathers name Nikola), born 1933, enrolled in 1940, Slavka
Amidi (fathers name Nikola), born 1933, enrolled in 1940, Ljubica
Mihajlovi (fathers name Mitar), born 1933, enrolled in 1940, Mileva
Stankovi (fathers name Luka), born 1933, enrolled in 1940, Mara Kuruzovi
(fathers name Milan), born 1933, enrolled in 1940, Mitar Koi (fathers
name uro), born 1933, enrolled in 1940, Darinka Todorinovi (fathers
name Mile), born 1932, enrolled in 1940, Nada Smiljani (fathers name
Ostoja), born 1932, enrolled in 1940, Svetozar Katalina (fathers name Simo),
born 1932, (moved from Varadin) 1940, Branko Smiljani (fathers name
Nikola), Jovan Brki (fathers name Trivun), Milo Glamoanin (fathers
name Petar), Zdravka Stoli (fathers name Pane), Stamena Katalina (fathers
name Duan), Anka Amidi (fathers name Nikola), Branko Stankovi
(fathers name Kosta), Mileva Savanovi (fathers name Jovan), Marija
Stankovi (fathers name Luka), Nada eva (fathers name ore), ivko
Stankovi (fathers name Lovo), Milivoje Todorinovi (fathers name Simo).
But still, one of the most severe and most morbid crimes was committed by
Luburi and Ustashas in Slobotina on 16 August 1942, when 1,368 women,
children and feeble old men were thrown into wells. The victims approached
the wells in lines and watched the unfortunate ones in front of them being
hit with a mallet in the head and thrown headlong down the darkest wells.
Only a few days after this brutal crime, Luburi together with his Ustashas
captured around 200 innoncent inhabitants of the villages of Guani and
Busnovi near Prijedor. Immediately upon their capture, 53 people were killed
in a savage manner, and the rest were taken to the Jasenovac death factory.
When it comes to Jasenovac, it has to be mentioned that on the basis of their
work and investigations, members of six national commissions, which were
formed at the 2nd Session of AVNOJ (Anti-Fascist Council of National
Liberation of Yugoslavia) on 29 November 1943, gathered the data on 1.3

million victims of the Ustasha and German Nazis. At the end of the war, at an
event in Ljubljana, as the president of the new Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito
publicly revealed the data that 700,000 people had been killed in the Ustasha
Jasenovac camp. Four-and-a-half decades later, the then president of the
Republic of Croatia, Franjo Tuman published a scandalous piece of
information in his book Bespua povijesne zbiljnosti that only 30,000 people
were killed in Jasenovac. That actually prompted a frantic campaign in the
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Republic of Croatia in which many publicists basically competed in negating

the crime of genocide and minimising the number of victims in the NDH. As
a result of such campaign, in the early 1990s ensued the forced disintegration
of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia by Slovenia seceding in 1991.
Soon after that an armed conflict broke out in Croatia and a year later in
Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the civil war, the traces of Ustasha crimes
were rooted out and destroyed in Croatia by design and many exhibits at the
Jasenovac Memorial Site were destroyed. Only in 2006 did the Croatian
authorities open a new and a completely changed museum exhibition
displaying the data and names of 75,159 Jasenovac victims, which was by as
many as 10 times less than the figure that has been in official use in almost
all historical documents for five solid decades.
Authors of the new museum exhibition also offered the data that 57,614
victims had been killed in Jasenovac, and 12,220 in the Stara Gradika camp,
while the place of death had not been established for eight victims!? It also
said that of the total number of Jasenovac victims, there had been 35,215 men,
20,469 women and 19,475 children under 14.
Even if we assume that the stated data is correct, the authors of the exhibition
are not even aware that they offered the public a completely new picture and
irrefutable evidence that the severe crime of genocide had been committed
in the Ustasha NDH during the Second World War. Namely, according to the
data published so far, of the total of 750,000 camp inmates killed in Jasenovac,
every tenth victim of the bloodthirsty Ustashas was a child under the age of
14. On the other hand, the latest information presented by the Croatian
authorities in the new museum exhibition at the Jasenovac Memorial Site
implies a shocking conclusion that every third victim of the Ustasha beasts
was an underage child. That is how the Croatian authorities, regardless of the
dramatic shrinking of the final number of Jasenovac victims, offered
irrefutable evidence to the domestic and foreign public that during the NDH
rule, the crime of genocide was committed against the Serbs, Jews and Roma
and that Ustashas main enemies were children in diapers.
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SMALL CHILDREN FROM KOZARA IN CAMP

JASTREBARSKO
The first and most notorious childrens death camp that the world had not
seen ever before was formed at the order of the NDH leader Ante Paveli on
12 July 1941 in Camp Jastrebarsko for Serbian children, throughout whose
existence the largest number of children came from Kozara.
The concentration camp was formed in the former Erdoedy Castle, i.e. an
abandoned Italian horse-stable in Donja Reka and a former brickyard. Only
two days before the camp formation, Ante Paveli had a conversation with
German General Edmund Glaise von Horstenau and German Ambassador in
Zagreb Siegfried Kasche, producing a document that among other things
stated that in relation to the future treatment of prisoners from Kozara all
facilities of the concentration camps in Jasenovac and Stara Gradika are to
be used in order to collect and gather as much labour force as possible for the
Reich. The same document envisaged that the children refugees from
Kozara be placed in a special camp in Jastrebarsko and subjected to planned
education.
The first trains carrying children are already on the move. This camp was
under the control of the Congregation of Sisters of St. Vinko Paulski. Barta
Pulherija, a 60-year-old nun, infamous for her severe treatment of children,
was the Jastrebarsko camp warden. As a sister-in-law of Mile Budak, an
Ustasha minister and war criminal, she managed to flee the country towards
the end of the war. With the help of the Sisters of Mercy, Ustashas
systemically and brutally carried out the plan of turning the Serbian children
into Ustasha youth and their janissaries, like the Turks took away underage
Serbian children during the centuries-long Ottoman tyranny in the Balkans,
converted them into Islam and taught them military skills.
Since the formation until late October 1942, 3,336 boys and girls went
through Camp Jastrebarsko. According to the available data, 768 children
were killed in the camp. However, an unusual battle to save the children was
fought in Jastrebarsko, which was run, at the order of the Party, by Tatjana
Marini (her real name was Josipa), a member of KPJ (Communist Party of
Yugoslavia) since 1919. She was a workaholic, she would run around and
manage to get everywhere; she had a circle of acquaintances in Zagreb, from
362
proletarians to modest housewives to intellectuals, many of whom, I am

certain, helped in our struggle just because Tatjana asked them to. There
were not many women in our Party like Tatjana Marini, wrote Rodoljub
olakovi in his Kazivanje o jednom pokoljenju.
I often wonder who had those little captives done harm to? In Jastrebarsko
(Jaska), Gornja Rijeka near Krievci, the first childrens camp was opened, a
horror never seen before. In this Uniat area, the first childrens camp was
founded. The Congregation of Sisters of St. Vinko Paulski was in charge of
the children. The number of children who were brought there, died there or
were given for adoption is unknown, recounts Dr. Milan Bastai, who, as
one of the rare survivors, went through the hell of the Jasenovac
concentration camp, where he was brought from his hometown of Grubino
Polje in October 1942. The golgotha of concentration camps, the suffering
and rescue of children from Ustasha death camps, Dr. Bastai described in
his book Bilogora i Grubino Polje 1941-1991.
There is also a harrowing testimony of gravedigger Franjo Ilovar, who was
paid to bury children by piece as referred to in the confiscated Ustasha
documents. According to his diary published in the book Deji ustaki logor
Jastrebarsko (Gambit, Jagodina, Duko Tomi; "Putevima smrti Kozarske

djece", Nacionalni park Kozara), he buried 496 bodies of murdered children.
At the order of Berta Pulherija, burials were made outside the cemetery,
because the killed children were not Catholics, but Orthodox Christians.
One should express great gratitude and pay ones respects to all the kind
people who gave those children martyrs a piece of bread or a cup of tea. There
were Croats who even adopted Serbian orphans. Many were facing trouble
because of that, such as Diana Budisavljevi, Dr. Bresler and hard-working
activists of the Red Cross, stated Dr. Bastai.
But, the main question is: why were tens of thousands of Serbian children
brought to a position to be rescued in wagons and trains of horror or in
Zagreb itself? Does anyone think that those innocent human beings left their
parents willingly and voluntarily? We should say it loud and clear: tens of
thousands of Serbian children, at least 40,000, were brutally plucked from
their mothers bosom and forcefully taken away from the arms of their
frantic, powerless mothers! Then they piled them up hungry, thirsty, without
the basic order or hygiene, threw away their daily kill who knows where,
363
stuffed them in cattle wagons and sent off those little sufferers on the trains
of death, misery, dread and horror to Zagreb and Jastrebarsko. That is the
real truth. Again, thank you to all the good people who helped us in any way
(Dnevnik Diane Budisavljevi).
Dragoje Luki was the first one, together with Jovan Kesar, to collect and
record the names and surnames of the killed children from Kozara. The
names were published in a special edition of the Borba daily. However, as
author Luki emphasised in his books himself, many people out of ignorance
used the geographical term Kozara children for the children killed in the
NDH, either intentionally or by accident. Those children were of Serbian
ethnicity from the Kozara Mountain, Potkozarje, Banija, Kordun, Lika,
Slavonia, and Srem. These are irrefutable facts because Ustasha did not harm
the Muslim villages in Potkozarje, and Muslim neighbours together with
Ustashas raided the Serbian villages and committed mass slaughters during
the Second World War.
According to the testimony of Dr. Milan Bastai, he was transferred from
Jasterbarsko to Jasenovac together with a group of children inmates in
October 1942, subjected to a brutal torture in cattle wagons.
We were travelling from Tuesday to Friday, with no water, no food. The
wagon doors did not open until Jasenovac. You cannot describe that evil a
normal human being cannot comprehend that. Women with small children
were transported in the same way to Camp Sisak. Hunger, cold weather, hard
physical labour, very poor conditions for sleeping in shacks without floors,
without doors, without firewood, daily physical abuse of prisoners, beating
with clubs on the way to a levee construction site, taking of prisoners to mass
executions day and night, brought fear, despair, hopelessness... Without any
strength, without any will, without any conditions for survival, we were an
apathetic crowd suitable for all kinds of execution, without any aim or
possibility of any kind of resistence. They would force us boys to do all sorts
of chores in the kitchen, to pull flax, to work on the levee. We would hide a
few potatoes in the kitchen, put them in our pockets, stitch up the pockets,
and when our clothes were taken for washing, potatoes would get boiled. This
procedure of getting hold of food one afternoon cost 16 people their lives.
They were shot dead in front of everyone before dinner. When we went out
in the morning to go pull flax, there was still blood and remains of brains.
364
Executions were conducted constantly by taking out long columns of

prisoners outside the camp, while new prisoners were constantly being
brought in. Nearly every morning, someone familiar was no longer there,
recounts Dr. Bastai, who became a prisoner of an Ustasha death camp
before the age of 12.
Speaking before the National Commission in 1944 and 1945, the
aforementioned Tatjana Marini accused sisters Berta Pulherija and
Gaudencija, and even some other sisters, of their brutal actions against the
children in Camp Jastrebarsko. According to the minutes, Marini stated
before the commission: Professor Bresler and Dr. Dragii will give other
information regarding the killed children. Indeed, the National Commission
called Prof. Bresler and Dr. Dragii to testify twice in 1945, but failed to hear
sister Gaudencija who lived in Jastrebarsko until the end of the war, nor
sister Pulherija, who escaped to Slovenia in May 1945, and then secretly ran
away to Austria where she died on 20 March 1970. That the intentions of the
National Commission and other judicial bodies in Titos Yugoslavia were not
honest is best proved by the fact that the extradition of many war criminals
had never been requested and neither had the extradition of the sister who
committed crimes against the Serbian children in Camp Jastrebarsko.
Despite the fact that Marini accused the nuns at Camp Jastrebarsko of their
inhuman actions towards children, the partisan authorities took no specific
action to examine those allegations and bring the responsible for those crimes
to justice.
Nothing changed even after the accusations made by Dr. Branko Dragii,
who stated before the commission that the children in Camp Jastrebarsko
died en masse from everyday beatings and abuse.
Between 12 July 1941 and early November 1942, as the book Sjeanja reads,
there was brutal punishment, whipping of children, threatening them with
Krampus on the Catholic holiday of Saint Nicholas (6 November).
Furthermore, according to the book Knjiga kazni, it is not hard to realise how
the Serbian children received confirmation and were given the first
Communion, and also how the children were forced to convert from
Orthodox Christianity to Roman Catholicism, how some Croatian families
adopted them, how they were trained in Ustasha uniforms and how they were
taught to sing Ustasha songs, etc.
365
Apart from Jastrebarsko, alongside the camp for adults in Sisak there was
also a childrens camp which Ustashas tried to portray as a Transit Camp for
Refugee Children to the German authorities. Immediately upon arrival in
Sisak, the children were separated from their parents. A big train carrying
1,400 children from the camps Mlaka and Stara Gradika arrived on 29 July
1942. Then, by the end of October 1942, several trains with more than 7,000
Serbian children from the area of Kozara, Banija, Lika, Kordun and Slavonia
arrived in Sisak.
The children were locked in the building of the former Yugoslav Falconry
Association, the so-called Sokolana. Over the next two months, the camp
extended to the building of the former Crusader tea house, the Saint Vinko
Monastery, Teslis Glassworks and bathing place, the Gua building, the
former Reis Salt Works and an elementary school in Novi Sisak.
Conditions inside the camp were terrible. Dirt, typhoid and contaminated
water took their toll. Of the total number of children that went through this
camp until its closure on 8 January 1943, around 1,600 died.
Ana Raki from Crkveni Bok remembers those horrifying moments when
after going hungry for several days, she ate the identification card she was
carrying around her neck. Her elder brother saved her from certain death
by not allowing her to drink the water from the well ordered by Ustashas. He
had seen for himself that the children who drank that water died.
As soon as the first train with 1,200 children arrived in Sisak in August 1942,
the head of the convoy, sister Dragica Habazin informed Zagreb of this by
telephone. The Croatian Red Cross notified her there were still some 200
Orthodox children from Hrvatska Dubica and neighbouring Banija
settlements, whose destiny was unknown. She was also told to go there
together with Diana Budisavljevi and find out what had happened to those
children, as an Ustasha had earlier said that they had all been taken to
Belgrade.
However, it later turned out that those Serbian children had died in
Jasenovac, namely, the boats in which they had been taken were flipped over
in the Sava River, Diana Budisavljevi wrote in her Diary, dated 23 August
1943.
366
During an inspection of Camp Jastrebarsko, Ustasha minister Lovro Sui

sharply criticised Kamilo Bresler, a social worker at the camp who treated
the little prisoners a little more kindly, warning him that it went against the
manner of implementing Pavelis decree on strict places for children in
the camp. Sui warned Bresler as follows:
These are all enemies of the Croatian people.
This is what Kamilo Bresler stated in relation to the suffering of children in
the camp:
Of the total of 7,000 little captives in the Ustasha camp of Sisak, 1,631
children died in three months of 1942, which is 22 percent, while 5,612
children went through the Institute for Deaf and Dumb Children (Zagrebs
biggest transit camp for the children taken over from the Jasenovac camp),
of whom 157 or 2.7 percent died.
The difference in the number of deaths in those transit camps is obvious
and the reasons are absolutely understandable: The transit camp in Zagreb
was managed by an Orthodox Christian, Dr. Branko Dragii, who had
previously been removed from the Zagreb clinic and who joined the partisans
after the job was done, and the camp in Sisak was managed by physician
Antun Najzer, who was hanged for the crimes against children.
When writing or talking about the war atrocities and monstrous slaughters
of children in Ustasha death camps, it would be unfair not to stress the role
of the generous Diana Budisavljevi, who as a rare and great humanist, took
on the great risk of saving and rescuing a huge number of little camp inmates
from the Ustasha horror.
This big-hearted Austrian, who was married to a Serb, in her glorious
humanitarian mission and an exceptional heroic deed in the Second World
War, managed to rescue more than 12,000 children from the hell of the
Ustasha concentration camps of Stara Gradika, Jastrebarsko and Jasenovac.
There was always someone to help the Jewish and communist women, but
no one was taking care of the Serbian women, Diana Budisavljevi stated in
October 1941, when she officially began the mission of rescuing children
from death camps. Her first destination was the camp Lobograd near Zlatar
in Hrvatsko Zagorje, where Jewish and Serbian women with their underage
children from Bosnia and Herzegovina were imprisoned; they had been
367
brought from the Kruica camp near Travnik on 5 and 6 October 1941. As
aid was reaching the Jewish women and their children directly from the
Jewish Religious Community in Zagreb, Diana decided to collect food,
clothes, shoes and medicines for the little camp inmates with the help of the
Red Cross in Geneva.
In the noble mission together with representatives of the Red Cross, Diana
had only one goal to save the imprisoned children, whose fate was in the
hands of the cruellest monsters.
A LETTER TO MUSSOLINI
As early as the first year of the occupation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the
Italian army command was forced in its occupation zone to fully protect
innocent Serbian civilians from Ustasha slaughters and persecutions, to
which dispatches, reports and documented testimonies in military archives
testify.
Among the many preserved documents, one of the most harrowing ones is
definitely a letter of Italian General Alessandro Lusano, which he sent to his
president Benito Mussolini with regard to the horrific Ustasha crimes against
Serbs. Here is how the letter goes:
Duce! My immeasurable devotion towards You gives me, I hope, the right to,
sometimes, bypass strict military protocol. That is why I feel free and obliged
to promptly describe for you one event which, three weeks ago, I personally
witnessed.
Patrolling in towns Stolac, apljina and Ljubinje (about 60 to 130 kilometres
north of Dubrovnik) I heard from our intelligence officers that Pavelis
army - Ustashas had on the previous day committed some crime in a village
(Prebilovci), and that, when they heard about it, nearby Serbs would certainly get upset yet again.
I miss words to describe what I found there. In a big classroom, I found a
slaughtered teacher and 120 young pupils! No child was older than 12! Crime
is an inappropriate, and too innocent a word that was above any madness!
They severed heads of many and put them orderly on school desks. From
their severed bellies bowels were, like New Years tinsels, spread below the
368
ceiling and nailed to the walls! A swarm of flies and an unbearable smell did
not allow us to spend more time there. I noticed an opened bag of salt in the
corner and I was stunned to realise that they had slauthered them slowly,
salting their necks first! As we were just about to depart, from the back of the
classroom we heard a child wheezing. I sent two soldiers to see what it was.
They found one pupil, still alive, breathing with his throat half cut! I took the
poor child to ourmilitary hospital, and there we were able to awake him and
from him we found out the full truth about the tragedy.
The criminals first, taking turns, raped the Serbian teacher (her name was
Stana Arnautovi) and then, in front of the children, they slaughtered her.
They raped even the eight-year-old girls. During all that time, a Gypsy band
brought there was forced to play music and strike the tambourines!
To the utter disgrace of our, Roman church, one priest participated in all this!
Theboy we had saved recovered quickly. And as soon as the wound healed,
he was able to run away from the hospital because of our inattention, and he
run back to his village looking for his relatives. We sent a patrol after him,
but to no avail: they found him in front of his house, slaughtered! From more
than a thousand souls in the village there was no one left! The same day (this
we discovered later) the crime in the school was perpetrated, Ustashas
rounded up 700 other inhabitants ofthe village Prebilovci and threw them
into a foiba, or killed them in the most bestial way on the way to the pit. Only
300 men saved themselves: they were able to break Ustasha lines and run to
the mountains! Those 300 survivors are stronger than the most elite Pavelis
Ustasha division. All they had to lose, they lost! Children, wives, mothers,
sisters, houses, possessions. They have been freed even from the fear of death.
The only meaning of their lives is in revenge, in the horrible revenge - they
are, in a way, even ashamed that they have survived! And villages, such as
Prebilovci, are all around Herzegovina, Bosnia, Lika and Dalmatia.
Slaughter of Serbs has reached such proportions that, in these areas, even
water resources are polluted. From one spring in Popovo Polje, near the pit
in which 4,000 Serbs were thrown, reddish water ran, I saw it for myself! On
the conscience of Italy and our culture an indelible stain will fall forever if
we do not distance ourselves from Ustashas and prevent their demented
crimes from being ascribed to us!
369
THREE NATIONS THE SAME FATE

Almost seven decades since the end of the Second World War, many justiceloving intellectuals still wonder in disbelief why the Serbs have been silent
for so long about their suffering and horrific slaughters of more than 700,000
innocent men, women and children by the genocidal Ustasha regime.
One of the most persistent in searching an answer to this question is Arie
Livne, a representative of the World Jewish Congress for the states that
emerged after the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, a special advisor
to the President of the Republic of Srpska Milorad Dodik and an envoy of the
Republic of Srpska in Israel.
Namely, Arie Livne has for decades been tirelessly working on strengthening
and renforcing the ties between the Jewish diaspora and the mother country
of Israel and as a true friend of the Serbian people, he has been using his
personal contacts and connections, friends and fellow workers around the
world, especially in the United States, lobbying for Serbia, both during the
imposed economic sanctions and during the civil wars, Kosovo crisis, air
strikes, etc.
- We, the Jews, keep our friends in our minds for a long time even though it
was not always obvious at certain moments in history, there is no doubt about
what the Jews actually feel towards the Serbian people. I perceive the world
through the Second World War and those who were friends of mine then still
are. The data that the Jewish people has for more than 500 years lived here
with the Serbs as a brotherly nation puts us under an obligation Livne stated
in an interview with the Belgrade-based Politika on 12 February 2007.
Arie Livne was born in Budapest in 1921 and spent his childhood and youth
in Novi Sad. Like his fellow compatriots, he went through many
concentration camps, holocausts, trials and tribulations, but also through the
moments of love and happiness, and based on his life two documentaries were
made.
In an interview with Belgrades Veernje Novosti (15 August 2012) Livne
reiterates that decades of silence about the suffering in the Second World
War has returned to the Serbs like a boomerang in the form of a fabricated
lie about the genocide in Srebrenica in 1995.
370
- There is no dilemma that the tragic events in Srebrenica had incurred more
damage to the Serbs than to the Bosniaks. It was an unnecessary war crime
for which the perpetrators must be brought to justice. I claim and believe it
was not genocide that was committed in Srebrenica but a severe war crime,
the kind of crime that unfortunately occurs in all wars. Manipulating the
number of victims is absolutely unnecessary, because the world public has
sealed that document and there is nothing you can do about it any more. But
a bad trait of the Serbs is that they do not speak much of their suffering,
thinking that the world knows about it, like in the case of Jasenovac or the
crimes committed against the Serbs in the last war. The world knows nothing
and that must be clarified, but it costs a lot of money and requires a great deal
of work, Livne stated.
The tragic fate of many Jews, i.e. the Second World War Holocaust did not
spare Arie Livnes family either. His mother Ilona Sigi Weiss was deported
to Auschwitz in 1944.
- She was killed in a gas chamber and then cremated. His father was in
Auschwitz too. He spoke excellent German and could write in the Gothic
script. Thanks to that they kept him as a clerk and this saved his life. He died
in Israel at the age of 79. I went to Auschwitz several times after the war. On
one occasion, I snuck into the crematorium, crawling, and took out a piece of
fireclay from it. I keep it as a sacred object that reminds me of my mother.
There are many figures and bright examples in our history that testify to the
centuries-long friendship between the Serbs and Jews. However, apart from
Arie Livne, a great contribution to building the Serbian-Jewish friendship
was given by Jasha Almuli, a renowned journalist and publicist. One of his
last works is entitled Stradanje i spasavanje srpskih Jevreja.
The main part of the book Stradanje i spasavanje srpskih Jevreja is dedicated
to the formation and operations of execution sites on the other side of the
Sava River, the old Fairground, which 7,500 Jews from all over Serbia went
through. The book describes numerous personal and family tragedies. The
author draws a conclusion that in Serbia proper and in Banat, around 14,800
Jews were killed under the direct German military command, which makes
up 88.9 percent of the pre-war population.
371
Like the kind-hearted Diana Budisavljevi, who rescued the Serbian, Jewish
and Romani children from a certain death in Ustasha death camps, a chapter
of Jasha Almulis book entitled Spasavanje [Rescue], gives distressing
accounts of the surviving Jews about the Serbs hiding them and helping them
in the toughest moments, risking their own lives. Around 30 such cases were
recorded, and in the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial (Place and Name) in
Jerusalem, 125 Serbs who received the medal Righteous Among the
Nations were registered until 2009.
Dragoljub Ackovi, one of the leading Romani intellectuals and a member of
the World Romani Congress, presented the data that more than 1.5 million
Roma were killed in the Second World War. Responding to the forgeries in
the book Genocid nad Romima: Jasenovac 1942, in which the author Narcisa
Lengel-Krizman stated that Romani victims could be estimated to a little over
8,500 with some certainty, in 2004 Ackovi pointed to just one mass grave
in Utica (Donja Gradina) where more than 12,000 Roma were buried.
Through the implementation of the racist and fascist theory of the pure
race, the Roma were persecuted like wild beasts during the Second World
War and in the Ustasha genocidal state NDH. They were taken to
concentration camps, murdered or destroyed in gas chambers.
The Roma are a lower race a roaming, nomadic, dirty, thieving gang that
needs to be liquidated and totally physically destroyed in the interest of the
higher races hygene. This was one of the points of the Nazi-fascist genocidal
plan of the extermination of Roma. The horrific result of the evil Nazi fascism
confirms that more than 80,000 Roma were killed in the concentration camps
of Pavelis NDH.
LITERATURE
- , - , ,
, 2005.
- Dragoje Luki, Kozarsko djetinjstvo, Narodna knjiga, Beograd, 1973.
- Joa Horvat i Zdenko tambuk, Dokumenti o protunarodnom radu i zloinima jednog
dijela katolikog klera, Zagreb, 1946.
372
- Koncentracioni logori, "Vjesnik" jedinstvene narodno-oslobodilake fronte Hrvatske,
Zagreb, 1944.
- , , , , 2008.
- Budo Simonovi, Ognjena Marija livanjska, NIDDA VERLAG, Vesti, Beograd, 2008.
- Dragoje Luki, Rat i djeca Kozare, Narodna knjiga, Beograd, 1979.
- , , , , 2008.
- Duan Bursa, Aneli u paklu, Udruenje logoraa Drugog svjetskog rata i njihovih
potomaka RS, Banja Luka, 2006.
- , , , 1945.; , , 2006.
- Jaa Almuli, Jevreji i Srbi u Jasenovcu, Slubeni glasnik, Beograd, 2009.
- Dr Milan Bastai, Bilogora i Grubino Polje 1941 - 1991, Udruenje bivih logoraa
Drugog svjetskog rata i njihovih potomaka u Republici Srpskoj, Banja Luka, Banja Luka Beograd, 2009.
- , , ,
1989.
- Diana Budisavljevi, Dnevnik 1941-1945.
- "", , 12 February 2007
- " ", , 15 August 2012
- , , , ,
2011.
- , , January 2011
- Globus, Zagreb, January 2006
- Nacional, Zagreb, No 265, 14 December 2000
- , , : , " ",
- , 1998.
- ,
- Antun Mileti, Koncentracioni logor Jasenovaac: 1941-1945: dokumenta, Narodna knjiga,
Beograd; Spomen-podruje, Jasenovac 1987
- Proceedings of the First International Conference on Jasenovac, New York, 1997
- Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Jasenovac, Banja Luka, 2003
- Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Jasenovac, Jerusalem, 2003
- Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Jasenovac, Banja Luka, 2007
373
- Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Jasenovac, Banja Luka, 2011
- Declaration on the Genocide of the Independent State of Croatia against the Serbs, Jews
and Roma during the Second World War
374
Dejan Motl
ECONOMIES
The abandoned Serbian estates in the villages close to the Jasenovac

concentration camp, where the camp prisoners, mostly women, tilled land,
tended the cattle and harvested the crops, were called economies by the
Ustashas from the camp [farming estates, t/n]. These farming estates were
founded in order to provide food for the Ustasha soldiers in the camp. A small
amount of the food was given to the camp prisoners. In the administrative
sense, the farming estates were a part of the camp working department E
farming estate. It was founded at the same time as Camp III the Brickyard,
in November 1941, and it occupied an area within the camp grounds, the part
between the lake and the river Sava. There were stables for cattle there, a
slaughterhouse, a milk factory, a garden... The livestock was procured
exclusively by robbing the Serbian villages around the camp.1 Because of the
needs of this working department, a womens camp was founded in Camp III
the Brickyard, in the summer of 1943. Then a group of 100 women were
transported here from the Stara Gradika camp and the women had to cross
the river Sava and go to some far fields where they had to till land every day,
watched by the Ustasha guards all the time. They would dig up the corn,
collect the crops, make hay and do similar jobs for the whole day. Late in the
evening, they would go back to the camp.2
Nikola Nikoli, Jasenovaki logor smrti, NIP Osloboenje, Sarajevo, 1975, p. 29.
The number of the women-camp prisoners in Camp III the Brickyard rose up to 1000
during the time. Until the autumn of 1944, they were accommodated in the part of the
camp where the camp farming estate was located. They used two shacks, separated from
the camp itself by wire. From the autumn of 1944, the women's camp was 500 metres far
from the farming estate. There were two big buildings there, and one of them was used as
375
The working department farming estate, existed also in the Camp V Stara
Gradika. Within the walls of the camp, there were stables for horses and
cows, piggeries, henhouses and a large garden. Around 40 camp prisoners
worked there. They were not starving to a great degree because they could
obtain the waste from the slaughterhouse and the food which was used for
feeding the livestock.3
The working department E farming estate, as time passed, acquired certain
independence from the Camp administration. It was under the Camp working
departments jurisdiction only in the sense that the working department of
the camp provided the labour it needed.4
Since the spring of 1942, the farming estate spread its territory to the areas
out of the camp. The robbed and abandoned Serbian villages became
Jasenovacs farming estates. The people from the villages had been killed or
taken to the camps, and other camp prisoners were locked in their houses and
had to till the land in the villages. The houses in those villages were mostly
fenced by barbed wire. Over the following summers, a great number of the
camp prisoners would work at the farming estates. However, most of them
were killed when winter came and after they stopped working.
There was the camp farming estate Greani around ten kilometres to the
north of the Stara Gradika camp. It was the first farming estate that was
founded out of the camp territory. The farming estate location was in the area
which belonged to the village of the same name.5 Besides this farming estate,
some authors in their books often mention the farming estate called the
Vojnovia Sala (a grange). Actually, it was the same farming estate, which
was founded on the land which had belonged to the rich Serbian peasant Gigo
Vojnovi, at his grange, which was farther out of the village Greani. The
Vojnovi family moved to Serbia as refugees immediately after the
the accommodation for the women. Revolucionarni omladinski pokret u Zagrebu,
Sveuilina naklada Liber, Zagreb, 1984, p. 346.
3 Sjeanje Jevreja na logor Jasenovac, Savez jevrejskih optina Jugoslavije, Beograd, 1985,
p. 39.
4 Antun Mileti, Koncentracioni logor Jasenovac, Vol. 2, Narodna knjiga, Beograd, 1986, p.
1070.
5 At the place where this farming estate used to be there is now the paytoll station Okuani
on the Zagreb-Beograd highway.
376
Independent State of Croatia was established, and their property were

confiscated by the Ustasha government. The Ustashas turned thousands of
hectares of their land of the highest quality among Greani, Novi Varo, Donji
Bogievci and Dubovac into their farming estate. The camp prisoners were
taken from Stara Gradika and they would sleep at the grange and work in
the fields during the days. Around one hundred camp prisoners worked at
this farming estate and stayed in wooden shacks.6
The farming estates of the camp covered mostly the areas which were close
to the camp itself, but there were also some estates which belonged to them
and which covered some farther areas. There were two farming estates in the
vicinity of Naice. There was the farming estate Ferianci at the estate called
itluk. It was founded at the beginning of the spring of 1942, when around
thirty camp prisoners, followed by around twenty Ustashas, were taken to
this estate.7 The land had been taken over from the Serbian Orthodox
Church, whose clergy had been killed or deported. The farming estate was
not enclosed by a fence or a wall, but there were lookout posts all around the
estate. The camp prisoners would work there, watched by the Ustasha
guards, and in the evenings they would be locked in the building previously
used as a stable. At this farming estate the camp prisoners tended and put out
to pasture the livestock abducted from the Serbian villages around the
farming estate.8 In the autumn of 1942, the farming estate was closed because
the Ustashas found out that the camp prisoners got in touch with the
Partisans intending to attack the farming estate. The camp prisoners were
then taken back to Jasenovac.9
North of Ferianci there was the farming estate Obradovci. It was founded in
the summer of 1942, when a certain number of the camp prisoners were
taken from the farming estate Ferianci to the Serbian village Obradovci, at
the foot of the Papuk Mountain. For accommodation they used the building
of the forest rangers cottage. Around one hundred metres further in the
forest a cattle grid was built and every day the camp prisoners put out to
6
Savo Vukievi, Preko Psunja i Papuka, GP M. Gambarovski, Nova Gradika, 1975, pp. 6369.
7 Mileti, ibid., Vol. 2, p. 1084.
8 Cadik Danon, Saseeno stablo Danonovih, Dosije, Beograd, 2007, pp. 153-154.
9 Zbornik Prve meunarodne konferencije o Jasenovcu, p. 169.
377
pasture the livestock from the grid. There were around thirty camp prisoners
at the farming estate. They were watched over by around twenty-five
Ustasha soldiers. On 12th September 1942, seven camp prisoners escaped
from this farming estate.10 A few days later, all the remaining camp prisoners
were killed and the farming estate ceased to exist.
The villages of Mlaka11 and Jablanac12 are on the left bank of the River Sava,
between Jasenovac and Stara Gradika. In April 1942, the Serbian villagers
from these two rich villages were killed and their estates were turned into
farming estates for the needs of the camp.
The Ustashas fenced off the central areas of both villages by barbed wire.
Two houses in Jablanac were used as accommodation for the male prisoners
and three houses for the female prisoners. All over the village itself there
were twelve bunkers with armed Ustasha guarding units in them. The camp
prisoners tilled around 60 hectares of land at this farming estate.13 The
Jablanac farming estate ceased to exist in mid-December 1944. Out of around
400 camp prisoners from this farming estate, around 70 were transported to
the Jasenovac camp, and all the others were killed.14
10
The names of the camp prisoners who escaped on that day are Zorko Golub, Feliks Hirl,
Duan Holce, Hugo tern, Mirko Mautner, Cadik Danon, and Boo varc. Revolucionarni
omladinski pokret u Zagrebu, pp. 398-399.
11 The village of Mlaka is 12 kilometres far from Jasenovac. During the night between the
13th to 14th of April 1942, all the Serbian population was taken to the Jasenovac camp.
Before the Second World War, there were 157 households, around 1000 people in the
village, and they were mostly Serbs (only one Croatian family). Around 930 people lost
their life. According to the data from the census in 1948, this village had 160 inhabitants.
Mile Dragi, Tragedija sela Mlaka i Jablanac 1941-1945, Opina Novska, Novska, 1989, p.
21.
12 The village of Jablanac is 3 kilometres down the river from the village of Mlaka.
According to the census, the village had 303 inhabitants in 1931. During the Second World
War 182 people were killed, 135 of them were victims of the reign of fascist terror and 47
fought in the war. In 1964, because of the frequent floods and the small number of houses,
the village became completely depopulated. The inhabitants who survived the Second
World War mostly moved to Bosanska Gradika, Banja Luka and Okuani, and most of the
land became part of the system of forest and hunting complexes. Dragi, ibid., p. 178.
13 Filip kiljan, Mlaka i Jablanac, nestala sela, Pro Tempore, Vol 3, asopis studenata povijesti, Zagreb, 2006, p. 82.
14 ABH, ZKUZ, Sasluanja, Bosanska Gradika, box 1.
378
The farming estate in Mlaka covered around 800 hectares. Around 250
women were interned in one house with seven rooms. There were also
around 70 men interned there. They would mostly gather corn and load it to
on the boats used to transport the cargo to Jasenovac. There was also a big
farm there, where they took care of around 400 cows, 300 pigs and 120
horses. 15 The Ustahas used the building of the Serbian Orthodox church for
the needs of the estate, and although damaged, it was not demolished until
the end of the war.16 This farming estate existed until the spring of 1945.17
The farming estates Jablanac and Greani were visited by a representative of
the International Red Cross, a Swiss named Julius Schmidlin, in July 1944.18
He wrote about the farming estate Jablanac that it consisted of a certain
number of small low-rise houses. He managed to count around 140 camp
prisoners who were making hay during his visit, watched by the Ustasha
guards. He called their clothes rags and said they had wooden sandals with
leather straps, obviously made by themselves, on their feet. Going to the Stara
Gradika camp, 7 kilometres down the river, he found another farming estate,
called Strug. There he found around 110 camp prisoners, who were cutting
down trees. He described their clothes as poor, too. 19
At the Greani farming estate, he found 95 camp prisoners, who dwelled in
some wooden shacks. The whole area was fenced off by barbed wire and
strictly guarded. Having described this whole complex as rather simple, he
15
Marko Runov, Zato Jasenovac, IKP Nikola Pai, Beograd, 2001, p. 142.
The church building was built in 1803, and it was dedicated to the Saint Prophet Elijah.
The church bell-tower was used as an observation post. All the furnishings were destroyed,
and in 1945, during their retreat, the Ustashas set the church on fire, and the roof of the
building burnt down. Dragi, ibid., p. 13.
17 Until today, five mass graves have been discovered in Mlaka, and two of them have been
marked.
18 During his visit to the Jasenovac and Stara Gradika camps and the above-mentioned farming estates, he was followed by Milutin Juri, Director of the Department of Public Security, which belonged to the Ministry of the Internal Affairs of the Independent State of
Croatia, and by other Ustasha officials.
19 Actually, it was the area called Meustrugovi close to the confluence of the Strug and
Sava. Some mass graves were found there and 967 human bodies exhumed in May 1945
(the author's comment).
16
379
also mentioned that all the products from this farming estate were
appropriated by the Ustasha officers.20
During the summer of 1942, at some economies there were thousands of
women and children from the area of the Kozara Mountain, who had been
taken from the Stara Gradika camp. In one of the barracks at Ferianci, for
example, there were children aged 5 to 8. They had to wear Ustasha uniform
and were watched by Roman Catholic nuns, who treated them rather badly.21
By mid-August 1942, almost all the children at this farming estate had died.22
Thousands of women and children dwelled in Mlaka and Jablanac in the open
air, in the worst possible conditions. Without any medical help, the death
rates among them were high.23 The children were separated from their
mothers here and taken to Sisak, Jastrebarsko, Zagreb or Jasenovac.
Close to Crkveni Bok there was the farming estate of Lonja. There is very
little information about this farming estate, which can be found in Ladislav
Lions memoirs. Without giving a description of the farming estate itself, he
stated that there were around 150 women and five men imprisoned there.
The women were all killed in the spring of 1945, while the men managed to
escape during the Ustashas retreat to the west.24
Even the fertile land on the right bank of the River Sava, in the abandoned
Serbian villages next to the road between Bosanska Dubica and Bosanska
Gradika, was tilled by the Jasenovac camp prisoners. They would be taken
from Camp III to work there every day, watched by Ustasha guards, and in
the evening, they would be returned to the camp. In 1943, the camp prisoners
collected the corn on the estates belonging to the Serbian villagers in
Drakseni and Meea. The corn was then transported to the camp by a river
boat.25
20
Mario Kevo, Posjet poslanika Meunarodnog odbora Crvenog kria logorima Jasenovac
i Stara Gradika u ljeto 1944, SP, Vol. 40, No. 2, Zagreb, 2008, pp. 577-581.
21 Zbornik Prve meunarodne konferencije o Jasenovcu, pp. 168-169.
22 Dnevnik Diane Budisavljevi, SP Jasenovac, HDA, Zagreb, 2003, p. 93.
23 Ibid., pp. 79-80.
24 Sjeanje Jevreja, ibid., p. 240.
25 Ilija Ivanovi, Svjedok jasenovakog pakla, Art print, Banjaluka, 2006, pp. 85-87.
380
The village of Bistrica, which is 15 kilometres away from Gradika up the

stream, is situated at the foot of the slopes of the Posada Mountain. From the
summer of 1942, there was a farming estate with around sixty camp
prisoners there. Because of the escape of some camp prisoners from the Stara
Gradika camp, on 24th December 1942, Miroslav Filipovi Majstorovi, the
camp commander, previously a friar, liquidated 56 Jews felling the forest.
The remaining camp prisoners from this farming estate were transported
back to the Stara Gradika camp. After that day, nobody was sent to this
farming estate again.26
The living conditions at all the farming estates were similar. The camp
prisoners worked from early in the mornings until late at night, in all
weather conditions. After they finished the work, they got their dinner and
were then lined up, for the Ustasha officers to check the number of the camp
prisoners present. The camp prisoners were then closed in their dwellings,
which they were not allowed to leave until the following morning and the
next line-up. When winter came and the camp prisoners were done with
their work, the Ustasha soldiers killed the remaining ones. They only spared
a small number of them, who were necessary to tend the cattle. Two women
by the names of Katica Filipovi and Jelka Cihaber, former camp prisoners
from the Stara Gradika camp, who worked at the farming estate in 1944,
made statements in which they testified about how the Ustashas liquidated
the camp prisoners at the farming estates Mlaka and Jablanac in the winter
of 1944. According to their testimonies, during one of the line-ups, all the
Serbs and Jews were called over and told they would go to Jasenovac. Next,
they were put onto a river boat, which sailed up the River Sava. About a half
an hour later, their dead bodies were floating down the river.27
In spite of all the crimes the Ustashas committed on the farms, a lot of camp
prisoners voluntarily applied to work there. There were reasons for it they
were not within the camp walls, they could easily find some food, and
working on a farm meant a bigger chance of escape from the Jasenovac
camps.28
26
Mirko Peren, Ustaki logori, Globus, Zagreb, 1990, p. 245.

Dragi, ibid., pp. 154-166.
28 ore Milia, U muilitu-paklu Jasenovac, ore Milia, Zagreb, 1945, p. 182.
27
381
Nenad Antonijevi
THE PLACE AND ROLE OF THE

MUSEUM OF GENOCIDE VICTIMS IN
EDUCATING YOUNG PEOPLE IN
SCHOOLS IN THE REPUBLIC OF
SERBIA ON THE SUBJECT OF
GENOCIDE AND HOLOCAUST
Abstract: The paper is an attempt to present activities and programmes that

need to be organised in order to adequately educate young people at schools
and universities in the Republic of Serbia about genocide and the Holocaust,
the genocide and the Holocaust committed in the territory of the former
Yugoslavia in the Second World War (particularly, the genocide of the Serbs
committed by the Nezavisna Drava Hrvatska [the Independent State of
Croatia]).
Key words: genocide, the Holocaust, crimes, education, Yugoslavia, Serbia,
the Republic of Srpska
The Museum of Genocide Victims was established pursuant to the Act on the
Establishment of the Museum of Genocide Victims for the purpose of
preserving a lasting memory of the victims of genocide committed against
the Serbs, collecting, processing and using data on them, and fulfilling the
obligations arising from the International Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Act on the Establishment of the
383
Museum also reads: The Museums activity can also include collecting,
processing and using data on genocide committed against the Jews, Roma
and members of other nationalities and national minorities.1
The Museum of Genocide Victims collects, processes and maintains: data on
individual and collective victims of the crime of genocide and on other
genocide-related facts; materials on the crime of genocide, official
documents, lists, testimonies, museum exhibits, photographs, films, video
and audio recordings, books, medical and other documentation, etc.; data of
importance for identifying the organisers, perpetrators of crimes, ordergivers and accomplices in the committed crimes of genocide; data on rescuers
of genocide victims; it identifies and marks places of execution (camps, pits,
execution sites); provides cultural and historical materials and information
available to it for cultural, educational, information and other purposes
through permanent and temporary exhibitions, publications and other ways
that are available to the public; cooperates with related institutions in the
country and abroad.2
Apart from the crime of genocide, the contents of the documentation at the
Museum of Genocide Victims also concern war crimes, ethnic cleansing,
execution sites, pits, camps, prisons, forced displacement, conversion, taking
of hostages, forced labour, plunder and destruction of property, historiccultural and religious monuments, use of prohibited means of warfare.3
1Slubeni glasnik Republike Srbije, no. 49/92, The Act on the Establishment of the Museum
of Genocide Victims
2 Slubeni glasnik Republike Srbije, no. 49/92, The Act on the Establishment of the
Museum of Genocide Victims (Article 3)
3
Apart from other collections and holdings, the Museum of Genocide Victims is also in
possession of: the collection of materials of the Committee of the Serbian Academy of
Sciences and Arts (SANU) for Collecting Material on Genocide of the Serbian and Other
Peoples of Yugoslavia in the 20th Century; Dragoje Lukis collection on genocide of
children in the NDH (concentration and collection camps, camps for children, lists of
World War II victims in the areas of Kozara, Bosanska Krajina and the entire NDH
territory, the materials about Diana Budisavljevi); Petar - Pepo Zianis collection
containing the lists of genocide victims, the chronology of the Ustasha genocide of Serbs in
Kordun region from 1941-1945; Branko Bokans collection on genocide of the Serbs in the
Second World War in the area of Bosanska Krajina, as well as other holdings and
collections.
384
The Day of Remembrance of Genocide Victims 22 April, the day of the

break-out of the prisoners from the Ustasha-run Jasenovac concentration
camp in 1945, was established in order to permanently commemorate the
victims of genocide.4
The Day of Remembrance of Genocide Victims was established pursuant to
Article 2 of the Act on the Establishment of the Museum of Genocide Victims
(Slubeni glasnik RS - RS Official Gazette, no. 49/1992):
In order to commemorate the victims of genocide committed against the
Serbs, Jews and Roma, 22 April, the day of the break-out of the Ustasha-run
Jasenovac concentration camp prisoners in 1945, is hereby established as the
Day of Remembrance of Genocide Victims.
The Act on Amendments to the Act on National and Other Holidays in the
Republic of Serbia (Slubeni glasnik RS, no. 92/2011) established 22 April as
a national holiday:
The Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust, Genocide and
Other Victims of Fascism in the Second World War.
The Act entered into force on 15 December 2011. This way the Republic of
Serbia also got a national day to commemorate the Holocaust at the national
level.
The Ustasha-run Jasenovac concentration camp, one of the biggest and most
monstrous concentration camps in Europe during the Second World War
was never liberated. Over one thousand unarmed surviving prisoners broke
Slubeni glasnik Republike Srbije, no. 49/92, The Act on the Establishment of the
Museum of Genocide Victims (Article 2); The OSCE summary report studying the subject
of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism in Europe, primarily in education and school systems:
Education on the Holocaust and on anti-semitism: An Overview and Analysis of

Educational Approaches, Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, 1 June
2005; The Museum of Genocide Victims in the Republic of Serbia deals with World War II
crimes committed against Serbs, Jews, and Roma. 22 April, the date of the uprising by the
prisoners in the Jasenovac concentration camp, is commemorated in the Republic of Serbia
as the Day of Remembrance of Genocide Victims. The Ministry of Education and Science of
the Republic of Montenegro informed the ODIHR that no separate Holocaust memorial day
exists.
385
out, and according to some research, at least 87 of them (identified by name

and surname) survived.5
Aside from the primary museum activities, the Museum of Genocide Victims
is also involved in academic research (the most important is the project aimed
at establishing the number of World War II victims, by name and surname,
in the territory of the former Yugoslavia the revision of the 1964 census
War Victims 1941-1945), but it also has an educational role.
Science failed to pay adequate attention to the education of pupils and
students after the Second World War. The university pedagogy professor
ore Leki, PhD, has published a book kola i genocid which analyses the
link between the manifestations of the crime of genocide and the situation in
a society, particularly in the educational system. The author largely addresses
the phenomena and the concepts of genocide and ethnocide, the
manifestations and forms of genocide and ethnocide, the genesis of genocide
in the Balkans, while analysing the Serbo-Croatian relations, particularly the
crime of genocide of the Serbs during the Second World War by the
Ustashas.6
Mileti, Antun, Prilog utvrivanja imenom broja usmrenih u koncentracionom logoru

Jasenovac, Jasenovac, sistem ustakih logora smrti, proceedings of the round-table held in
Belgrade on 23 April 1996, the Museum of Genocide Victims and the Institute of
Contemporary History, Beograd, 1997, pp. 50-88; a list of 87 names and surnames of the
Jasenovac concentration camp prisoners who survivied the uprising of 22 April 1945; the
list was made based on the reports made by the very participants in the breakout, the filledout questionnaires for surviving Jasenovac camp prisoners, or the data were provided by
surviving inmates. These 87 inmates somehow managed to rescue themselves between 21
and 28 April 1945;
According to the records of a prisoner who was the registrar, Mio Anti, there were 1,073
prisoners in the Jasenovac camp on 21 April 1945, Mileti, Antun, Prilog utvrivanja
imenom broja usmrenih u koncentracionom logoru Jasenovac, Jasenovac, sistem ustakih
logora smrti, proceedings of the round-table held in Belgrade on 23 April 1996, the
Museum of Genocide Victims and the Institute of Contemporary History, Beograd, 1997,
pp. 80-81
6 Leki, ore, kola i genocid, Beograd 1993, reviewers: psychologist Jovan Parli, PhD;
pedagogue Duan orevi, PhD, and historian Duan ivkovi, PhD; expert consultants:
academician, professor and historian Vasilije Kresti, PhD, academician, professor and
psychopathologist Dr. Jovan Rakovi; psychiatrist Dr. NevenkaTadi; writer Vasilije
Kalezi, PhD, and Zorica Jovanovi, the editor of Nova Prosveta.
386
According to professor Leki: Genocide is a phenomenon of a monstrous

deviation of personality in ideologies promoting the biological destruction of
those who think, believe and act differently.7
In 1997, at the initiative of the Museum of Genocide Victims and with the
support of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Serbia Government
(particularly the Research and Development Department), the then
Education Minister of the Republic of Serbia Government, professor Jovo
Todorovi, PhD, sent an instruction-recommendation to primary and
secondary school principals, as well as to the deans of two-year postsecondary schools and universities in the Republic of Serbia, to organise
befitting celebrations of the Day of Remembrance of Genocide Victims (22
April).
While designing the programme of activities to mark the day, it would be
desirable to include in it the experiences of the Yad Vashem Memorial
Museum in Jerusalem (Israel), which, as part of the Holocaust studies, pays
considerable attention to the educational element of this subject (seminars for
professors, teachers, students and pupils, international exchange of
knowledge and experience in research, the collection of materials and
presentation of achieved results by means of exhibitions, lectures at schools
and universities, publication of academic studies and articles).8
There are dozens of museums in the USA, Europe and Israel that deal
exclusively with research, preservation and presentation of the Holocaust
materials. These museums dedicated to the Holocaust have special rooms for
lectures that are based on well-developed multimedia programmes (the
presentation of photographs, facsimile documents, statistical tables, historical
and geographical maps, films, verbal history projects), which thousands of
pupils and students go through.
The proposals of the Museum of Genocide Victims to commemorate the Day
of Remembrance of Genocide Victims are as follows: holding public lectures
on the subject of genocide, particularly on Jasenovac, the Ustasha-run
Leki, ore, kola i genocid, Beograd 1993, p. 81

The Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority, The International School
for Holocaust Studies, Catalogue of educational units on the Holocaust, Yad Vashem,
Jerusalem 2004.
387
concentration camp, the largest site of execution of Serbs, Jews and Roma;
the writing of school papers and the making of drawings, visits to museums
and memorials to victims: Staro Sajmite the Memorial to Genocide Victims
in Yugoslavia In Memoriam, Banjica and Jajinci in Belgrade, Novi Sad,
Sremska Mitrovica, Ni (the camp Red Cross), Kragujevac and other towns.
It is necessary to establish cooperation by making proposals, suggestions,
observations, and through exchange of experience and information between
the Museum of Genocide Victims and professors teaching the related subjects
at schools and universities (history, art history, Serbian language and
literature, psychology, sociology, philosophy, religious studies, art and
music), as well as class teachers, school principals, and deans of two-year
post-secondary schools and universities. It is necessary to have cooperation
between the Museum of Genocide Victims and the Jewish and Romani
communities, associations of former camp prisoners, their descendants and
admirers, for the purpose of participation in commemoration programmes.
Educating pupils and students about the committed crimes of genocide
should not be limited only to the Day of Remembrance of Genocide Victims.
It is necessary to continuously have exhibitions, release publications, books
and the latest results of historiographical research on war crimes and the
crimes of genocide, as well as results achieved within the research projects
of the Museum of Genocide Victims.
The activities of the Museum of Genocide Victims have particularly been
abundant and diverse in the areas of exhibition and publishing.9
Some of the exhibitions by the Museum of Genocide Victims include the following:
Exhibition Bili su samo deca, Jasenovac, grobnica 19.432 devojice i deaka: Beograd,
Novi Sad, Kragujevac, Jagodina, Herceg Novi, Panevo, Kragujevac, Obrenovac, Zrenjanin,
Bijeljina, Skelani, Zvornik, Ugljevik, Bari, Naples, Milan, Jerusalem; Exhibition IstinaKosovo i Metohija: Beograd, Kragujevac, Kraljevo, Kosovska Mitrovica, Herceg Novi;
Exhibition Stradanje Srba pod okupacijom na Kosovu i Metohiji 1941-1944: Beograd,
Herceg Novi; Exhibition Gubim Nevino Svoj ivot Zbog Nevaljali i Prokleti Ljudi:
Kragujevac, abac, Beograd, Loznica; Digital exhibition Holokaust na Kosovu i Metohiji,
Beograd.
Some of the publishing activity by the Museum of Genocide Victims includes the following:
GENOCID U 20. VEKU NA PROSTORIMA JUGOSLOVENSKIH ZEMALjA[GENOCIDE IN

THE 20TH CENTURY IN YUGOSLAV LANDS], proceedings of the academic conference,
Beograd, 22-23April 2003, Godinjak Muzeja rtava genocida tematski broj, Beograd,
388
The intention in educating young people in schools and universities about the
crime of genocide is to teach them to capture the essence and manifestations
of genocide, and to contribute towards preventing this type of crime from
happening again in the future. The youth should be devoid of revanchist
sentiments and hatred against an entire nation or a religion whose members
committed the crime of genocide. The instigator, organiser, order-giver,
perpetrator and accomplice in a crime have names. Human beings should be
distinguished by tolerance and forgiveness. This will be made possible by
presenting indisputable facts without hiding or minimizing what happened,
and also without exaggeration or creating myths, prejudice and
interpretations that are not based on documented research, that is, only by
presenting facts found in papers that are based on the principles of the
scientific methodology applied and preserved by historiography.
2005; Duan Vruini, DEMOGRAFSKI GUBICI SRBIJE PROUZROKOVANI RATOVIMA
U XX VEKU[DEMOGRAPHIC LOSS IN SERBIA CAUSED BY THE WARS IN THE 20TH

CENTURY], Beograd, 2007; uro Zatezalo, JADOVNO, KOMPLEKS USTAKIH LOGORA
1941, JADOVNO, I-II [THE JADOVNO COMPLEX OF THE USTASHA
CONCENTRATION CAMPS 1941], Beograd, 2007; DRAGOJE LUKI RODITELj
POKOENOG NARATAJA, Godinjak Muzeja rtava genocida tematski broj, Beograd,
2008; Miodrag Bjeli, SABIRNI USTAKI LOGOR U SLAVONSKOJ POEGI 1941.
GODINE, Beograd 2008; IZRAELSKO-SRPSKA NAUNA RAZMENA U PROUAVANjU
HOLOKAUSTA [ISRAELI-SERBIAN ACADEMIC EXCHANGE IN HOLOKAUST
RESEARCH], collection of papers from the academic conference, Jerusalem-Yad Vashem,
15-20 June 2006, Godinjak Muzeja rtava genocida tematski broj, Beograd 2008; ore
N. Lopii, NEMAKI RATNI ZLOINI 1941-1945, PRESUDE JUGOSLOVENSKIH
VOJNIH SUDOVA, Beograd, 2009; Nenad Antonijevi, ALBANSKI ZLOINI NAD
SRBIMA NA KOSOVU I METOHIJI U DRUGOM SVETSKOM RATU, DOKUMENTA,
Drugo izmenjeno i dopunjeno izdanje, Beograd, 2009; PRILOZI ISTRAIVANjU ZLOINA
GENOCIDA I RATNIH ZLOINA, proceedings, Godinjak Muzeja rtava genocida
tematski broj, Beograd, 2009; ore N. Lopii, MAARSKI RATNI ZLOINI, PRESUDE
JUGOSLOVENSKIH SUDOVA, Beograd, 2010; uro Aralica, USTAKI POKOLjI SRBA U
GLINSKOJ CRKVI, Beograd, 2010(1st edition), 2011 (2nd edition); Branislav Boovi,
STRADANjE JEVREJA U OKUPIRANOM BEOGRADU 1941-1944, Drugo izmenjeno i
dopunjeno izdanje, Beograd, 2012; ISTRAIVANjA I MEMORIJALIZACIJA GENOCIDA I
RATNIH ZLOINA, proceedings, Godinjak Muzeja rtava genocida tematski broj,
Beograd, 2012; Silvija Krejakovi, Identiteti rtava streljanih u Kraljevu oktobra 1941.,
Muzej rtava genocida, Beograd, 2013.
389
School-age youth in the Republic of Serbia need to be educated about the

roots, manifestations and results of the crimes committed during the Second
World War. It is necessary to make critical comparisons between the history
curricula in the Republic of Serbia and those in the countries in the region.10
In order to analyse the contents and possibly improve parts of the modules in
school textbooks that cover the Second World War and are related to war
crimes and the crimes of genocide, it is necessary to have cooperation
between the Museum of Genocide Victims and the Serbian Academy of
Sciences and Arts, the Matica Srpska, the National Library of Serbia, the
Institute for School Books and Teaching Aid, as well as other institutions in
the Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Srpska (museums, archives,
faculties, historical institutes).
10
The new history textbooks in the Republic of Serbia that cover the Second World War
module: Raji, Suzana, Nikoli, Kosta, Jovanovi, Neboja, Istorija za 8. razred, Beograd,
2005; VI Drugi svetski rat 1939-1945; 8. Ocena Drugog svetskog rata; Okupirana Evropa,
Koreni antisemitizma, Holokaust, Stradanje Jevreja u Srbiji, Genocid u NDH, Jasenovac,
pp. 160-162;
Nikoli, Kosta, uti, Nikola, Pavlovi, Momilo, padijer, Zorica, Istorija za III razred
gimnazije prirodno-matematikog smera i IV razred gimnazije opteg i drutveno-jezikog

smera, Beograd, 2003; VI Drugi svetski rat; 6. 7. Genocid i teror u Nezavisnoj Dravi
Hrvatskoj i na Kosmetu; Uspostavljanje ustakog reima, Genocid, Ustaki logori smrti;
Ustanak; Srpski narod na Kosmetu; Stradanje Jevreja; pp. 154-157;
Ljui, Rado, Dimi Ljubodrag, Istorija za osmi razred osnovne kole sa itankom i
radnom sveskom, Beograd 2010. chapter VII (Drugi svetski rat: dominacija Sila osovine
1939-1941, rat 1941-1943, pobeda antifaistike koalicije, posledice rata) and chapter VIII
(Jugoslavija u Drugom svetskom ratu: Aprilski rat i posledice poraza, otpor i ustanak,
graanski rat 1941-1942, jugoslovensko ratite i zavrna faza rata, doprinos Jugoslavije
pobedi antifaistike koalicije);
Ljui, Rado, Dimi, Ljubodrag, Istorija za trei razred gimnazije prirodno-matematikog
smera i etvrti razred gimnazije opteg i drutveno-jezikog smera, Beograd, 2013, chapter
VI (Drugi svetski rat: saveznitva i frontovi, promena granica i okupacioni sistemi,
hronologija ratnih dejstava i prelomni dogaaji 1940-1943, Hronologija ratnih dejstava i
prelomni dogaaji 1943-1945, ratna stvarnost, kraj rata i njegove posledice) and chapter VII
(Jugoslavija u Drugom svetskom ratu: od diplomatskog pritiska do rata, vojni poraz,
okupacija, otpori okupaciji i faizmu, hronologija ratnih zbivanja 1941-1943, Ideoloki
koncepti i ureenje budue drave, Jugoslavija i Balkan u odnosima i planovima velikih
sila, kraj rata i njegove posledice, svakodnevni ivot u ratu).
390
The Serbian people in the Kingdom of Serbia and in the territory of AustriaHungary suffered a tremendous loss of life during the First World War
(1914-1918).11
During the Second World War (1939-1945), the crimes of the occupying
armies of the German national-socialist Third Reich, fascist Italy, Bulgaria
and Hungary in occupied Yugoslavia (1941-1945) also have the character of
war crimes and the crimes of genocide.12
Genocide against the Serbs and the Roma, and the Holocaust against the Jews
were committed in the NDH. It is particularly necessary to emphasise and
present the genocide of children that had been planned and was
systematically executed. The largest mass destruction of population in the
territory of the former Yugoslavia took place in the territory of the then
11
Judging by the consequences caused the number of people killed, wounded, expelled;
destroyed property, churches, monasteries, monuments the operations by the occupying
forces of Austria-Hungary, Germany and Bulgaria aimed against prisoners, civilians, the
elderly, women and children (killings, executions by firing squads, hangings, plundering,
setting fires, imprisoning hostages, internment, camps) had the character of war crimes
and the crimes of genocide; Stojanevi, Vladimir, Gubici u stanovnitvu Srbije i Beograda
pod austrougarskom okupacijom za vreme svetskog rata 1914-1918. godine, pp. 61-74,
Godinjak grada Beograda, Knjiga XXI, Beograd, 1974.; Bojkovi, Slaana, Pri, Miloje,
Stradanje srpskog naroda u Srbiji 1914-1918, Dokumenta, Beograd 2000.; Radojevi, Mira,
Dimi, Ljubodrag, Srbija u Velikom ratu 1914-1918, kratka istorija, Beograd, 2014.
12 Vojnoistorijski glasnik, cover story: Zloini, genocid, holokaust u modernoj istoriji,
Beograd 1-2/1994; Vojnoistorijski glasnik, cover story: Drugi svetski rat i Jugoslavija,
Beograd 1/1995; Genocid nad Srbima u II svetskom ratu, the proceedings of the
international academic conference at SANU, 23-25 October 1991, Beograd, 1995; Drugi
svjetski rat50 godina kasnije I-II, the proceedings of the interational academic conference
in Podgorica, 20-22 September 1995, organised by CANU and SANU, Podgorica 1997;
Glii Venceslav, Teror i zloini nacistike Nemake u Srbiji 1941-1944, Beograd, 1970;
Zeevi Miodrag, Popovi P. Jovan, Dokumenti iz istorije Jugoslavije, the State
Commission to Investigate Crimes Committed by Nazis and their Allies in the Second
World War, Beograd, 1996; Koljanin Milan, Nemaki logor na beogradskom Sajmitu 19411944 [The German Camp at the Belgrade Fair (Sajmite)], Beograd 1992; Petranovi
Branko, Istorija Jugoslavije I-III, Beograd 1988; Petranovi, Branko, Srbija u drugom
svetskom ratu 1939-1945, Beograd, 1992; Luka Duan, Trei Rajh i zemlje jugoistone
Evrope 1933-1945,Volumes 1-3, Beograd, 1982,1987; Ristovi Milan, Nemaki novi
poredak i jugoistona Evropa 1940/41-1944/45, planovi o budunosti i praksa,Beograd,
1991.
391
NDH, only because this population was of a different ethnicity and religion.
The crimes in the NDH took place in the areas predominantlypopulated by
the Serbs.13
The crimes of genocide and war crimes in the region of the former
Yugoslavia have their own specificities, manifestations and characteristics
that distinguish them from the crimes that took place in other parts of Europe
and the world in the 20th century.14
13
Novak, Viktor, Magnum Crimen: pola vijeka klerikalizma u Hrvatskoj, Zagreb, 1948.;
Mileti Antun, Koncentracioni logor Jasenovac, Dokumenta I-III, Beograd-Jasenovac,
1986.; Zloini na jugoslovenskim prostorima u Prvom i Drugom svetskom ratu, zbornik
dokumenata, Tom I, Zloini Nezavisne Drave Hrvatske 1941.-1945., Zloini Nezavisne
Drave Hrvatske 1941., knjiga 1, Beograd, 1993.; Bulaji Milan, Ustaki zloini genocida IIV, Beograd 1988,1989;uri Veljko, Ustae i pravoslavlje: Hrvatska pravoslavna crkva,
Beograd, 1989.; uri Veljko, Prekrtavanje Srba u Nezavisnoj Dravi Hrvatskoj: prilozi za
istoriju verskog genocida, Beograd-Zemun, 1991.; uri Veljko, Golgota Srpske
pravoslavne crkve 1941-1945, Beograd 1997.; Luki Dragoje, Bili su samo deca, Jasenovac
grobnica 19.432 devojice i deaka, I-II, Laktai-Beograd, 2000.; Mirkovi Jovan, Objavljeni
izvori i literatura o jasenovakim logorima, Laktai-Banja Luka-Beograd, 2000.; Jeli-Buti
Fikreta, Ustae i NDH 1941-1945, Zagreb, 1977.; Krizman, Bogdan, Paveli i ustae, Zagreb,
1978.; Krizman, Bogdan, NDH izmeu Hitlera i Musolinija, Zagreb 1980.; Krizman,
Bogdan, Ustae i Trei Rajh, Zagreb, 1983.; Kurdulija Strahinja, Atlas ustakog genocida
nad Srbima 1941-1945 [Athlas of the Ustasha Genocide of the Serbs 1941-1945], Beograd,
1994.;
The First International Conference on Jasenovac, Jasenovac, Proceedings of the First
International Conference and Exhibit on the Jasenovac Concentration Camps, Banja Luka
2007 (the conference was held from 29-31 October 1997, Kingsborough Community
College of the City University of New York); The Second International Conference,
Jasenovac System of Croatian Ustasha Camps of Genocide (1941-1945), 8-10 May 2000,
Banja Luka-Donja Gradina, Banja Luka, 2001; Proceedings of 11th International Conference
on Holocaust, The Holocaust from the perspective of the 21st century and the 3rd
International Conference on Jasenovac, Jasenovac the anatomy of neglected
concentration camps, Belgium House, Hebrew University, Givat Ram Campus, Jerusalem,
Israel, 29-30 December 2002; Jasenovac, Proceedings of the 4th International Conference
on Jasenovac, Banja Luka, 30-31May 2007, Banja Luka, 2007; Jasenovac, the 5th
International Conference on the System of Concentration Camps and Execution Sites of the
Croatian State for the Extermination of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies in WWII, Banja Luka, 24
and 25 May 2001, Proceedings, Banja Luka, 2011;
14 Heading: Genocide, Enciklopedija srpskog naroda, Beograd, 2008, pp. 224-225 (authors:
PhDJ. iri; N. Antonijevi); Genocide (Greek, genos race, people and Latin, occidere to
392
The intention behind educating pupils and students about the crimes of
genocide committed in Yugoslavia during the Second World War is not to
create and instigate hatred and revenge on the contrary, it is to promote
positive qualities, humanism, tolerance and forgiveness.15
Co-existence of people of different ethnic, religious, ideological backgrounds
can only be built on telling the truth that is based on historical documents
and sources, and with wide public support. For the purpose of everything
kill) means an act committed with intent to exterminate, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnical, racial or religious group of people. The term was coined after the end of the
Second World War as a result of the crimes committed by Nazis and fascists who had
wanted to destroy whole nations because of their racial and religious affiliation. The term
was first used by the United Nations General Assembly in its Resolution 96(1) of 11
December 1946, whereby genocide was declared an international crime. For the purpose of
prevention and international prosecution of genocide, the UN General Assembly adopted at
its III session the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Resolution 260 (III) of 9 December 1948. The Convention came into force on 12 January
1950. Yugoslavia ratified it on 21 June the same year; Zloini protiv ovenosti i
meunarodnog prava: Nirnberka presuda i dokumenti o genocidu, Beograd 1992.
15 Within the educational system of the Republic of Serbia, this issue is also indirectly
regulated by law; The Act on the Foundations of the Education System; Prohibition of
discrimination and political organizing (Article 46); Activities aimed at threatening,
belittling or discriminating groups and individuals on the basis of their racial, national,
linguistic, religious background or gender, physical or psychological characteristics, age,
social and cultural origin, financial status or political views, as well as encouraging such
activities, shall be prohibited in an institution. Discrimination of a child or a pupil shall
mean any direct or indirect differentiation or granting preferential treatment, exclusion or
limitation aimed at preventing the exercise of rights, limiting rights, or failing to grant
equal treatment to a child or a pupil. Physical violence and insulting children, pupils and
employees shall be prohibited in an institution. Political organising and activities in an
institution, as well as the utilisation of the institutions facilities for such purposes shall not
be allowed. The Act was published in the Official Gazette nos. 62/2003 and 64/2003 and
came into force on 25 May 2003;
http://www.mps.sr.gov.yu/upload/dokumenti/visoko/zakon__visokom_obrazovanju.pdf;
The Act on Higher Education; The principles of higher education (Article 4) inlcude,
amongst others: recognition of humanistic and democratic values of European and
national traditions and respect for human rights and civil liberties, including prohibition
of all forms of discrimination.
393
that has been said here, it is necessary to see participation and cooperation of
experts of different profiles and from different fields, museums and other
institutions, as well as daily newspapers and periodicals, radio and TV
stations (particularly public broadcasting services), web portals, and the
public in general, all those that can contribute toward adequately educating
the school and university population about this subject.
Conclusion
The 20th century phenomenon the crime of genocide and of the Holocaust
was not talked about enough and was not adequately explained in the
Yugoslav countries after the Second World War. People of all generations,
from the youngest to the eldest, have to be familiar with the roots,
manifestations and consequences of the crimes of genocide and the Holocaust
that were committed. It is particularly important to educate the youth, pupils
and students, on the subject, and this should be adequately adapted to suit
their age, based on carefully prepared curricula involving historians,
pedagogues, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and experts from
other fields. The established facts have to be presented without
embellishment. The education cannot be aimed at triggering negative
emotions, prejudice, revanchist sentiments and hatred, but at fostering
virtues humanism, tolerance and forgiveness, which will only be possible
if what happened in the past is said in time and regardless of how painful it
may be. Presenting the crimes of genocide committed in the region of the
former Yugoslavia to pupils and students has to be designed and organised in
cooperation with the Museum of Genocide Victims and other state authorities
and institutions. While developing the curricula, it is necessary to use the
experiences of the Yad Vashem Memorial Museum in Jerusalem, as well as
other related institutions in the USA, Israel and Europe that have a long and
well-developed educational tradition. The programme of presentation should
include: multi-media museum exhibitions, presentation of recorded verbal
testimonies, or having surviving witnesses as guest speakers, through
lectures at schools, the making of drawings, the writing of school papers and
high-school graduation papers, undergraduate dissertations, masters
dissertations and papers, PhD dissertations, showing documentaries and
feature films, visiting memorials to genocide victims, publishing brochures,
publications, books, studies, proceedings and documents, academic articles.
394
Sanja Savi 16
LEGISLATIVE ACTIVITY IN SERVICE

OF THE GENOCIDAL POLICY OF THE
(NDH)
Abstract: The Independent State of Croatia (hereinafter referred as to

NDH, the acronym in Serbian) was proclaimed on 10th April 1941.
During its existence, a number of laws were passed which were
essentially of ethnic, racial and religious base and, as such, directed
exclusively against the Serb, Jewish and Roma population. Hence the
genocidal Ustasha policy got its "legal" backing.
Key words: The Independent State of Croatia, legal acts.
1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
The Independent State of Croatia (hereinafter: the NDH, the acronym in
Serbian) was proclaimed on 10th April 1941. The proclamation was made by
Slavko Kvaternik, the deputy of the Ustasha leader Ante Paveli.17 After his
return to the country on 15th April, Ante Paveli immediately initiated the
formation of government in which he himself took part not just as its prime
minister but also as the foreign affairs minister.
Since the establishment of the NDH, its legislative organisation was
immediately dealt with. On one hand, the Ustasha authority accepted and,
with certain modifications, implemented some of the laws from Kingdom of
16
Senior Teacher Assistant, MA, School of Law, University of Eastern Sarajevo
17
Official Gazette No. 1, 11th April 1941.
395
Yugoslavia. Primarily, that was the Criminal Law of 27th January 1929.18
Apart from this law, adopted were the Act on Regular Court Judges of 8th
January 192919 and the Act on Organisation of Regular Courts of 18th January
1929.20
A variety of legal acts shows that the NDH legislation did not boil down only
to adoption. These were primarily legal provisions by which the Ustasha
authorities regulated different issues from the sphere of both private law and
public law. Orders and instructions were issued by ministries to enact the
foregoing provisions.
Having in mind that during the existence of the NDH genocide was
committed on its territory against the Serb, Jewish and Roma population, this
paper will present and analyse only the legal acts which served as the
legislative basis for this "crime of all crimes".
2. LEGAL ACTS AIMED TO PRESERVE AND

PROTECT THE NDH
One of the imperatives of Ustasha politics was certainly the preservation and
protection of the newly formed state. Accordingly, this issue was also legally
regulated. The set of laws passed on the date of the NDH proclamation also
contained a law requiring all civil servants to swear allegiance to the NDH
18
The amendments to the Criminal Lay of 27th January 1929 applied to the following:
"Wherever the Criminal Law or other act contain the terms' Kingdom of Yugoslavia', 'the
Kingdom', 'life prison', 'prison', 'captivity' and 'safety measures', these terms are replaced
by the following respective terms: 'Independent State of Croatia', 'the State', 'life dungeon',
'heavy dungeon', 'dungeon', and 'security measures". The following paragraphs are
completely changed: 36, 78, 91-101, 109, 114-115, 135, 191, 193, 307-309, 313, 405-406.
Added are the paragraphs 98, 109, 291, 399. Official Gazette No. 19, 5th May 1941,
Official Gazette No. 36, 26th May 1941, Official Gazette No. 74, 12th July 1941, Official
Gazette No. 111, 26th August 1941, Official Gazette No. 162, 25th October 1941.
19 Amendments to the Act on Regular Court Judges of 8th January 1929: Article 3, (1);
Article 8 (1) Official Gazette No. 36, 26th May 1941
20 Amendments to the Act on Organisation of Regular Courts of 18th January 1929: Article
6(2). Official Gazette No. 36, 26th May 1941
396
and its Leader within three days.21 The sanction for those who refused to do
so was termination of employment.
The legal act on citizenship made the difference between the state citizenship
and state membership. In the light of this legal act, a member of the state was
a person under protection of the NDH, while a citizen was a member of the
state of Aryan origin who by their conduct has proven that they did not work
against the liberating aspirations of the Croatian people and who are ready to
serve the Croatian people and the NDH. A citizen was also a holder of political
rights.
Those who moved out of the NDH or left it for racial or political reasons
would lose the NDH citizenship or membership. A decision on the nature of
the reason for moving out of the NDH territory was passed by the foreign
affairs minister. The decision also defined the date of losing the state
citizenship/membership. In case the wife or underage children of such
person stayed on the NDH territory, the minister was entitled to decide that
they also lose the NDH citizenship/membership.22
In order to protect the NDH, "Act on Protection of People and State" was
passed.23 In line with this act, every person who in any way threatens "the
honour and life interests of the Croat people or in any way threatens the
existence of the NDH or the state authority, or even just attempts to do so,
shall be considered as guilty of the crime of high treason." The sanction for
this was the death penalty, executed by a firing squad.24 The specificity of
this legal provision was its retrospective character as it could have been
applied to the period before it was passed. In regard to this legal act, it is
interesting that it did not define the expression honour and life interest of
the Croatian people or the threat to the existence of the NDH and its
21
Act on Swearing Allegiance to the NDH - Official Gazette No. 1, 11th April 1941.
22 The act on losing the state citizenship/membership of persons who moved out or left the
NDH territory - Official Gazette No. 178, 10th August 1942; The act on losing the state
citizenship/membership of persons who moved out or left the NDH territory - Official
Gazette No. 178, 10th August 1942; 180, 12th August 1942.
23 Official Gazette No. 4, 17th April 1941.
24 The Act on amendment to the Act on Protection of People and State - Official Gazette No.
22, 8th May 1941.
397
authority. It probably depended on an individual estimate and interpretation

of the person authorised for its implementation.
The following act, which was also aimed to protect the NDH and make it
ethnically clean Croatian and Catholic state was the "Act on sending
unwelcome and dangerous persons to forced detention in concentration and
working camps".25 According to this act, all persons who represented a
danger to public order and safety and who might threaten the peace and
safety of the Croatian people or legacy of the liberating struggle of the
Croatian Ustasha Movement could be interned to concentration or working
camps. The right to establish such camps was exercised by the Ustasha
Surveillance Service. Although it was prescribed that the internment in
camps could not be shorter than three months or longer than three years,
practically there were very few of those who survived the internment at all.
Also, it was prescribed that, prior to reaching a decision on sending to a camp,
an appropriate procedure would be conducted by the Ustasha police.
Moreover, there was no legal remedy for the decision.
Given the substance of the foregoing acts, we are free to claim that these were
the most dangerous legal acts enacted by Ustashas as these acts could easily
be implemented against all those who were not at the mercy of the new
authorities. The number of victims clearly shows that the acts were
predominantly implemented against the Serb, Jewish and Roma population.
However, it is impossible to comprehend how children could pose a threat to
the interests, peace and safety of the Croatian people as well as to the
existence of NDH, and be sent for punishment to camps and killed there.
3. RACE-BASED LEGISLATION
Among others, one of the basic characteristics of the Ustasha legislative
policy was the racial character of laws. Namely, having the Nazi laws which
were passed in 1935 as a role model, the NDH authorities, shortly after the
proclamation of the NDH, engaged in passing legal acts of the same nature.
25
Official Gazette No. 188, 26th May 1941.
398
Among first race-based laws was the Act on Racial Background.26 The act
made a distinction between persons of Aryan and non-Aryan origin, where
the NDH Ministry of Interior Affairs would make a decision on the origin in
case of suspicion about somebody's background, upon a proposal by the NDH
Racial-Political Committee.27 Thus, in the light of this act, a person of Aryan
origin was the one "who is descended from ancestors belonging to the
European racial community or those who are descended from the
descendants of that community outside Europe". The Aryan background was
proven by the baptismal certificate, birth certificate or marriage certificate
of ancestors of first and second generation. Members of the Islamic
community who were unable to acquire the aforesaid documents would
prove their Aryan origin by a written statement by two credible witnesses
who had known their ancestors.
According to this legal act, the following persons were considered Jews:
1. Persons descending from at least three Jewish descendants of the
second generation (grandparents and grandmothers). Grandparents or
grandmothers are considered Jewish if they belong to Jewish religion
or were born as such;
2. Persons with two Jewish descendants of the second generation in the
following cases:
a) if they were of the Jewish religion on 10th April 1941 or if they
converted to Judaism afterwards,
b) if their spouse is Jewish as outlined in paragraph 1,
c) if, after the entry of this Act into force, they married a person who
has two or more Jewish ancestors of the second generation or are
descendants of such a marriage,
d) if they are illegitimate children of a Jew as outlined in paragraph 1,
born after 31st January 1942,
26

27 The establishment of the Racial-Political Committee was defined by paragraph 5 of the
Act on Racial Background. The Act on Authorisation for Solution of Jewish Issue of 17th
January 1942 abolished the Committee and its authority was passed onto the Ministry of
Interior. Official Gazette No. 15, 19th January 1942.
399
e) if the Ministry of Interior Affairs decides, upon a substantiated

proposal by the Racial-Political Committee, that they are Jewish;
3. Persons born outside the NDH territory to parents who are not from
the NDH, provided they were Jewish on 10th April 1941 or have at least
two Jewish descendants of second generation, or are considered Jewish
as defined by laws of their country of origin;
4. Persons who, after the entry of this Act into force, entered into illegal
marriage by breaching the Act on Protection of Aryan Blood, or their
descendants;
5. Persons who are illegitimate children of Jewish women as outlined
in paragraph 1.
The foregoing act also defined the persons who were considered Roma. A
person was considered a Roma if they had two or more Roma ancestors of
the second generation.
Although the legal act clearly defined the persons entitled to the Aryan
origin, there was the possibility that all rights enjoyed by such persons would
be granted to those who were not entitled to them. Namely, in line with
paragraph 6 of the Act, the head of state was entitled to acknowledge these
rights to persons who, before 10th April 1941, deserved some honours for the
Croatian people or their liberation, as well as their spouses (provided the
marriage was entered into prior to the entry of this Act into force) and
descendants.
Based on paragraph 7 of the Act,28 the NDH Minister of Interior Andrija
Artukovi issued the Decree on Determination of Racial Background of Civil
and Self-Government Servants and Holders of Academic Titles.29 According
to the Decree, the foregoing servants had to, within 14 days as of its entry
into force, deliver a statement of their racial background as well as of their
spouses. This was in force even if the spouse had died or if they were
divorced. Those who did not submit the statement within the deadline or
those who would provide incorrect information in the statement would be
sentenced to at least three months in prison. Besides, civil servants were
28
"The implementation of this decree is passed onto the Minister of Interior" - the legal act
on racial background, paragraph 7.
29 Official Gazette No. 44, 5th June 1941.
400
punished by losing their job, whereas holders of academic titles would lose
the right to the title.
All statements were submitted to the Ministry of Interior Affairs and
forwarded to the Racial-Political Committee for analysis. In cases when it was
not possible to determine the racial background based on the statement, this
person was ordered to provide necessary documents to prove their origin.
The legal act on protection of Aryan blood and honour of Croatian people30
prohibited marriage between Jews and other people of non-Aryan origin
with those of Aryan origin. Besides, there were cases when, to enter a
marriage, a special permission was needed issued by the Ministry of Interior
Affairs upon proposal by the Racial-Political Committee:
"for a marriage between a person with two Jewish ancestors of the second
generation and a person with one ancestor of European Aryan origin of the
second generation, or a person of Aryan origin;
2. for a marriage between a person with ancestors of other non-European
races and a person of the same background, or a person with one or two
Jewish ancestors of the second generation or one Roma ancestor of the 2nd
generation, or a person of Aryan origin;
3. for a marriage between a holder of citizenship and a holder of state
membership unless forbidden pursuant to paragraph 1."
How seriously the Ustasha authorities took the racial issue is also noticeable
through the prohibition of sexual intercourse between non-Aryan males and
Aryan women in order to preserve racial purity. A man who had breached
this provision was considered to have committed "the crime of racial
defilement" and was sentenced to prison or dungeon. However, in case of a
rape there was the possibility of death penalty. Besides, it was forbidden for
Aryan women under the age of 45 to hire non-Aryans in their homes. This
issue was regulated in detail in line with paragraph 6 by the Minister of
Interior affairs through a relevant order.31 The purpose of the aforesaid order
30

The Order on prohibition of females in non-Aryan households - Official Gazette No. 20,
6th May 1941.
31
401
was probably the prevention of potential marital or non-marital relationships

between members of the two communities (t/n: non-Aryan and Aryan).
4. LAWS IN SERVICE OF CATHOLICISM

The proselyte character of the Catholic Church was undoubtedly pronounced
during the existence of NDH. While on one hand the Ustasha government
worked in favour of Catholicism, on the other hand it strived to uproot
everything that was related with the Serbian Orthodoxy in any way.
The legal act on conversion to another religion32envisaged that a person who
wished to convert should submit an appropriate application to the authorised
administrative authority of the first degree to get a relevant written
confirmation. The next step was conforming to the rules of the new religion.
The aforesaid act was amended on 4th November 1941: For conversion of
persons under the age of 18 it is only necessary to have their mother's consent
if the father is absent or dead, whereas permission by the higher authority is
unnecessary.33
The method of conversion to another religion was regulated in more detail
by the Minister of Education Mile Budak's act "Instructions for Conversion
to Another Religion".34 Besides, he issued an order on 18th July 1941 to
change the term the "Serbian-Orthodox religion" into the "Greek-Eastern
religion".35
An order by the Poega Ustasha Headquarters of 12th May 1941 demanded
that the Orthodox Serbs, under the threat of being arrested and most severely
punished, must wear a white ribbon on their left arm with the Latin word
"ORTHODOX". Also, by the legal act of 4th December 1941, Ante Paveli
abolished the Julian calendar and prescribed that all holidays must be
celebrated according to the Gregorian calendar. 36
32
Official Gazette No. 19, 5th May 1941.

Official Gazette No. 170, 5th November 1941.
34 Official Gazette No. 37, 27th May 1941.
35 Official Gazette No. 80, 19th July 1941.
36 NDH Official Gazette, 4th December 1941.
33
402
5. "LEGAL" PLUNDER OF PROPERTY

During the existence of the Ustasha state of NDH, a number of provisions
were passed to enable the Ustasha authorities to "legally" plunder primarily
Jewish, and then Serbian property.
As for the Jewish property, the first acts to be passed were the "Act on
Prevention of Concealing of Jewish Property" and the "Act on Obligatory
Registration of Property of Jews and Jewish Companies".37 Namely, the Jews
were in obligation to, within 20 days from the commencement of the
foregoing acts, to declare their property, even the one confiscated in the
period from 10th February 1941 to the commencement of the given act. The
same application was to be submitted by persons of the Aryan origin married
to Jews. Also, within the same time frame, the property of Jewish companies
had to be declared as well as the information on their owners. Those who
disregarded the stated obligation were sentenced to heavy dungeon for the
period 1 - 10 years and confiscation of the property. For every confiscation
of Jewish property in excess of normal household needs as well as
confiscation of property of Jewish companies in excess of regular business
operations, permission issued by the NDH Ministry of National Economy was
necessary. Otherwise, the sanction was confiscation of property as well as
responsibility in line with the aforesaid act on protection of people and state.
If somebody concealed Jewish property or the signboard of a Jewish
company, they were sentenced to 1-5 years in prison and confiscation of the
property.
The next step was passing the Act on Nationalisation of Jewish Property and
Companies,38 by which the property of every Jewish person or company
could be nationalised with or without any compensation, to the benefit of the
NDH. A year after the adoption of this act, a new act on nationalisation of
Jewish property was passed.39 Unlike the previous act, which referred to the
possible nationalisation of Jewish property, this act went a step further,
prescribing that all property which belonged or had belonged to Jews became
37
Official Gazette No. 44, 5th June 1941.

38 Official Gazette No. 149, 10th October 1941.
39 Official Gazette No. 246, 30th October 1942.
403
the property of the NDH. The foregoing act was enacted retrospectively and
referred to the period from 10th February 1941.
The same principle was applied in confiscating the property of Serbian
companies and institutions.40 Besides, a separate "Act on the Confiscation of
Property of Those who Violate Public Safety and Order" was passed.41 This
referred to those who independently or in cooperation with an armed group
had committed a crime against the state or constitutional organisation of the
NDH.
CONCLUSION
During the existence of the NDH, the Ustasha authorities passed a number of
legal acts to regulate different issues within the private law and public law.
Having in mind that the Ustasha policy in itself had the ethnic, racial and
religious component, some of these acts were directed exlusively against the
Serb, Jewish and Roma population. As their execution implied the violation
of the most basic human rights, it can be concluded that the Ustasha authority
legalised the genocidal NDH policy through legal acts.
40 The Act on Confiscation of Property of Serb Institutes and Institutions in Hrvatski

Karlovci - NDH Official Gazette No. 132, 20th September 1941.
41 NDH Official Gazette No. 213, 30th December 1941.
404
Tanja Tulekovi 1
NEW RESEARCH FINDINGS ON THE

PERSECUTION IN THE KOZARA
REGION 2 UNDER THE RULE OF
MUNICIPALITIES OF KOZARSKA DUBICA,

GRADIKA, AND KOSTAJNICA
While we were riding to Nova Gradina, still under the impression of
the presentation by Tanja Tulekovi, a Donja Gradina curator from Kozarska Dubica, at the Fifth International Conference on Jasenovac,
Wanda Schindley, a U.S. historian, asked Danilo Trbojevi, a young sociologist, and myself: Where exactly is the village whose great suffering was so vividly presented at the Conference?
We were not able to give an answer. However, Professor Srboljub ivanovi, a London anthropologist and paleopathologist, Chair of the
International Commission for the Truth on Jasenovac, joined the conversation: I know where Meea is located. Well pass through it on
our way to Donja Gradina. Ill tell you when we get close.
Senior curator, Public institution Donja Gradina memorial site
The Kozara region covers 2,500 square km delineated with the Sava, Una, Sana, and
Vrbas Rivers. It encompasses the cities of Prijedor, Novi Grad, Kostajnica, Kozarska Dubica
and Gradika, and around 300 villages.
405
As we approached a green hill, before the house roofs came into sight,
the Academician ivanovi stood up and shouted: There it is! Meea...3
The collection of witness accounts gathered jointly with the team of the
Washington Memorial Museum in the Municipality of Kozarska Dubica (the
villages of Meea, Demirovac and Drakseni) in 2008 resulted in a whole
new perception of the terror period under the rule of the NDH (Independent
State of Croatia). The village of Meea was the focus of my research, as a
settlement most hit by the suffering of the local population. It helped save
from oblivion 80 forgotten victims, i.e., victims of the Ustasha genocide
whose names had previously not been officially listed.4 I presented a paper
on this topic at the Fifth International Conference on Jasenovac, held in Banjaluka, on 24th and 25th 2011.5 The paper grew into a book titled Knjiga iz
tiine: Ustaki zloin genocida u selu Meea, 1941-1945 [A Book Sprung
from Silence: The Ustasha Crime of Genocide in the Village of Meea, 19411945], published in 2012.
The preface was written by Salamon Jazbec and
the book was reviewed by Simo Brdar and Pavel
Vjaceslavovich Tihomirov.
The method of collecting witness accounts
proved to be a valuable tool during the
investigation into the Meea events (19411945). The standards of this method have been
devised by many scientific disciplines such as sociology, psychology, history, etc. Furthermore,
the method is used by all institutions collecting
3 Tanja Tulekovi, Knjiga iz tiine: Ustaki zloin genocida u selu Meea, 1941-1945, Jagodina, 2012, p. 5.
4 The referenced sources are rtve rata 1941-1945 (1965),
1941-1945 (2007), and Antun Mileti,
1941-1945, 2011.
5 , 2008. , , , 2011, pp. 263-273.
406
the date related to the Holocaust and genocide against the Serbian people. The
witnesses I spoke to provided valuable information on the events under NDH
rule. Today, only few witnesses are still alive so gathering as much audio and
video material as possible is more than welcome.
Relevant data were also collected during the archive research and
investigation of the death records at the local registry. Upon the approval by
the local authorities, I examined the death records for the municipalities of
Kozarska Dubica, Gradika, and Kostajnica. Furthermore, my cooperation
with the local SUBNOR organisation was beneficial as they have carefully
preserved valuable victim records.
After visiting the village of Meea and seeing the records of the genocide
victims were incomplete, I widened my investigation to include other villages
in the Municipality of Kozarska Dubica and the town itself in 2011. In 2012,
I extended my research to the Municipalities of Gradika and Kostajnica and
collected new information. My plans for 2014 are to continue my
investigation in the Municipalities of Novi Grad and Prijedor so as to
complete my work. Only after that will I publish the new findings on the
persecutions in the region of the Kozara Mountain.
***
On 10th April 1941, the quisling Independent State of Croatia was proclaimed.
It covered an area of 102,000 square km and had a population of 6,300,000
people. The Serbian population numbered 1, 925, 000 people, which was around one-third of the total population of the NDH, living on 60-75 of its total
territory.6 Decrees were adopted to make the ethnic cleansing of Croatia legitimate and create an ethnically pure state. One of the decrees concerned
the sending of inadequate and dangerous people to do forced labour at concentration and labour camps. The goal was to form camps to liquidate Serbs
as an entity in the whole of the NDH, including the Jews and Roma who opposed the existance of the Ustasha state, said Ljubo Milo, commander of the
Jasenovac concentration camp.
Dragoje Luki, Bili su samo deca, Beograd, 2000, p. 6.
407
The scheme to annihilate the Serbs, Jews, and Roma was premediated and
elaborate.
***
The machinery of death of the NDH enforced its deadly legislation for four
years. The Serbs, Jews, and Roma had been annihilated in a most horrifying
manner. They showed no mercy. The elderly, women, children... there was
no mercy, for thousands of them! In 1946, the State Commission to
Investigate the Crimes of the Nazis and Their Allies ascertained the number
of war victims at 505,182. The 1941-1945 War Crime Victim List assembled
in 1964 gave the figure of 597, 323 people. According to the database of the
Museum of Genocide Victims, the 1941-1945 War Victims, i.e., the analysis
the Museum carried out in September 2008, the number was 660, 002 victims.
Thus, the research is still incomplete and unfinished.
***
We will now provide a statistical overview of the data collected during my
research on the Kozara region, with each municipality presented separately.
NEW FINDINGS
KOZARSKA DUBICA (previously Bosanska Dubica)
The names of another 252 victims of the Ustasha crimes of genocide have
been collected based on the field and archive investigation and the
testimonies given by the witnesses from those infamous times. This means
that the total victim count is now 3.64 higher in comparison with the
previous findings. Of the total of 252 victims,
408
7
134
W8
75
C9
43
KOSTAJNICA (previously Bosanska Kostajnica)

The names of another 18 victims of the Ustasha crimes of genocide have been
collected based on the field and archive investigation and the testimonies given by the witnesses from those infamous times. This means that the total
victim count is now 4.49 higher in comparison with the previous findings.
Of the total of 18 victims,
M
16
W
2
C
0
GRADIKA (previously Bosanska Gradika)

The names of another 162 victims of the Ustasha crimes of genocide have
been collected based on the field and archive investigation and the
testimonies given by the witnesses from those infamous times. This means
that the total victim count is now 1.56 higher in comparison with the
previous findings. Of the total of 162 victims,
M
95
W
59
Most of the victims were men, followed by women and children.

Almost all of the victims were Serbian. In Kozarska Dubica, we discovered
the names of 160 new Serbian victims, 1 Croat and 1 Muslim. In Gradika, we
discovered 250 Serbian victims, 1 Croat, and 1 Muslim. In Kostajnica, there
were 18 Serbian victims.
The new findings confirm that the Municiplaity of Kozarska Dubica was the
most badly hit by the genocide in the 1941-1945 period. The majority of
victims were killed in 1942.
1941
1942
1943
1944
men
W women
9 C children
8
409
1945
Bos.Dubica
Bos.Gradika
Bos.Kostajnica
1
1
1
227
156
17
15
3
5
2
***
The list of the Ustasha genocide victims is still not final. In order to make it
complete, we need to focus on small territorial units. Such an approach is
most likely to provide accurate information about the persecution specific
areas and their populations. Also, it will not be possible to manipulate or
revise such data. It is certainly a complex undertaking and will demand a
great number of researchers but it is not impossible. That has been proven
by the most recent investigation. The name of every victim deserves to be
listed, which is definitely our duty!
Although the use of statistical methods in historiography may seem
dehumanising, we should bear it in mind that each figure represents a person,
with his or her intimate moments, difficulties and joy, a past and a future. In
the case of children victims, those future plans are priceless, and the loss must
be assumed to have affected the persons family as much as the nation he or
she belonged to.10
Translated by Nevena Vuen, M.A.
Proofread by Svetlana Miti, M.A.
10
, 1941-1945.
1964. , , ,
, 2011, pp. 25-35.
410
Draga Mastilovi
MASSACRES OF THE SERBS IN

SREBRENICA IN THE SECOND
WORLD WAR
According to the 1931 census, Srebrenica County had 35,210 inhabitants, of

whom 17,766 were Orthodox Serbs, 17,332 Muslims and 103 Catholics.1
Therefore, Orthodox Serbs constituted the majority, more precisely, 50.54
of the total population, Muslims 49.22 , whereas the percentage of the Catholics was negligible. Srebrenica County was divided in the municipalities of
Fakovi (3308 Serbs and 1520 Muslims), Kravica (3308 Serbs and 2230 Muslims), Skelani (3784 Serbs and 2112 Muslims), Bratunac (2882 Serbs and 3423
Muslims), Osatica (1582 Serbs and 2925 Muslims), and Srebrenica (2808
Serbs and 5122 Muslims).2
The first units of the German army entered the area of Srebrenica in midApril 1941 and took control of it. Shortly after them, the first detachment of
the Home Guard came to Srebrenica, under the command of Captain
Slijepevi, a former Yugoslav army officer who had previously served in the
town of Bjelovar. The Muslim population in Srebrenica gave a ceremonial
welcome to the Home Guard, and a welcome speech was delivered by a local
mullah, who, among other things, said Muslims groaned under the regime
Definitivni rezultati popisa stanovnitva od 31. marta 1931. godine, Vol. II, Beograd, 1938,
p. 6.
2
Ibid., p. 41.
411
in Yugoslavia for 20 years, but now it was time for them to be free again.3
The official welcome was attended by the former deputy Ismet Bektaevi.
An official welcome was staged for the Croatian Army in the Municipality of
Bratunac, and the then Mayor Jusuf Varleevi delivered a speech.4 For a
short period of time, the Croatian authorities took power throughout
Srebrenica County; since there were only about a hundred of Croats, the new
government relied on the local Muslims.
Ibrahim Lakii was appointed Prefect of Srebrenica County, with Sakib
Uzunovi as his deputy. In the Municipality of Skelani, Avdo Deli was
appointed Mayor, with Huso Junuzagi as Deputy Mayor.5 Redo Halilovi
became Mayor of the Municipality of Fakovi,6 and Hasan Hasanovi became
the first Mayor of the Municipality of Osatica after the Croatian authorities
took power.7
Immediately upon the arrival of the Home Guard, an Ustasha camp led by
camp commander Muhamed ozi was formed. Apart from him, Jasar
Ibrahimovi, Safet Abdurahmanovi and others became members of the
Ustasha camp.8 After that, the Ustashas distributed arms to the Muslim
population, mostly to younger people, and formed the Ustasha-Muslim
militia. Meho Temin, also called Mostarac [a man from Mostar, t/n], became
the commander of the Ustasha municipal camp in Bratunac, and the members
of the camp were: Ethem Efendi, Osman Verlaevi, Resko Efendi, Osman
ogaz and others.9 In the Municipality of Skelani, Omer Mustafi became
commander of the municipal Ustasha garrison, with Kadrija Softi and Nezir
Bosnia and Herzegovina Archives (hereinafter: AB&H), Collection: State Commission to

Investigate the Crimes of Nazis and Their Allies (hereinafter: ZKUZ), box 2, envelope 40,
item 6.
4 Ibid.
5 AB&H, ZKUZ, box 204, item 56396.
412
Ti as his closest associates.10 In the same way, the Ustasha-Muslim militia

was formed in all other municipalities of Srebrenica County.
Instantly after the establishment of the Croatian authorities in Srebrenica,
torture of the Serbian population began. The first targets were the Serbian
Orthodox Church and its clergy, followed by the most reputable Serbs. All
Orthodox Christian churches in Srebrenica County were closed, and all
activities of Serbian priests prohibited. The Parish House in Srebrenica was
converted to the Ustasha Club, and during the first days of the rule of the
NDH, the Ustashas ordered the Serbs from Srebrenica to demolish the
memorial commemorating a World War I hero, Major Kosta Todorovi. Even
if church service had not been prohibited, soon there would have been no one
to perform it, as the new government zealously carried out orders to arrest
all Orthodox priests and send them to concentration camps or to exile them
to Serbia. Thus, for instance, on 11 May 1941, Dragoljub Jolovi, a priest in
Srebrenica, received a written order from the Croatian authority from
Srebrenica to move to Serbia within three days.11 Fortunately, Jolovi
immediately obeyed the order and headed for Serbia, though robbed and
without property, but alive. Other priests from Bishops Governorship of
Vlasenica and Srebrenica were not that fortunate; they were imprisoned,
tortured and taken to the Caprag camp, with some of the priests killed in the
most horrible ways. Priest Blagoje uri managed to escape to Serbia after
being imprisoned and tortured, whereas Srbislav Blai, a priest from the
Municipality of Kravica, and Marko Kati, a priest from the Municipality of
Fakovi, were arrested on 12 July, taken to the Caprag camp, and later
banished to Serbia. In late July 1941, after sadistic torture, the parish priest
of Jeremii Drago Miskijevi was killed. Srbislav Blai saw the mutilated
corpse of the priest Miskijevi with his own eyes and said: I saw the corpse
of the late priest Miskijevi. It was dreadful. His eyes had been gouged out,
his ears cut off, and the skin of his back flayed.12 Apart from priest
Miskijevi, other priests from the Bishops Governorship of Vlasenica and
10
AB&H, ZKUZ, box 204, item 56396.

11
413
Srebrenica that were killed in the first months of the reign of the NDH were:
head-priest Duan Bobar, Milo Savi, Ljubomir Jaki and Marko Savi.
Aside from the clergy, the Serbian intelligentsia and prominent farmers
came under the attack of the new Croatian authorities. They were the first to
be arrested and, after being tortured and abused, were held as hostages and
then released after the ransom, then imprisoned again and later killed or
taken to the Caprag camp. That exactly is stated in a document of the State
Commission for Investigating the Crimes of Nazis and Their Allies: As soon
as the Muslims formed the Ustasha militia and armed themselves, they began
persecuting the Serbs. Service in the Orthodox Christian Church was
prohibited, along with all other ecclesiastical activities. The arrests of
hostages began, which culminated before St. Vitus Day. On the night before
St. Vitus Day, the Ustashas captivated Serbian students and took them to
Sarajevo: it is not clear what happened to them. Among the arrested was the
theologian Mito Blai. The Ustashas arrested the Serbs, torturing them
harshly in prisons and releasing them after getting ransom. The Ustashas
often entered villages, arresting prominent Serbs and supposedly detaining
them as hostages, whereas at night they would take them out of goal and kill
them. In the village of Drinjaa, seat of a Croatian company, the Ustashas
slaughtered 8 distinguished Serbs from the village and surrounding area over
a barrel, in the storeroom of an agricultural cooperative.13 The
aforementioned priest, Srboljub Blaevi, who managed to escape from the
Ustasha prison, stated the following: I watched their clotted blood in the
barrel and their common tomb, from which bones protruded, still containing
some flesh on them.14
Apart from abusing adult men, the very first days after the establishment of
the Croatian authorities in Srebrenica began the molestation of children in
Serbian villages and the massive looting of Serbian property. These activities
were mostly performed by the notorious Muslim militia. A document from
the State Commission describes the events as follows: They would break into
the Serbian houses under the pretext of searching for weapons and the
Chetniks, but they would carry away all items of value: money, rings,
13
14

414
watches, clothes, shoes, and food, in a word, everything they liked. The
Ustashas also raped Serbian women and girls, especially in the villages.
Ustasha Ibro Paali and miller Jaar, both from Srebrenica, were well
known for these misdeeds.15 The looting was followed by cruel and brutal
murders, even of old people and women. Thus, for instance, by early August
1941, the notorious unit of the Muslim militia formed and led by Jaar
Ibrahimovi from the locality of Pusmolii killed around 30 Serbs in the
village of Podravnje, among whom there were many old people, women and
children. The Ustashas captured victims in their homes or intercepted them
on roads. According to witness accounts, the key motive for murders was the
robbery of property. The terror of the Ustashas in Srebrenica County
reached its peak the night before St. Vitus Day 1941, when a great number
of the Serbs were arrested.16 According to the documents of the State
Commission for Investigating the Crimes of Nazis and Their Allies, 110 Serbs
were killed in Srebrenica County during July and August 1941.17 The scariest
place of execution of Serbs in eastern Bosnia, and thus in Srebrenica, was the
cooperative warehouse in the village of Drinjaa. When the insurgents
entered Drinjaa on 14 August, they eyewitnessed a horrible scene, which
the commander of insurgents, Pero ukanovi, described as follows: The
entire room, including the ceiling, was spattered with human blood. In the
corner of the warehouse stood a rather large oak barrel, which was open and
contained about 150 liters of human blood. The victims were detained in the
large rooms of the attic of the cooperative warehouse. From that place, they
were taken to a special empty room, where they were undressed and then
taken downstairs and slaughtered over the barrel. Some victims were
tortured by the executioners beyond belief. Thus, the victims had their
hands, feet or other parts of the body chopped off, I guess to stuff the barrel,
because they were drunkenly talking about sending a present to their leader
Ante Paveli in Zagreb.18 Apart from the warehouse, the insurgents found
the mass graves with more than 100 corpses.
15

17 AB&H, ZKUZ, box 2, item 53
18 Zdravko Antoni (ed.), Zapisi Pere ukanovia Ustanak na Drini, Beograd, 1994, p. 66.
16
415
More crimes against the Serbian people were stopped by the uprising, which
broke out in Srebrenica County on 5 August 1941. In just two months of
fighting, the Serbian insurgents regained Vlasenica, Srebrenica, Zvornik and
Kladanj County.19 However, this situation did not last long. In January 1942,
eastern Bosna was swept by a German-Home Guard-Ustasha punitive
expedition, which brought new suffering to the population, but all this was a
prelude to premeditated mass slaughters that soon began. Namely, for the
needs of the Eastern Front, the Germans had to withdraw the 342nd Division;
instead of it, the infamous Black Legion under the command of Jure
Franceti occupied the territory, and in cooperation with some German units,
started a new offensive in Eastern Bosnia. The insurgents, ideologically split
into the Chetniks and the Partisans and warring against each other, were not
able to put up joint resistance to the new Ustasha offensive. After the clash
with the Chetniks and on the order of Josip Broz, the Partisan Proletarian
Brigades were withdrawn from Eastern Bosnia, and the Chetniks, disoriented
first by the German-Ustasha and then the Partisans actions against them,
19
Aware of the bleak prospects awaiting them under the patronage of the new Croatian
authorities, the Serbs of Srebrenica began abandoning their homes and hiding in the woods
as early as June. With the Ustasha maltreatment intensifying, more and more Serbs took
refuge in the woods, where they formed the first rebel units. A peasant from the village of
Kravica near Bratunac called Petar ukanovi proved the most prominent figure and organiser of the uprising of the Serbs from Srebrenica County; he was a Salonika volunteer and
holder of several decorations, one of which was the Order of the Star of Karaore with
Swords. He was also arrested by the Ustashas in late June and detained in the Ustasha prison in Drinjaa, but during the night between 6th and 7th July 1941, he escaped from prison
and fled to the woods. Afterwards, he began gathering people in the villages of Kravica
Municipality and posting village guards, followed by an open rebellion against the Ustasha
terror in Srebrenica County, launched on 5th August 1941. In the meantime, incursions
were made by the highlander rebel unit headed by Aim Babi from the village of Kusaa
near Han Pijesak, who liberated Han Pijesak as early as 8th August, and then started collaboration with the rebels from Mount Romania, with the intention of liberating Vlasenica.
By mid-August, the rebels had liberated Han Pijesak and Vlasenica, and ukanovi and his
rebels defeated substantial Home Guard forces in Konjevi Polje after the fights for Vlasenica, and liberated Nova Kasaba, and also Drinjaa the next day, 15th August. Major Jezdimir Dangi arrived in Drinjaa around then and took command over the rebel forces in Eastern Bosnia. Srebrenica was liberated on 18th August, and the day after Bratunac was also
free of the Ustasha presence. (Zapisi Pere ukanovia Ustanak na Drini, p. 20; Zdravko
Antoni, Ustanak u istonoj i centralnoj Bosni 1941, Tuzla, 1983, p. 165).
416
were unable to provide effective resistance.20 Francetis Ustasha reached the

area of Srebrenica County in early April and within a month committed a
terrible massacre of the innocent Serbian population, most of whom were the
elderly, women and children. The problem was that a great number of the
Serbian population, mostly children from the area of Romanija and Rogatica,
Vlasenica and Kladanj County, were fleeing in front of the Ustasha. Together
with the population of Srebrenica County, they were trying to cross the Drina
River, and thus find salvation in Serbia. However, while crossing the Drina
River, many of them were caught by the Ustashas, who slaughtered everyone
they seized. Witnesses described horrible scenes that took place on the bank
of the Drina River. Stabbed and mutilated victims were thrown into the
river, which was full of corpses, reads a document of the State Commission
for Investigating the Crimes of Nazis and Their Allies. The exact number of
the Serbian population killed on the banks of the Drina River and during
April and May 1942 was never determined, but the estimates range from
4,000 to 6,000.
As soon as Francetis Ustashas appeared, the units of the Muslim militia
were activated in Srebrenica County. So, the units led by Meho Arpadi and
Osman Verlaevi21 participated in the massacre of the Serbian children on
the banks of the Drina River. In this massacre, Francetis legion was led by
Josip Tomi, Francetis deputy, Rafael Boban, Ante ianovi, an migr
Ustasha, Karlo Siber and Ante Caratan. The few Serbian soldiers tried to slow
down the advancement of the Ustashas and to protect the crossings over the
Drina River. It should be noted that they were assisted by Nedis border
guards, as well as peasant from the villages of Serbia along the border, who
protected the people crossing the river with their machine-guns from the
right bank of the Drina River. Thus, for instance, villager Ljubo Jovi from
the village of Podnemi managed to protect a lot of people from the Ustasha
dagger at a crossing near the village of Bjelovac, defending them with a
machine gun he had taken during the April War.22 According to the
20
Zdravko Antoni, Zloini nad Srbima i Jevrejima u Istonoj Bosni 1941-1942, in: Genocid nad Srbima u II svjetskom ratu, Proceedings of the International Conterence of the
SANU held 23rd-25th October 1991, Belgrade, 1995, p. 423.

22 Zapisi Pere ukanovia Ustanak na Drini, p. 179.
417
testimony of Pero ukanovi, in April 1942, around 45,000 of Serbian

children from Srebrenica, Kladanj and Zvronik County managed to cross the
Drina Rivar and reach the grounds of Serbia.23 According to some witnesses,
the killings at the crossing in Skelani were terminated upon an effective
intervention of German soldiers, who, together with Nedis soldiers, crossed
to the left bank of the Drina River to see what was happening. Under the
order and supervision of the German officers, two barges transported
Serbian, women, children and elderly at Skelani all night, while the Ustashas
took 56 men and brought them to Fakovi, where they were killed and buried
in several mass graves, whereas a second group, with 58 men, was taken to
Skelani, where they were slaughtered at the local military barracks and their
bodies thrown into the Drina River.24 As claimed by some witnesses, the
German officers who were watching the massacre on the left side of the Drina
River fired at the Ustashas upon seeing the Ustashas killing children with
bayonets and throwing their bodies into the river. On that occasion, a German
soldier killed an Ustasha across the river.25 A lot of children did not manage
to reach the Drina River as the Ustashas caught up with them, killing them
mercilessly. Thus, for example, in the village of Fakovi, the Ustasha
imprisoned over 200 people in a tavern, whom they captured between the
Drina River and Fakovi, and the same night they killed them brutally. The
Ustashas slaughtered fifty-six of them in front of the house of the priest in
Fakovi, and threw their bodies into the Drina River. With their machine
guns, the Ustashas killed the remaining 179 victims and buried them in two
previously prepared pits in Fakovi.26
During Francetis raid on Eastern Bosnia, which took place in the spring of
1942, a great number of the Serbian population from Srebrenica County was
killed, mostly those who did not mange to escape across the Drina River or
those who did not want to flee at all, and thus stayed in their homes, believing
nothing would happen to them, for surely they had done nothing wrong.
Those people were usually slaughtered at their homes.27 The Ustashas
23
Ibid., p. 180.
24
418
entered Srebrenica County on 10 April 1942, looting all Serbian houses and
killing the people. At the time, Aleksa Bakoti and his wife Julka, oka Tomi
and others were slain at their homes, but no mass slaughter occurred in the
town of Srebrenica at that time.28 In the villages of the Municipality of
Skelani, a large number of people were slaughtered in their homes or on the
banks of the Drina River, and some were taken to the Ustasha camp in
Skelani, where they were brutally tortured. For them, the Ustashas prepared
special and thitherto unheard of methods of torture. Namely, the prisoners
were forced to eat a quarter pound of salt every day, all in order to enable the
Ustahas to easily flay strips of skin off their heads and necks. Danilo
Marinkovi was an eyewitness of these atrocities, who himself had to eat
three pounds of salt for several days, but managed to escape from the torture
chambers in Skelani.29 Twenty-four Serbs from the village of Kostolomac
alone were killed either in the village or on the bank of the Drina River, along
with another 13 from the village of Boii, 5 from the village of Bujakovi,
and so on.30 While passing through the village of Breane, the Ustashas took
Mirko Marjanovi and Despot Balakovi from the village of Breani, and
Jovan Gligi from Zvornik as their guides, then they butchered them,
stripped the skin off their faces and left their mutilated and disfigured bodies
on the road.31 Only some women, elderly and children were left in the village
of Breani, and upon the third day of the departure of Francetis legions,
the village of Breani were stormed by the armed Muslims from the
surrounding villages near Srebrenica, ravaging all the houses in the village
Breani, driving cattle off, taking food, clothes and all farming equipment.
The Serbs had to watch calmly the raiders taking away their propriety, for
they did not dare to confront them, because some Ustashas were with the
Muslims. In the village, these robbers killed three old men and a boy of 14.32
Advancing along the Bijelo Polje Buje line, on 3 May 1942, the Black
Legion opened mortar and machine-gun fire on the villages of Podravno and
Pale, which prompted people to start fleeing towards the Drina River.
28

32 Ibid.
29
419
However, the Ustashas intercepted a large number of refugees, mostly

women and children, who were not able to move fast and were massacred.
Only in one place called iroki Do, in the village of Podravno, 40 men, women
and children were killed at once.33 In the villages of Kravica, a horrible
massacre of Serbs occurred in April and early May in 1942. In the village of
Banjevii, over 100 children from various counties, who had tried to escape
terror, were killed with machine-guns. There were about 50 men, women
and children from the village of Banjevi.34 Twenty men, women and
children from the village of Konjevii, Srebrenica County, were killed
there.35 In the village of Lipenovii, the Ustashas killed every single Serb they
found at home. Nineteen men, women and children were killed. In the village
of Mratinici, 24 Serbs were killed. The most terrifying massacre in the
Municipality of Kravica befell the village of Jeestica, of which the
documents of the State Commission say the following: In the village of
Jeetica, the Ustashas committed the biggest massacre, in terms of the
number of victims. During the day, the Ustashas took people from the village,
and at night they brought them to the stream and killed them. The victims
were previously tortured. They slashed womens breast and other parts of
mens bodies, slaying them afterwards. The Ustashas slaughtered the people
of this village on several occasions, always taking them to various locations
by the stream, where they committed their atrocities. In one such massacre,
a 75-year-old woman was stabbed by the Ustashas and rolled into the river;
incidentally, she remained alive for the next 24 hours, during which she
witnessed the massacre and could describe it afterwards. In this village, the
slaughter was done by the local Ustashas, the so-called unjarska Legion, led
by Mustafa and Atif Ademovi from the village of unjari.36 In the village
of Brana Bai, the Ustashas killed 15 people at their homes, along with 12 in
the village of Opravdii, and 5 in the village of iljkovii.37 In the villages of
Lipovac, Pale and Slatina, Srebrenica Municipality, around 50 Serbs were
33

37 Ibid.
34
420
murdered, and the villages thoroughly looted and burned.38 In the villages of
the Local Peoples Committee in Toplica, which belonged to the Municipality
of Osatica before the war, 85 men, women and children were slaughtered.39
The family of ivko Miloevi from the village of Beirovii, the Municipality
of Osatica, were killed at their doorstep by their neighbours Redo Salki and
air Mehanovi, and by Hasan Piti from the Municipality of Rogatica.40
Hasan Mehi, head of the village of Beirovii, and Raid Opi, from the same
village, took the thirty-three-year-old ivojin Radoji from the village of
Barbiii and killed him after ten days of horrible torture, and then returned
to the house of his seriously ill father and killed him too.41 Milan Lazi from
the village of Gladovii, Municipality of Osatica, and his two relatives Milovan
and Obrad Veselinovi were killed by their neighbours from Osatica,
Beirovii and Sulica, the Municipality of Osatica. They were Ibrahim Ali,
Ibrahim Dinovi and Suljo Nuinovi. They raped Milans wife Radojka for
days; even after seven days, her neighbour Asib Mehi and his friends came
to rape her. The misfortunate woman eventually died in agony.42 In the
village of edanjsko, the Ustasha Jaar Ibrahimovi killed the whole
Spasojevi family, with all its 30 members.43 Also, in the village of Jeestica,
the Municipality of Kravica, the whole family of Stanoje Stjepanovic was
killed: wife Rua (21 years old), daughter (2), mother Jovana (50), daughterin-law Angelina (27), cousin Bosko (8), brothers Peter (17) and Aleksa (9) and
sister Darinka (14). The Ustashas took them out of the house and 500 metres
farther by a stream, slaughtered them all with knives. Apart from them,
another 13 Serbs from the village of Jeetica and three refugees from
Vlasenica County were slain at the same place. Stanojes mother Jovana lived
a few days after the massacre, which was enough for her to tell the story
about the terrible tragedy that had befallen her family. She managed to
recognise some murderers. Those were Mujo Alispaji, amil Cvrk,
38

39
421
Muharem and Ibro Zuki, and other people.44 Bekto Imirevi and Mujo
Spaji invited their neighbour Savo Maksimovi from the village of Krnjii
to come out of the house and slew him at his doorstep, in broad daylight.45
Amdija Dini and a group of Ustashas stabbed Goja Mirkovi (39) from the
village of Opravdii, the Municipality of Kravica, 18 times, so she spent the
next four hours dying.46 In the same village, Osman ogaz and a group of
Ustashas fiercely killed Jefta Peri (60), Cvija (52) and Todor Dragicevi (40).
There were hundreds of similar executions across Srebrenica County, since
anyone could kill and torture the local Serbs as they pleased. In the village of
the Local Peoples Committee in Blaevii, the Municipality of Skelani,
around 40 people were slain at their homes or on their way to the Drina River.
A dozen of them were murdered at the very river. In the village of Karina,
the Municipality of Osatica, the Ustashas captured 15 people, tied them
together and slaughtered them in one stream near the village.47 Apart from
other monstrosities, the Ustashas immolated fifteen children in the house of
Vujadin Kostijerovi in the village of Zelinje. The Ustasha unit responsible
for these crimes was under the command of Mujo Omerovi from the village
of Glogovo. In the village of Zelinje, he took Milinko Avramovi, Vujadin
Avramovica, Mislisav Avramovica, Joco Simi, Ilija Mili and other Serbs,
and after torturing them sadistically, killed them in the village of Drinjaa.48
In the village of lijebac, the Municipality of Fakovi, the Ustashas
slaughtered the whole families of Tomo Balmazovi (8 members), Spasoje
Vasiljevi (8 members), Milovan Savi (10 members) and many others.
Thirteen members of the family of Ljubo Joki were slain in the village of
Jaketii.49
After the ravages done by Francetis legion, the Serbian villages of
Srebrenica County remained desolate, for the people had either been killed
or escaped to Serbia. In the majority of the villages, only children remained,
with few adult men who kept hiding. Thus, for instance, in the village of
44

45
422
Zelinje, which had previously counted 137 Serbian households, only a fiftyyear-old woman remained.50 The tragedy of the Serbian people of Srebrenica
County did not stop after the torture of Francetis legion, since the Muslim
militia stayed in the villages, and their only job was to capture the surviving
Serbs or those who were trying to return from Serbia, and to kill them. The
unit of the Muslim militia led by Omer Mustafi was especially notorious. His
aids were Ahmed Dini from the village of Dobrok, his deputy, Jusuf
Jusufovi and Jusuf Baki from the village of Karaii, Mustafa Smailagi
and Redo Huki from the locality of Osma, and Suljo Ibrahimovi from the
village of Krnjii.51 During 1942, this infamous unit committed many crimes,
slaughters, murders, rapes and pillage against the surviving Serbs of
Srebrenica County. Thus, for instance, in the village of Karin, they tied the
family of one Cvijetin Gagi, took them to a stream in order to slay them,
while beastly torturing them on the way to the stream. They stabbed them
with knives, beating them all along, and also burned Cvijetins hair at the back
of his heads. Cvijetin somehow managed to untie himself and escape, while
his family, that is, three women and one child were slaughtered in the
stream.52 In June 1942, in the village of Srpski Pribidol, the Ustasha patrol
led by Abid Smailovi from the village of Pe, the Municipality of Skelani,
slaughtered the fifty-year-old Milka krnji, who lived alone in her house. In
late June 1942, in the village of Jeetica, the local Muslim Ustasha from the
village of Bljeeva, one of whom was Ibrahim Muratovi, captured Milojka,
Anica and Radojka ukanovi and her little child and slaughtered them in a
stream behind the house. Only Milojka managed to survive the massacre,
who, after being stabbed and mutilated, managed to reach the Serbian village
of Suvo.53 In July 1942, the Muslim civilians from the village of Turski
Pribidol, Smajo, Daut, Mustafa and Suljo Alji, brought the Ustasha militia to
their Serbian neighbours, and together they took Mlao Jankovi and his son
Boko, as well as Radosav Mitrovi, and detained them in the basement of
Fata Begis house in the village of Pajii. After an abundant dinner at Fatas,
50

52 Ibid.
51
423
they sadistically murdered the three men.54 Also, in July 1942, seven
Ustashas came to the village of Radoevii, Municipality of Osatica, and
slaughtered Maksim Mitrovi (75), Gospava Jevti (55), Obrad Mitrovi (83),
Stevanija Petrovi (85), Stoja Mitrovi (50) and a girl, urija Todorovi (12),
a refugee from Vlasenica County who failed to cross the Drina River, and
thus stayed in the village. Jevto Jevti, who watched the massacre while
hiding in the crops, recognised four of the seven killers. Those were: Ramo
Torlak from Osmaa, brothers Suljo and Smajo Ibrahimovi from the village
of Urisii and Orhan Hadi from the village of Ljeskovik, all from the
Municipality of Osatica, Srebrenica County.55 In September 1942, the Muslim
militia led by Mujo Omerovi found four Serbs in their homes in the village
of Polom, Municipality of Kravica, and killed them brutally.56 This killing
spree of the Muslim militia continued in 1943. The documents of the State
Commission describe the raids on the village of Breani during 1943 in the
following way: Armed local Muslim Ustashas killed Serbs while they were
working in the field or in their houses, and the killing was always
accompanied by plunder. The raids of the Muslim militia continued in 1943.
During this frequent looting and raids, the local Ustashas managed to
eventually burn down the village of Breani, while the villagers had already
been murdered. They immolated twelve people, including the host, in the
house of Gligor Stevanovi, and also 10 men, women and children in the
house of Vujica Jovanovi. Eight women, girls and children were burned in
the barn of Gligor Stevanovi. All this was done by the local Ustasha under
the command of Ramo Torlak and Omer Skeljan.57 On the order of the
Ustashas, the land of the killed or expelled Serbs was cultivated by their
Muslim neighbours and some Catholic people the Ustashas brought from
other places, for which they were given half of the what the land yielded.58
Part of the Serbian population of Srebrenica County who escaped to Serbia
were killed while trying to return to their homes in order to farm the land.
The Ustasha patrols kept vigil at the crossings, capturing the returnees and
54

55
424
brutally killing them. Thus, for example, four women of the Peri family,
Smilja, Radmila, Velinka and Zorka from the village of Ratkovi,
Municipality of Fakovi, were entrapped and slaughtered on the left bank of
the Drina River, while returning from Serbia. Milorad Pavlovi was killed in
the same way, slaughtered in a boat on the bank of the Drina River.59 In the
following year, 1943, the Ustashas kept on capturing returnees from Serbia
and killing them without remorse. In January 1943, while returning from
Serbia, six members of the Ivanovi family and six members of the
Jevremovi family from the village of Kostolomci were slaughtered, along
with Milan Filipovi from the village of Boii.60 In July 1943, the Petrovi
family and Ili Zorka were slaughteredwhile trying to cross the Drina River.
The family included the following members: Desimir, Simeun, Mitar,
Dragoslav, Tomislav, Stojka, and Stoja Ili.61 This crime was, among others,
committed by Halmo Rami and Salko Muratovi from the village of Zapolje,
and led by the Ustasha commander efik Pasagi from the village of Tegare.62
In the village of Rajkovina, Municipality of Skelani, 30 mutilated corpses of
Serbs returning across the Drina River, of whom 8 were girls, were found in
a tank next to the military barracks. The girls braids, which the Ustashas
tore off them while they were still alive, were retrieved from around the
water tank.63 It goes without saying that before slaughtering them the
Ustasha brutally raped those young women, teenage girls, even the really
young one. Julka Mitrovi from the village of Jaketii was slaughtered
together with her two children as soon as she crossed the Drina River.
Jovanka Simeunovi and her six-year-old daughter Lenka managed to reach
her home in the village of Jaketii, but there they were both captured by the
Ustashas there, who took them to Fakovi and cruelly slew them.64 In order
to describe all the individual crimes committed against the Serbian people in
Srebrenica County during 1942 and 1942, volumes of book would have to be
published. Not even that would suffice to describe the horrors those
59

62 Ibid.
60
425
experienced by those misfortunate people as they waited to be slain by the

Ustasha dagger.
The very town of Srebrenica, as well as some Serbian villages that belonged
to the Municipality of Srebrenica, that is, those nearer the town itself, were
less destroyed in the first massacre of the Serbs in Srebrenica County.
Pressed by the Germans, the authorities of the NDH were forced to create at
least a semblance of law and order in their clerical and fascist establishment.
Thus, the new Prefect of Srebrenica County, Nikola Mlaenovi, by the order
of the NDH authorities, tried to enforce the policy of internal pacification,
and ordered to open all Orthodox churches in Srebrenica County,65
forgetting that there was not a single priest in the County. In his report of 12
June 1943 to the Great Vicar of the Great Parish of Usora and Soli in the town
of Tuzla, he claimed that thanks to his policy of pacification in Srebrenica
County, a number of Serbian refugees had returned since he guaranteed for
their safety. Still, despite the good intentions of Prefect Mlaenovi, he
himself could not control the Muslim militia, especially the forces located in
the remote villages of Srebrenica County; as we have already seen, they
continuously committed crimes, murders, rapes, pillage and other forms of
robbery. However, the misleading hope of the rest of the Serbs in Srebrenica
that their lives would be spared did not last long. Lieutenant Josip Kurelac,
the infamous commander of the 29th active battalion, which took control of
the town of Srebrenica after Francetis offensive, made plans on how to
exterminate the remaining Serbs in Srebrenica. He was assisted by Mayor
Suljo Hajdar and Vera Franz, commander of the Ustasha county youth camp.
This decision was made at a meeting in the town of Bratunac.66 A perfect
opportunity for the killers emerged on 11 June 1943, when the Partisans
attacked Srebrenica in the afternoon, took command of it and drove the
Ustashas out. That morning, Kurelac left Srebrenica for Bratunac due to
some official activities, thus, he was not there when the Partisans entered
Srebrenica. However, the Partisan left Srebrenica after three days, so by 14
July there was not a single Partisan in Srebrenica. The same day, a messenger
notified Kurelac about that, who immediately set out for Srebrenica from
Bratunac with his battalion. Under his order, the messenger said no resident
65
66

426
must leave his or her home before he arrived.67 With one part of his battalion,
Kurelac went straight to Srebrenica, sending the second part of it, led by
Pavao pani and Mile Domazet, over the hills across the area of au and
Obod, to the village of Zalazje. Kurelacs battalion entered Srebrenica without
resistance, without firing a bullet. However, Kurelacs Ustashas blocked the
city on all sides, and launched a massacre of the Serbian civilians. According
to the documents of the State Commission for Investigating the Crimes of
Nazis and Their Allies, the massacre happened in this way: On the second
day of the Orthodox Pentecost, 14 June, the Ustashas headed by Capt. Kurelec
entered Srebrenica. Then, they blocked all the entrances, intersections and
streets around Srebrenica, and went around from house to house killing the
Serbian men, women and children. The Ustashas killed the victims in various
ways, using firearms, axes and knives, and on this occasion, 98 people were
killed The houses of the killed were later robbed and clothes, footwear and
jewelry removed from the dead bodies. Sometimes, the Ustasha would cut off
fingers and ears of the victims so they could easily snatch their rings or
earrings. At that time, the Ustashas killed every Serb they encountered on
their way.68 On this occasion, the Ustashas killed the senior officer of the
court in Srebrenica, Muhamed Aganovi (34), and his entire family: his wife
Zlata69 (31) and his three children, a son (7) and two daughters, one 5 years
old and the other only 13 months old.70 Aganovis wife was a Serb from the
Trickovi family from the village of Bela Palanka. The Aganovi family was
killed by Kurelac himself. He also killed Demal Plisk, a postal clerk, who was
accused by an Ustasha he had attended the execution of an Ustasha by the
Partisans in front of the post office. In addition, Kurelac and his Ustashas
launched a search for Ibrahim Tanica, a municipal official, whose only
crime was the fact that he was married to a Serb. Luckily, Tanica and his
67

69 The victim list assembled by Judge Vejsil Hadibegi claims Ljuba, not Zlata, as the name
of Judge Aganavis wife. However, the name of Zlata is stated in this paper because that
was the name used by her father, ivojin Trikovi, in his report of the stated crime to the
relevant body of the State Commission for the Crimes of Nazis and Their Allies (AB&H,
ZKUZ, box 204, item 7186/1).
70 AB&H, ZKUZ, box 204, item 7186/1.
68
427
family had managed to escape from Srebrenica on time.71 Three Jews were
also killed in the spree targeting the Serbian population of Srebrenica. An
Imam from Srebrenica informed M. Hfz. Raif Ulem Medili, that is, Effendi
Hafiz in Sarajevo about the massacre of Serbs. On 10 June, I went to see
some Muhajir around the village of Drinjaa, and entered the District of
Zvornik. On the same day, which was Thursday,72 the Partisans unexpectedly
entered Srebrenica. After heavy fighting, they occupied Srebrenica and
stayed there until Monday, when they retreated to the hills. The same day,
our Ustashas entered Srebrenica and committed a horrible bloodshed. All
Serbian women and children were killed, including the remaining male
Serbs. Then they killed an officer of the court, Muhamed Aganovi, together
with his wife and children, as well as the postal clerk Demal P. from
Sarajevo. After that, they went to the villages to kill the rest of the Serbian
population. Srebrenica was robbed again and experienced a Golgotha again. I
was informed that my family was alive. I do not believe that we should stay
in Srebrenica any more, since there will be retaliation against the Muslims
for this bloodshed.73 After the massacre of Srebrenica, the Ustashas headed
for the nearby village of Breani, which had already seen torture and
destruction during Francetis offensive. They detained the remaining 17
Serbian men of the village, took them to Srebrenica and the following day,
on 15 June, slaughtered them in a tavern near a bridge.74 All victims of the
Srebrenica massacre were buried in two mass graves, which were located
500 metres from the town, near the bridge by the former Austro-Hungarian
military barracks.
The same day Kurelac entered Srebrenica, the second part of his battalion,
under the command of pani and Domazet, approached the Serbian village
of Zalazje. Before them, Commander Jusuf ozi entered the village with his
unit, summoned the local people and told them soon the numerous Ustasha
troops would come, but no one would hurt the locals so there was no need to
leave the houses or the village. Since they knew ozi from before, the
71
AB&H, ZKUZ, box 2, envelope 40, item 4242.

The Partisans entered Srebrenica in the evening of 11th June, and not on 10th June, as
stated in the letter.
73 AB&H, ZKUZ, box 2, envelope 40, item 4236.
72
428
Serbian locals believed him, waiting peacefully the entry of the majority of
the Ustasha army. However, as soon as pani and the rest of the Ustashas
entered the village, he gathered around 39 men, women and children in front
of the house of Manojlo Maksimovi and ordered that they be killed with
machine guns. Then the Ustashas went from house to house, slaughtering
everyone they found. A total of 105 men, women and children were killed.75
After that, Commander ozi and his unit went to the Serbian village of
Vitlovac and slaughtered an entire family there, that is, Milivoje Jovanovi
(30), his wife Mileva (25) and their four children, followed by Rua Markovi
and her son Boo (12) years, and a sixty- year-old woman.76 Whole families
were killed in the village of Zalazje. For instance, 14 members of the family
of Stojan Raki, 8 members of the family of ivojin Raki, 10 members of the
family of Manojlo Maksimovi (Manojlo and his son were wounded and thus
survived), 8 members of the family of Mato Dragievi were murdered, and
so on.77 The victims of the massacre in the village of Zalazje remained
unburied until the next day, when an Ustasha patrol came and ordered some
Muslims from the village of Likari to dig some pits and bury the dead. At that
moment, Timotije Lazarevi approached the pile of the dead people,
searching for the corpse of his wife. One of the Ustashas asked him what he
was doing and if what had been done was any good. When Timotije replied
that nothing was fine and that those acts were sins, the Ustasha brutally fired
a bullet through his head.78 During the funeral of the slain people, two infants
were found still on their mothers breasts, protected by their bodies and thus
saved from a certain death. Strangely enough, the Ustashas did not finish
their bloody feast of the infants and the children survived the war.79
As an order to suspend the mass killing of Serbian civilians was issued by the
NDH, Colonel Luki, Commander of 3rd Home Guard unit, demanded the
investigation of this crime. On 17 June 1943, the Gestapo arrested 32
members of 29th Battalion and imprisoned them in the town of Tuzla. The
75

AB&H, ZKUZ, box 13, no item number (The list of victims of the slaughter made by Vejsil Hadibegi, the investigating judge).
77 Ibid.
79 Ibid.
76
429
investigations were conducted by Vejsil Hadibegi, who happened to be a

Home Guard captain but who illegally kept in touch with the Partisans.
Hadibegi carried out the investigations in a very detailed manner. He
exhumed the bodies from one mass grave and made a record of each
excavated corpse. Moreover, he made a separate list of the victims and, at his
request, a list of all the Ustashas from 29th Battalion who took part in these
massacres was submitted too. It was also very significant that Hadibegi
created all documentation during the investigation in triplicate, keeping one
copy for himself, which he concealed and submitted to the UDBA (TheState
Security Service) after the war.80 Although his investigation was hampered
in various ways, Hadibegi completed the indictment with all evidence, but
the Court Martial of the 3rd Military District in Sarajevo, headed by General
Prohaska and Judge Dr. Osman-beg Firdus acquitted the criminals and made
a decision that all proceedings concerning the matter were being suspended
and that the case was no longer valid.81 The decision was justified by the fact
the Ustashas who committed the massacres in Srebrenica, Breani and
Zalazje had been provoked by the killing of about twenty Ustashas, who
perished in a clash with the Partisans, one of whom was Lieutenant Kurelecs
brother. The Ustashas also reacted to the fact the Partisans had allegedly
mutilated some bodies, as well as to the fact the Serbs joyfully welcomed the
Partisans, took them food and ironically enough for the Ustasha court, put on
the traditional Serb cap while hoeing the corn. Therefore, even if it were so,
according to the Ustasha judges, this was quite a sufficient and legitimate
motive for the massacre. As for Judge Aganovi, the fact that he went fishing
in the direction of the place which the Partisans had come from was sufficient
proof he was a follower of the Partisans. Such were the judiciary and justice
in the Independent State of Croatia.
According to the list of victims made by Judge Vejsil Hadibegi, a total of
196 people were killed and 8 people wounded in Srebrenica, Breani and
Zalazje on 14 and 15 June.82 However, this list is obviously not exhaustive,
which is evident from the fact Judge Aganovis youngest daughter, who was
only 13 months old, was not on the list. Moreover, 16 victims were registered
80

82 AB&H, ZKUZ, box 13, no item number.
81
430
in Breani, while there were in fact 17 of them. The strangest thing was that
Hadibegi recorded only 74 victims on the list of the victims of Srebrenica,
when he himself exhumed 78 bodies during the exhumation of the abovementioned mass grave on 20 June 1943 in the town of Srebrenica. The second
mass grave was not opened, of which there is a record too.83 Truth be told,
according to Judge Hadibegis records, over 30 bodies exhumed from the
mass grave could not be identified during the exhumation. In addition, some
witnesses said there were 96 victims, while others claimed it was as many as
98 victims who were massacred in the town of Srebrenica.84 In the village of
Zalazje, Hadibegi recorded 100 killed and 8 wounded people, but we have
seen others say 105 people were killed that day, including Timotije Lazarevi,
who was killed the next day. However, according to the list of those killed in
the village of Zalazje (Obadi), which was created by the Sase Local Committee
in 1946, 119 people were killed by the Ustashas in 1943.85 In any case, it is
certain that more than 200 Serbs from Srebrenica, Zalazje (Obadi) and
Breani were slaughtered on 14 and 15 June of 1943. Thanks to Judge
Hadibegi, who asked to be provided with a list of the members of the 29th
Battalion who took part in the massacre, the names of the members of the
Ustasha units who committed the atrocity became known. According to the
list, most of the 29th Battalion personnel which entered Srebrenica were
mostly Muslims. The Command company and all the four companies of the
29th Battalion comprised 125 Muslims and 108 Croats. The command of 29th
Battalion included 13 Croats and 2 Muslims.86
The torture of the Serbs in Srebrenica County did not stop after this
massacre. It has already been stated that during the entire 1943, the Ustasha
Muslim militia continued killing individual Serbs, sometimes even groups of
Serbs, throughout Srebrenica County. People returning from Serbia were
83

85 AB&H, ZKUZ, box 13, envelope nos. 1-2, no item number. Interestingly, the list contains
the name of a single victim from the village of Zalazje (Obadi), killed before the 1943 slaughter, Stoja Josipovi, killed on the Drina River in 1942. Unlike the other Serbian villages
in the Srebrenica County, this village was spared the Ustasha atrocities until the slaughter
committed on 14th June 1943.
86 AB&H, ZKUZ, box 2, envelope 53, item 4234.
84
431
mostly killed; troubled by various hardships, especially famine, those people

tried to come back and at least partially farm their land. In 1943 and 1944,
some parts of Srebrenica County were under Partisan command, and others
under the Ustashas; sometimes there was even a switch between the
authorities, which led to more persecutions against the population. Some
parts of the County were controlled by the Chetniks, and in their occasional
clashes with the Ustashad and the Partisans, the civilian population suffered
again. The Serbs from Srebrenica County and other parts of Eastern Bosnia
could only expect even greater torture, when in 1943 the Ustasha Colonel
Stipkovi was killed while hunting, and was replaced by the famous cutthroat and pathological killer, Franjo Sudar, who became thecommander of
one part of the Black Legion in Eastern Bosnia. According to the atrocities he
committed, the documents of the State Commission describe him as the most
cruel and bloodthirsty war criminal.87 Numerous individual and group
killings were committed on the territory of Srebrenica County by Sudars
Ustashas and Muslim Ustasha militia in the second half in 1943 and in 1944.
The Decision of the State Commission proclaiming Franjo Sudar a war
criminal provide the following description of the crimes committed by his
Ustashas in the villages of Srebrenica County: In February 1944, an Ustasha
unit, members of the Black Legion, entered the village of Stanatovii,
Srebrenica County, during the night and killed the family of farmer Radia
Simi in his house. Using machine guns, the Ustasha killed Ikonija Simi,
Radias wife, Simi Julka, a housewife, Vojislav Simi, a boy, Jovanka Simi,
a girl, and the baby Mitar Simi. The same evening, the Ustashas slaughtered
5 members of the Jovi family in the village of Mleva, Srebrenica County,
while in the village of Mandre they killed fthe ifty-eight-year-old housewife
Obrenija Subai In June that same year, Sudar and the Ustashas came to
Srebrenica, where they carried out forced mobilisation and committed
killings in the nearby villages. The Ustashas raped and tortured one Vida
Prodanovi from the village of Slapanica, who eventually died from the
injuries. In villages of Opravdii and Brana Baci, Srebrenica County, the
87
Savo Skoko, Milan Grahovac, Zloini Nezavisne Drave Hrvatske i nemakog okupatora
u Hercegovini 1941-1945. godini, Document Collection, Vol. I, edited by Draga Mastilovi,
M.A., and Gordana Mastilovi, Beograd Gacko 2011, document no. 22, p. 141 (Decision of
the State Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina for the Crimes of Nazis and Their Allies
no. 1873, Pronouncement of Franjo Sudar as a war criminal).
432
Ustasha slaughtered and immolated 80 men, women and children. These

villages were later robbed and set on fire. The Ustashas killed four people in
the village of Radonji, three people in the village of Pepovac and one person
in the village of Zagon.88 As one can see, even during 1944 there were mass
killings of the Serbs in Srebrenica County, for instance, the massacres in the
villages of Opravdici and Brana Bai. The slaughter in these villages was
done by the Ustasha unit under the command of Mujo Omerovi.89 A large
number of individual or group crimes committed in 1943 and 1944 in
Srebrenica County were not even recorded in the previously-mentioned
Decision proclaiming Sudar a war criminal; however, they were noted down
in other materials of the State Commission. Thus, for example, the crimes in
the village of Blaijevii committed by one Ustasha unit under the command
of Omar Mustafi included the torture and killing of seven people in Lazar
Stevanovis barn, some of whom were children, and some shepherds found
around the cattle.90 In 1944, the Ustashas committed crimes or individual
murders in almost all Serbian villages in Srebrenica County.
According to the documents of the State Commission for Investigating the
Crimes of Nazis and Their Allies, in the period from 1941 to 1945, the
Ustashas killed 1076 adult men, 546 women, 210 elderly and 430 children in
Srebrenica County, which amounts to a total of 2262 victims.91 Apart from a
few exceptions, all victims of the Ustasha terror were Orthodox Serbs. This
means that in Srebrenica County during World War II, over 2200 Serbs were
killed. Still, this figure is not final, because not all the victims have been listed,
especially those children or infants who had not yet been given a name,
therefore, they are not on the list of the victims. Out of the total number of
victims (3281) in Srebrenica County during World War II, the Orthodox
Serbs made up about 68 , which means more than two-thirds of all victims.
Most of them were killed with firearms 1129 of them, while 9 were hanged,
663 slain, 348 abused using various methods of torture, 95 died from torture,
88
Ibid., pp. 140-141.
89

91 AB&H, ZKUZ, box 204, no item number.
90
433
and 18 were killed in the camps.92 Undoubtedly, these figures speak for
themselves and ask for no further comments.
92
Ibid.
434
Milenko Jahura
WHAT IS THE SIMILARITY

BETWEEN THE SUFFERING IN THE
CZECH LIDICE AND HERZEGOVINA
PREBILOVCI, AND WHAT IS THE
DIFFERENCE IN CHERISHING THE
MEMORY OF THE VICTIMS
LIDICE
A village in the central Czech Republic, 20km west of Prague and 8km away
from the mining and metallurgy centre Kladno. Until 10 June 1942 it had 503
inhabitants in 167 families and 106 households.
Lidice suffered great losses after the assassination of Hitlers Acting ReichProtector of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich. The assassination
was committed on 27 May 1942. On the same day, a Prague radio said, apart
from the news of the murder, the following: For catching the perpetrators
of the assassination, a reward of 10 million Czech koruna is posted. Anyone
who harbours or helps the perpetrators, or knows their identity or
whereabouts and fails to report it will be shot dead together with their family
members.
The state of emergency and curfew was declared in the area of Prague. A
police operation, which was one of the biggest police operations in the Second
World War, was launched immediately for the purpose of finding and
apprehending the assassins. During the state of emergency, minimum 1,381
435
people were executed. Of the 3,000 Czechs detained in the Mauthausen

concentration camp, among whom were 600 intellectuals, 2,700 were shot
dead. Among the remaining 300 there were only 6 intellectuals.
Heydrich died from his injuries on the morning of 4 June 1942. On the same
day, Hitler received the Protectorates puppet government. He threatened to
wipe out the Czech nation from Europe unless the state of affairs in the
Protectorate becomes bearable. As soon as 10 minutes later, Hitlers order
to destroy Lidice arrived in Berlin from Prague. The Fuhrers choice of such
a horrific reprisal came after a never confirmed suspicion of the villages ties
with the assassins, worked out from a seized private letter.
Reprisals started as early as 10 June. On that day, following the order to
destroy Lidice, some weapons were found in a Lidice mill, but it is assumed
that agent provocateurs had put them there. On the previous night, the village
was surrounded by the German army and Gestapo units. The Germans raided
the village the next morning and arrested all the inhabitants, and then
separated the men from the women and children. The women and children
were taken to a village school and men to a nearby Horak farm. According to
a previously devised plan, women and children were driven on trucks to the
town of Kladno the same morning, where they were detained in the grammar
school.
Right after the women and children had left, a penal squad made up of the
German Security Service was formed in the village square near the church
and sent off to the yard of the Horak farm, where the Lidice men were
detained. Straw-beds and mattresses were put up against the barn walls so
that the bullets would not ricochet. Each of the Lidice men was shot with
three bullets. After the firing squad fired the three rounds, every man
received another bullet in the back of the head. The bodies would remain
where they fell and the next victims would then line up in front of them
The victims were neither tied nor blindfolded. The eldest among the villagers
was 84, and the youngest 15. A 73-year-old village priest was killed too. On
that and the following days, 199 people of Lidice 192 men and 7 women
were shot dead, completely innocent.
Three days after the arrests, the Germans separated the mothers from
children in Kladno. They survived two days and three nights on the bare floor
and only after the separation were the mothers allowed to give children a
436
wash. The women were taken to the concentration camp at Ravensbrck. In

an agonising journey, the children were transported on trucks and a train to
the camp in Lodz, Poland. Eighty-one children found unfit for
Germanisation were sent to the death camp at Chelmno. It was the first place
in the occupied Poland intended exclusively for the mass execution of
civilians. The camp was hidden from the public very well. Executions were
performed quickly, usually immediately upon arrival. The victims were
received by a representative of Sonderkommandos. He would assure them a
job was waiting for them in the east and that they would be treated well and
get food. The only thing they needed to do first was to get washed and have
their clothes disinfected. Then they would all gladly go into a big room that
was heated in the winter. They would take their clothes off and carefully put
them on clothes hangers. They were allowed to keep their underwear. As for
their luggage, they could only take a towel and a bar of soap. However, they
were not going to the bathroom but into a special vehicle a gas chamber. It
was standing outside, in front of the entrance, and the victims would enter it
after passing between two rows of gendarmes who rushed them with beating.
Once everyone was inside, the door would be locked, and exhaust gasses
would be released from the engine. When the unfortunates would suffocate
after a few minutes, they would be transported to huge graves and thrown
inside. They would previously be searched; their gold teeth would even be
taken out. During the war, 98 Lidice children lost their lives.
Some of the children were given over to German families for adoption and
Germanisation. After the war, the Czechoslovak government started
searching for 890 children that the Germans had taken away from their
parents during the occupation. Among them were the children from Lidice
too. Eighteen children from the village were found and returned to their
mothers or other relatives. The search went on until 1948. According to the
available data, the total of 320 inhabitants of Lidice, i.e. 63.5 percent had been
killed or gone missing.
The village was burnt down, and then levelled to the ground with explosives
and totally destroyed on 1 July 1942. The Germans cut the fruit trees and
linden trees in the village, destroyed the road, changed the course of the
creek to run outside the village and covered up the local fish pond with dirt.
They covered the rubble with ground 70cm high and sowed crops there the
next year. They tried to wipe out any trace of the village, so even the
437
geographic maps of the Prague area that had Lidice drawn in them were
confiscated. Around the village there were warning signs put up strictly
forbidding entry, including a threat of execution.
The world learnt of the tragedy of Lidice very quickly. It was reported on by
all the media of the countries of the Anti-Hitler Coalition, as well as those that
were not taking part in the war. Lidice was mentioned in numerous events,
in speeches of prominent figures, military parades and soldiers oaths. The
United States immediately launched a campaign for the American people to
resurrect the destroyed village. Only 30 days after the crime, on 12 July a
hamlet in the State of Illinois was renamed Lidice. On the first anniversary
of the crime, a square in Havana, Cuba was renamed the Square of Lidice.
The same year, a little town of Berlin in the Republic of South Africa was also
renamed Lidice. On the second anniversary of the crime, a Brazilian
settlement was named Lidice. A similar thing happened in many other
countries: Colombia, Peru, Chile, Panama, Mexico, Venezuela, India, Great
Britain, etc. Towns received streets named after Lidice, monuments to Lidice
were erected in many places. Publications were printed and commemorative
events took place in honour of the destroyed Czech village. Girls would get
the name Lidica. The world made it publicly known that the tragedy of Lidice
would never be forgotten and that it would never come to terms with what
Nazis did to the village.
In accordance with this, the Government of Czechoslovakia on 6 June 1945
made a decision to build a new Lidice within the original boundaries of the
village and its official traditional Czech name. The foundations were laid
on 15 June 1947. The village was built by 500 Czechoslovak and 80 foreign
youth volunteers. Four types of family houses spreading across approximately 100 square metres were designed. Each of them had central heating
installed. Keys to the first houses the women of Lidice received for Christmas
in 1949. Apart from a modern settlement, a memorial area was also built and
developed. The grave of the Lidice victims remained untouched. It was
marked with lines of flowers and a big wooden cross. A garden of friendship
and peace was made of roses. The roses arrived from Hiroshima, Nagasaki,
Leningrad, Korea, USA, Brazil, Australia, etc. A round terrace lies in the
centre of the garden, depicting the coats of arms of 11 cities and places with
similar fates arising from the war, including the Serbian town of Kragujevac.
Numerous delegations, excursions and state officials pay visits to Lidice.
438
Czechoslovakia and the world have treated Lidice with dignity. The village
has been given a new life and enjoys eternal respect.
PREBILOVCI
A village in south Herzegovina (Bosnia and Herzegovina), on the edges of the
Neretva River valley, 35km south of the regional cantonal centre Mostar,
5km east of the centre of the apljina municipality, around 20km north of
the Adriatic Sea coastline. Before 4 August 1941, Prebilovci had 1002
inhabitants of Serbian ethnicity and Orthodox faith in 102 households and
approximately 30 Muslims in three households. For Herzegovina at the time,
it was a big and economically good standing village. The Prebilovci village
was the biggest one in the municipality of apljina, with its hilly pastures,
cultivable valleys and fields, Hutovo Blato marshland, surrounded by river
streams and lakes. The people of Prebilovci also owned big farms with the
most fertile soil in the valley along the Neretva River on the territories of
other villages. The village had 1,500 heads of bovine cattle and 10,000 small
animals. Prebilovci was a peaceful, patriarchal village of diligent, trustworthy
and religious people.
Prebilovci suffered severe losses in the execution of the plan of genocide
against the Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia, which was created in
1941 with the help of Hitler and Mussolini, after the capitulation of the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Because of its ethnic and religious background, its
size and position overlooking important roads connecting Bosnia with the
Adriatic Sea through the Neretva Valley and the resources that had to be
plundered, Prebilovci had been sentenced to total destruction by the clerical
and Franciscan entities even before the war. At the beginning of the war,
those entities formed into Ustasha structures and got an opportunity to
execute their plan. Their hatred against the inhabitants on Prebilovci grew
stronger due to the fact that during the Balkan Wars and the First World
War, Prebilovci contributed 18 volunteers to the Serbian and Montenegrin
armies.
On 4 August at dawn, Ustasha hordes from the settlements of the
municipalities of apljina, Stolac, Ljubuki, Dubrave, Kruevo and Burmazi,
acting upon a carefully devised plan, surrounded the spacious Prebilovci in
439
closely-packed formations. In the criminal operation against Prebilovci,

around 3,000 Croats and Muslims were engaged, and at least 1,500 of them
stormed at the village with weapons. It would take much more space to list all
those who participated in the crime against Prebilovci. However, we will
specifically single out the Ustasha camp warden Franjo Vego from apljina,
Pero Juki, an Ustasha envoy for apljina, priest from Klepci Don Ilija
Tomas, Ustasha envoy for Herzegovina, priest from Studenci Don Jure
Vrdoljak, Janko Vego, Ivan Borovac, Niko Filipovi, Rudo Vrdoljak, Ahmet
Kapetanovi, Jusuf Begi, Andrija Buljan, Nikola Grepo, Pavo Beno, Dane
Beno, Andrija Jarak, Mate Andrun, Nikola Merdan, Damjen Mati, Pero
evenica, Nikola Blaevi, Slavko Suak, Stanko Ragu, Mile Ostoji, Stojan
Ragu, Niko Jerini, Rudo Brajkovi, Pero Mati, arko Storeli, Pero
Dalmatin, Marijan Milanovi, Osman Lizdo, Petar Mari, Jusuf Muminagi,
uro Pervan, Martin Masla, Kasim Kudro, Salko uko, etc.
The previous day, a few women from Prebilovci went to Klepci to see Don
Ilija Tomas Dumilija and to Hotanj to see the Ustasha head of the village, Pero
Beno, asking for protection. Those two had thoroughly been aware of the plan
to kill all Prebilovci Serbs and of the attack, scheduled for the following day.
As participants of the criminal plan, they failed to tell them to run away and
save their lives and instead told them to stay at home and even gather in the
village centre! Still, the villagers spent the night in the hills, but at dawn,
women and children returned home, not expecting the attack. At that point,
bypassing the plan, Ustashas opened fire around the village, since they
stumbled upon some of the Prebilovci inhabitants in the Bregava River
canyon, who had come out of a cave they had been hiding in. As the shooting
started before the stranglehold was tightened from the east, a huge number
of adult males from the village managed to flee to Hutovo Blato. Many of them
survived in the rushes there. Ustashas then gathered the women and children
and closed them up in a classroom of the local school. Around 11 oclock,
Ustashas escorted to an old bridge on the Bregava River the women and
children rounded up until then, filed in rows of four, beating them along the
way. Prior to that, outside the school, they had killed the old women unable
to walk with rifle butts and trampling them underfoot. The ones who made it
to the bridge, they loaded onto four trucks and took to Silos in the
neighbouring Tasovii, which that summer was a collection camp for
apljina Serbs on their way to the pits. There, without any food or water, this
440
group of Prebilovci unfortunates spent the night being constantly disturbed

by Ustashas, who would storm in with torches, picking good-looking girls to
rape. At dawn, when an Ustasha guard opened the silos for a brief moment, a
Joka Ekmei, one of the many girls who Ustasha took in the direction of the
urmanci pit, managed to escape. Mara Bulut, wife of Gojko, and Jela
Ekmei, wife of Marko and her two little girls, escaped from the village
school and saved themselves.
In the afternoon of 4 August and in the morning of 5 August, Ustashas
captured the remaining women and children in Prebilovci and brought them
to the school, telling them they would relocate them to Serbia. The poor
people believed this, so they put on the most beautiful clothes they had,
carrying only bundles with them. This group was subjected to even more
horrific abuse, especially the girls, while the captured males, having been
tortured first, were killed in a little valley down from the village.
In the afternoon of 5 August, this group was escorted, first on foot and then
on trucks, directly to central apljina, to the railway station, where the group
from silos was then brought as well. These physically weak people, some 600
of them, were brutally loaded on and closed in six animal or G railroad cars
at the temperature of over 40 degrees Centigrade. This was happening right
in front of the Croat and Muslim population, who did not even give them a
drop of water to drink, let alone try to save them. Late in the afternoon, they
were taken 7km to the north, to urmanci, where they stayed on the track,
locked up in the railroad cars until the morning of 6 August.
They were escorted by a big group of Ustashas from apljina and the
neighbouring areas, headed by Andrija Buljan, the monstrous Tabornik [municipal Ustasha commander, t/n] from the village of Dretelj and deputy
Logornik [county Ustasha garrison commander, t/n] in apljina, Rudo
Vrdoljak from Drinovci. A big group of criminals was also waiting for them,
mostly unarmed villagers from urmanci, Meugorje and Bijakovii, headed
by the infamous Ivan Jovanovi Crni, the Ustasha chief of the village of
urmanci. In total, there were more than 300 of them.
These monsters, equipped with wooden stakes 2 metres long, to which
wreaths of tobacco were tied to dry, forced the Prebilovci people out of the
railroad cars and hurried them up the hill. They stopped them 1 kilometre
away from the Golubinka pit, in the settlement of Vranac. That was where
441
they searched them and robbed them, and then took them towards the abyss,
divided in small groups. The criminals received various instructions for the
execution of the Prebilovci population. Some were guarding the people,
others were making sure no one escaped, some were taking the groups
towards the pit, and some were collecting stones. Others would later throw
those stones into the pit. A separate group was standing above and around the
pit itself and their role was to push the victims into the abyss. All of them
participated in the same crime and its full execution depended on each and
every of them. Groups of 30 victims were stopped under a tree a terebinth
some 50 metres from the pit. There they would separate 5 or 6 people and
lead them to the abyss and hand them over to the criminals who pushed them
or threw them into the pit. During the execution, the criminals would switch
places at the pit. When some of them would get tired, others were there to
replace them. The victims were pushed into the pit with stakes, and small
children were sadistically thrown into the air above the pit opening
approximately 4 metres wide. Some of the Prebilovci girls did not let the
criminals push them but jumped into the pit themselves. The criminals later
recounted that Ljubica Bulut, wife of Manojlo, had hugged her three little
children and told them: My little angels, lets fly away! The criminals would
beat with stakes the hands and heads of those who would reach for the rocks
in despair until they could no longer hold on and fell into the abyss, whose
initial vertical fall was 27 metres, followed by a coiled slope to the base of the
pit, some 66 metres down from the opening. After the last victim had been
pushed into the pit, Ivan Jovanovi held a speech at the pit, and the criminals
went to have lunch. Three days later, everybody peacefully attended a
Sunday mass at the Meugorje church.
Around 600 women, girls and children were thrown into the pit from
Prebilovci alone. The Supreme Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina mentions
the figure of 570, Ustasha pit-workers 520, and the District Court in Mostar
claims that 470 victims from Prebilovci were killed in the urmanci pit. Most
of them survived the fall, with or without bone fractures. They also managed
to survive being hit on the rocks that the Ustasha pushed into the pit. Namely,
the Prebilovci victims were falling on a heap of bodies, the previously thrown
in Sarajevo Serbs, which softened the fall whose results were more easily
survived by the children. The next day, Ivan Jovanovi Crni threw two
bombs into the pit, so that the residents living in the nearby houses would not
442
have to listen to the cries of the sufferers. This made no difference at all,
because the bombs must have gone off much before they fell on the bottom
of the pit because the screams could be heard for another seven days.
Witnesses, the Muslims and Croats, claim that some 2,000 Serbs were killed
in this pit. Statements of the railway workers and of the witnesses from
Alipain Most near Sarajevo say that around 15 railroad cars carrying Serbs,
arrested in Alipain Most, Ilida, Reljevo, Rajlovac, Novo Sarajevo and
Hrasno were sent away from this railway station to Herzegovina. Apart from
them, it is well known that railroad cars carrying Serbs from Konjic and
Zenica were sent towards Herzegovina, to the execution site in urmanci.
In the following days and weeks, up until 18 August, Ustashas engaged in
hunts after the remaining Serbs in Prebilovci, during which many victims
were killed. Mass murders were committed in Kravarica near the Medan
houses, near the lake of krk, in Do down from the village, at Gostiljac and
next to a well in Bregava, in the hamlet called Brdo, at the village cemetery,
in Orahov Do, etc. More than 50 residents of Prebilovci were murdered in
Do. Apart from the adult males, killed were also the women and children of
the Nadadin and Medan families, who had lived near the school. Mileva Medan, wife of Bogdan, was giving birth at the time. The criminals ripped her
stomach with a bayonet, pulled out a living baby boy and called him Jovan.
Then they killed him with a bayonet and placed him back into the womb of
the unfortunate mother, who was dying an agonising death. Croat Pero
evenica from eljevo flayed Dragutin Nadadin alive and poured salt over
his flesh. Lazar Nadadin was buried alive in the ground. Tripko iri iro
was slaughtered in Do too. First, his three-year-old son Slobodan was slaughtered in his arms. Tripkos wife and all nine daughters died in the urmanci
pit. Teacher Stana Arnaut and Slavica Bulut, a Slovenian wife of arko, were
tortured and raped for hours, and then disfigured with knives and killed.
Girls Kova and Joka, daughters of Obren Suhi, were raped in the little valley
in front of their house, in the hamlet of Brdo, and killed them there with iron
pitchforks. At Kravarica, outside their houses, old woman Mara Medan was
slaughtered together with her four daughters-in-law and 14 grandchildren,
and two other Prebilovci children. Murdered were also four of Maras sons,
one in apljina, and three others in Morin Otok. In Orahov Do, nearby
Hutovo Blato, shot dead were women and children, mostly from the families
of Bulut and Dragievi. The execution was survived by 13-year-old etko
443
Dragievi, who fell to the ground, next to his dead mother, his coat riddled
with bullets. They were informed on by the Croats from Koela, where they
had hidden, and were murdered by the Croats from Gnjilite. In Morin Otok
near the Bregava, 50 residents of Prebilovci were slaughtered, who, having
been promised pardon, surrendered to Ustashas, depressed after finding out
their whole families had died in the urmanci pit. Those were mainly adult
people, with their sons and grandsons. That is how next to the 16th-century
bridge on the Bregava, dozens of Prebilovci homes were destroyed. Having
been tortured in the village school, they walked tied for 2.5 kilometres to have
their heads cut off by Gypsy Ibro Mehi, a blacksmith from Tasovii. The
heads were buried in one hole and the bodies in another. After the slaughter,
Mehi, who served a few years for this crime in the Zenica prison, recounted
excitedly that Aim Dragievi had walked the distance of 50 metres beheaded. Along with Aim was slaughtered his father oko and his nine-yearold son Vukain... The last Ustasha raid into Prebilovci occurred on the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, 28 August 1941, when the surviving Prebilovci
residents had already returned home, and the Croatian colonists had left the
village. Three young members of the Bulut family were killed outside the
village, as were a group of old men, women and children near a well in the
field near the Bregava River.
The old idea, which was turned into the plan and decision to colonise
Prebilovci by Croatian families, was applied by the authorities immediately
after the village was raided and its Serbian residents were wiped out.
According to the plan, the name Prebilovci and every memory of it were
supposed to be eradicated for good. A sign reading Novo Selo was put up at
the entrance to the village, while signs reading Do Not Enter Ustashaowned Flat!! signed by Jozo Jeli, a high-ranking post-war official, were
put up on the doors of the village houses. The one who worked the most on
the colonisation of Prebilovci for the purpose of resolving the burning
economic and social problems of the Croatian people in Western
Herzegovina was Don Jure Vrdoljak Bievi, a Roman Catholic vicar from
Studenci. Carrying a rifle under a Croatian flag, he would lead trucks loaded
with Croatian peasants to Prebilovci. There they would be assigned the
houses of the killed and still living Prebilovci residents. These colonists, their
wives and children included, took part in real hunts around the village,
looking for the tortured and starving Prebilovci people to kill them. The
444
village was plundered completely, including an enormous number of cattle.

The Croatian authorities brought to Prebilovci the workers of the apljina
Tobacco Station to pick and string up tobacco leaves from the Prebilovci
fields. During the biggest slaughters, the village would resound with their
songs. A kitchen was opened in the house of Murat oa to feed the criminals.
From the beginning of September 1941, reports of the Metkovi Police
Division, which fell under the command in Dubrovnik, read that in
Prebilovci Ustashas had killed around 600 men, women and children in
cradles. Along with this, the author of the report cynically stated that this
is not such a dreadful thing as much as the fact that they stole every single
object in the village... The conclusion was that Prebilovci was a model of
wealth, but every single thing was plundered. There are some unstolen cattle
left: horses, mules, pigs, sheep and other animals without any supervision in
the fields, are eating the planted plants, destroying, so to speak, assets worth
millions under these difficult circumstances. Tobacco, several thousand
plants unpicked, dead men lying along the road, covered with dirt just a little.
Hence, the state of despair that only can be believed by those who were there
to see it.
There were no survivors in 57 Prebilovci families. The total of 172 residents
of Prebilovci, Serbs by ethnicity, survived; 15 of them were women, girls and
little girls, and 16 were boys under the age of 15, of whom only two were
born after the year 1930. The majority of them survived in the rushes of
Hutovo Blato. Some survived in caves, cracks in limestone, or some other
places. The Croats stated pretty accurately that 156 men had survived, which
means that they had been well aware of the number of the killed and the
number of the pre-war villagers. The survivors, who were detained in the
school, testified that they had been counted every 10 or 15 minutes. Two girls
were forced to marry Ustashas. They survived the slaughter and as soon as it
was possible, they returned to Prebilovci. The Croats sang in triumph:
Paveli, what are we going to do with the Serbs?

Bind them with chains, throw them in urmanci!
and
Serbian candles have been put out,
445
No one will ever light them again!
Attempts were made to wipe out everything that had reminded of Prebilovci,
whose Serbian residents had been killed everywhere they happened to be,
even in hospitals in Mostar and Sarajevo. Until the end of the war, 850
Prebilovci Serbs, i.e. 85 percent were killed in total.
Some of the surviving Prebilovci men who had lost their families remarried
and had new children. That is how the village kept on living.
The post-war communist government tried to cover up or minimise the
crimes of the Independent State of Croatia against the Serbs, the heinous
crime against Prebilovci included. Exhumation and burial or the victims have
never been allowed. A white stone pillar was erected at the pit, without any
data regarding the number, nationality or the place the victims had come
from. No monument whatsoever has ever been erected in Prebilovci to
honour the victims. The majority of the criminals have never been
prosecuted, and a great number of those who were charged were rendered
short sentences.
The same authorities confiscated the fertile land along the Bregava and
Neretva rivers from the Prebilovci peasants and turned it into an agricultural
plant Hutovo Blato, later named Hepok. As the generations born between
1930 and 1941 were missing, the number of children in the village declined,
and the authorities took advantage of that and in 1971 closed down the school
in Prebilovci, from which 120 pupils including their teacher were killed in
1941. Thanks to all this, young people and their families moved out from the
village; the number of young people reduced by 30 percent between 1961 and
1971.
On the 40th anniversary of the killing of Serbs in apljina, the Franciscan
Order of the Roman Catholic Church in the Meugorje Parish announced an
apparition of the Virgin Mary. According to them, she said: I have chosen
this parish in particular! This parish that harbours several pits in which the
Serbs were killed, among them the one where the Prebilovci mothers and
their children were killed by the local parishioners, became the worlds
Catholic pilgrimage site before which tens of millions of Catholics from all
over the world bowed, even though the Vatican has not officially recognised
446
the Miracle of Meugorje. In 2013, the apljina municipality adopted a

special tourism development project in the village of urmanci, a part of the
Meugorje parish in whose pit the Prebilovci women and children had been
killed.
When the League of Communists government was toppled in 1990, the people
of Prebilovci and other Serbs from the neighbouring villages opened the pits
over which cement boards were placed in 1961. They took out the bones of
the 1941 victims and brought them all to Prebilovci. The victims were buried
in a crypt of the Orthodox Church that was being built in the village.
Authorities of the Republic of Croatia, in association with the Croatian and
Muslim paramilitary formations from Herzegovina, repeated the crime
against Prebilovci and Serbs in the Neretva Valley in 1992, the crime that
was unfinished in the Second World War and that was quietly resumed after
the Second World War. In the Republic of Croatia army offensive launched
in June 1992, after the Yugoslav army retreated from Bosnia and
Herzegovina, some of the Serbs were killed and the entire Serbian population
was forced to leave their settlements that were subsequently completely
destroyed together with churches, monasteries, cultural, community and
commercial buildings. Another crime was committed against Prebilovci
again, this time against the dead lying in the crypt of the church and in the
village cemetery. Plastic explosives were laid in the church that kept the
bones and the intention was to completely destroy and thus erase the
evidence of the crime against children in the Second World War. Many
graves in the village cemetery, which was completely ruined, were opened
and the deceased were burnt inside them. The ground where the church used
to stand was flattened and a landfill formed instead, which existed there until
2002. No one has been prosecuted for these crimes until this day.
Some of the former residents returned to the burnt and destroyed Prebilovci
in the autumn of 1999. However, only 20 percent of the pre-war residential
units were reconstructed, which did not allow the majority of residents to
return to the village, which is now the only Serbian village in the Neretva
Valley with 60 permanent residents. Prebilovci has basically remained a huge
ruin while the authorities are quietly making sure it stays like that and that
the village finally dies away. Its territory is being incorporated in the nature
park related to the Hutovo Blato marshland and the hunting ground of the
Galeb hunting club from apljina. The state-owned land confiscated from the
447
Prebilovci residents during the rule of the League of Communists was given
to the Croats who fled Central Bosnia.
Some say Prebilovci is a symbol of Serbs sufferings. Authorities of Belgrade,
the capital of the Republic of Serbia, dubbed by some the capital of the Serbs,
did not accept a 2006 proposal of the association of the Prebilovci victims
descendants to name a street in the city after Prebilovci.
Just like in 1941, there are now attempts to destroy or hide any trace of the
existence of Prebilovci. It is probably the only settlement in the world that is
deprived of a sign with its name to be posted on the road entering the village.
This place has seen the most sever atrocities in Europe and is the fourth place
in the world by sufferings in the Second World War, where more than 85
percent of the population lost their lives!
CONCLUSION: COMPARISON OF THE SUFFERING

AND ATTITUDE TOWARDS IT IN THE CASE OF
LIDICE AND PREBILOVCI
The war ordeals of the Czech Lidice and the Serbian Prebilovci are quite
similar. Both villages fell victim to horrible war crimes against innocent
civilians. In both villages almost all children were killed. In Lidice it was their
fathers and grown-up brothers, and in Prebilovci it was their mothers,
grandmothers and grown-up sisters that were killed. The majority of women
in Lidice were killed, while in Prebilovci it was adult and elderly men, so,
along with children, both parents and all other household members were
killed. Prebilovci had twice as many inhabitants as Lidice. Its sufferings were
greater also by the total number and percentage of the killed.
Lidice was the victim of a cruel German reprisal, which was carried out
ruthlessly and systematically. Prebilovci was the victim of a planned Croatian
genocide because of the victims ethnic and religious background. The crime
was committed deviously and sadistically, including the humiliation and
horrific and long-term torture of the victims. The settlements Lidice and
Prebilovci themselves were the subject of criminal plans whose goal was to
make them disappear in the administrative sense too. Apart from this, in 1942
Lidice was destroyed as a living settlement too, without any trace of them
448
left, like the ancient Troy. Prebilovcis name was changed to Novo Selo in
1941 and the village was colonised by Croatian families. The settlement was
completely destroyed and the surrounding area devastated in 1992. Even the
bones of the 1941 victims were destroyed, as were the bodies of the deceased
in the cemetery.
For those not in the know, there is a staggering difference in the societys
attitude towards the victims of the village of Lidice and the village of
Prebilovci. The Czech people, the Czechoslovak state and the whole world
have paid respects to Lidice and its victims, as one would expect. Lidice is a
national value of the highest degree, recognised and acknowledged even
outside the Czech borders. The village has been reconstructed and provided
long-term survival, and the victims have been remembered and given a
fitting memorial.
According to a survey published in 1999 by the Japanese daily Asahi
Shimbun, Prebilovci was the place of the greatest suffering in Europe during
the Second World War. The newspaper listed them among the places with
the worlds greatest atrocities of the Second World War. According to the
paper, the tragedy of the Serbs in the NDH is one of the global symbols of the
history of the 20th century. Because of this, Prebilovci would hold a highest
national value in any other nation. Still, Yugoslavia, the Serbian states that
emerged after the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav and Serbian
society, as well as the Serbian people have shown a completely different,
humiliating attitude towards the innocent victims of their own people in the
case of Prebilovci. Victims are deprived of respect, memory or decent burial,
and the village Prebilovci is deprived of survival for the sake of utopian
political goals because of which the truth about the suffering of ones own
people is intentionally being concealed. Accepting the imposed guilt for all
the evils of the 1991-95 and 1999 wars seemed much easier and more
acceptable to the Serbian side than respecting the historical truth and letting
the foreign and domestic public know about the sufferings of its own people
in the 20th century?! Decades have passed and such an attitude towards the
truth about the sufferings cannot and may not be beneficial to the victims.
February 2014
449
SOURCES AND REFERENCES
1. Ivan Ciganek, Lidice, ORBIS Press Agency, Prague, 1982.

2. Judgement of the District Court in Mostar, K. 77/57, dated 2 October 1957, with
investigation records.
3. Judgement of the Supreme Court of the Peoples Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina,
K. 139/58, dated 17 February 1958.
4. Judgement of the Federal Supreme Court, K. 9/58, dated 23 June 1958.
5. Records from an interrogation of the Ustasha unit commander Stojan Ragu in the
remand prison of UDBA (State Security Administration) in Mostar, July and August 1952.
6. Statement by Desimir Mihi from Stolac, Belgrade, 19 March 1943 (Archives of the Holy
Synod of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church).
7. Pali u borbi za slobodu, apljina-Neum, 1941-1945, SUBNOR apljina, 1984.
8. uro Ekmei, Prebilovci, neprebolna rana srpska, uro Ekmei, Beograd, 1994.
9. Mitar ari, Greh utanja je prekinut: ustaki genocide nad srpskim narodom u selu
Prebilovci avgusta 1941, Serbian Ministry of Culture, Information, Science and
Technology, Ministry for Relations with Serbs Outside Serbia, Belgrade, 1992.
10. Janko Bobetko, Sve moje bitke, Janko Bobetko, Zagreb, 1996.
11. Savo Skoko, Milan Grahovac (ur.), Zloini Nezavisne Drave Hrvatske i nemakog okupatora u Hercegovini: 1941-1945, Vol. 1 and 2, SPKD Prosvjeta, OO Gacko, Filip Vinji
Beograd, Optina Gacko, 2011 and 2012.
12. Milan Bulaji, Ustaki zloini genocida i suenje Andriji Artukoviu, I, Rad, Beograd,
1988.
450
Nikola Oegovi
ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY IN THE

Religious and denominational affiliation in the Balkans played a big role in

the national homogenisation and an atypical ethnic engineering, often orchestrated by international centres of political power. Religious issues have
always been of great importance, throughout the entire history of Serbo-Croatian relations. Apart from the general review of the causes of the tragic fate
that the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox population have been
put through in the Independent State of Croatia, this paper focuses specifically on the phenomenon of the Croatian Orthodox Church, because its history gives an outline of the overall national and religious policy of the Ustasha
regime and its supporters, who, unfortunately, still exist.
The ideology of the Party of Rights upheld by Ante Starevi and Eugen Kvaternik, which originated in the 19th century as a response to the awakening
of the national awareness of most European nations, denied the existence of
the Serbian identity in the territories belonging to Croats, in line with the
centuries-old Croatian state law. In this regard, they were trying to find a
way to weaken the Orthodox Church as the source of the Serbian identity, or
even use it as an instrument in the process of Croatisation. The first records
of the Croatian Orthodox Church were found in Eugen Kvaterniks Diary,
dated 3December1861. It describes a visit paid by this ideologist to a Ban of
Croatia, Josip okevi. Among other things, it says: I mentioned the need
for a Croatian Orthodox Church Patriarchy.1 The idea of a national Croatian
Veljko . uri, Ustae i pravoslavlje, Hrvatska pravoslavna crkva, Beograd, 1989, p. 20.
451
Orthodox Church has stuck with all those looking for the most appropriate
way to nationally unify the Croatian historic territory ever since.
Speaking of spreading the Croatian national idea and building stronger links
with the Roman Catholic Church, there was another important event at the
beginning of the 20th century. It was the First Croatian Catholic Meeting, held
in Zagreb from 3rd to 5th September 1900. The so-called Catholic meetings
were organised by the Roman Catholic Church in European countries affected by destructive Darwinist, naturalist and freemasonic ideas.2 Viktor
Novak saw this event as the beginning of clericalism in Croatia. In addition
to fighting the liberal Masonic middle-class ideology, the First Croatian
Catholic Meeting also had Croatian national goals. From the late nineteenth
century, the Roman Curia and Vienna rapidly started turning the Croatian
national feeling into a tool serving the purpose of growing their own spiritual
and political influence in the Balkans and further east. It was therefore important to identify the name of Croatia with the affiliation to the Roman Catholic Church. Suddenly myths and romanticised ideas about Croats appeared,
describing them as the Antemural of Christianity and the avant-garde of a
Roman Catholic revival.3 These ideas were upheld by the clerical Croatian
Peoples Party in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. However, considering the Serbo-Croatian relations, it is important to mention that almost
the same national/political ideas were upheld by all the political factions in
the Croatian national corpus. Croatian clericals, liberal civil parties and communists, and along with the later Ustasha movement, persisted in opposing
the alleged Great Serbian hegemony and Belgrade centralism. On the contrary, Serbian political parties were fragmented, some even helping the Croatian separatism with their agendas.4
The socio-political history of Croats in the 19th and early 20th century did not
succeed in creating a progressive national ideology. Instead, what was created
was a strange amalgamation of national ideology and Roman Catholic clericalism, handicapped in many ways by the feudal and class heritage. The Croatian elites wanted to free the Croatian nation from the numerous Serbian
2
Dr Nikola uti, Rimokatolika crkva i hrvatstvo, od ilirske ideje do velikohrvatske realizacije 1453-1941, Beograd, 1997, p. 138.
3 Ibid., p. 146.
4 Ibid., p. 154.
452
and Orthodox elements in the newly created Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and
Slovenes, so they copied the ideological propaganda clichs of the international centres of power. The most common clich was certainly the so-called
Great Serbian hegemony. Time should not be wasted trying to prove how
such an accusation was groundless. A non-structured provisional state like
the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/Yugoslavia in barely over two
decades of its existence could not possibly have had an exclusive and discriminatory policy in favour of one side, especially not to such an extent that it
could provoke or even justify such monstrous crimes against Serbs in 19411945.
Superficial political accusations accompanied an entire arsenal of religious
and racial prejudices against the Serbian Orthodox Church and the main figures of Serbian Orthodox culture. Their genesis can be traced back to the
early Middle Ages. A collective name for all those prejudices was Byzantism.5 That was how the struggle against the Great Serbian and aggressive Belgrade, or the struggle of the Roman Catholicism against the treacherous and schismatic Orthodox Christianity flowed into a resentment,
whose bestiality will be felt mostly by common Serbian Orthodox Christian
people living in the territory of the NDH, which had nothing to do with the
turbulences of the world politics.
The Roman Catholic and Croatian bellum iustum theory directed by Paveli
and his mentors was being prepared for decades and even centuries-long dehumanisation and animalisation of the Orthodox people. In order to willingly accept force, the causality of a war gets closely tied to its moralisation:
the right to war (jus ad bellum) is not in fact only a legal matter (war laws:
jus belli or ius in bello), but needs to have moral grounds : therefore it has
been decided that there is such a thing as a just war (bellum iustum), meaning
there is a right to kill people and not get sanctioned for it, shrouded in the
disguise of supposed morality.6 Therefore, the phenomenology of the Serbian suffering in the NDH territory in World War II must be viewed in the
context of the historical and geographic issues of the so-called long duration
(longue dure Fernand Braudel).
5
6
This term was extensively used by the Blessed Aloysius Stepinac in his homilies.
Bogoljub ijakovi, Pred licem drugog, fuga u ogledima, Beograd Niki, 2002, p. 324.
453
Once mentioned, the idea of the Croatian Orthodox Church continued to resonate with Croatias political and intellectual elite as one of the methods
aimed at national consolidation. After Kvaternik, this idea was mentioned
again in 1902 and 1903 and discussed in more detail in the paper written by
Antun Radi titled Home.7 Not long after that, the same idea was mentioned
by Niko Bjelovui in his book Trijalizam i Hrvatska Drava [Trialism and
the Croatian State], published in Dubrovnik in 1911. Bjelovui suggested division of the Serbian Church in two sections: Serbian Orthodox Church for
Serbs and Croatian Orthodox Church for Croats.8 During World War I, the
Peoples Government (Austro-Hungarian) in Sarajevo drafted a law in 1915
on the Orthodox Church in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The law prescribed the
deletion of the word Serbian and the prohibition of the use of Cyrillic and
Serbian flags. It also planned the prohibition of Serbian confessional schools.9
Pavelis own words can help fully understand the essence of the extreme
hostility the Ustasha regime towards the Serbian Church. Archbishop Stepinac recorded in his Diary a conversation he had had with Paveli in this regard. Stepinac wrote: Poglavnik (...) replied that he was going to go along
with anything the Roman Catholic Church wanted. He then said that he
would not tolerate the Serbian Orthodox Church, because it was not a
church to him, but only a political organisation...10 Religious issues in
the Independent State of Croatia were also discussed at a session of the Croatian Parliament held at the end of March 1942. On that occasion, the Minister of Justice and Religion Mirko Puk said: Sharing the standpoint of the
Father of our Homeland, Ante Starevi, the Croatian State Government now
actually acknowledges three religions among the Croatian people, both Eastern and Western Catholic Church, the Muslim religion and the Evangelical
Church of the Augsburg and Helvetian confessions (...) Gentlemen, members
of the Croatian State Parliament. I would also like to address the issue of the
so-called Serbian Orthodox Church, or the Eastern Greek religion. In this
uri, ibid., p. 21.

Vasilije . Kresti, Iz istorije Srba i srpsko-hrvatskih odnosa (Studies, articles, discussions, essays), Beograd, 1994, pp. 289.
9 Ibid., 289.
10 uri, ibid., p. 50.
8
454
regard, I would like to say that the Independent State of Croatia is not persecuting the Eastern Greek religion, while on the contrary it cannot recognise
the Serbian Orthodox Church. Therefore, to allow the foundation (?!)
and existence of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the territory of the
Independent State of Croatia would mean allowing the government
of the State of Serbia to extend a part of its governing authority
through the Serbian Orthodox Church to the territory of the Independent State of Croatia, which is something no country would allow
and cannot allow, and the Independent State of Croatia will certainly
not allow it.11
In the same Parliament session, Poglavnik said the following: I will say
again, there can be no Serbian or Eastern Greek Orthodox Church. Why?
Because orthodox churches are national churches all around the
world. The Serbian Orthodox Church is part of the Serbian state,
Serbia... It can happen in Serbia, it was possible in the unfortunate
Yugoslavia, but it cannot and will not happen in Croatia. Under no
circumstances are we going to allow any church to become a political instrument, an instrument directed against the survival of the Croatian people and
the Croatian state.12
An interesting dialogue between Ante Paveli and Ivan Metrovi has been
preserved, illustrative of Poglavniks attitude towards the Orthodox religion
and generally towards the religious issue in the Independent State of Croatia.
On that occasion, Paveli said that Orthodox Christian people should not be
forced into conversion to Catholicism, it was more important for them to become Croatised. In that case, even he could convert to Orthodox Christianity.
He said he did not care much about the Roman Catholic Church anyway.13
We can draw a conclusion that the pathological hatred Paveli had towards
the Serbian Church was not inspired by his Roman Catholic fanaticism, but
by his Serbophobia. While the majority of the Roman Catholic clergy, wholeheartedly supported by the Vatican, dreamed of a religiously homogenous
11
Ibid., pp. 162-163.

Ibid., p. 163.
13 Veljko . uri, Srpska pravoslavna crkva u Nezavisnoj Drzavi Hrvatskoj 1941 1945,
12
Veternik, 2002, p. 47.
455
Croatia Croatia Sacra, Paveli and the political leadership allowed a religious heterogeneity that was extremely Croat-centred.
The new government was not just talking. At a session of the Committee on
Judicial and Religious Affairs held on 11th March 1942, a possibility was mentioned of establishing a new Orthodox Church14. Poglavnik passed a decree
on the Croatian Orthodox Church on 3rdApril, which was soon followed by
the establishment of the first church borough belonging to the new church
in Zagreb, presided by Petar Lazi. The first liturgy was given by priest Vaso
urlan at the Church of the Holy Transfiguration of Our Lord in Zagreb. The
Decree on the appointment of the Metropolitan Archbishop was signed by
Poglavnik on 5th June 1942. That was how Reverend Archbishop Germogen
was appointed Metropolitan Archbishop of the Zagreb Province of the Croatian Orthodox Church and was supposed to be appointed head of the newly
established church.15 Germogen pledged to Paveli three days after his appointment in the presence of many members of the government.16
Georgy Ivanovich Maximov Germogen, Russian by nationality, was the
Archbishop of Yekaterinoslav and Novomoskovsk during the revolution in
1917. He resided in the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1922,
while in emigration. He was a member of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.17 The intelligence service of the Third
Reich had a major role in his discovery and appointment as head of the newly
founded church, as much as in its establishment. The involved operatives
were Adalbert Kungel and Marbot Schumacher. A big role was played by
Milo Obrkneevi, a collaborator with the German intelligence service and
a church official at Sremski Karlovci. He later worked on the Constitution of
the Croatian Orthodox Church, and became Germogens personal secretary.18
A Montenegrin quisling and pre-war communist, Savi Markovi tedimlija
was an associate of the Croatian Orthodox Church and editor of its official
journal (Glas pravoslavlja, The Voice of Orthodoxy).
14
uri, Ustae i pravoslavlje, p. 164.

Ibid., pp. 169-170.
16 Ibid., p. 173.
17 Ibid., p. 174-175.
18 Ibid., p. 176-179.
15
456
The Serbian Orthodox Church had an immediate reaction to the establishment of the new church in Croatia by emphasising its non-canonical nature.
The Holy Synod of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church insisted on the
fact that the establishment of the new church was not the will of the Orthodox
population in the Independent State of Croatia, and the standpoint that the
government did not have the right to establish the new autocephalous Orthodox churches.19 Among the other Orthodox churches, only Bulgarian and Romanian churches had some contact with this, basically, quasi-church organisation. The Vatican had a positive attitude towards the Croatian Orthodox
Church and the Independent State of Croatia itself. A report by Nikola
Rusinovi, a diplomatic representative of the NDH at the Vatican, sent to the
Croatian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mladen Lorkovi, testifies to that.20
According to the Constitution of the COC, the territory of the NDH was divided into four church provinces eparchies: Metropolitanate of Zagreb (see
in Zagreb), Eparchy of Petrovac (Bosanski Petrovac), Eparchy of Brod
(Bosanski Brod), Eparchy of Sarajevo (Sarajevo). By the end of its existence,
the COC will have failed to become constituted due to the very slim social
grounds on which it was based. As a state entity without the support of the
Orthodox population that had already lost direction and was terrorised by the
Ustasha henchmen, it could not come to life in full force. Apart from Germogen, only one more bishop will have been appointed by the end of the war
Spiridon Mifka (Croat).21 According to the decisions issued by the Ministry
of Justice and Religion or Zagreb Metropolitanate, there were around seventy priests at the COC, among whom there were dozens of Russian emigrants.22 Nevertheless, it should be noted that those were administrative documents and that the actual situation was even worse for
Pave church. To make a comparison, the Ustashas killed 196 Serbian priests
across the territory of the eight eparchies of the Serbian Orthodox Church
belonging to the NDH during the war.23 The new church was completely
19
Ibid., p. 190.
Ibid., p. 182.
21 Ibid., pp. 230-231.
22 Ibid., pp. 242-254.
23 Ibid., pp. 115-117.
20
457
loyal to the NDH, Poglavnik and Ustasha principles. Its officials used the official Ustasha greeting For homeland, ready! The direct involvement of the
COC hierarchy in the genocidal actions was testified by the post-war sentence
pronounced on Bishop Spiridon, which read: As a priest of the so-called Croatian Orthodox Church and the confessor of the Orthodox prisoners at camp
Jasenovac, he witnessed mass killings and took part in them...24
The Croatian Orthodox Church ceased to exist at the same time as its protector the NDH. Among its high clergy, Metropolitan Archbishop Germogen,
Bishop Spiridon Mifka and four priests were arrested. They were all sentenced to death, along with the Head of the Department of Religion, Friar
Radoslav Glava.25
Nothing was written about the Croatian Orthodox Church in the socialist Yugoslavia for decades. This issue was also ignored due to the brotherhood ideology the unity. The communist regime itself used the political pressure
and threats towards prelates of the Serbian Church in order to use the establishment of the so-called Macedonian Orthodox Church and erase the Serbian
name in Macedonia, just like Paveli did in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Slavonia,
Srem and other parts of the country. A similar process of establishing a quasichurch with extremely nationalistic, Serbophobic charge can be traced back
to the early nineties of the twentieth century in Montenegro.
The history of the Croatian Orthodox Church, unfortunately, did not end in
1945. Early in 1993, in the middle of the war, the Dean of the Theological
College in Zagreb Juraj Kolari said that the Orthodox Church in Croatia
could be organised following the Macedonian principle, have its head and be
independent of the SOC. Kolari enjoyed the support of Ivan Gabelica, restorer of the Croatian Pure Party of Rights. Gabelica almost literally repeated
Pavelis arguments against the SOC. This politician praised Paveli and
thought he equalled Garibaldi, Bolivar, Washington and De Gaulle. 26
Still, the Croatian Orthodox Church has been restored in the recent years. A
man called Ivo Matanovi (born in 1929 near Banja Luka), a wartime member
of the Ustasha Youth Party and Ustasha by choice, founded in 2010 the so24
Ibid., p. 271.
Ibid., p. 272.
26 Kresti, ibid., p. 288.
25
458
called Croatian Orthodox Community, as he proudly emphasises, with Vinja

Paveli, Poglavniks daughter. 27 This community declared itself an autocephalous church in 2013 and falls under the jurisdiction of Nikola I, the
Archbishop of Paris, Metropolitan Archbishop of Europe and Patriarch of the
European Orthodox Church, who issued a Pravorijek a document confirming its autocephalous status.28 Needless to say, the mentioned European patriarch is actually an impostor unrecognised by the regional Orthodox
Christian churches. The new COC is based on the new Croatian Orthodox
Christian followers, who are 16,647, according to the Croatian Bureau of Statistics.29 Although the current President of Croatia officially condemned the
creation of this religious community that bluntly calls and builds upon the
Ustasha principles, its very existence cannot be happily accepted by the remaining Serbs in Croatia. The mediocrity Matanovi and his caricature community would not have attracted any attention if they had not called for a
de-Serbonisation of the Balkans at a service commemorating Germogen,
the former head of the COC. 30 It is well known that history does not repeat
itself, but also that it is associative. In a new political turmoil, dangerous ideas
can again become dangerous devices and instruments. The idea of the Croatian Orthodox Church is one of those dangerous and threatening ideas.
27
Ivo Matanovi, Svjedok naeg vremena, Murter, 2012, pp. 440-443.

www.hrvatskipravoslavci.com, accessed on 27 January 2014.
29 www.dzs.hr, accessed on 27 January 2014. Who are the Croatian Orthodox people? Not
hard to guess if we know that the process of quiet assimilation of the Serbs in Croatia is still
ongoing. However, a large part of the responsibility lies with the Serbian institutions,
which have failed to draw up and support a responsible cultural policy.
30 www.hrvatskipravoslavci.com, accessed on 27 January 2014.
28
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Radovan Piljak
ANOTHER NEW CITY IN THE

REPUBLIC OF SRPSKA THE CITY
OF WHITE ANGELS
I suggest that as of today, on the occasion of the centenary of the Great War,
apart from Andrigrad, the Republic of Srpska be richer and more famous
for another new city, the city of admonition and remembrance the City of
White Angels!
The City of White Angels is located along the banks of the Sava River, next
to Jasenovac and Donja Gradina, and beneath them, too.
It is a hidden, largest Serbian underground city that emerged as a product of
the Jasenovac casemates of death and drives of a disturbed mind. The publication of my book of poems Grad bijelih anela and its seeing the light of day
has cut the ribbon of several decades of oblivion and silence and with the
blurred light of thousands of candles, flaring from the verses of this book, I
commemorate all the victims of this hell, regardless of the name, nation, religion or skin colour. Jasenovac casemates of death were walked by the innocent ones only: children, the elderly, the poor and the weak; Serbs, Jews,
Roma and all the others who did not belong to the ideology of dagger and
hammer. For all of them, or at least for the majority of them, according to the
words of the writer and inmate Ljubo Jandri, even encountering death was
encountering the holy death at the wedding feast!
As of today, the name of the new city - the City of White Angels should be
written down in all schools, on all maps of battlefields in our history! For it
to be proudly and respectfully demonstrated to new generations and the
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world and to be the city of admonition and remembrance rather than a source
of hatred and revenge!
The city of admonition for young generations to learn what a frenzied
mind is capable of doing, and the city of remembrance, for such crimes
never to happen again to anybody, in any part of the world. That is why I
open the gates of this city for its white angels to be honoured by all the
willing and unwilling ones, by all well-wishers and supporters of human
freedom and beauty of life, by all those who despise the evil and hatred and
celebrate human happiness.
I shall explain how the idea of producing Grad bijelih anela came about.
As the time passes, there are fewer witnesses of the Jasenovac factories of
death who are still alive, while this killing field is being increasingly politicised and pushed into obscurity. Therefore, while there are solid foundations,
and few still surviving inmates of Jasenovac, and the granite foundation laid
by, now a deceased writer and inmate, Ljubo Jandri with his novel Jasenovac, I wished to ignite on these foundations the lyrical and eternal flame of
admonition and remembrance and open this City for still living martyrs of
Jasenovac to come and get warm by its light. So, I set about a difficult and
painstaking work: by reading through the Jandris novel, historical documents, Jasenovac round table announcements and memories, confessions of
surviving inmates, I was creating the book of poems Grad bijelih anela.
By browsing through the pages of this book and by revealing the images of
this City to the light of day, we again see before us the world of small people
coming back to life humiliated and insulted, poor and weak and yet dignified and morally strong. And in this labyrinth of death that was flourishing
like a plague, they stood tall and spiritually stronger than the enemy. We see
the locked gates of the City unlock before us and monstrously conceived
deaths causing pain and suffering, according to the inmate Radovan Rubin:
''It is beyond words, it is not for the living person! My wounds suffice for two
centuries!''
Jasenovac and, in particular, Donja Gradina is the killing field designed by
murderers, evil doers and sick-minded men-beasts, where they exterminated
human souls and innocent people only because they did not belong to their
God.
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Based on the motifs and verses of the book, in 2010 in Kozarska Dubica, a
young director Aleksandar Pejakovi very successfully directed and performed with the Banja Luka Student Theatre a formal ceremony under the
same title on the occasion of the anniversary of the Jasenovac breakthrough.
The book immortalised confessions and destinies of some wretched lucks,
who managed to survive the Golgotha of Jasenovac and Donja Gradina and to
convey to the new generations the message of those who had words on their
lips while encountering the holy death at the wedding feast, through pain
and suffering that no living man should feel and dying while defending the
honour and dignity of the man and religion.
The composition of the entire book is symbolic. It starts with the poem
Opomena and its carriages of death depict the two, equally major events: the
massacre in Drakuli near Banja Luka in February 1942, which announced
the black Jasenovac night of Ustashas creation of the NDH and the second
event from the past patriotic war, the death of the son of Kozara, Major Milan
Tepi. This closes the lyrical circle of victims of Kozara, and God forbid that
is should ever happen again!
Let the new generations learn about democracy of freedom and live in the
freedom of democracy, and let them erase from their hearts the ideology of
hatred and killing technique.
Throughout the book, an invisible, blessed hand is taking you breathless
through the black nights of Jasenovac to the times of Milan Tepi and the
present day.
Yet, you will not get lost!
The wings of white angels overshadow the whole path of suffering and pain
and there is a looming light.
You have before you the City of White Angels the sanctuary and monument of history in all its strength, size and beauty!
I present this book of poems Grad bijelih anela, published in 2007 in Banja
Luka, co-financed at the competition of the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Labour and Veterans and Disabled Persons Affairs of the Republic
of Srpska, to be translated into the English, Russian and Hebrew languages
and I invite all interested film and theatre professionals to produce a grand
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and impressive piece of art on Jasenovac and Donja Gradina, i.e. the City of
White Angels, based on the motifs of this book.
Since the agenda of today's conference includes the Programme of Protection
and Organisation of the Donja Gradina Memorial, I propose we consider that
this killing field be named the City of White Angels and that a new city, the
city of admonition and remembrance the City of White Angels be designed
and possibly developed based on the motifs of this book!
This is my contribution to the idea that the truth about Jasenovac, after 73
years, should fully see the light of day and I am willing to take part in the
implementation thereof, whereby this time I bestow as a gift around twenty
books for this purpose.
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MEMORIES
Bogdan Petkovi
THE CHARACTER OF WORLD WAR II

PRISONER CAMPS IN GERMANY
AND THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF
CROATIA
In the Second International Conference on Jasenovac, held in Banja Luka in

2000, the Croatian historian Josip Jurevi, from the Dr Ivo Pilar Institute,
discussing the Jasenovac camp, kept pointing out that it was merely a concentration and labour camp. The actual name of the Jasenovac camp was
Concentration and labour camp. However, the label labour camp was not
reflective of the camps character, i.e. of the fact that it was a camp for destroying Jews, Serbs, the Roma people and Croatian antifascists.
The label labour camp was used for the Jasenovac camp by other speakers
as well. Their aim was to attenuate its horrible character as an extermination
camp, because slave labour was meant to run as many of the camps prisoners
to the ground, to exhaust and put them to death through poor or no food at
all, as death reigned across the camp from its first to its last days.
The true character of the Jasenovac camp can be seen and characterised from
a memorandum of the Main Headquarters of the Poglavnik, dated 27th April
1942, addressed to
General Staff of the Home Guard,
Ustasha Militia headquarters,
Ministry of Interior and
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Chief Command of the Gendarmerie

stating that: The Command of the Ustasha Surveillance Service the chief
adjutant, in the top secret order No. 139/42, has informed us that the concentration and labour camp in Jasenovac can accept an unlimited number of inmates. The memorandum was signed by General Prpi on the Poglavniks
command.
There lies the answer to the purpose of establishing the Jasenovac camp and
to its character. How can an unlimited number of inmates be accepted in only
the 6 (six) dormitories that had existed since the camp was formed in August
1941 up to 22nd April 1945 when it was blasted by explosives? What kind of
labour could be done in the camp that would require so much work force, an
unlimited amount?
Advocates of the claim that Jasenovac was also a labour camp are not aware
of what the difference was between labour camps and concentration camps
in Germany.
Having had the misfortune to experience three types of camps during the
Second World War, both in the territory of the Third Reich and the Independent State of Croatia, I believe that what I am about to write will refute
the claims that Jasenovac was also a labour camp, revealing its true character
as a camp for executing prisoners.
I will state what I personally experienced in those camps, not what I heard or
read from someone else, but only what happened to me.
I will list three types of camps in which I was imprisoned.
Labour camps (in Vienna and in Linz)
Prisoner Encampment in Kanal, a Zagreb borough
Jasenovac Concentration Camp in the Independent State of Croatia
1. LABOUR CAMPS
In early November 1942 along with a hundred Serbs from Bjelovar I was deported to Vienna to do forced labour. I was assigned to the Reihert optische
468
Werke company, Urban Gasse number 6, Vienna. I was placed in a camp

called Gemeinschaftslager Nr. 9 Heigerleinstrase. The exact name of the
camp can be seen in the Lagerausweis (camp pass) belonging to Branko
Kusobrak from my dormitory room in Vienna. The original pass is now in
the Museum of the Republic of Srpska in Banja Luka, in the Donja Gradina
collection. I was in this camp from early November 1942 to mid-April 1943.
My second round in labour camps in Germany was when I was transferred
from the Jasenovac Camp to work in Germany in late February 1945.
I stayed in several transit camps around Linz, whose names I do not recollect,
but having been assigned to work in the Herman Gring Eisenwerke steel
company in Linz, I was placed in the Heid beim Traun labour camp, some 12
km away from Linz. I travelled to work by train. I stayed in this camp up to
5th May 1945, when we were liberated by American soldiers.
THE CHARACTER AND PURPOSE OF THESE CAMPS:
The aforementioned labour camps served only for lodging and nourishment
of forced labourers in Germany. These camps were being built in the vicinity
of industrial facilities. The labourers had some freedom of movement, i.e. we
were allowed to go in and out of the labour camp with the Lagerausweis. To
enter the company we had to have an Arbeitsausweis (work pass). After
working hours, we were free to go to the movies, theatre, inns, public bathrooms, the Prater Amusement Park in Vienna, museums, to visit acquaintances in other camps or to go to church on Sundays. The Arbeitsausweis contained information where the person was working, and the Lagerausweis
which camp they were stationed in. The camp warden in Vienna was a retired
army captain, also a disabled war veteran, and in Linz it was a Greek man,
also brought in by force, but spoke German well. Camp security officers were
senior Germans in civilian clothes. The only uniformed thing about them
were their short top hats. They wore red armbands on the left arm saying
Wane, i.e. guard.
The rooms in the dormitories were all with twenty beds. Each room had an
iron wood or coal-burning stove. The coal, in briquettes, was abundant. We
each had our own iron beds with a straw mattress, a pillow without no pillowslip and one blanket. One wooden cabinet was available per every two
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men, for keeping essentials. Each room had a laundry wash-basin, a dining
table, benches, a water pitcher and drinking cups. Each dormitory had sanitary facilities, i.e. wash-basins and toilets. All of it was meagre, but it was
much more than what the concentration camp quarters had.
The camp management only worried about preparing food, following the
black-out rules and maintaining order and sanitation. At the workplace we
had to clock in our punch cards every time we went in or out, just like any
German, meaning that our working hours were being recorded. We received
wages every Saturday, along with all the Germans. It was a small satchel with
some paper slips and a record of our working hours. The wages were minimal, 8 or 9 German Marks. That could get you 1.5 kilos of bread at the market.
The Germans were getting a few cooked potatoes and some salad for brunch
around noon, and we were getting nothing.
The most common contact with the camp guards was when we failed to close
the window blinds properly. When that happened the guard would knock his
cane on the dormitory walls saying light, and then we would immediately
close up to make the black-out complete.
The Germans authorised us, the forced labourers, to take leaves of absence in
case of a death or grave illness in the family. Several friends of mine never
came back from their leaves. Nobody made a big deal out of it, because they
had plenty more work force and easily replaced the missing workers with
newcomers. I had also received a telegram saying that my father was gravely
ill, which had to have been authorised by the competent Ustasha tabornik.
The Germans easily approved 14 days of absence, but the Croatian consulate
in Vienna would not issue me a visa for the return trip.
An interpreter talked me into taking the trip on the eve of Easter 1943, and I
somehow obtained the visa at the border. I will not discuss this in more detail
here because it would be too long a story. I know of people who had obtained
correct and authentic papers and headed for home, but somewhere before
Novska an Ustasha patrol would take them off the train and transport them
to the Jasenovac camp for no reason at all. They were soon executed. Their
families probably believed that they had died during allied bombings of Germany, and they ended up in Jasenovac.
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I would also like to point out that, while I was doing forced labour in Germany
I never worried that I might be taken away to be shot or hanged. There was
the danger of been killed by accident at work or in allied bombings. However,
when I was at home in the NDH, I was never certain that I was not going to
be arrested, deported to Serbia or taken to prison of a camp, because no other
reason was needed for that than being a Serb. In Vienna, we used to go to
church, not so much for the prayer, as because of the girls that came as well,
so we had opportunities to meet someone. We used to frequent an inn, the
proprietor of which used to switch the radio to Radio Zagreb or Radio Belgrade as soon as we would walk in, so it was the only place where we could
hear our folk songs. In the camp we were roommates with Greeks.
I do not know if they were prisoners of war or forced work force. The Greeks
turned out to be more resourceful than us, because one could always get buy
bread or cakes from them without vouchers. How and where they obtained
vouchers for that, I do not know.
On my second round in Germany in Linz, on Sundays we used to go begging,
we called it bitteschon. We used to beg in more remote places where there
were no Field Gendarmes. It was April 1945. Food was scarce, but in the
countryside we would always get a cooked potato or some apples, which was
enough to at least alleviate our hunger.
This was a brief overview of life in labour camps in Germany in 1943 and
1945.
1. LABOUR CAMPS
In early June 1944, I was released from the Holy Spirit Home Guard military hospital in Zagreb, and as a recovered prisoner I was sent to the Kanal
Prisoner Encampment. That space is now the Main Bus Station. It used to be
a complex of 40 to 50 buildings. It seemed to be a transit camp, because many
units came through it, staying for a short time and then moving on to their
destinations. I stayed in that camp from 6th June 1944 to 2nd August 1944,
when I was arrested with 9 other inmates and taken to the Ustasha constabulary on Petrinjska Street for questioning. I think our Tabor had three dormitories in that complex. The kitchen and stockroom were in one, the Tabor
Head Office in the second, and we, the prisoners, in the third. Security was
handled by a division of the Ustashas.
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The Tabor commander was a Senior Captain of the Home Guard named Josip
Maras. His staff comprised several other commissioned and non-commissioned officers, mainly residents of Zagreb who had pulled strings to be assigned to such a position out of harms way. He was better off here than somewhere in a mountain brigade on the front line. The food was poor. Mainly
macaroni and sometimes a small piece of meat. But we were allowed to have
visits. We could buy newspapers, write letters to our families back home and
be culturally engaged. Among us was a teacher named Milan epak. He was
a member of the resistance movement leadership, captured and wounded by
the Cossacks. He obtained some blank staff paper and organised a choir. I was
immediately excluded, because I was tone deaf. They practised Tschapajews
Tod. Why he had chosen that one, I do not know. I was a Partisan and I knew
it was a Russian revolutionary song, but no one from the camp management
reacted.
One day, the whole camp was ordered to fall in. There might have been
around a hundred of us. The camp commander and his head office came and
asked us to openly declare where each of us would like to go next from the
camp. He offered us the possibility to join the Home Guard, Ustasha Militia,
German Army, to work in Germany and to be exchanged to the Partisans. He
told us to speak our minds with no fear. Some of the men chose the Home
Guard, but nobody chose the Militia or the German Army. Myself and three
other men chose to be exchanged. The camp soon moved to Trenjevka, a set
of small buildings on the left bank of the Kustoak Creek, near the Siemens
factory, today Rade Konar. The commander called teacher epak and told
him to work on getting as many men as possible to sign up to be exchanged,
because the Germans were insisting on that to free their own soldiers who
were in Partisan captivity. At that time I was visited by my mother. She had
crossed 65 km from my home place on foot and come to Zagreb to visit me
and bring me food. She also brought a brochure about a meeting between Tito
and ubai. My father fought with the Partisans, and my sister and aunt had
taken refuge in Slavonia. The teacher drafted the letter immediately and addressed it to the HQ of the 10th Corps. He explained to them the possibility of
prisoner exchange and asked them to speed up the negotiations, because some
prisoners could be arrested. My mother took the letter and promised to bring
the response as soon as she received it. She knew imo Balen, the second in
472
command of the Corps. She even visited his mother in Zagreb to bring her a
message from him.
Soon the Home Guard recruitment committee arrived to the camp. Some men
chose the Home Guard, but myself and most others refused. I was told to state
my decision and I said: Every bird to its own flock, so I would like to go to
mine. They said: Boy, you might regret It later. I was confident, because
this was after the assassination attempt on Hitler, sometime after 20th July
1944. We believed the war was going to be over within two-three months,
and if I were to don the Home Guard uniform right then, I would have ruined
what I had struggled for until then.
Thus we came to 1st August 1944, and when the working shift finished in the
camp offices only one NCO (non-commissioned officer) was on call. The
Ustasha police paid a surprising visit and took one of the prisoners. The officer on call was sergeant Humi. He was a barkeeper from Zagreb. His bar
was running and he was strutting across Zagreb during the war, because he
was out of harms way here, completely spared of any threat to his life that
he would have felt in a mountain brigade somewhere in Bosnia. We were
under German jurisdiction, because we had almost all been captured or arrested by the Germans or Cossacks. The Ustashas meddled with the prisoner
exchange between the Germans and Partisans in any way they could, below
the radar of the Germans. The camp commander did not dare intervene, because of the danger of ending up in Bosnia, where no one felt like going. The
poor sap they had taken away blurted out everything he knew about ten of
us, thinking he would be spared for it.
On 2nd August 1944, after the working shift, the police came again. The same
story. The officer on call delivers us to the police, himself not trying to notify
the camp commander. We are taken to the police station on Petrinjska street.
They first ask who Kefeeg and Petkovi are. Kefeeg was a commando, and
I was said to be asking to be exchanged to the Partisans, my mother carrying
a letter to the Partisan HQ. We are waiting in processing to hand over any
items we are not supposed to have in prison, such as knives, belts, writing
utensils and what not. Kefeeg has already been taken to questioning. The
teacher has a list of the entire camp with information who served in which
unit in which position, member of the Youth Communist League or the Communist Party. The guard is looking for a place to store our trinkets. The
473
teacher is in the front line, he takes the list out and hands it to the second line
whispering destroy it. Somebody gets hold of the list, teas it up into small
pieces and throws it into the nearby trash can. We finally sighed with relief.
Had they gotten hold of that list they would have arrested the whole camp,
and we would have been charged with treason, never to clear our names.
The ten of us did not say a word about anyone else. Kefeeg was soon hanged,
one man was sent to the Home Guard, one was brought back to the camp, and
seven of us transferred to Jasenovac. Three men were killed there, the
teacher among them, and only four of us survived. We went through hell. I
was also a hostage on Savska Street, where one night around eleven oclock
an Ustasha opened the door and called: Bogdan Lovreni! At the mention of
the name Bogdan I was already on my feet. However, it was a Home Guard
sergeant who was being called to questioning. I could sleep any more that
night. Every day, if the weather was favourable, hundreds of American
bombers thundered over Zagreb. We could hear someone closing the doors
in the hallways. Some older inmates said the Ustashas were setting up machine guns, so that, in case the building was hit and collapsed and the prisoners broke out, they could shoot them all when they tried to escape. This
should be believed, because these men were not police officers but Ustashas.
Uncertainty day in and day out. No visits nor food, no news from home or
any information from the press. The only contact with the outside world was
this Ustasha guard. There were no beds or anything else to lie in. We lay on
the floor on our clothes for sheets. We were lucky that it was August so it was
not cold, but it was stuffy inside.
I would like to point out that at the Prisoner Encampment we were not assigned to any work. The only work we had done was digging trenches for
our protection from air raids, which we dug in a circle around the dormitories for our own protection. When we had been digging the trenches three
prisoners stayed inside, hiding until the night and escaping through barbed
wire to the Kustoak Creek and onwards out of Zagreb. The men who escaped
were Horvati (aka tana), member of some committee, then Tomo Lonar
(real last name Vragovi) and Milan Vergot, commando. Their disappearance
was unnoticed until the evening roll call. There was no retaliation towards
those of us who stayed. The guards were reinforced and we were not allowed
to get close to the wire any more. The Camp Commander, now a Home Guard
soldier, probably adhered to the Prisoner Conventions. We were denied
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nothing after this escape, because we continued to have visits, buy the press,
read the newspapers, play football with some old rag ball. Singing was also
allowed but no one dared sing the Tschapajews Tod.
There it is, a short overview of the character and atmosphere in in the Prisoner Encampment. Poor food, no abuse, no fear for ones life. In short, a bearable situation, because in June the Second Front was opened up in France
and on 20 July 1914 an assassination was attempted on Hitler. We were all
optimistic that within 2 or 3 months the war might be over.
I do not know what happened to this camp until the end of war.
JASENOVAC CONCENTRATION AND LABOUR CAMP
In the second half of September 1944 my friend Anton Kadoi and I were
transferred from the Savska Cesta prison to the Petrinjska Street prison. We
stayed there for about two weeks, waiting to be deported to the camp. The
police guard that monitored our room recognised a fellow countryman inside, a disabled man with only one leg. He brought him food and newspapers
every day. That was how we learned about developments on the front lines.
We were taken for walks every morning in the prison yard. We found out
that Romania had been occupied and that the Fatherland Front overtook the
government in Bulgaria, which meant the Russians were on the borders of
Yugoslavia. The morale was high, because we could see the end of the war
was near, but unfortunately it took a while longer for it to end. On 4th October
1944, after dinner, our guard came in and told us to get ready to move out
the next day, on 5th October, heading to the camp. So far we could receive
food and smuggle some messages, but now it was about to end and any possibility of giving word to relatives would be gone. We were only hoping that
we were being sent to the Stara Gradika camp, because it was much less notorious than Jasenovac.
In the morning after breakfast we left the prison and headed for the trains
station. All around us were Ustashas in black uniforms, all with some badges
saying U.O., short for Ustasha defence (ustaka obrana). At the station we
were boarded into two economy class carriages. In every corner of the carriage were Ustasha NCOs armed with Radom pistols and long hairstyles. We
set off via Dugo Selo towards Novska. Reaching Popovaa, we could see destroyed bunkers, carriages burnt on the tracks or derailed. I wondered at an
475
armoured train, wrecked by an explosion, a truly nonpareil sight. What force

must it have been to destroy and derail such a leviathan!
We reach Novska, and our train takes a turn towards Jasenovac. Its a sunny
Sunday. We reach Jasenovac, and ride along the camp wall. On the walls we
see observation posts with heavy machine guns and crews. We head from on
foot the station towards the camp. We enter the camp straight to the front
desk. It is a warm day and my Yugoslav greatcoat is under my arm. It is my
turn. The Ustasha took the greatcoat from my hand without a word and threw
it into a pile of personal effects taken from other prisoners.
It is Sunday and there are few Ustashas in the camp, i.e. only the ones on call
and no one is being beaten or abused. The inmates are roaming around the
camp, pale, horrible looking. Their eyes read hunger and exhaustion. We go
to get dinner. We each get around two ounces of thin maize porridge, unseasoned and unsalted. I do not feel like eating it but I will get used to it. There
is no bread. We were assigned sleeping quarters. There is not enough room
for all of us in the dormitory. We are taken to the attic of the wood carving
shop. No cots were there, no straw mattresses or blankets. We each lie on
what is at hand. I was assigned to construction detail. On the morning of the
first day some rain is drizzling, but here it is no reason not to go to work. I
have no hat. I am only wearing a shirt and a German army blouse, and it is
6th October 1944 and the winter has come aknocking. I do not know how I
am going to survive that winter.
In the construction group I was designated to attend to a mason on some scaffolding. I had been shot in my left arm, which was not rehabilitated. It aches
from the cold and I am keeping it in my pocket and hand bricks to the mason
only using my right arm.
Suddenly I hear a voice beneath the scaffolding: Hey, you, Home-Guard
halfwit, do you happen to have only one hand?! I looked down and saw an
Ustasha officer. Yes, Im talking to you. Come down here! I came down, and
he slapped me three times and left. It was Ustasha ensign Lisac. He was working in the camp management. I was somewhat glad he had called me a Home
Guardsman, because there were some prisoners in Home Guard uniforms, all
of them Muslims. Who knows why they were sent to camp as well.
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One day after lunch I was walking by the kitchen of the Ustasha apprentices,
on my way to the brick-yard. Standing in front of their kitchen, one of them
called out to me: Private, are you hungry? I said yes. Come in here, well
give you something to eat. I stepped into their kitchen, and they closed the
door and started slapping me around. Some of them were still so small they
had to jump up to give me a slap. I did not dare fight back, but I wrestled free,
reached for the door and ran away. Nearby was the railway and some carriages. Somehow I got through that as well and made for the furnaces of the
brick-yard. I ran the whole length of it and jumped off it among some roof
tiles that were curing on some platforms. I do not know if any of them were
running after me, but fortunately for me there were no senior Ustashas
around to see me run from the apprentices, for he could have done anything
to me and not be held responsible.
The third time I got beaten was almost fatal, for me as well as for the other
prisoners from my group. It was sometime in January 1945. After roll call
we followed our foreman to our workplace. He had something to do and told
us to go to the gun shop. New workshops were being built and we had been
working there for days. Mirko Kovai, Zvonko Letini and Ivica otari
were with me. otari was from Podsusedi, and the other two from Vrape
near Zagreb. We reached the gun shop, set our tools down, but we could not
start working because we had to wait for the foreman. He was away for a
while, and we lit a fire in that room, which still did not have a floor, had a
door but without glass, and started talking. Nobody was on the lookout if any
Ustashas would come along. We got carried away in talking, when that one
door opened and the head of camp lieutenant colonel Hink Piili appeared
behind it. We got up and I am sure the others were just as frozen in fear as I
was. He said: And youre not working! None of us even tried to explain why
we were not working, because in the earlier years his punishment for such
an offence was death on the spot, and not by a bullet but with a whip. Now it
was early and he was not as drunk as the usual. We expected him to kill us on
the spot or to seize our lunch cards, and have someone pick us up in the evening. He ordered us to get out and told his aide: Bring me a club! The adjutant, a lieutenant, brought a rail of some sort from a pile of scrap iron. The
lieutenant colonel said: That is too thin, give me something tougher. And
the aide brought a bigger piece. Bend over, Pilii ordered us and so we did.
I guess I was third in line. He struck the two guys before me five times each
477
and kicked them away. Then it was my turn. Thinking that five strikes was a
pattern, I suppose I got up before he could kick me down. He yelled: Where
do you think you are going, you son of a bitch?!
The lieutenant stuck my head between his legs and Pilii gave me a beating.
I did not count, but ultimately he kicked me down and I scurried away. He
gave the last guy five strikes and walked out. He had come to see how the
work was coming along, but fortunately he had not been completely drunk.
He was said to have kept hitting the unfortunate prisoners with a whip for as
long as the poor sap was breathing. He did not use a gun, but he lashed out on
the inmates with the whip. I went to the infirmary straight away to see doctor
Bardek. He knew me, we had been cellmates back when we were waiting to
be transported to the camp. He checked me over and said that nothing appeared to be broken, it was red but would turn black by the next day. Do not
ask for sick leave, do not come to stay in the hospital, because the night will
take you. Go to work and manage as well as you can, he advised me. I was
lucky to have survived that. We had all had some cloths around our waists, I
had been wrapped in a blanket, all that and a course winter coat weakened
the blows so I managed to endure it.
Janko Ban, an inmate from my work group, said Give me that blouse, it will
get you killed. I know a guy in the quartermaster depot, hell give you some
civilian clothes. So he took away my blouse and brought me a thin blanket,
a hat and a winter coat with no buttons, made out of some course cloth, which
saved me from being so conspicuous. Terror reigned in the camp. Every
night someone was taken to be executed. I saw Dane Polovina being taken
away. I thought I was next because we were both under P. On the next day
I was told that Ahmed Kapetanovi was taken away. He was a Muslim, an
arrested Partisan and a member of my group in the Kanal Prisoner Encampment. A couple of days later I saw him alive. I wanted to talk to him, and, all
flustered, he responded: Im not talking to anybody. Only when we got to
Germany did he tell me how he saved his skin, because he was an electrician
and the Ustasha apprentice that worked with him ran off to get his superintendent, who then saved him. Fortunately I used to fall asleep quickly as soon
as I would go to bed, so I did not see or hear the men being taken away. One
night I heard the Ustashas yelling and singing From Garii to Russia, Jew
skin flutters in the air. They must have been taking Jews away. One time
they publicly hanged three inmates. It was the first time I watched a man die
478
on the gallows. Sometime in late September 1944, Dr. Milo Bokovi, Remzija
Rebac and their group were hanged publicly in the camp. Ustasha officers
were hanged in Jasenovac as well.
Then the Communist Party organisation was uncovered. The hospital administrator and an inmate himself, captain Jurev, was also involved. His wife
and child were also hanged along with some Ustashas who had ties to the
camps. Then all the Croats and Muslims from the Stara Gradika camp were
transferred to the Jasenovac camp on a death march. The exhausted prisoners who would collapse along the way were shot on the site and left in ditches
on the side of the road. It was whispered about in the camp for a few days and
it was soon forgotten. After all, things like that were an everyday occurrence
in this camp.
In late December 1944, the Red Cross Commission came to the camp and surveyed it. There was talk of us being taken to labour in Germany. Soon a photographer came to the camp to take pictures of some inmates. I was also photographed. Over time the hope of going to Germany was dissipating. In the
end it happened after lunch on 17th February 1945, when a locomotive came
into the camp on the industrial railway and pushed in some 13 to 15 empty
freight carriages. That made us certain it was a train to Germany. We were
called out, and even given baths in the morning and some hot stew for breakfast, and we were directed to the carriages, which were guarded by German
soldiers. The German officer in charge of the organisation of the transport
was there as well, and lieutenant colonel Piili handed him a folder, presumably the lists of inmates going to the Third Reich. This was our salvation and
a ticket out of this bloody grinder.
On 20th February 1945 we crossed the NDH border and entered the Third
Reich, thus slipping out of Ustasha hands.
I submit to this deposition photographs taken in Vienna in 1943, a photograph
from the Kanal Prisoner Encampment from June 1944 and the photograph
from the passport I was given in Jasenovac, which is badly damaged and cannot be photocopied any more.
479
Bogdan Petkovi, Vienna, April 1943, during forced labour in labour camp no. 9
From left to right: Bogdan Petkovi, Branko Brankovi and Branko Vitas.
Taken in April 1943 in Vienna. All three men were forced labourers in Vienna
in labour camp no. 9
Photo from the Kanal Prisoner Encampment in Zagreb, June

1944.
From left to right, in the back row in uniform Bogdan
Petkovi. The other men were captured Partisans.
Photo from the passport I was sent with to labour in Germany.

Taken in the Jasenovac camp in late 1944.
This is the briefest possible description of the life and state of affairs in these
three categories of camps in the Second World War in the territory of Germany and the Independent State of Croatia.
480
The kind of propaganda that was disseminated throughout the NDH about
the conditions in the Jasenovac camp can be seen from the following example:
An article on Jasenovac, published in the Ustasha magazine called Hrvatski
vojnik (Croatian soldier), no. 7 dated 15th February 1945.
Mate Frkovi, Deputy Poglavnik, visited the Jasenovac camp in early February 1945. The press from his entourage described the trip and visit to the
camp. I will quote only a part of that article here: It is an unusual feeling to
visit a place with so many people who have been deprived of their freedom.
We immediately noticed the tall red brick wall, surrounding the expanse of
the camp. Only a few steps on the other side were the prisoners, who had
transgressed against the interests of the Croatian people and who had been a
harmful influence on the human community. They are here now to pay for
their sins and become useful members of the community through working.
We entered the camp grounds. The inmates, who were unloading logs from
rail carriages standing on the tracks, were not much bothered in their work.
Having seen us, rare guests, they tipped their hats to salute us and went back
to their work. So far all over the world, various prisoners and convicts used
to be punished by dungeons, solitary cells and prisons. We, however, have
been convinced that the manner of punishing unwelcome members of the
human society has been changed, so that those members, who have been dangerous and harmful up until recently, are now useful to the whole and the
community they act in. They have no exterior markings, which would denote
them as convicts or prisoners. They do not wear convict uniforms nor numbers. They are not punished with dungeons or prisons, but with work, order
and discipline. Those who have transgressed the interests of the Croatian
people have been punished. They all must work... In one word, all vocations
were there. If a prisoner had not learned a trade in his private life, which
would be beneficial to the camp, he would learn one in the camp, so this large
machine made up of the prisoners is constantly moving, benefiting not only
the camp, but the whole state as well. The inmates earn their freedom with
hard work. It is up to them when they will go free. The most hard-working
inmates are rewarded by reducing their time in forced labour. You will
surely think: they would all be thrilled to be released as soon as possible. This
is true, but I must warn you that so far we have received a pile of letters from
481
ex-inmates of the Jasenovac camp, thanking the camp administration for setting them straight on the roar of useful and honest work. However, there are
many inmates who, after serving their time, do not want to leave the camp,
but stay in as free men. They work like any other state craftsmen for eight
hours a day. Their wages are decent so they can provide for their families,
whom they have brought and settled to Jasenovac. We were curious to hear
what our guide had to say. The things he told us were very new to us.
This is how the Ustasha press portrayed the conditions in the camp. It was
described as an idyllic place, one which the inmates just did not want to leave,
because once you taste the Jasenovac porridge and drink from its wells, you
wish to never leave. Tens of thousands have stayed, but not in Jasenovac, but
across the Sava River, in the area of Donja Gradina, i.e. in mass graves. This
visit by the Deputy Poglavnik happened at a time when the Russians overtook
Budapest, the Syrmia Front formed, and the NDH lost Zadar, Split and
ibenik. The end of the war was in sight and only days away.
The quoted lines from the Ustasha magazine Hrvatski vojnik from 15th February 1945 would better fit into the category of science fiction than a description of the current state of affairs. These journalists had to have been good at
geography and that the NDH was soon to be gone. They would not admit it
even three months later, when the band of Ustashas came to Bleiburg, and
their master, the Third Reich, capitulated.
The quoted lines from the Ustasha magazine Hrvatski vojnik no. 7, from
15th February 1945, have been published as document no. 363 in Antun Miletis book on page 889.
482
Milinko eki 1
NURTURING THE MEMORY OF

FALLEN COMRADES
On behalf of members of the Jasenovac Association of Former Prisoners in

Belgrade, I would like to convey their greetings and gratitude to the organisers for holding the Sixth International Conference on Jasenovac, the largest
place of execution of the Serbs, Jews and Roma people in this part of Europe
in the Second World War.
Allow me to say a few words on the Association, which I represent and speak
for at this conference.
The Association has been running in order for forty years. This year is our
40th anniversary.
The members of the Association are children prisoners from the Ustasha
camps at Stara Gradika, Jasenovac, Sisak, Jastrebarsko and other camps,
some descendants of prisoners and some supporters. Out of over 600 members, 350 are former children prisoners.
The Association preserves the memories of the victims of crimes, genocide
and holocaust, collects documents and authentic statements on crimes committed, especially in the territory of the former Independent State of Croatia,
struggles against the revival of neo-Nazism and neo-fascism, malevolent reinterpretation of events from the Second World War and belittlement of the
chairman of the Jasenovac Association of Former Prisoners in Belgrade
483
contribution of the Peoples Liberation Army to the liberation of the country

and victory over fascism.
The Association is a member of the International Federation of Associations
from ten European countries with the same goals. It has a representative in
the International Committee of this Federation. In the Committees work so
far we have adopted several documents and invited the Secretary General of
the UN, the president of the Council of Europe and heads of states and governments of European countries to support the values we advocate. We are
not satisfied because most countries have not responded to our invitations,
including the country I live in, although it sacrificed a lot for these values.
The holocaust and genocide against the Serbs, Roma people and Jews is written about by renowned historians and scientists, who research crimes committed during the Second World War. In that sense I am in an inferior position. However, that is not how I feel, because as a child prisoner I experienced
a lot first hand, and through conversation with other inmates I reached some
findings that have not reached the general public yet.
Sometimes the authenticity of our memories is brought into question. They
say we were just children. In his novel The Red and the Black, Stendhal says:
Everything I testify, I have seen, and although I could have been fooled when
I was watching, I am surely not fooling you with this story.
It is true that some of our memories were repressed into oblivion (I suppose
it is our defence mechanism, protecting us from the trauma of what we had
experienced), and that they are often discontinuous, like a text with some
segments blanked out, however our memory still retained countless images
of our most horrifying experiences recorded as with some camera, accessible to us to describe in detail.
And so my memory flashes images, like some slides, of my family taking refuge on Mount Kozara, under constant shelling, my seven-year-old Boo being wounded, holding my hand after his right foot was blown away by a grenade. I can still hear his father, Duan, calling out to him. He was brought to
Kozara, where he was killed in the Partisan hospital by the Ustashas and the
Germans, along with 300 other wounded people. My other uncle Pavle, a 22year-old Partisan, was among those who were killed. The images of the
Kozara refuge, daily shelling and bombardment, the howls of the German
484
Stuka dive bombers, the warnings: airplanes, put out the fire!, the images
of the dead, dismembered, men, women, children, cattle. Then the image of
our huts, tucked deeply in one of Kozaras ravines, below Vitlovski Venac.
Descendants standing where their ancestors were killed, August 2010
Life on the run with around 80,000 people is a familiar story. When the Partisan lines were overrun, all I can remember that was left of the forest canopy
above us were the charred tree trunks, blown to pieces by the grenades, as if
a great fire roared by. The masses of people started, not knowing where they
were going, but wherever they headed they had to walk over dead bodies.
Today I believe that without the help of the German troops Kozara would
have never been conquered, there would have been less Ustasha camps and
victims. We were more afraid of the German dogs, brought in from Berlin to
sweep through Kozara, who attacked us, than we were afraid of bayonets.
After the Partisan lines were overrun, my father could not leave his family,
so he joined us, just like many other men. We were captured by the Ustashas
485
and the Germans, and 68,560 men, women and children were marched into
camps.
Father was separated from us at the village of Cerovljani near Dubica with
the other men. That was the last I have ever seen him or heard of him. I can
only guess that just like many of the Kozara prisoners (around 12,000 of
them) he was transported to the German camp at Sajmite. He and a lot of
others probably ended at Sajmite or the mines of Bor, Trepa, or at the Ostrovaka Ada and the swamps along the Danube, or perhaps he was transported along with four thousand other exhausted prisoners back to Jasenovac
and killed there. Records of the Sajmite infirmary noted three people with
my last name. Two of them were listed as deceased. Making myself believe
my father was still held prisoner, for years I expected him to come back. Unfortunately, that never happened.
From Cerovljani, myself, my mother and my two sisters (three-year old Dragana and six-month-old Zdravka) were transported to Jasenovac along with
other relatives and prisoners. We spent six weeks in Jasenovac, staying out
in the open with nothing, exposed to Ustasha terror, the sun, the rain and the
cold. With my older cousin Rajko and some other boys, I would crawl under
the wires and look for food in the nearby houses. One time on our way back
we found a pile of corpses in a ditch, and after that we no longer dared go out.
I do not remember eating anything in the camp. I only drank some disgusting
water. I do not know if it was food from Ustasha cauldrons or water from the
camp puddle.
After six weeks, we were transported in closed carriages, with lots of stops,
manoeuvring and loading new prisoners, to Grubino Polje, from where we
were distributed across the surrounding villages. A reminder: at that time
16,500 women and children from the villages of Potkozarje were transported
to Grubino Polje and Garanica from the Jasenovac camp. It was probably
done to relieve the camp temporarily, and at the same time it was time in
Slavonija to harvest the wheat and maize, vineyards and cattle feed, after
which we were transported back to the camps.
My mother and the three of us children were placed with a Hungarian family
on Velika Dapevica. We lived in a room with a furnace that used to be used
for baking bread. Mother worked out in the field and took care of the cattle,
and we were fed leftovers from the family we lived with.
486
Donja Gradina after the commemoration, April 2012
In late September of 1942, a Partisan unit attacked and entered Grubino

Polje, but they did not stay long. They looted weapons, food and other supplies and withdrew to the woods. We were left to the mercy of the local Ustashas.
What followed was retribution against the local Serb populace. Many people
were killed. While my mother was fetching water from the well, Ustashas
came to the yard across the street from where we were staying, and killed
the entire family right before our eyes, because they were sympathisers of
the Partisan movement. There were children, women and men in that family.
That day several more families were killed. Recently I found out that they
were Serb families called Vudrak. We were spared because they knew we
had been allocated there by orders from the Ustasha authorities.
Soon afterwards, in early October, all the refugee families and the local Serb
populace were abruptly driven out of their homes to the village gathering
487
point. There an Ustasha killed a man and his dog because he had not said it
was his dog, and the Ustasha had yelled: Whose mongrel is this, tell me so I
can kill them both!
Together with several hundred men, women and children, we walked for
more than 10 kilometres to the Bastaji train station. Along the way my
mother, who had stopped at a house to give water to her thirsty child, was
caught up by two Ustashas and beaten with rifle butts until she re-joined the
file of prisoners. She was carrying two children in her arms and all of our
baggage, and whenever they hit her she would fall to the ground, get up, pick
up the children, and then she would be hit again and the same thing would
happen over and over again. I was running next to her, helping her get up
when she would fall.
In Bastaji we were closed into carriages, and after I do not know how long,
again with no food or water, we ended up in the Ustasha-German camp called
Sisak, where there were lots of adult prisoners and children. The adults capable of work were singled out to be sent to forced labour in Germany, and
the children were separated from their parents and placed in unsuitable living quarters.
When I was separated from my mother I was less than six years old, my older
sister Dragana was three years old, and my younger sister Zdravka was eight
months old. The drama of forced separation of children from their mothers
in Sisak was told many times. My mother bathed us first, dressed us in whatever clothes we had, and seeing what was going on, she surrendered me and
my older sister without protest. However, she would not give up her eightmonth-old baby, so the baby was forcefully taken from her with harsh help
from the Ustashas and the women who were taking the children. I have never
seen my youngest sister since.
488
Viktorovac childrens cemetery in Sisak, October 2013
seen my youngest sister since.I will say something everybody knows. The
records of Ante Dumbovi, who was an officer at the Sisak childrens camp,
state that during five months in 1942, 1,630 children died. Coroner David
Egi recorded 1,152 children, and the gravedigger, Franj Videka, claimed
that there was always more than one child in the coffins. He said that small
children were not even listed in the records, even though they were the majority of the ones who died.
489
At the Viktorovac childrens cemetery in Sisak, one of the nine round concrete slabs says that around 2,000 children were buried there.
Viktorovac, Sisak, the tomb of around two thousand murdered children, October 2012
I do not want to guess the number of children who died in the Second World
War, but even the research of the late Dragoje Luki reached the number of
74,762 murdered children, 60,234 of whom suffered genocide. A statement
from the International Committee on the truth on Jasenovac mentions
110,000 Serb, Jew and Roma children who were killed in the Independent
State of Croatia.
The Ustashas are accountable for the deaths of children, the number of whom
was never determined, who died from negligence in Zagrebs shelters and
foster families and from abuse in Ustasha camps.
490
Jastrebarsko surviving prisoners standing where their peers were buried, August 2013
I have to mention the childrens camp in Jastrebarsko, where there were over
4,000 children kept captive, out of whom, by all estimates, more than 2,000
died. Eight of the children had the same last name as me, and three of them
died. Aside from the local cemetery in Jastrebarsko there is a grave site
where children were buried and a monument with an inscription that 560
deceased children were buried there. I do not know if any research was conducted at that site.
Among the many monstrous ways children were put to their deaths, Jastrebarsko witnessed children being poisoned with caustic soda, which a nun
named Berta Pulherija, the mother in law of the renowned criminal Mile Budak, mixed into the childrens food. There are claims that she killed 1,100
children in this manner. Just before liberation she fled to Austria with the
Ustashas. She was tried in absentia. She died in Vienna in 1981. Some sources
say than an autopsy report for 162 children was found at the Dr Fran
Miljevi clinic for infective diseases in Zagreb, saying that their cause of
death was caustic soda poisoning. This should be looked into.
491
In the well-known humanitarian children rescue operation, organised and

carried out by Diana Budisavljevi and a group of Croatian humanists, a large
number of children were extracted from the Ustasha camps of Gradika,
Jasenovac, Mlaka, Utica and Sisak, and transported to Zagreb. My two sisters and I were among those children.
My younger sister, Zdravka, was moved to Zagreb on the C transport, on 10th
October 1942. Further documentation points to her staying at the Josipovac
childrens home. In Josipovac she was registered as unknown female child.
Her death certificate, no. 1472/217C, signed by Dr Aleksandar Peji, states
that the unknown female child, aged 7-8 months died on 23rd October 1942
at 9pm, and buried on 25th October, 1942 at 5pm.
Memorial Site to children buried at the Mirogoj Cemetery in Zagreb, August 2013
The records of the Mirogoj Cemetery show that 862 known and unknown
children from Kozara were buried in lot 142. My sister was one of the 414
unnamed children, listed as female child 1472/217C. This is how, after 70
years, having compared her file number to the number from the unidentified
492
death certificate, I finally found out what had happened to her. The area occupied by todays lot 142 at Mirogoj was a grove outside the cemetery in 1942.
It was named Kozara, after the children that were buried there. A gravedigger named Josip Pavii gave a statement to Duko Tomi, author of the
book called Putevima smrti kozarske djece [The Roads of Death for the Children of Kozara], saying that in 1942 there were 40 gravediggers working on
interring children who had died in the Zagreb shelters.
For me and my sister there are no records of when, how and where we were
transported from Sisak. I have a memory of looking through the window
from the second floor of a building onto its yard filled with children. They all
looked very small to me, probably because I was higher up. I used to think
this was in Sisak. Last year I visited the building of the Institute for the Deaf
and Mute Children in Zagreb and realised that it had been the yard of this
building. In late October of 1942, as part of a large group of children we got
to Gudovac, and were then dispatched to Bjelovar. I could not find our names
in the transport charts and lists that have been available to me. In the State
Archives in Zagreb, which has the records for my younger sister, claim with
wonder that there is no record of any children being transported to Gudovac
and Bjelovar. In the Bjelovar archives they claim that they have no records
whatsoever from that period, and that the materials were probably destroyed
during or after the war. I cannot but wonder if all remaining archive material
from that period is available, or is part of that material hidden somewhere in
archive depots.
My mother, who was set to be transported to Germany, was found in the Sisak
camp by a police officer from Kostajnica named Anelko Vidovi, who had
known her and her parents since before the war, who then released her from
the camp. He released many more citizens on the occasion. With his help, my
mother brought along thirty-two children from Slabinja and the surrounding
villages. She did not find her own children because we had been allocated to
different facilities which she had no access to. When she came back, Vidovi
issued her a pass that allowed her to continue looking for her children.
During December 1942 she spent three weeks walking around places in Slavonia which she heard there were children in. Occasionally she rested in
abandoned houses, maize or hay stacks that were left in the fields. She ate
whatever fruit was left in the orchards or unharvested in the fields. She found
493
me and my sister in Bjelovar. She didnt recognise us at first although it had

been only two months since we were separated. They wouldnt release my
three-year-old sister, who was in a coma due to a severe head injury (they
said that child is on its deathbed), so my mother literally stole her, having
paid off some guards.
On a cold, rainy night in late December, she brought us out of Bjelovar. She
carried my sister, who was barely alive, wrapped in her coat, and I followed
barefoot, wearing only the top part of some pyjamas. Fearing a pursuit because she took us without permission, she didnt dare go to the train station
in Bjelovar, but she walked along the railway, across fields and ploughed land
to the next station. It took all night. We were all wet and freezing. My feet
were covered in injuries. She tore off pieces of my shirt and her clothes to
wrap my feet up, but it would soon fall off and I would be barefoot again. We
reached a train station, from where we went by train, with many stops and
changing trains, to the Hrvatska Kostajnica station, and then continued on
foot to Bosanska Kostajnica. There we were taken in by some friends of my
grandfathers, who gave us a change of clothes and took us from Kostajnica
towards the villages.
After walking for fifteen kilometres, we reached our house late in the evening. My sister passed away that night. Although she had been through several
Ustasha camps and had succumbed to the consequences of Ustasha terror,
she has not been recorded as a victim of Ustasha crime anywhere but in the
monument for victims in our home place.
494
seen my youngest sister since.In Slabinja, which now belongs to the municipality of Kozarska Dubica, where I was born, there were 973 people in 1882,
and 482 in 1951. The monument to the victims of the Second World War for
Slabinja is inscribed with the names of 1,241 people, 114 of whom were children and 120 were women. 465 of the victims were fighters killed in action,
and 776 were victims of Ustasha and German terror.
The misery of war went on until the end of April 1945, when my home place
was liberated, ten days after Germany capitulated.
On the Serbian New Years Eve of 19432 Ustashas came to the village, set all
the houses on fire and killed anyone who did not manage to escape into the
woods on time. We took refuge in a forest complex near the village, where
we stayed in the January winter for three days and nights, with no fire, food
or covers, wearing minimal clothes. Many people died from the cold. Our
house and all farming buildings were set on fire. They did not even let the
cattle out of the barns. Our horses, cows, calves, sheep and pigs were all
burned alive.
Just in the night between 14th and 15th June 1944, the Ustashas from Dubica
and Kostajnica (4th Ustasha battalion) killed 72 elderly men, women and children. 42 people were locked in Simo Malinis barn and burned alive. Six
children of ure Dolini were killed there. When the defeat of Germany and
the Ustasha state was imminent, and half of Europe already liberated, the
Ustashas from Kostajnica stormed Slabinja on 17th February 1945 and killed
another 64 people.
I often get asked when it was the hardest for me that I remember. I do not
know. Perhaps it was the walking because I remember it the best. From our
home to Kozara, from Kozara to Dubica, then onwards to Cerovljani,
Dapevica and Bastaji, the walking from Bjelovar to the next train station,
2
Serbs use the Julian calendar, according to which New Years Eve is on the eve of 13th
January by the Gregorian calendar, t/n.
495
then from Hrvatska Kostajnica to Bosanska Kostajnica and then to Slabinja.

The underlaid woolen socks that I was wearing when we first headed for
Kozara were torn before we even got there, and afterwards I was barefoot
throughout the walks in the ravines of Kozara, the cobblestones of the Dubica
road to Cerovljani, in the camps, around Slavonija, and back to our home. I
envied my sisters because my mother was carrying them, but I was aware
she could not carry me as well.
Donja Slabina, Monument to the victims of the Second World War and the 1991-1995 war, August 2013
Hunger? I do not remember being hungry, and I was. I remember the maize
ear I nibbled on in Kozara, which my father had brought to me when he visited us while we were in refuge, and the bits of food I would snatch from the
bowl of food I would carry to feed the dog of the Hungarian family in
Dapevica, where we had been staying for a time. I used to feed him regularly,
so I ate regularly as well we shared the meals.
Typhoid? There was no one in the village to bury the ones who died. When
the Ustashas retreated, the sick ones were somehow brought to some bushes
and left there because they could not carry them along. Some of them died
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there, some were found and killed by the Ustashas. Some survived, including
me.
I remember carriages filled with children, large rooms full of children, their
cries, calling their mothers, asking for water and food, the death rattles. I can
still hear all these voices, although I have a feeling that I was not part of all
this, but that it was going on beside me, as if I had been just an observer. I do
not remember ever crying during all these war years, I just gazed blankly,
kept quiet and endured.
The dreams, the nightmares, are perhaps the scariest thing I remember well
from after the war. They were dreams reiterating all the things I experienced
or my eyes saw in the war. Not even Hitchcock could direct such images that
I have seen in my dreams. Psychologists say that such dreams indicate that
there is a need for us to change something within us. They say, it is electroshocks. These electroshocks went on for years.
Stories such as this one, and even more disturbing ones, can be told by each
of our former prisoners. The only difference is who experienced what. They
carry inside all the drama of the time. Last year a little over 50 of our prisoners told their war stories in front of cameras, and that will remain an eternal
testimony of that time, of the victims and criminals.
Regardless of all the ways that era is interpreted today, these testimonies remain as the cruel truth, beyond the time we live in and beyond social and
political prejudice. For those who wish to acknowledge that truth it shall be
a warning to make all efforts that such times and events never come again.
It is not rare today that the crimes committed by the Germans, Ustashas amd
other quisling formations. Victim numbers are diminished, graves and monuments desecrated, inter-ethnic intolerance spurred on, ethnic and religious
landmarks and cultural monuments destroyed, minorities rights to cultural
heritage challenged. We are the only people in the world who have denounced the symbol of the nationwide resistance in the Liberation War of
1941-1945, which is why swastikas often adorn the facades of our buildings, monuments, institutions...
Allow me to make some remarks in the end without any broad elaboration,
possibly in lieu of a conclusion:
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We place the responsibility for the crimes committed against our people at
the Ustasha movement and the Independent State of Croatia, which is an undisputable fact. However, we neglect the responsibility of Germany, not only
for crimes committed by the Reichs soldiers, but also for the victims of the
military and police quisling formations that server the goals of Nazi Germany. Invading Yugoslavia and dividing it, forming quisling states and regimes, it was both the executor and the sponsor of crimes committed by the
Ustashas and others.
Germany has still not paid compensation for the damages it did in its aggression towards this region. No program of the German Federal Republic includes compensation for the victims, those Serb citizens who were killed nor
those who survived.
It will soon be 70 years since Nazism and fascism were defeated, so let us
invite the German Federal Republic, which today advocates for the rule of
law, justice and democracy in Europe and invites others to do the same, to
unearth our demands for restitution from the Berlin archives and fulfil its
obligations, imposed by international law.
The parliament of Israel founded the Yad Vashem museum 1953 and established a commission for awarding the Righteous Among the Nations honorary title, a recognition in the form of a charter and a medal, awarded to
non-Jews who saved persons of Jewish origin during the Second World War.
Many citizens of Serb, Croatian and other ethnicities, often risking their own
lives, saved innocent Serbs from the Ustasha camps. I can list some of them
myself. Why dont we follow the Israeli example and do something similar?
During the rescue operation organised by Diana Budisavljevi, between
12,000 and 13,000 children were saved, out of whom 3,000 died in the various
shelters and foster families. There are records of 862 children buried at the
Mirogoj cemetery. The Jastrebarsko monument says 468 children were buried there. Where were the remaining 1,670 children buried? Dr Ljudevit
afari, director of the Institute for Deaf and Mute Children, claimed that the
children had been buried in other cemeteries as well. I believe that the archives of these cemeteries contain information on this. There is mention of
the Zagreb Jewish Cemetery, the Rakov Potok cemetery near Zagreb and
others. Is it too late to research and mark those places as well?
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Zagreb the building of the Institute for Deaf and Mute Children, August 2012
The number of victims in the Second World War is still not final. The lists
that exist have not been assembled in one place and sorted. For many victims
the only record of their deaths can be found in the local monuments, monographs for their towns and villages, municipal archives and other places. It is
a problem that will surely never be solved.
I would also like to point out that there are no lists and records of the other
hundreds of thousands of people who have survived the agony of the Ustasha
camps, because no one had held records of the prisoners. The Red Cross has
files on former prisoners who were in the German camps. There is no such
data for surviving camp prisoners. There is only individual data for those
who were registered by associations as their members.
There are many documents in the archives of Croatia, Serbia and the Republic of Srpska for children who died and are listed as unknown. If we were to
compare the available files, file numbers from the Mirogoj death certificates,
the lists of children who died in Josipovac and the transport lists for children,
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the number of unknown children would be much smaller. I myself have obtained information on my sister who was buried in Mirogoj as unknown.
It has been determined without a doubt that 862 children were buried at lot
142 of the Mirogoj Cemetery. There are no markings at the front of the monument, and a marble slab in the ground says that several hundred children
from Kozara were buried there. It is time to rectify this although 862 is not
the final number.
The former Institute for Deaf and Mute Children in Zagreb (now the Slava
Rakaj Educational Centre) has no inscriptions about the more than 13,000
children from Kozara that stayed there in 1942. The teachers of the educational centre that is now there have no knowledge of these events.
A memorial panel or room to commemorate the events of 1942 would not be
a shame to the Croatian people, but the opposite.
I know that today, when Cyrillic signs are vandalised on the buildings of state
institutions in Croatia (how this reminds me of 1942), it is difficult to get the
memorial panels in Sisak to be returned to the buildings where children prisoners stayed in camps during the war, but it is something to remember.
In Jastrebarsko there is a monument on the parcel beneath the local cemetery, where the children murdered in the Jastrebarsko shelters were buried. The parcel is well maintained, the grass is mowed and well-groomed. The
monument is not damaged, but is showing signs of its age and is in need of
renovation. This condition is mainly thanks to the citizens of Jastrebarsko. In
the well-maintained Jatrebarsko Park there is the neglected and dilapidated
Erddi Castle, which was used as a prisoner camp for children in 1942 and
1943. There is a sign saying that it is a valuable cultural object from the 15th
century, but there are no markings to indicate that once there were thousands of Serb children held prisoner there. This location should be marked,
so that those who come to visit the site could learn that fact as well. I believe
that the citizens of Jastrebarsko, many whom were part of the resistance
movement and saved some of the children, would not be opposed to the place
being marked.
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The Erddi Castle, where children from Kozara were held captive in 1942, August 2013
Sometime in the summer of last year some members of the Jasenovac prisoners association visited the children cemetery at Mirogoj, the former Institute for Deaf and Mute Children in Zagreb and Jastrebarsko. In October we
attended a commemoration at the Viktorovac children cemetery in Sisak,
which was partially renovated through efforts of the Serb National Council
of Croatia and the Serb Ethnic Minority Council of Sisak. In the area where
the children were buried the pathways were built and the concrete panels
that symbolise the monument were renovated. The Serb National Council
will continue rebuilding this cemetery. It should be fenced off and the graves
marked.
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The grave parcel for the buried children with the monument; Jastrebarsko, August 2013
The former Falcon Home is now the Crystal Cube of Brightness3 the Culture Centre in Sisak. The memorial panel saying that Serb children were held
there is missing, it was taken off. The monument in the park in front of the
Centre was preserved, but without any insignia on it.
I propose that this conference calls upon the appropriate ministries of the
Republic of Srpska and the Republic of Serbia to use bilateral agreements
with the Croatian authorities to arrange to take over the maintenance of execution sites and memorials in Croatia, just like it is done, although insufficiently, in other countries. Am I proposing something that cannot be done?
I propose to send an invitation to the government of the Republic of Croatia,
as a member of the European Union, claiming to be a country of democracy,
law and justice, to prevent further decay and help restore the destroyed mon-
Croatian: Kristalna kocka vedrine, t/n
502
uments and markings that had been erected at the places of execution to commemorate the victims and the purpose of which is to be a reminder for such
things to never happen again, although they do.
In Belgrade there is no monument to the children who were killed during the
Second World War. I do not know if there is such a monument in Banja Luka.
I know of four in Croatia...
Sisak, the memorial standing before the former Sokolski Dom, today Crystal Cube of Brightness, August
2013
And in the end, why have there been no officials from the Republic of Srpska
and the Republic of Serbia at the commemorations in Jasenovac for years
now? I know, some will say, the ambassadors attend, but it is not a cemetery
somewhere far off like Norway! Ultimately, Jasenovac is the place and synonym of the greatest suffering of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia for
as long as we have existed as a nation.
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Dobrila Kukolj
WAR YEAR 1943, RETURN FROM

THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF
CROATIA to the Village of MEEA
(Bosanska Dubica)
We embarked on our trip as part of a convoy of wagons. Happy, I ran to get

to the wagon that would take us to Poljana as fast as possible, and in Poljana
we boarded railway cars.
I asked my mother if we were really going home, and she answered, Yes,
my daughter, we are going home, God willing!
From Jasenovac, where we had been brought by force at the beginning of
October 1942, we were taken under armed guard to Slavonia, to the Village
of Toranj, Municipality of Gaj. We were surrendered to the NDH authorities
in Toranj, and they put us up in various houses to serve there as slaves.
It was Sunday, I remember well, when they led us to the village and put us
up in houses. When it was our turn my mothers, mine and my younger
sisters they separated us, putting mother and my little sister in one house
and me in another. I started crying, screaming, holding on to my mothers
skirt in an effort to keep from being separated from her, but my crying and
tears were in vain. I remember lying down on the ground, saying: Kill me! I
wont leave my mother! After I uttered these words, a young woman
approached my mother, saying: Tell her not to cry. I wont separate you. By
day she can stay at my house, and at night you can sleep together. Then she
added loudly, Dont you fear anything; you wont go hungry, for in my house
we eat bread such as even Paveli hasnt.
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I got up and looked at the woman, and what could I at ten have known about
Paveli. She took me by the hand and led me to her house, while my mother
and sister went to another house close-by. When she brought me to her place,
she called to her eldest daughter, Ankica, and told her to prepare for me some
dresses, and then she took me for a bath and haircut. I wasnt crying, but I
was shaking with fear, thinking whether I would see my mother and sister
again and what they were doing to them.
After she had given me a bath and dressed me, she took me to the kitchen,
where they ate. I saw on the table a large loaf of white bread, plates and a
large pot of food. I ran to the table to take a little piece of the bread, but the
woman stopped me, saying, You mustnt eat anything just yet. You are too
hungry; you will get just a little, and a little more later on. I looked at her
sadly and thought she refused to let me eat because she wanted me to die. But
later I decided she was right.
After I had eaten some, she told me their last name was Peterli; the husband
being Stevo, the daughters Anka and Francika, and the sons Jozo and another
whose name I cant remember. She was Hungarian by nationality, and was
called Elza. The husband Stevo was Croatian.
Late that afternoon, she took me by the hand and led me to the house where
my mother and sister were staying, telling me, Sleep with your mother, and
in the morning come to my house.
For the first time in three months, the three of us were in bed in the same
room. My mothers landlords were Serbs and they were nice to her and my
sister. Mother worked in the fields. The household included the landlord
Branko, his wife Ljuba, and the landlords sister Milica. Every morning,
mother would take me to my landlady and go back to where she was staying.
My landlords were farmers. Every morning I would take the cows to pasture,
after which I would clean the yard. I should add to my story that my landlady
never kept me apart from her children, and that I sat and ate with them.
Sundays we spent together. Mother, my sister and I would visit our aunt
Marija and her children, who were accommodated a little farther away from
us. Their landlord was an Italian. They lived there under very poor
conditions. The village was home to a number of nations Croats, Serbs,
Ukrainians, Italians, Hungarians, and others.
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Sunday afternoons, Milica, my mothers landlords sister, would take my

sister Jagoda and me for a stroll through the meadows. She was a young
woman. Whenever she took us out, shed ask us about the village we were
born in and what Bosnia was like. On one occasion when I was talking about
Bosnia, my sister Jagoda began to sob, saying, Sis, lets sing our song, which
song was, Bosnia, land of mine, impoverished maiden, not even the sun
traverses your heaven. Then Milica joined my sister and I in our sobbing,
and began consoling us, saying: You will return to your Bosnia, to your
home. Milica loved us sincerely and was with us whenever possible.
We stayed with them until the spring of 1943, when the NDH announced that
women and children may return to Bosnia with the right permits; my mother
contacted a woman who could obtain the permits and applied for our return.
When we came to the railroad station in Poljana, there were many of us. Only
women and children were allowed onto the railway wagons. On this trip, we
went through Jasenovac; we were not put in the camp again, and I dont know
where I later heard that our predecessors ended up at the camp once again.
We continued to Hrvatska Kostajnica, where we got off and headed for the
bridge on the Una. There we were met by armed Ustashas/Black Shirts, who
stopped us. Then the woman who was leading us showed the permits and they
let us continue on our way. We crossed the bridge and followed the Una River
along the road towards Bosanska Dubica. However, we suddenly came under
fire; they were shooting at us! I remember my mother grabbing my sister
and I and throwing us in the bushes by the road. We then crawled along the
ground and slowly turned right, towards a nearby forest, not daring to look
back. I remember well the women and children left dead on the road that day,
but I cant say how many. All night we walked through the woods and came
to the village of Jasenje, near Bosanska Dubica. There we stayed a few days.
In the meantime, my mother managed to obtain permits allowing us to go to
our village. Now the convoy we joined was smaller than before, including my
mother and I, my sister, and aunt Marija and her four children, Rajko, Milja,
Slobodan and Simo.
We finally arrived at our village, to be met there by Ustasha guards (the
village had an Ustasha company and command). They registered us and said
they would be checking on us.
507
I ran from happiness at arriving home. However, when I saw our devastated
house, my joy abated. The house had two levels, and as yet had not been
torched. The door had been broken down, the windows smashed, the house
stripped of its former contents, save for a fork and small spoon, but no table
to put them on. Upstairs the rooms were strewn with feathers and broken
dishes. I remember my mother saying, Children, we are in our own home;
we will survive.
And so it was. First we worked in the garden, cleaned the house, and put some
boards together for beds. When we arrived, we found our neighbours who
had returned from Croatia before us. Since the Ustashas ran a farm in our
village, they began taking the women away to work it. At first, they would
take them back to the village at days end. However, as the autumn
approached in 1943, they began leaving them in Gradac, Mlaka and Jablanac.
I remember when once Ustashas came to collect the women and girls that my
mother got the idea to put her sisters daughter Stojka, sister-in-law Jagoda
and aunt Marija to bed and cover them; when Ustashas arrived, she warned
them that they had contracted typhus (common at the time, which I too had
suffered through), and so saved them from being taken away, for once taken
away they wouldnt return.
It was then that the persecution began; they came to our house every other
evening to search it. One evening they said they came looking for partisans
whom we were supposed to be hiding; another evening they introduced
themselves as partisans looking for Ustashas. During the day they came
threatening to kill us all if they heard we were harbouring anyone. This lasted
till the end of 1943, when, just before Christmas in 1944, we were surrounded
by Ustashas from Dubica and Orahovo, who with them had even Cherkesses.
That Christmas in 1944, Ustashas committed a massacre; you could call it a
bloody feast. Whomever they caught, they killed or butchered; some people
were burnt alive in their homes, and some children thrown into ovens. Stojan
Ruii was caught and flayed alive. All that was heard that night were
terrible screams and howls. My cousin Stojanka, my mothers sisters
daughter, escaped, but those who were caught were butchered, tortured and,
finally, burnt. Our salvation lay in the Prosara woods. Under a bare beech
tree late at night I watched as my house and many others burnt.
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Now, as I write this, I think of my mother Savka, who was a hero. She
survived the hell of Jasenovac. She lost her 15-year-old son, who died at
Sajmite concentration camp, Belgrade. (The other inmates of the camps tore
off pieces of his skin while he was still alive; he died a most horrible death, as
was related by the witness Mihajlo Galonja. The writer Prof. Milan Koljanin
entered him in his book as a surviving witness.) All of this evil my mother
survived. My father Rade, three uncles, Ilija, Mirko and Milorad, were
returned from Sajmite and butchered in Gradina. Grandfather Simo was
stabbed to death at the Jasenovac railroad station. We were left without our
dearest. The Bajati family lost 21 members in the war.
That fateful night we left Prosara and endured much hardship. After roaming
awhile we came to the village of Pucara. After a days rest we continued to
the village of Vojskova, in the foothills of Mount Kozara. The Zlojutro family
put us up, followed by that of one Dragoje Meed. I remained in the last house
until the end of the Second World War in May 1945. During our stay there,
I did rounds of the houses as we had no food. My mother worked as a day
labourer, sometimes even ploughing the fields with other women.
We endured this too, and finally arrived home in May, 1945, but to a devastated, empty house. Everything was torched, the house, the outbuildings
nothing was left! I must add here that the first to come to our aid was Kadir
Softi from Orahova. He had a brother in the partisans; he had worked our
land for my father and grandfather. He brought us a full wagon of flour,
beans, potatoes, and even a cow tied to the back of the wagon. Since
everything had burnt to the ground, he helped my mother cover a corner of
one of the outbuildings with some boards. There mother built a fire, and said,
Here we are children, in our own home!
After a short while, aunt Nada, my fathers sister, came home. She had been
in the 12th Slavonian Brigade, and suggested to my mother that we move to
Banat in Vojvodina, where we would be given a house and everything else.
However, mother said that she would never again leave her home and that no
one could force her to change her mind. We stayed since we were a large
family on both my mothers and my fathers side. Mother tried by way of the
Red Cross to find the children of her brothers, sisters and brothers-in-law.
She gathered together the 15 of us left alive, and when the autumn arrived,
we were placed in homes for war orphans. The last person she found was
509
Jevrosima, the daughter of her brother Savo, a Salonika volunteer; her other
brother, Joco, was also a Salonika volunteer and was buried at the Zeytinlik
Cemetery in Salonika, Greece. That means two of her brothers, Savo and
Joco, were Salonika volunteers.
I stress in my story that my mother was a hero, who survived every evil. Of
my immediate family members, killed in the war were: my father Rade
(Jasenovac-Gradina); my brother Boko (15 years old, Sajmite); my sister
Jagoda, grandfather Simo (stabbed to death at the Jasenovac railway station);
three uncles on my fathers side, Mirko and his wife Marija, their daughter
Slobodanka and son Ilija and his wife Nevenka and their four children, Milan,
Radojka, Duan and Mio; my uncle Milorad and his wife Marija, and their
daughter Svjetlana, three children survived. Nikola Bajati, my grandfathers
brother and his wife Petra, their daughters Zagorka, Radmila and
Slobodanka; my more distant uncles in Gradina, Mile and Milutin, Miles wife
Marija and their children Milan and Koviljka (on Milutins side only his
daughter Mila survived). The Bajati house in Donja Meea lost everyone.
When I add it all up, of my most immediate family I lost three members, of
my uncles 16 members, and one grandfather and three more distant Bajatis,
which means that 23 of my closest and more distant Bajatis lost their lives
in that unfortunate war.
My village was left deserted; not a single male over ten was left alive, and it
wasnt until 1955 that the first was recruited to the army. Thirty-six families
were extinguished, of which I remember: the Komadina family, seven
members; olaja, four members; Ilija Bajati, six members; and the
Ugrenovi, Alaa, opi, Poua, Breki, Kecman, Vukmir, Radoji and
Muti families. These are the surnames I remember. Thirty-seven hearths in
my village were extinguished in the Second World War.
I should mention the massacre that occurred in the Kecman home and at the
Daniin well, into which they threw people alive; and in the Kecman home
an unheard-of massacre, following which the victims were set on fire.
My village, Meea, was large and included Lower, Middle and Upper
Meea, the hamlet of Mlinarice on the river Sava, Liarne just below
Prosara, where before the war Germans lived, who left when the war began.
510
I would end my story with the words, Narrated, never to return! Maybe we
can forgive a little, but forget, never!
Banja Luka, February 2014
511
Zorka Skiba, ne Deli
CRIMES OF GENOCIDE OF ROMAN

CATHOLIC NUNS IN CHILDRENS
CAMPS IN SISAK AND
JASTREBARSKO
British philosopher Bertrand Russell accused the Vatican of concealing the

truth about the genocide against the Serbian people by Ante Pavelis Ustasha
regime in the monstrous Independent State of Croatia in the Second World
War between 1941 and 1945.
The present-day Croatia, a favourite of the Vatican, allows itself to hide the
truth, using untruthful statements about the number of victims in Jasenovac,
claiming it was a labour camp, not a concentration camp for Serbs, Jews and
Roma.
When it comes to childrens camps, such as those in Sisak and Jastrebarsko,
Croatias untruthful statements are never-ending; they want to cover up the
crimes of genocide of the Roman Catholic Church nuns. Support in this was
provided to them by the Vatican and the communist regime of Josip Broz.
For Croatia, those were not concentration camps but transit camps for refugee children from Lika, Banija, Kordun, Western Slavonia, Srem and Western Bosnia, who, running away from Ustasha bandits, fell into the arms of
nuns on their own.
Those were Serbian, Jewish and Romani children whose parents had been
murdered by the Croatian and Muslim Ustashas who wanted to get hold of
their children more easily, whom they transported on livestock wagons to
childrens camps, and the task of the nuns was to turn the male children into
513
Ustasha janissaries, and convert the female children from Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism and thus increase the number of Croats by changing each
childs identity.
The truth about children dying in huge numbers from diseases and poisoning
in childrens camps had been hidden for 70 years, as had the truth about the
crimes of Roman Catholic nuns, thanks to the Vatican.
In the infamous Ustasha concentration camp for children in Sisak, in the
summer of 1942, inside a short period of time 2,500 children died from food
poisoning. Sister Emericija unko from the Vatican Order of Carmelites was
to blame for this crime. Children were given corn mash mixed with caustic
soda for lunch every day. For this cruel crime of genocide against children,
Emericija unko was decorated by the Ustasha leader Ante Paveli with a
great medal, the Order of King Zvonimir.
In the Ustasha concentration camp of Jastrebarsko, the warden was a 60year-old sister of mercy from the Vatican Congregation of Sisters of St.
Vinko Paulski. She was born in Jastrebarsko and was a sister-in-law of the
Ustasha deputy leader Mile Budak. Right after the war, the State Commission
to Investigate Crimes Committed by Nazis and their Allies in Zagreb declared
Ana Pulherija a war criminal. She was accused of the deaths of 3,200 children
in Jastrebarsko, who arrived hungry and sick from Mount Kozara in the
summer of 1942. According to her, those children would have died anyway,
and she made sure they died as soon as possible. That is why she forbade they
be given any food or medicines. She was never tried for those crimes and she
died at a very old age at a monastery in Austria.
As a war orphan whose father and mother were killed by the Croatian and
Muslim Ustasha in the summer of 1941 in Sanski Most where I was born, I
arrived in childrens camp Jastrebarsko on 24 April 1942, together with 5,500
Serbs and Jews on livestock wagons escorted by Ustashas. They cut off my
hair and gave me a new name, camp number 97, telling me to forget who I
was, what I was and where I came from. Sister Gracioza placed us female
children in a basement of an old and abandoned castle of the former Count
Erdoedy. The basement was dark and damp, with some straws and a few
horse blankets on the floor. There were so many of us in the basement.
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Sister Mercedes placed the male children into shacks, three kilometres away
from Jastrebarsko. She dressed them in Ustasha uniforms and told them they
would be called Ustasha janissaries from then on.
On 25 August 1942, she personally killed a six-year-old Nikola Vujinovi with
a pickaxe and threw him in a septic pit for trying to break from the camp.
Viktor Novak, a Croatian writer, in his book Magnum Crimen, published in
Zagreb in 1946, described Sister Mercedes as a monster and a human freak
wearing a nuns clothing that frightened the little boys very much.
I stayed in Jastrebarsko for 12 months. Hunger and disease were our daily
companions, which made the girls die. Every morning before the break of
dawn, the castles metal doors would open squeaking loudly. A horse-drawn
cart with carter Mirko and grave-digger Franjo would enter the yard. They
would throw out the dead children from the basement using broad shovels.
Camp warden Pulherija and Sister Gracioza were always present. They
would show them which children to pick up with shovels; among those were
alive children too who were sleeping and did not put up any resistance. Each
time, Pulherija would tell them to hurry up to empty the basement as quickly
as possible to make room for other children, saying that picking up a few
living children was not a problem at all. Drive them away as far into the
woods as possible and bury them into the ground to conceal any trace of
them, she would say. I can remember very well the forest and the pit that I
myself was supposed to be thrown into together with the dead children.
When the grave-digger saw I was alive, he took me back on the horse-drawn
cart, covered me with a blanket and brought me back to the camp. Since then
on, I was awake every morning when the gates would open loudly, in fear of
ending up in a pit in case I fell asleep.
In the old castle basement there were no toilets and we were cold, because
there werent enough blankets and many girls could not go the whole night
without peeing so they urinated on the straw. A punishment was defined for
such children to kneel on the sand or corn with ones arms held up in the
air for two hours.
Sister Gracioza applied this punishment on me very frequently. During the
time I was kneeling, my knees and arms would hurt very much. When I
515
would put my arms down, Gracioza would put them back up again and extend
the punishment from one hour to two.
Sister Gracioza was young and beautiful, but evil. She also gave us a religious
lecture at 5 oclock in the morning.
The children who would fall asleep during class would receive a punishment
called krampus. One of them was me too. Gracioza would lock us up in a
dark attic room where there was a masked devil; it was baker Joica whom
we recognised. In one hand he would hold a torch to light up his distorted
face of a masked devil to scare us, and in the other a metal chain to beat us
with. From a strike to the head, some children would fall dead at once; a little
girl was holding her own eyeball, screaming. Those of us who survived the
punishment would shake and cry from fear and pain, calling out to our dead
mothers.
Sister Gracioza would on occasion open the metal castle gate and let the children leave the basement and freely go across the yard and beyond the barbed
wire. Seeing a number of children go out, she would happily close the gate
and call camp guard Slavko to take his dog Rex to catch those children, who
would later be punished by slaughter for running away from the camp. The
slaughter was done by Ustasha Petar Lovrin, while Sister Gracioza would
hold back each childs head so that the Ustasha could have free access to the
throat and slit it with a narrow knife as if he were butchering lambs.
I was the only one to survive the slaughter and the scar on my throat wont
let me forget the punishment.
In 1943, the humanitarian organisation Caritas of the Zagreb Archdiocese
freed, with the help of Austrian Diana Budisavljevi, 12,000 children from
concentration camps, among who was myself too, and gave us for adoption
by Catholic families loyal to the Ustasha regime of Ante Paveli. I was taken
to Zagreb by camp guard Slavko Dasovi and upon the instruction of Zagreb
Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac I was converted from Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism in St. Peters Church in the Vlaka Street, where my identity was
changed as well. The certificate of baptism which I received from a Catholic
priest at the church stated that my name was Maria Dasovi, born in Zagreb
on 10 April 1937 to father Slavko, that I was a Croat by ethnicity and a Roman
Catholic. With the false identity, I finished grammar school in Zagreb and
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moved to Mostar when I got married. Having finished a two-year college of

education, department of mathematics, in 1960 I got a job as a teacher at the
Braa Simi Elementary School, where the majority of pupils were Croats. I
got employed as a teacher at that school because I had come from Zagreb and
because they thought I was a Croat. I enjoyed huge reputation at the school,
not only from the pupils but also from the teachers whose parents were
Jasenovac slaughterers.
This went on until 1979, when I went to Jastrebarsko for a gathering of the
pioneers of Yugoslavia, to hold a speech about my memories of the days spent
in the camp. The organiser of the event was the Yugoslav SUBNOR (Federal
Association of WWII Veterans). That was the most difficult speech I ever
held.
After 38 years, for the first time I spoke about my unhappy childhood related
to war and camps. I told them that my strongest memory were the punishments I used to receive from Sister Gracioza. At the beginning I was the only
one crying and after a while all the children in the hall were crying. Reporters and cameramen from Belgrade were filming my speech entirely, and it
was shown as a documentary on television throughout Yugoslavia.
Later I found out that Sister Gracioza was transferred from Jastrebarsko to a
nuns monastery in Bijelo Polje near Mostar in 1941 and that she had seen the
film. She was asking my students who attended her religious classes about
me and sent a message through them that she was sorry for not poisoning me
in Jastrebarsko during the war and was just waiting for the opportunity to
do so as soon as possible. When Croatia committed aggression on Mostar in
1992, Ustashas and the Catholic Church welcomed that moment with joy to
arrest Mostar Serbs. If I had not left Mostar on 5 April, I would definitely
have been murdered.
In the Catholic newspaper Glas Koncila, journalist iril Petei, who was
close to the Catholic Church, wrote about Sister Gracioza and said that all
children in Jastrebarsko, where she worked during the NDH, loved her because she was an angel and that what I had told about Gracioza in Jastrebarsko in 1979 was pure fabrication, on the grounds that the child of three
years could not remember anything.
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That may be true, but I was 6 years old at the time and I remember everything
very well even today, and all traumas from Jastrebarsko are with me now
and I transferred them partly to my children.
Dr. Dragan Elii, a film director and screenwriter wrote a script about the
childrens camp in Jastrebarsko. The films title is U kandama jastreba. I was
assigned the lead role as a Serbian heroine, the witness-victim and a symbol
of Serbian children in the Independent State of Croatia, who managed to defeat hate with love, evil with goodness and death with life, thanks to the spark
of joy of life that gave me the strength to spread the truth in the world for
more than thirty years about the suffering of children in the Ustasha camps
and about the crimes against children committed by Roman Catholic nuns.
Since he did not get the money for making the movie of either Serbia or the
Republic of Srpska, the film has not been made yet. I asked Television of the
Republic of Srpska to organise a humanitarian action to collect funds for the
film. I have not received any response from them yet but I was informed by
Dr. Elii that Mr. Davidovi had called him and apologised for not being able
to do anything about this as a director because he was leaving his job.
Dr. Radoslav Lazi lives in Belgrade. He was born in Sanski Most and Ustasha
killed his father and two brothers in 1941, when my parents were also killed
together with 18 other members of the Deli family. He believes that it is time
that the Association of WWII Camp Inmates initiated proceedings for me to
receive the Order of St. Sava, the one that Diana Budisavljevi received, and
a recognition from the Republic of Srpska, like the one awarded to late Gojko
Kneevi, the former chairman of inmates. If this happens and I am not alive,
let the recognition be awarded posthumously to my daughter Dr. Slavica
Vujovi, who lives in Novi Sad in Petra Drapina Street, no. 34, on the fifth
floor.
Koprivna, 20 February 2014
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Milinko Skrobi
THE ENDLESS SUFFERING
So far, I have spoken about the refuge in Mount Kozara, internment in

Jasenovac death camps and stay in ghettos in Slavonian villages (t/n:
Slavonia is a historical region in Croatia).
On the 72nd anniversary of the German-Ustasha offensive on Kozara region,
these are my memories and views, given in a more expanded version, of
terrible atrocities and suffering carried out by Croatian and Muslim Ustashas
in the period 1941-1945, who exterminated the children of Kozara, like all
other adult men and women.
I consider my obligation to remember and make public everything that I
experienced and survived with my family and other Serb families during the
war and even later, growing as a fatherless child with my mother, older
brother and two sisters, as it would be unforgivable and shameful to let these
events sink into oblivion.
It is certain that some details I am talking about will remain incomplete
because the threads of my memory of specific events and experiences were
being cut in the time that remained somewhere far behind me.
I was born in a rural family in village Vlakovci near Kozarska Dubica on 10th
September 1935 to my father Rade and mother Stana ne Vrsajko. I have lived
with my family in Doboj, Bosnia and Herzegovina, for more than 50 years.
My wife Staka Kecman was born in village Miljakovci near Prijedor. She was
an internee in the Ustasha camps in Jasenovac, Stara Gradika and Slavonska
Poega together with her older sister Duanka, mother Lazarka and her
grandmother. Her mother got sick in the camp and soon died after she had
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returned to her birth place in the autumn of 1944. Her father died as a
Partisan in 1942. Her uncle Joo was a Partisan, who Muslim Ustashas from
the neighbouring village ela knew well, so they slaughtered his complete
family in their courtyard. They cut off the right hand of their youngest son
Miodrag and left him among the massacred corpses, where his neighbours
found him and transported him to a Partisan hospital, where he had his right
arm amputated.
Ma father Rade Skrobi was a councillor of the local people's government in
the village and a highly decorated WWI war invalid. He was captured with
his whole family in the Brljuga -Kozara region and taken to Jasenovac camp
to be murdered in the cruellest possible way. Apart from my father and
brother, 17 of my close and distant relatives of the Skrobi family were
murdered in Jasenovac death camps. These are their names: Mile, uro,
Simeun, Marijan, Dujo, Stevan, Stevo, Simo, Nikola, Rajko, Mirko, Radovan,
Duan, Milan, Niko, Rade and Stevo, all of which were the fathers of large
families. There were eighty households in village Vlakovci, and each house
had at least two men fit for combat. The largest were the families Milankovi,
ipka, Peki, Gaji, akovi, Lazi, urii, Semiz, Relji, Cikota, Simatovi
and Meava, whose member was the famous national hero Mile Meava.
The households were more or less rich, with large orchards, rich agricultural
land and a lot of cattle. The households were large, ranging from 6 to 10
members. There were three grocery shops in the village, owned by Marko
Milankovi, Branko Milankovi and Milan Peki. A blacksmith's shop was
owned by Jovan Skrobi, a fearless Serb soldier killed by a canon shell in
1941. Around 200 strong, healthy men from my village were killed in
Jasenovac death camps, Norwegian camps and Auschwitz. Only four holders
of the Partisan Commemorative Badge 1941 (t/n: awarded to those who
joined the movement in 1941) survived the war, while Stevo ipka and Milo
Gaji survived the camps in Jasenovac and Norway. After 1945, nine men and
four girls got back from captivity in Germany, while seven men with their
families found their salvation hiding in ditches around Kozara.
Village Vlakovci is eight kilometres away from Dubica and therefore was
often raided by Ustashas who would burn houses and other objects, pillaging
goods, cattle and food from them and cutting down trees for firewood.
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They knew each household very well, as they had used to come to the village
to harvest apples and plums, buy cattle or food products. In the autumn of
1941, Ustashas and Home Guard stormed the village, burnt the Orthodox
church and church cooperative, having stolen the money from it. Arresting
and persecution of people ensued. After they had burnt the church, they got
deeper into the village to arrest men. At the last minute, my father hid under
sheaves of freshly reaped corn placed around fruit trees, while ore Lazi
hid under a hayrick.
The people recognised the threat of carnage by Ustashas and Germans in time
and started to offer resistance.
The war interrupted my childhood dreams. Potkozarje region was ablaze and
I was just 7. I forgot play, dreams and mischief and, frightened to death, I
clung to my mother listening to intense gunfire from small arms. We would
hide in nearby groves to avoid the fascists.
Thick snow came down in January 1942; nights were cold but days were very
sunny. I remember a small Partisan unit come to our house and go to village
Aginci after lunch to liquidate a group of German and Ustasha officers and
soldiers on the Dubica Prijedor road. Seeking revenge, Ustashas stormed
our village in the evening, surrounding it from three sides, and began to
arrest and murder everybody they captured. However, they did not use
firearms. They were plundering barns, stealing cattle and burning farm
buildings. That evening they murdered a man named Lazo Semiz, who was
coming back from village Gornjoselci leaving his son ivko there, and took
his oxen to Dubica. The same evening, his wife Draginja Semiz, Jovo Meava
and Ostoja Skrobi were immolated. My older brother Savan and my sisters
Mika, Pava and Sava left their dinner, ran out of the house and fled along a
path in the snow towards village Odinci. My mother would carry me for a
few moments and then take me by the hand and walk beside me. One foot
bare, I got to village Odinici with my mother and we went to my
grandfather's, Vaso Vrsajko. Frightened, I had not felt that one foot was bare
although it was all cut with ice and covered in blood. So my delicious dinner
ended. The following day we found out that the enemy had plundered 80
households and burnt the houses to the ground. After such an evil act, many
adult Serbs joined the Partisan movement, taking weapons from the enemy
by force during combats and fighting like lions in Kozara people manner, as
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they had no other choice. My sister Mika went from village Odinci with a
man named Pero Zaki to village Jasenje, joined the rebels and fought in her
own way together with members of SKOJ (t/n: the Serbian acronym for
Young Communist League of Yugoslavia, the youth wing of the Communist

Party of Yugoslavia) and the National Liberation Army (the Partisans). She
wholeheartedly belonged to the anti-fascist movement, as were her father
and older brother Milorad, who captured a light machine gun and a rifle
during the action in village Pogleevo in 1942, although he was all covered
in blood pulling a wounded Partisan out.
16th May 1942 should be inscribed in golden letters, since that was the day
Prijedor was liberated. These days my father was involved in removing shells
and ammunition from Prijedor to Kozara region, during which one of the
activists carrying out the task died. I thought that my father had also died
then. Imagination and a big and inexplicable fear can easily cloud the mind
of every child. I had often cried until I found out that my father was alive.
When I eventually saw him I jumped for joy.
I still have a clear memory of Kozara, as I lived in Borik-Kozara together with
my closest family and a large number of neighbours in a hut made of logs and
branches of a tree. When we fled to the mountain, we did not any connections
with the civilisation. Wood and desolation were all around us. To find
something to eat, I would go with other children from the refuge to clearings
in Mednjak area and nearby the forester's house to pick strawberries and
mushrooms. This is where Ustashas and German soldiers noticed us from a
hill in village Bjelajci and opened artillery fire on us. On that occasion, a little
girl was heavily wounded in her leg. As she was bleeding, a Partisan took her
deeper in the forest. Ustasha and German planes often fly over us, throwing
bombs and strafing civilians and Partisans. They were throwing leaflets
calling for people to surrender and get back home from the refuges in woods.
Whoever obeyed lost their life.
All paths led from the south of Kozara to the north, where Jasenovac
extermination camps were loaded with male and female internees from
Kozara region, mostly the municipalities of Dubica and Gradika, as well as
Kostajnica, Bosanski Novi and Prijedor. Not only were Serbs interned in
Jasenovac camps, but also deported to Zemun Sajmite camp near Belgrade,
Norway, Hungary and Auschwitz.
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In the following villages of Dubica municipality: Parnice, Bjelajci and

Odinici, lived the following Croatian families: Luketi, Odak, Krpan,
Krizmani, Rukavina, Matijevi, imunovi, Radman and others. All of them
joined the Ustasha movement in 1941 and posed a deadly threat for
Potkozarje Serbs. As the physical existence of the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia
and Herzegovina was threatened, they mounted a strong resistance against
the Nazis and their Ustasha allies since the first days of occupation. Ustashas
well knew those who were capable of organising and preparing the Serb
population for armed resistance.
I well remember when my father talked one night about Partisans' preparation for a breakthrough from Kozara towards Mount Grme. He said that
all the people from refuges will go with the wounded. The breakthrough was
only a partial success as many were killed during it.
As soon as German soldiers and Ustashas came to Kozara, it became
impossible to make the breakthrough as powerful German-Ustasha units had
laid a siege to the mountain. For the Partisans, especially the wounded ones,
a living hell ensued. The wounded and captured Partisans were killed on the
spot. For example, Ustashas slaughtered more than 300 wounded Partisans
in Grabovac creek in Mljeanica. After this rout, hours of fear and suffering
ensued for the people in the refuge. The number of refugees was about
80,000, while the number of Partisans under arms was about 3,500. My
family as well as hundreds of other Serb families was captured in BrljugaKozara area by the Germans. We were herded to a hill in village Bjelajci, from
which all roads led to the north, towards Croatia. We spent two days in
Bjelajci collection camp as a large number of the captured was brought to the
camp every hour. We were hungry, thirsty, poorly dressed and barefoot,
molested by the Ustashas, who were trying to establish order in their own
way by yelling, shouting and threatening.
Only a few Ustashas herded thousands of us from Bjelajci. We all kept deadly
silent while the Ustashas were shouting, striking fear into us. We travelled
in a great heat for over 7 kilometres across villages Furda, Hadibajre and
Urije to Dubica and further on across a bridge on Una River through Croatian
Dubica, and 7 kilometres more to the railway station in Cerovljani, Croatia.
While passing through Dubica, I noticed groups of men wearing fezzes while
women were dressed in harem pants (t/n: also known as dimije). Some of
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them held buckets full of water in their hands but none of us dared to ask for
some, as they would be murdered by the blood-thirsty Ustashas. While we
were crossing the bridge, a young woman jumped out of the file and plunged
into the river. The Ustashas demanded that she should be pulled out alive. We
were not allowed to look back or stop so we just kept walking. I did not ask
about or heard the woman's name.
When we arrived to the railway station in Cerovljani, there had already been
a large number of Ustashas and interns there. It seemed to me that, if
somebody had thrown an apple into the crowd, it could not have fallen onto
the ground. There was also a collective camp for captured Serbs of both sexes
and all ages, from children to old people. A vast space was crowded with
captives from Kozara and other places. Here the Ustashas were also trying to
establish order in their specific way, shouting, yelling and threatening to
slaughter them. They were separating adult and healthy men from women
and old people. They were kicking and hitting them with gun stocks with
knives attached. It was very hard to watch all this and listen to the crying and
bowling of women and children, as well as adult men, being separated and
loaded onto empty stock cars. When they loaded a car, they would shut the
door and secure it with an iron bar. The captives were bowling, crying and
begging the Ustashas to open the door, shouting that they were suffocating
because of the heat and lack of air. However, it was in vain. They asked for
water but there was none, nor dared anybody to pass some water to those
inside through small bars on the cars. This is how our beloved were dying in
agony. When the cars were loaded, the train would set off for Jasenovac to
get back empty and ready for a new load.
It was not before all healthy and adult men had been sent to Jasenovac that
the Ustashas loaded women, children and old people onto the cars. The doors
in our cars were left ajar. People were unloaded in front of the camp gate and
would stay there for a few hours to be finally herded like cattle into the camp
fenced with barb wire. There were also some barracks and a brick factory.
The Ustasha guards kept watch on moving and behaviour of the prisoners.
We neither meet the men who had been sent away from Cerovljani earlier
nor did we see them in a large number. I noticed that certain prisoners were
taken to Sava River with their hands tied with barb wire, where they would
be hit in their head with a mallet at which they would fall into the water.
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The men, women and children who had been executed or who had died were
collected in the camp, loaded onto trucks and carts and transported across
Sava River to the area of Donja Gradina, where gunfire from rifles and
machine guns could be heard every day. Men were executed there and a large
number of them carrying shovels were taken under watch to some labour.
We were lucky not to stay in Jasenovac for long. Women and old people were
mostly saved by the International Red Cross commissioners and thus,
through Novska and Pakrac, we arrived in Daruvar, where was a collection
camp as well. All the time we were hungry, thirsty and so exhausted that we
could hardly walk. We spent the night there. My older sister Sava aka Slava,
who we knew nothing about at the time, had stayed with a woman in Daruvar.
Sava was quite a cuddly and adorable little girl. My mother and I together
with my brothers Simo and Savan and sisters Mika and Pava, after we had
spent the night in Daruvar and got a piece of bread and a cup of milk each,
were sent to Grubino Polje together with a large group of prisoners, where
we also were not assigned to anybody or accommodated in any village
households. If we had stayed there for just a few more hours, we would all
have been slaughtered. We were always conducted by some unknown
women. We were directed towards village Ercegovac, where my 15-year-old
brother Simo stayed at an unknown men's together with our cousins Dragoje
Milankovi and Vukosav Milankovi. Shortly after, Ustashas captured him
and took to Jasenovac camp, where he was murdered. We did not find
accommodation in the surroundings of Ercegovac too, so my mother, older
brother Savan and my sisters Mika and Pava went through Popovac on our
way to Veliki Prokop, where some men and women had gathered in a
crossroads. There we sat on a sward with a creek flowing aside. Ducks and
geese paddled across the creek, which was interesting to me so I forgot the
hunger and suffering. We were distributed in different houses.
My sister Mika and I were assigned to the Ustasha named Matija Kutnjak. My
other sister Pava was assigned to the Ustasha's cousin Rozika Kutnjak and
her husband Milan. My mother with my brother Savan was accommodated
at Nikola and Pava Vujinovi's, who were always angry, moody and grumpy.
They forbid me to visit my mother so we would see each other while grazing
cattle. We slept in barns with the cattle. I did farming and some other jobs I
was not grown enough for. In such conditions I managed to survive in Veliki
Prokop and to defend myself against hunger and other ordeals following me.
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With my older sister Mika and my mother I would occasionally go to

vineyards to disperse birds which were swooping down on ripe grapes. Near
a vineyard there was a noble lady who my mother would visit and who would
give us some food. Her house was on the edge of a grove and Partisans used
to visit her.
While we were travelling from Jasenovac to Daruvar I saw a young Ustasha
with a rifle on his shoulder, accompanied by a young girl who entertained
him so they did not pay attention to us. Further away, about 200 metres away
from them, a man was standing by the road signalling us with his hands to
hurry up. I assume he was one of Partisan collaborators who helped us that
way to get deeper into villages, where we would be safer. Ustashas would
come to Veliki Prokop from time to time, dropping in on our landlord's and
talking to his family. Julka Kutnjak, his mother, did not allow my brother
Savan, her grandchildren and me to be near Ustashas; she would always make
us go into the house or barn. She must have been doing it for safety, since
Partisans threatened her and her family to kill them if something bad
happened to the Kozara refugees. When the brothers of our landlord's wife
(six of them, all Ustashas) would visit them, the youngest one would kick my
brother and me and pulled us by the hair and ears saying he would slaughter
us unless we were obedient and did everything we were said by our
landlords. Then the sons of Ustasha Matija Kutnjak would stand up for us and
tell them we were good and obedient servants.
Our captivity burdened our hearts, as a tragic event with uncertain outcome,
the biggest worry of all. According to my mother, in the second half of
October 1942, one afternoon some women came and asked from us to prepare
for getting back home across Slavonia villages and take food and clothes. She
pointed out that we would not go via Jasenovac and Dubica; instead, we would
go across Sunja, Croatian Kostajnica and Bosnian Kostajnica as that direction
was much safer. When we got to Kostajnica, we proceeded along a ditch
towards Mount Balj. In the evening, we got to some burnt Serb houses, where
we gathered some food in gardens and orchards, had dinner and went to
sleep. It was rumoured that we would have been slaughtered in Bosanska
Kostajnica if only we had been two hours late.
The next day we arrived in our home village, where all houses had been burnt
to the ground. We immediately started to gather fruit and vegetables which
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we could find in abundance in gardens and fields. We built some sort of shed,
or a hut, of the remaining charred boards. Some youngsters of 14 and 15
years of age came back from Slavonia villages, disguised in women's clothes
with babushkas on their heads. The ones that got back were: Stanko Burazor,
Boko Milankovi, Mihajlo Gaji, Dragoje Milankovi, Dragolub Skrobi,
Nikola urii, Mirko Dugajli, brohers Milorad and Marko Milankovi and
Milo ipka, who were settled in Slavonia villages Mala and Velika Brlenica,
Rogoa, Vukovije, Gari, Podgari, Popovac, Ercegovac and others.
Most of these young men joined the Partisans in 1943 and became brave
fighters, devoted to the Movement. They fought against those who had
captured and sent them to Jasenovac camps.
Having returned to our burnt homes, a new life began. Even then we were
not left alone by Ustashas from Dubica, who would shoot and slaughter
everybody they encountered, burning newly built shacks and destroying
everything that was on their way. Partisans came to the village and organised
girls and women to keep guard day and night. At the same time, they
organised groups for building small, humble houses necessary to
accommodate the returnees. Poverty is at its peak; however, freedom was
stronger than everything, while faith in a happier and better life increased
every day.
As early as 1944, Ustashas knew they were losing the war. However, they
kept committing atrocities. They would launch sudden attacks, storm villages
and, without shooting, arrest and slaughter women and children they would
capture. For example, on Good Friday of 1944, Ustashas captured a woman
with three children in village Parnice and slaughtered them all, while in
village Vlakovci they broke the head of a boy from the Dugajli family by
hitting it against a wooden post of a well and then threw the poor child into
the well. Little girls named Anka Milankovi and Vukosava - Cuja were
wounded then. Owing to the SKOJ member Nikola urii who diverted
Ustashas from capturing us and was chased by them as they wanted to catch
him alive, a large group of villagers including us were saved from certain
death in a land clearing near village Odinci.
My sisters, together with the other women from the village who returned
from Slavonia, would go to Dubika plain and harvest and thresh wheat at
night and brought it back in bags and sacks across the foot of Mount Kozara
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towards Mount Grme. They were barefoot and would come back to the
village with their feet covered in blood. During that time, my mother, brother
Savan and I were in great fear for their and our safety because they were the
only ones capable of providing us with food.
In our village, the 1941 member of the Partisan movement Duan Simatovi
posted Partisan guards which also consisted of women and unmarried girls.
When Ustashas would start from Dubica towards Krukovac and our village,
he would fire two or three shots and start shouting to cease fire as Partisans
were surrounding the Ustashas. He saved a large number of our villagers
from certain death. On behalf of all survivers from our village, I hereby pay
him respect and extend gratitude for everything he did for us.
In July 1982 I visited Veliki Prokop and Popovac with my two cousins to meet
the family of the former Ustashas Matija Kutnjak and Nikola Vujinovi after
40 years. At Matija Kutnjak's I found the youngest son, who told me that the
elderly from his family i.e. grandma Julka, her husband and his father Matija
had died and his mother Jaga had got remarried. He told me that his older
brother Mati Kutnjak worked as a forester in Popovac and his brother
Slavko in Rijeka. When I visited Mati, he could not recognise me. He was
getting ready to go for a holiday to his brother Slavko in Rijeka. He said he
did not remember me. I did not want to delay him as he was preparing for
the holiday so I just said the tone of his voice had remained the same as 40
years ago. He asked me again to tell him how we knew each other. He could
not believe we had survived. When I asked him if he remembered the year of
1942 and grandma Stana, Savan and Milinko from Kozara, he started to cry
and told his wife he was not going on holiday because his friend he had not
seen for 40 years was there. I told him I had just dropped by to see who of his
family was alive and that I intended to come for a few days with my brothers
and sisters to visit the vineyards I had used to go as a child to disperse hungry
birds. Mati was crying all the time we were together.
The war was over and the long awaited freedom came, which made me, as
well as other people of Potkozarje, extremely happy. However, I mourned my
lost father, my uncle, my brothers, relatives, neighbours, and friends. I am
full of memories and scars. If I lived for a thousand years, my childhood war
odyssey could never sink into oblivion.
In the name of thousands of innocent victims of Jasenovac camps and places
of execution in Donja Gradina near Kozarska Dubica, unjari near Sanski
Most, Garavice near Biha, Jadovno, Drakuli, argovac, Motike and Rudnik
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near Bnjaluka, Caprag near Sisak, Jastrebarsko and Prijedor, from where
6,000 Serbs were brought to Jasenovac in stock cars, and in the name of
martyrs from Glamo, Trebinje, Prebilovci, Kupres and other places in
Herzegovina, I will strive with all my might and as long as I am sane to
prevent what I went through and what I survived from falling into oblivion.
The RS Association of Detainees of the Second World War, whose president
I am, is not adequately supported by Republic of Srpska authorities. As a
pensioner, concentration camp detainee and soldier of the RS DefensePatriotic War of 1991-1995, I still have strength to preserve the memory of
the pogrom of Serbs. I will be visiting the aforesaid places of massacre, bow
to the remains of victims, light candles and lay at least one carnation for all
victims from that hard and troubled time. I hereby strongly condemn the
revival of Ustasha ideology, which has been recently promoted in Republic
of Croatia.
In the end, as a token of gratitude to Diana Budisavljevi (t/n: a humanitarian
of Austrian descent who led a major relief effort in Yugoslavia during World
War II that rescued mostly ethnic Serbian children from the concentration
camps) and a Red Cross commissioner for everything they did saving Serbian
children, women and the elderly from death camps, on behalf of survived
camp prisoners and their descendants and on my own behalf, I again express
our profound gratitude! I suggest that streets in the municipalities of
Potkozarje region are named after her, while a monument in memory of her
deeds should be erected in Donja Gradina.
Doboj
21st February 2014
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Vasilije Karan
WOUNDS OF KOZARANS HAVE BEEN

FORGOTTEN BY THE WORLD
I see myself on top of Mrakovica, the Olympus of Kozara. Victories mixed

with defeats. This black, red and hellish year of 1942 was full of songs
permeated with screams. Kozara, Kozara, mother of humiliated, killed ones!
Mother of heroes, wholehearted and courageous fighters who fought and
defended their people unarmed. It was blood, blood all over. People were
falling down like cut bundles of ripe grain.
Germans, Germans, and then Ustashas, Ustashas! Followed by the Home
Guard. Huge army forces surrounded Kozara. People stayed together with
partisan armies. Escaping before the assault troopers retreated into the
mountains and stayed there. They stayed until the fierce German military
formations overcame the 2nd Kozara Detachment. Moreover, all the partisans
were carrying guns. Unequal balance of powers played a sad and fatal role.
Partisans lost the battle, their defeat lasted for two months, then the troops
got back together, stood up in the formation on the legendary hill of Pale,
and on that critical historic day the 5th Kozara Brigade was created.
Afterwards the heroes of Kozara, like lions, went to face the fascists and
Croatian Ustashas. Battle of Patria is remembered not only under this sky,
Adolf Hitler also knew all about it. On that fateful rainy night when partisans
tried to break through the fascist Ustasha grip around Kozara and to take out
their hungry people from the area, Berlin heard about Kozara on the next
day. A military reporter informed the General Staff in Berlin: "This is a
gruesome and unprecedented conflict between the partisans and our military
forces! The trenches of our warriors were jumped in even by women with
knives in their hands!
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It wasnt before the fourth of July 1942 that Kozara turned into hell. The
Germans furiously entered the mountain even though they could not get
compared to Croatian Ustashas. The massacres were going on and on. Only
in the streams of Grabovac on the right side of the Mljeanica River in one
hour Ustashas slaughtered more than 300 wounded partisans. There was
gushing blood all over red Mljeanica. This was followed by another hell.
Germans, with the help of the Ustasha troops gathered Kozaras population
pushing civilians into lines deporting them to many camps. People able to
work were deported to Germany as the Germans were on the front lines.
Factories in those days were lacking workforce. So the prisoners of Kozara
produced ammunition and everything else needed for the German war, and
the very same ammunition the Germans used to kill those very people.
Dubica will stay remembered as a hell town. City of wounds, tears, crying
city, town of attacks and every kind of disorder. The city on the border with
Croatia was adequate for crossing over the Una and attacking Kozara. This
battle has been named as the biggest enemy offensive led by German General
Friedrich von Stahl.
In the memories of Dubica there are two evils remembered. In one day in one
hour Ustashas slaughtered 1,600 Serbs at the town cemetery. These were
mostly women, children and the elderly population. People of powerlessness,
people of hunger, fear, and every other evil. During the same summer, a
different type of massacre happened again. Ustashas in interaction with
German soldiers in the city centre at the market hanged seventeen citizens
of Dubica. They were mostly underground activists but also those who had
no clue about the underground. Thus, in the same instant one four-member
family of Dubica was hanged. The husband, wife and two young children of
the Ornek family. All of them died on the ropes without having ever harmed
anyone.
At the time of the massacre at the cemetery Ustashas were taking photos with
the dead bodies and bloody knives. There was a brutal German amongst them,
a native from Vranoci, Gustav Majer. Before the war, he lived in harmony
with Dubica people while during the war he was slaughtering them as if they
inflicted the greatest injustice to him. The war creates hatred, and hatred
fierce nationalism, and nationalism created German Nazism. Resistant,
creepy, unparalleled.
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The Second World War was a cataclysm of all remembered cataclysms. But
still, this crash cannot serve the civilisation as a reminder. Inter-civilisation
harmony is missing.
I remember the Kozara cemeteries. Here and there, they were all over the
hills, on every hill, in the flat field clearing in the ditch. Kozara was not only
the Olympus of Kozara, it was rather a grave witnessing everything that
history had not fully described, defined or said what needed to be said. I
remember the evils at the time although I was only eight years old. I lived on
wild strawberries, honeydew and wormy and over-ripe mulberries from the
villages. Hunger was agonising me, and at the time I was in the mountains
without my parents. They were in Jasenovac, and I became a wild boy who
had jumped out of the convoy and returned to the forest. The forest was my
parent. Both mother and father. I did not dare to move through the village, I
was afraid of open spaces while Kozara protected me with its forest branches.
My enemy number one was hunger. I persevered and then I was caught once
again by the Germans in the woods and deported to Croatian camps. One
trouble led to another. However, I survived the war.
This is not a fictional story, it is kept in my heart, my soul, my eyes; I do not
see the present-day Kozara, I only see myself spending time there as a lost,
savage boy escaping from anyone stronger than me. I was not afraid of
anyone so much as of Croatian Ustashas. For me, they were pure terror. I am
full of respect for Kozara, for the fallen Kozarans; I respect the heroes, and
the faith that bred optimism, patriotism and pride which does not exist among
todays generations. There was a Kozara once, once and never again.
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Lazar Milinovi
THE GREATEST SIN IS TO FORGET
Much is forgotten with the passing of time. That is why we, the few of us who
have experienced so many things, should write down what we remember.
Because if it is not written down, it has not happened. It takes a lot of courage
to write the truth about the historical events which took place in this region
in 1941-1945. First, you need distance from family, national and religious
aspects and then you can write the truth. Paper is forgiving. But the truth
comes out, sooner or later. Many historians and quasi-historians failed there,
in a moral and character sense.
I have had a chance to talk to educated Croats. They all said, How long are
you Serbs going to mention Jasenovac? Stop talking about that. It is history.
My reply was: If you do not feel guilty and responsible for what your fathers,
brothers and your Holy Roman Catholic Church did, why does it sting and
hurt then? Because, what happened, happened and that can never be undone.
Something similar was said by the German Foreign Minister Genscher in a
conversation with a Serbian politician: Look, you need to forget what
happened to Serbs in the Second World War. That is in the past. When it
comes to the Serbs and Jasenovac, then it is in the past. But, when it is about
another people or peoples, then it is not in the past. Double standards.
Later, I got the impression that: they used to kill us, but now they try
incredibly hard to make us and persuade us to forget what they have done to
us. No matter how hard anyone tried to deny what happened to Serbs, Jews,
Roma and anti-fascists during the reign of the NDH, in Jasenovac and other
camps, and even individual and mass murders, the massacre of Serbs on
535
Ilindan 1941 in unjar... - it cannot be done. You can kill a man, but you
cannot kill the truth. It is never too late for the truth. You can hide, rebut,
deny, diminish and belittle the truth, but it lives forever.
EARTH HAS SWORN TO HEAVENS TO REVEAL

ALL SECRETS
The truth is a torch, but a huge one, and so it is only with blinking eyes what
we all of us try to get past it, in actual terror of being burnt (Goethe).
It is hard to get to the truth about the crimes against Jews, Roma and Serbs
while the church archives in the Vatican and Kaptol are sealed. Let the
Vatican open its archives and we will reach the hidden truth about many
things we do not know. And why the Vatican hides its archives, they know
best. Our time will pass. The archives will be opened (sealed up to now) and
everything that was hidden from us, everything that lives in history through
lies, will show the world the glory and horror of various gods. So much
misery and horror has the century hidden, but who was truly great, shall
always remain great.
When I say that we will not and cannot forget, we need to remember the old
saying: A grandfather took his grandson, put him on his lap, and to the sound
of gusle started to speak what once was. We, the older generation, who
survived those difficult times, need to make an effort to tell the truth to the
younger generations about Jasenovac, unjar, Jadovna, the massacre of
Serbs on Ilindan 1941, Herzegovina pits and other killings of innocent people.
To tell you how the occupying soldiers, who, on their belts, wore the
inscription God is with us (Gott mit uns), turned Serbian Orthodox
churches into stables (Prijedor, 15th April 1941).
In Prijedor, a town crier used to go from one street corner to the next one
announcing orders and notices to the people. On the main street, between
tern's and our house, there was an electricity pole next to which he would
always stop and read out proclamations.
So, on one day in 1941, the town crier announced: Hear ye, hear ye! Starting
today, between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m., no movement is allowed to Serbs, Jews,
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Gypsies and dogs. If any of these is caught in the street in that period, they
will be severely punished.
The order was signed by the Ustasha camp commander Josip Kardum and
Headquarters head Miro Slikovi. As previously mentioned, this order was
read by the town crier, but it was put up in many places and even on that
pole, pinned to it with drawing pins. (Prijedor, 1941)
Does this need to be forgotten?
It was on the altars of Serbian Orthodox churches and in front of their
parents that the Ustashas raped Christian girls in the name of Jesus Christ.
Such atrocities can simply not be forgotten. The villains who committed the
atrocities and those who, even today, approve of those atrocities, diminish minimise and deny them, are the same as those villains - butchers. They
committed crimes against some peoples only because they are of a different
denomination (Jews, Roma, and Serbs) and in the name and on behalf of
others. But, remember that a crime committed for the welfare and benefit of
one religion against another is, actually, the worst crime against your own
religion. Or, as rabbi Schneier recently put it A crime committed in the
name of religion is the greatest crime against religion. The Roman Catholic
Church has kept and still keeps quiet about the crimes committed by Croatian
Ustashas and their accomplices in the Second World War. That Church was
one of the accomplices and associates in those monstrous crimes.
IT IS A CRIME TO CLOSE YOUR EYES IN FRONT

OF THE TRUTH
When you take into account that Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, said in Zagreb
on 27th March 1941, and later wrote in his diary, that the schism of Eastern
Orthodoxy is the greatest curse of Europe, even greater than Protestantism.
In it, there is no morale, no principles, truth, justice nor honour. It is quite
clear that his subordinates acted on his orders. At the beginning of August
1941, friar Luka Tei from Sasina said in mass: First, we will kill Serbs and
then Muslims. This was and still is being hidden. However, earth swore to
heavens to reveal all secrets. Those words might have been a slip of the
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tongue for the reverend, but it should not be forgotten that that kind of
teaching could only come from his superiors.
I wish to give one more example of how some Roman Catholic clergymen
treated the Serbian people: the clergyman Dr Sreko Peri (Livno county),
from the altar of the Gorica church near Livno, in mass, among other things,
he said to his congregation the following words: Brother Croats, go and
slaughter all Serbs, but first go and cut the throat of my sister, who married
one.
Immediately after the proclamation of the NDH, drastic measures toward the
unwanted peoples ensued. The legal act on conversion to another religion
was passed on 5th May 1941 and already on 25th May The legal act on the ban
of cyrillics was passed and an Orthodox church was torn down in Banja
Luka. On the same day, Dr Viktor Guti spoke in a gathering to Croats and
this is what he said: This day is an iron broom for Serbs. Let's celebrate the
grand day of destroying the devil's altar.
No church services in Serbian Orthodox churches were allowed from 9th
August 1941 and through that the Orthodox denomination and Church were
practically banned.
During the Second World War, 20 Orthodox churches were converted into
Roman Catholic churches.
In Dubrovnik, fascist soldiers (Italians) had photographs of one Ustasha who
wore two necklaces. One necklace was made out of gauged eyes and the other
of cut off tongues of killed Serbs. (Avro Manhattan, The Vatican's Holocaust,
1986, pages 78).
There is no reconciliation without telling the real truth about the past on both
sides, whatever that truth may be. Holocaust and genocide against the
Serbian Orthodox people was planned even before the April war. The Ustasha
movement had over 500 armed terrorists abroad, in Hungary (Jankapuszta)
and in Italy (Bovegno), and over 3,000 underground sworn Ustashas in
Yugoslavia.
Many Serbs, who did not interfere with anything, simply vanished in the
NDH. What happened to them? None of them had a chance and opportunity
to testify about those events. Because there were no survivors.
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After the proclamation of the NDH, on 10th April 1941, the first monstrous
mass killings were committed by the Ustashas around Bjelovar, then, in
Banija in May 1941 and in Lika in June of the same year. On 7th May, the day
after St. George, 27 Serbs were shot in Sanski Most. The dead Serbs were left
hanging in the town park for a few days, until the stench of the corpses began
to spread.
As an author, journalist and former chairman of the Jewish Community of
Belgrade, in that period, between April and mid-June 1941, Jaa Almuli
stated over 600,000 Serbs had been killed by the Croatian Ustashas. About
180,000 Serbs were exiled to Serbia.
On the territory of the NDH, in addition to Jasenovac and Stara Gradika,
there were other camps, such as Jadovno Velebit, the island of Pag Slano,
Sisak Caprag, Jablanac, Mlaka, Loborgrad (camp for women and children),
Danica near Koprivnica, Prijedor Ciglana, Kruica near Travnik, Gospi...
As a concentration camp, Jasenovac existed from July 1941. Other sources
claim that in was opened at the end of August. As a concentration camp, it
existed until 22th April 1945. On that day, in early dawn, the camp prisoners
organised a breakout. One hundred sixty-six prisoners made it to freedom.
The atrocities which the prisoners went through go beyond all known
prisoner torture. That was monstrous torture before death. Ustashas tortured
prisoners in various savage ways, gauging out their eyes while they were
alive, killing them with axes, knives, hammers, mallets, a special knife called
srbosjek [Serb-cutter, t/n], which was specially made for them in Solingen.
The least common was to kill a prisoner using fire arms; the Ustashas said
they were not worth spending a bullet on. Ustashas killed out of whim. They
would compete who could slaughter more prisoners faster. They would tie
two prisoners together, one facing the other, and then throw them in the
River Sava. In winter, they would put prisoners in iron cages, in which they
had to stand naked, and then pour cold water over them, so they froze to
death. We all know very well how cold winters were in those years. They
would bury them half-dead, or they would throw alive or barely alive people
into Piilis furnace. Ustashas used prisoner corpses to make soap. No one has
ever done anything like this, except Croatian Ustashas. No concentration
camp in the world, except in the NDH, had special camps for women and
539
children. All those killings and torture could be called killings in the Croatian
way.
The scale of the genocide against Serbs in World War II can be seen from the
clearly documented fact that in the territory of Bosanska Dubica there were
no military service recruits until 1962. The same was true in Kneopolje and
other Kozara villages.
On the entrance to the camp it was written Order, work and discipline. If
Jasenovac was a work camp, then why did Ustashas destroy all the
documentation of that work camp? Why did they destroy the entire camp
by mining it? What were they trying to hide? The war was almost over, but
Ustashas, until the last day of the war, still killed people as they did in 1941.
In Prijedor, on Ilindan 1941, a massacre was committed in which more than
700 Serbs were killed. In the market, Aga Delki sexually abused a dead
Serbian woman. The eyewitness to this atrocity was Savo Krneta. The whole
market can be seen quite easily from his house. On that bloody day, more
than 10,000 Serbs were killed in Bosanska Krajina.
In Stari Majdan, on 3rd August 1941, in the animal cemetery Troska, which
people used to call Kujin Potok for ages (Vid Marjanovi Prota), 25 Serbs
were killed, including two of my uncles, Gojko Kokanovi and Rade
Kokanovi, with who I spent my childhood. A few days after his sons were
killed, my grandfather Jovan was sitting in the apiary in front of the house,
unshaven, as is the custom when we, Serbs, are in mourning, when someone
came down the road and said: Jovan, is that you? My grandfather Jovan
replied, because he recognised the voice: Yes, ordi. Then ordi said:
Jovan, can you hear how your Rade's shoes creak on my feet? How my
grandfather Jovan felt at that moment, only he knew and took that to his
grave. About ten days later, my grandfather Jovan and grandmother Rista
were banished from their home to Serbia. On their way to Serbia, they came
to Prijedor to say goodbye to their son-in-law Mirko and grandchildren,
orphans, who so early in life lost and grew up without their mother. Then,
our grandfather told us that tragedy and made all of us swear that we will
never forget that. I honour that oath even today. The rest of my family died
in Jasenovac (father Mirko), Stara Gradika (sister Nada) and Kruevac
(brother Dragan). My children swore that they will honour their great-
540
grandfather's oath and keep it and pass it to their children, so they know what
had happened.
Can we really forget how the women prisoner in Stara Gradika wrote, with
their blood, on the wall of a cell Oh, my darling, do not mow the grass next
to the river Sava, you'll mow my blue eyes? The most hideous torture, never
before seen, happened to a prisoner Vukain Mandrap, a man from the village
Klepci in Herzegovina. The butcher tortured him, cut his ears and nose with
a dagger, gauged out his eyes... To all the butcher's curses and threats, the
proud and brave Vukain calmly said: Do you job, child. That was told to Dr
Nedeljko Zec by the Ustasha butcher Friganovi.
There is something in the Serbian people so they take torture, suffering and
pain standing up, without showing the tormentor that it hurts. Is that pride,
spite or something else?
On 19th August 1941, the Partisans killed a German motorcyclist on the road
Prijedor - Banja Luka. In retaliation, the Germans, on the same day, rounded
up and brought to Prijedor about 70-100 adults Serbian farmers from the
village where the murder happened. Those people were brought to the yard
of the Vuenovi's house, where the German town headquarters was located.
They were lined up in three or four rows. I do not know what kind of things
they asked them. The only thing I know is that none of those people replied.
Then began the beating of these people, who certainly had nothing to do with
the murder. They were hit with hands, feet and gunstocks. The bloodcovered peasant would fall and just get up, even several times, without
making a sound. I and my friend Aleksandar Ostoji watched this from
behind the fence between that yard and the bowling alley. This took about
two hours and then we went home, because night was approaching. I do not
know what happened to those people afterwards. I compare this to the
behaviour of Vukain Mandrap. None of those Serbs moaned, begged or
cried. Did this kind of behaviour during torture annoy the torturers, who
expected a different kind of reaction? That was the pride and dignity that
graces the Serbian people of my home land.
During the 1970's, table lamps made of human skulls were sold in Zagreb.
When the police established that the skulls originated from the Jasenovac
area, all of those lamps disappeared. All kinds of newspapers used to write
about that. But, when it was found out where the lamps came from, the press
541
immediately stopped writing about it. It was a taboo about which everyone
had to keep quiet for the sake of brotherhood and unity.
Out of 24 concentration camps, Jasenovac is one of those in which the largest
number of innocent people were killed. In no other camp were prisoners
exposed to such torture as in Jasenovac. After the end of the Second World
War, the victors established the approximate number of victims who died in
concentration camps. Even now, after so many years, they stick to that
number. And now, some Croatian institutions and individuals are seeking and
trying to revise the number of people killed in Jasenovac, to remove and
reduce accountability for the committed crimes and to minimise the number
of victims who they have on their conscience. Unfortunately for them, neoUstashas, they will not succeed in that. Germans do not deny what their Nazis
did during World War II. They do not try to distance themselves from it,
because they cannot. They do not deny what was done. Every year, more than
once, their television stations show crimes which the Nazis committed, the
arrests, transports, killings... They do not try to forget the concentration
camps. Because to forget is mans greatest sin. There are graves, documents,
the numbers of victims recorded in municipalities, pictures and books The
State Commission to Investigate the Crimes of the Nazis and their Allies,
Zloini u logoru Jasenovac, Zagreb, 1946.
Others, too, wrote about Jasenovac, and they should. Let it never be forgotten.
Vladimir Dedijer best shed light on and showed, through documentation,
which and what kinds of crimes and atrocities were committed by Croatian
authorities during the Second World War. As Jovan Dui said, we have to
admit that Croats are ...the bravest people in the world, not because they do
not fear anyone, but because they have no shame, not even for what they did
in the Second World War.
Jewish prisoners, who survived and experienced camp life in Jasenovac,
claim that clergy Ustashas were far more brutal and bloodthirsty in killing
innocent victims than the Nazis. The Nazis had an industrial system of
executing people, while clergy Ustashas would torture their victims before
killing them. They enjoyed in the suffering of innocent people (Jaa Almuli).
Serbs were forcefully catholicized - baptised - in order to, in a few weeks or
months, be killed. So, Ustashas would show them as Croats in their
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documents. For example, Lazar Dragosavljevi or Slavica Raboti, who was

buried in a Serbian Orthodox cemetery.
Those who deny the number of victims, the committed torture and killing in
Jasenovac, must have incredibly strong reasons for doing so. Jasenovac was,
is and will always remain the biggest and most brutal concentration camp in
the Balkans in the Second World War.
Victims need not be manipulated. Neo-Ustashas and the Roman Catholic
Church are doing everything they can to place their own versions of Bleiburg
in an effort to present it as a counterpart of Jasenovac. The loudest and most
authoritative in those efforts is cardinal Josip Bozani. The following
question needs to be asked, why did the army - Ustashas, their collaborators
and their families abandon their homes and flee to the West? Whose families
were they? They were not families of conscripted soldiers, but of high and
powerful officials of the NDH. Top leadership sent their families to safety in
a timely manner. They fled like rats, and the people were supposed to manage
as they could. The war was decided. It was a matter of time before Germany
would capitulate, which it did on 9th May 1945, but Ustasha troops fought
until 25th May, when they finally surrendered. (Milan Basta, Rat je zavren
15. maja 1945)
Even before that moment, the army had a possibility and chance to lay down
their weapons and surrender. Why did not they use that possibility and
chance? They must have had very good reasons for that. Why did they flee,
instead of surrendering? Who did they run away from and who were they
going to? In any case, those wretched people knew what kind and how great
the weight on their conscience was. Considering what most of them did
during the war, from 1941 up to those days, it is quite understandable why
they fled rather than surrendered.
What happened to members of the armed forces of the NDH who
surrendered is well known. Among these there were many whose hands were
stained with the blood of innocent people. Some of them were convicted and
served their prison sentence. But, there were those who, despite the crimes
they committed, fared well thanks to connections and praises of
brotherhood and unity and the story that they had been misled. The
cardinal should reply to this. It was not only Croats who died in Bleiburg.
Slovenians the White Guard and Serbs Chetniks also died there. Croats
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are quiet about the main culprit for this tragedy, the British government and,
future Prime Minister, Macmillan who signed the order for the British units
to have all quisling units return and surrender to the Yugoslav People's Army
the Partisans. Macmillan did that at the explicit request of Marshal Tito, the
great son of the Croatian people. Did the Marshal have a strong reason to
ask for those, his enemys units, to be surrendered to him? Because, during
the war, and after it, nothing could be done without his knowledge or consent.
Jasenovac and Bleiburg are two completely different things. They cannot be
compared. In Jasenovac, it was about innocent people, but in Bleiburg there
were killers, slaughterers of innocent people, villains. By keeping quiet about
problems, little is gained, but much is lost. Silence after the Second World
War about the atrocities of war and the silence about post-war problems have
led to the breakup of Yugoslavia.
Only by learning from lessons from a bad past, a good future can be built. We
need to preserve our language, script, traditions, and beliefs, everything that
makes one nation special. As long as the people and government are dedicated
to their language, script, culture, traditions, roots and national feeling, we
need not be afraid.
Remember: Only one evil is incurable, and that is when people give up on
themselves (Goethe).
Those who do not know the truth, live in a delusion. Those who do not speak
the truth, lie. Deliberately distorting the truth means being dishonest.
Serbs should adopt the principle to like others only as much as others like
them, and not any more or less. Appreciate others as much as they do you. In
the same way, respect others as much as they respect you. Do everything
based on reciprocity. One should be willing to compromise, but not to ones
harm. We need to properly preserve our historic sites.
If we are a serious people, which holds dear its past and victims, we must take
care of these historical sites Jasenovac and monuments, to see them as our
human and moral obligation. We will either maintain our monuments or
admit we are not worthy of our ancestors (Crnjanski).
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Veljko Mari
HORROR, CRIES, SUFFERINGS...
I was born in 1934 in Vrbaka village to father Nikola and mother Vukosava,
ne Gonin from the Village of Sovjak near Bosanska Gradika. Due to the
absence of original registry data, my birth year was recorded to be 1935 and
1934, which I took to be more accurate according to my familys telling.
Since my birth until the second half of 1941, I lived in my fathers family in
my home village. They were getting me ready for school that autumn with
the family intention to provide me with education in any of the production
activities apart from agriculture; I was looking forward to that, I would
become someone and something in life. All this fell apart on a day of August
1941, which was my first contact with war, atrocities and deaths caused by
the Second World War. On that day a beautiful sunny day, a group of armed
soldiers was passing by the first newly-trained unit of Ustashas from
Bosanska Gradika went past my house in the direction of Miloevo Brdo and
Sovjak villages. Both of these villages were inhabited by close neighbours and
next of kin uncles and brothers of my mother, Gonins from Sovjak.
Just before dusk, the Ustasha unit returned to Gradika, followed by screams
and horror. They killed all men from Miloevo Brdo and Sovjak aged between
20 and 40, among whom the oldest one was Ilija Gonin, my mothers uncle
who raised her as a child and the youngest, his 18-year old son Blagoja.
At that time, the time of Kozara uprising, Germans and Ustashas deployed
their outposts of bigger or smaller strength, in all the villages in the
direction of Kozara, including in my Vrbaka village, too, where the school
that I was supposed to attend was located, which was the area dominated by
the intersections of roads leading from Gradika and branching towards
545
Podgradci and towards Dubica, that is, Orahovo Village, where Ustashas were
stationed.
Taught by the inhumane act of traitors in the previous massacre, people
gathered and attacked fortifications in the school and on the bridge called
Petnaesti - it was the autumn of 1941. That was the point when the lives of
villagers from the several villages of the region ended, and the same was with
my life lived in the house of my birth. Our own corn bread was not eaten any
more, milk from own cows was not drunk anymore, we went to the houses
of relatives and neighbours towards Kozara. The same was with my family,
we, the women and children, departed escaping to my mothers family,
where the men were killed, so the grief accompanied misfortune.
Fully grown men went to have tea, as we used to say at the time, to look over
the weaker ones day and night at Kozara, and continued so through the entire
winter of 1941/1942.
The spring of 1942 came, domestic degenerates led by fifth columnists every
day raided and attacked Potkozarje villages more offensively, they burnt,
looted and killed anything that moved. Houses, barns, sheds, farming tools
were ablaze, including everything else that served to sustain life. Cannons
from the Stara Gradika walls daily fired missiles, grenades were falling on
positions held by adult males and stronger girls, mostly in the villages at
range. Vrbaka, Bistrica, Jelii and Trebovljani both men and women
defended Kozara, defended their families, and the enemy sent the third
offensive in return. The battle lasted for 40 days and 40 nights, at that time,
all householders, husbands, brothers, and every single inhabitant of
Potkozarje was holding position to defend with their lives their birth places,
their Kozara, while behind them, their wives were giving births. And so, in
May 1942, my mother gave birth to my younger brother who was born in the
Pisari crook in Sovjak.
Few defenders lost strength and the enemy pushed us straight from Kozara
over the Sava to concentration camps, i.e. the entire area of Potkozarje,
former Gradika district, to fields in the vicinity of Stara Gradika, the area
occupied by two rivers Veliki and Mali Strug, a meadow called Siarnica.
Aircrafts threw leaflets on Kozara at the end of the third offensive telling the
people to get ready and cross the Sava River in a couple of days until the
invader cleansed Kozara of partisans. It was all a wicked lie, yet in vain was
546
our knowledge with three enemy machines behind our backs, the last looters
who killed and robbed everything they encountered, from the top of Kozara
down to the bridge called Petnaesti. That is how I and my closest family were
placed in Siarnica, on the banks of Veliki Strug.
It was on Siarnica fields, along the Strugovi River near Stara Gradika, as
much as I could visually estimate and based on thousands of pieces of
evidence of human destinies and families who passed through, that the
concentration camp was maintained for the classification of Kozarans based
on the manner in which each and every one of them would be executed. This
selection was conducted from the fall of Kozara in early July 1942 until late
September or early October 1942.
The first selection was conducted immediately upon the arrival to Siarnica,
when all men, and even younger, strong and healthy women, who were able
to work were separated and expelled to Germany as captured partisansinterns to forced labour, among whom was my father Nikola. Since the day
when my father was separated from us July 1942, until the end of the war,
September 1945, we had no information about him, and when the last interns
came back, my father returned with them exhausted, broken and sick. He
was kept in a labour camp for the entire time from the moment of fleeing to
Kozara and the uprising until the end of 1945.
My family and I had neither a house nor shelter, nor any source of food,
everything was burnt, looted and destroyed and fruit trees were cut down,
every bit to the last henhouse made of wicker.
From the concentration camp at Siarnica, people were taken and killed in
various ways some of them were confined to forced labour in Germany, the
elderly and the sick were killed mostly at Uskok a place at the Sava
overlooking Stara Gradika, now called Gornji Varo, the children were
separated and sent away to childrens camps, a well-known Sisak, Jastrebarsko, Rijeka, etc.
A certain number of male youth over the age of 14 was transferred to another
part of the Jasenovac concentration camp where many were shot, and a
certain number of them were liberated by Banija partisans and taken to
Banija prior to the famous breakthrough, and the stronger ones escaped to
partisans, while the weaker ones stayed hidden in some families. Of those
547
who were executed, I knew Stojakovi Ostoja the brother of my wife

Nevenka, of those who were freed and taken away by Banija partisans, I knew
Mihajlo Velji from Podgradci very well. After the end of the war he was a
JNA officer and retired as an active JNA colonel, he lived in Zagreb, and
together with the publicist of Arena, Marin Curl, he collected a lot of data
about the children of Kozara. For his contribution to finding Your loved
ones that was the name of the column in the Arena magazine Curl
received a weekend house at the foothills of Kozara in Podgradci from
children inmates of the Gradika Potkozarje, where the Wounded Bird
monument was built, and at the entrance to Gradika from the direction of
Kozara, the eight-grade school called "Children of Kozara" was built.
The concentration camp at Siarnica was rapidly destroyed, because it is a
field that is flooded by the Sava and Strugovi rivers, and there was a threat
that thousands of children, women and elderly men could drown, when at
the same time there was no possibility that bodies would be taken away. For
these reasons, in September and October 1942, the camp was disbanded and
the propaganda was spread by Ustashas that the people could return to
Kozara, some attempts were successful, while many returnees were slain,
tied to each other with wire and released downstream the Sava on the
transport Convoy for Serbia. It was called the returnee camp from
Strugovi. This act of the enemy could not quickly solve the problem of
disbanding the camp, so they started taking away young children from their
mothers, whereupon many mothers were shot because they refused to give
their children away, and the children were taken via Vrbovljani, Mlaka and
Jablanac to children's camps, the well-known Sisak, Jastrebarsko and Rijeka
and others where many died of starvation and contagious diseases, in dirt and
misery. My future wife Nevenka was placed with her older sister and brother
in Sokolski Dom in Sisak. They were rescued by Croats, while their youngest
brother Mirko Stojakovi died of starvation and exhaustion in the same camp.
He was too young to survive this horror.
In the critical moment, the last of the camp inmates were scattered around
the villages on Psunj, from Okuani towards Pakrac on the left, and to
Slavonska Poega on the right.
My family managed to walk to Golei at Bijele Stijene, at the foothills of Psunj.
It was late autumn, it was raining cold, we knew neither where we were nor
548
where we were headed. An old man, oro Pavi and his wife Draginja,
helped my mom and aunt with the children. Me, the oldest one at 6 or 7; there
were five of us, and my youngest brother Milan, not even one year old was
born in a refuge in Kozara. We decided to flee towards the Sava, that is where
Kozara is. We wandered around the unpicked cornfields up to the village of
Greani. We were discovered by some residents of Greani, brought down to
the village and hid in a newly built and vacant house (the house of one of the
Bogievi brothers). They were afraid to keep us unhidden, because all
families had house lists with names and data of age of those who lived there
posted on the door. My aunt Magdalena was a Pole, her mother Ana, three
sisters and the stepfather Rafajlo Rak (sick man), were living in Potkozarje,
the atrnja village. My aunts stepfather somehow managed to get a pass to
bring over from Slavonia his daughter with children.
Angelina got a pass to bring over her sister with children, they came to pick
us up at Greani and bring all of us over. The known rule and order was to
appear at the Command of the Town to get papers or convoy transport to
Serbia. Following the advice of older Polish hosts, they were hiding us until
the end of the war, by shifting us back and forth in barns and houses. My
aunt stayed at her mothers with her daughter where we often hid, and the
rest were mostly at Visedecki and Pawlikowski families, mainly with Martina
and Rozalja Pawlikowski. So during the Second World War, my family and I
spent 4.5 years living in camp fields and other peoples barns without
anything at all, but we managed to survive.
549
CASES
551
Savo trbac
CAMP JASENOVAC BEFORE THE

INTERNATIONAL COURT OF
JUSTICE
1. CAN PERPETRATORS OF WORLD WAR II CRIMES
BE TRIED AT THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF
JUSTICE: THE ISSUE OF TEMPORAL JURISDICTION
It was as early as July 1999 that Croatia demanded from the International
Court of Justice (ICJ), 1 a highest judicial body, to declare Serbia guilty of the
crime of genocide committed between 1991-1995, in their opinion, by the
military, police and paramilitary forces under the direct command of the
FRY, i.e., Serbia. Serbia responded with a countersuit in 2010, claiming that
The International Court of Justice (French: Cour internationale de Justice; commonly

referred to as the World Court or ICJ) is the primary judicial branch of the United Nations.
It is based in the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands. Its main functions are to settle
legal disputes submitted to it by states and to provide advisory opinions on legal questions
submitted to it by duly authorised international branches, agencies, and the UN General
Assembly. Established in 1945 by the UN Charter, the Court began work in 1946 as the
successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice. The Statute of the International
Court of Justice, similar to that of its predecessor, is the main constitutional document
constituting and regulating the Court. The ICJ is composed of fifteen judges elected to
nine-year terms by the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council from a list of
persons nominated by the national groups in the Permanent Court of Arbitration. The
election process is set out in Articles 419 of the ICJ statute. Elections are staggered with
five judges elected every three years, in order to ensure continuity within the court.
1
553
Croatia committed the crime of genocide against the Serbs in the Operation
Storm.
Quite often, both the public and concerned professionals, both before and
after Croatia and Serbia filed the mutual lawsuits, wondered why the Serbs,
Jews and Roma never sued Croatia for the crime of genocide committed against them by the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during the Second
World War.
From a legal point of view, Croatia cannot be held responsible for any crimes
committed in the Second World War because the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted in 1948, and only
came into force in 1951, which means it does not apply retroactively, including the crimes committed in the Second World War. After all, the war crimes committed by Germany during the Second World War were not declared genocide for the same reason.
According to Professor Christian Tams, 2 the Genocide Convention was not
adopted to be retroactively implemented and so regulate the past, including
the Holocaust committed in the Second World War, but to prevent genocide
from happening in the future. 3
2. HOW THE CRIMES COMMITTED IN THE SECOND

WORLD WAR STILL REACHED THE ICJ
The Croatian lawsuit against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia) 4 for
aggression and genocide against members of the Croatian people in the
armed conflict between 1991-1995, irrespective of the fact it was a case of
historical irony, 5 opened up the possibility for Serbia to include the crimes
Mr. Christian J. Tams, LL.M., Ph.D. (Cambridge), Professor of International Law,

University of Glasgow, comme conseillers of The Team of The Government of the Republic
of Serbia
3 RTS, 11th March 2014. The Hague, there is no retroactive accountability
4 http://www.icj-cij.org/search/index.php?pg=1&p2=2&op=0&str=croatia+vs+serbia
5 Saa Obradovi, head of the legal team representing Serbia in the dispute between Serbia
and Croatia on mutual genocide suits before the ICJ, Records of the ICJ, the main hearing,
10th March 2014, p. 8.
554
committed against the Serbs, Roma and Jews in the territory of the NDH during the Second World War in its countersuit, 6 for a better understanding of
the events from 1991 to 1995, or the continuity of crimes committed by the
Croats against the Serbs, which the court must take into consideration with
the other evidence and arguments and take a stand about it. 7
At the centre of the exposition of the Serbian legal team before The Hague
Tribunal will be the events between 1991 and 1995, but it is impossible to
avoid the historical context which surrounds the word genocide in the minds
of the Serbs. 8
It is true that Croatia got away cheaply with its terrible crime of genocide
against the Serbs, as well as Jews and Roma, thanks to the policy of brotherhood and unity, without ever answering for it in front of a national or international court or being de-Nazified, like Germany.
That is why it is very important there has not been a mutual withdrawal of
Croatias and Serbias lawsuits for the 1990s genocide. Even though the NDH
genocide against the Serbs is not the subject of the lawsuit before the International Court of Justice, the current case will be used in the way which will
make the evidence presented by Serbia enter the records of this Court, therefore also the history of the Second World War on the territory of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
That will essentially help todays international community get the right idea
about the mass tragedy of the Serbs in the NDH and ensure the processes
marking the provoked and imposed breakup of the SFRY are seen with greater objectivity and impartiality. 9
http://www.icj-cij.org/search/index.php?pg=1&p2=2&op=0&str=croatia+vs+serbia
Savo trbac, President of Veritas, expert member of the legal team representing Serbia in
the dispute between Serbia and Croatia on mutual genocide suits before the ICJ,
International Radio Serbia (MRS), 10th March 2014, radio show Talasanje.
8 Novak Luki, a lawyer from Belgrade, member of the legal team representing Serbia in
the dispute between Serbia and Croatia on mutual genocide suits before the ICJ, MRS, 10th
March 2014, radio show Talasanje.
9 Vladislav Jovanovi, Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Government of the former
Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, in an op-ed published in the Belgrade daily Politika, 24th
February 2014.
6
7
555
3. THE PRESENTATION OF THE SECOND WORLD

WAR (INCLUDING JASENOVAC) TO THE ICJ IN
SERBIAS COUNTERSUIT
Ever since Serbia has filed a countersuit, on various occasions and in several
places, including the media, there have been speculations about whether and
how it has presented the Second World War, especially the Jasenovac camp,
as the paradigm of the persecution of the Serbs, Roma and Jews in that war.
Such speculations were fuelled by the fact that all the documentation submitted to the ICJ was kept secret until the commencement of the main hearing, which was held from 3rd March until 1st April 2014. Serbias countersuit
and all the annexes and subsequently submitted documents were written in
English, and following their publication on the website of the ICJ, they still
remain inaccessible, i.e. incomprehensible to those who do not have Internet
access or do not understand English or French, which are the official languages of the Tribunal.
Because of all the above and because of the importance of this issue, in agreement with the organisers of this conference, I have decided to publish the
English translation 10 of the original material in Serbian in its entirety and
thus make it accessible to all interested parties, which the participants of this
Conference on Jasenovac certainly are.
3.1 . T HE COUNTERSUIT
Serbias countersuit deals with the Second World War in its Chapter V,
points 388-420, i.e., pages 135-146 and footnotes 258-294. Of these, points
412-420, pages 142-144 and footnotes 285-293 refer to the Jasenovac camp.
Chapter V is herein published in its entirety, including the footnotes.
(The meaning of some terms: The Memorial is an annex of the Croatian lawsuit,
whose authors are Ivan imonovi, currently the Assistant Secretary-General of the
UN Security Council for Human Rights, and Ivo Josipovi, the incumbent President
of Croatia; it was submitted to the court in March 2001. The Republic of Croatia is
the Applicant, and the Republic of Serbia is the Respondent.)
556
CHAPTER V
THE HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL BACKGROUND
Introduction
388. This Chapter will discuss Chapter 2 of the Memorial that deals with
the historical and political background to the conflict that is the subjectmatter of the present dispute.
389. At the outset, it should be noted that the presentation of facts in this
chapter of the Memorial has apparently been drafted as the Applicants official and definitive interpretation of events leading to the break up of the
former Yugoslavia. As such, it also deals with the events that are largely
irrelevant to the present dispute which only concerns the crime of genocide.
390. More importantly, the Applicants presentation of events serves as
part of a one-sided, biased account, designed to portray Serbia and the Serbs
as having the sole responsibility for the break up of the former SFRY and
the crimes committed during the armed conflicts connected with it. In general, it seems that the Applicant tried not just to prove the alleged genocide
but rather to justify its official claim that an aggression by the JNA and
Serbia against Croatia took place in 1991. However, this claim is not only
irrelevant for the present proceedings, but it also utterly fails to take into
account the complexity of the break up of the SFRY. In any case, as will be
demonstrated in this Counter-Memorial, even if all the allegations presented by the Applicant were accurate (quod non), it does still not follow
that the alleged conduct amounts to genocide.
391. In addition, the Memorial fails to deal with facts that are clearly relevant, but are not favorable to the Applicant, such as the advent and the rule
of Croatian nationalism and the crimes against the Serbs in Croatia during
the war 1991-1995. Similarly, as will be discussed below, the genocide
against the Serbs in Croatia committed by the Independent State of Croatia
during World War II is dealt with in a single sentence. 11
11
Memorial, para. 2.08.
557
392. The present chapter will deal only with those allegations in Chapter 2
that are relevant to the present case. In any event, the Respondent expressly
denies all the Applicants claims that are not confirmed by the presentation
of facts contained in the present Counter-Memorial.
393. The order of presentation in the present chapter will be as follows.
Firstly, it will deal with the Nazi-puppet Independent State of Croatia and
its genocide against the Serbs during the period 1941-1945, because these
events had a significant influence over the events of 1991-1995.
394. Secondly, it will be demonstrated that the Memorial not only presents
a distorted and at times inaccurate picture of Serbian nationalism, but it also
fails to mention the rise of Croatian nationalism that had a major impact on
the conflict in Croatia. In this regard, this chapter will deal with the rise of
Croatian nationalism, and the discriminatory policies and practices of the
Croatian nationalist government elected in 1990 that were directed against
the Serbs in Croatia.
395. Thirdly, this chapter will deal with the development of the Serb
movement in Croatia and its activity during the escalation of the crisis in
the SFRY in 1989-1991.
396. Fourthly, this chapter will expose certain inaccuracies and omissions
in the Applicants overview of the political and military developments during the armed conflict in Croatia in 1991-1995. In particular, it will deal
with the existence of the SFRY as a subject of international law in 1991 and
early 1992, as well as with the other relevant developments in the period
1992-1995, such as the establishment of the UN protected areas in Croatia,
and the establishment of the Republic of Serbian Krajina.
T HE INDEPENDENT STATE OF C ROATIA AND THE GENOCIDE

AGAINST S ERBS 1941-1945
The Memorial devotes only one single paragraph to the Independent State of
Croatia and only one sentence in this paragraph to the genocide it committed
against the Serbs:
Ustashas implemented Nazi policies and persecuted Serbs, Jews,
558
Roma/Gypsies and anti-fascist Croats. 12 However, the Respondent considers that that the Independent State of Croatia and the genocide against the
Serbs had such an influence on the actors of events of 1991-1995 on all sides
that they must be discussed and taken into account in any consideration of
these events. The present section will provide some basic facts about the
Independent State of Croatia and the genocide it committed. The present
section is followed by a section dealing with nationalism that will show to
what extent the Independent State of Croatia and the Ustashe movement
were rehabilitated during the time that the Croatian nationalist government
was in power in the 1990s.
The Creation of the Independent State of Croatia

397. The Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna drava Hrvatska) 13 was proclaimed by the Ustashe on 10 April 1941 with the support of Nazi Germany, Italy
and other Axis powers occupying Yugoslavia. The Ustashe was a terrorist organization created in 1931 that sought to create an independent and ethnically cleansed
Croatian state. 14 The movements founder and leader, Dr. Ante Paveli, headed the
Independent State of Croatia as its Poglavnik (Fuhrer).
398. The Independent State of Croatia encompassed most of the present-day Republic of Croatia, all of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as Srem (Sirmium), part of
present-day Serbia, stretching all the way to the town of Zemun, near Belgrade. 15
The Independent State of Croatia was a Fascist puppet state that served the political
interests of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. 16
M. Peren, Ustashes camps [Ustaki logori], Zagreb, 1990, p. 20; also see, H. Neubacher,
Sonderaufrsgsudost 1940-45, Bericht eines fligenden Diplomaten (1956), p. 18
and ICTY, Tadi, IT-94-1-T, Trial Chamber Opinion and Judgement, 7 May 1997, para. 62.
13 For more, see L. Hory & M. Broszat, Der Kroatische Ustascha-Staat 1941-1945
(1964); S.G. Payne, A History of Fascism 1914-1945 (1995), pp. 405-411; I. Gutman
(Editor-in-chief), Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust, Vol. 2, pp.739-740; Encyclopaedia
Britannica, 1943 - Book of the Year, p. 215, Entry: Croatia;
M.A. Hoare, The Ustashe Genocide, South Slav Journal, Vol. 25, No. 1-2, 2004, pp. 29-38.
14 F. Jeli-Buti, Ustae i NDH [Ustashe and the Independent State of Croatia], Zagreb,
1977, p. 21.
15 Map of the Independent State of Croatia (Annex 1).
16 See, e.g. J.H.W. Verzijl, International Law in Historical Perspective (1974), p. 313.
12
559
The Genocidal Policies

399.
Upon the assumption of his office as prime minister of the Independent
State of Croatia, Paveli was sworn-in on the Principles of the Ustashe Movement,
a document which was signed with his own hand in 1931.17 This document
envisaged the creation of a Greater Croatia within its historical boundaries, a state
in which only Croats by birth or origin would make decisions. The Ustashe ideology
created a theory about a pseudo-Gothic origin of the Croats in order to raise their
standing on the Aryan ladder. 18 Ethnic cleansing and land gain were at the centre of
the Ustashe agenda. 19
400.
According to the data of the Nazi Germany Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the
population of the Independent State of Croatia in April 1941 was 6,285,000 people,
out of which there were 3,300,000 Croats (52.50%); 1,925,000 Serbs (30.62%); 700,000
Muslims (11.13%) and 360,000 others (5.72%). 20 It is apparent that the main obstacle in
the Ustashes plan to establish an ethnically pure Croatian state was the large
number of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia.
Soon after it was created, the Independent State of Croatia adopted a number
of decrees that were to provide a legal framework for a state of terror and the
genocide that was to follow. 21 At the same time, the Ustashe were ready to put
this legalized system of terror into practice.
17 A. Paveli, The Principles of the Ustashe Movement, 1931, translated by Sinia

uri, available at http://pavelic-papers.com/documents/pavelic/ap0040.html.
18 Statement of Ante Paveli given on 13 April 1941: We do not have and we have
never had anything to do with Serbs.
We are distinguished from Serbs by our religion and our physical appearance. It is
difficult to mistake a Croat for a Serb.
We are not Slavs, in F. Jeli-Buti, Ustae i NDH [Ustashe and the Independent State of
Croatia], Zagreb, 1977, p. 139.
19 A. Paveli, The Principles of the Ustashe Movement, 1931, paras. 8 & 11.
1977, p. 106.
21 A brief survey of names and abstracts of some of the NDH decrees will
unmistakably show the nature of this State and its intentions:
- The Legal Decree on the Defence of the People and the State of 17 April 1941
practically introduced a permanent state of emergency: Whoever violates or has
violated or who offends or has offended in any way the honour, lifes interest of the
Croatian people or who threatens in anyway the survival of the Independent State
of Croatia or its state authorities, even if such an act is only attempted, shall be held
accountable for the crime of high treason. As is clear, this decree was applied
560
401. The genocidal plan began to be implemented as soon as the Government

took office. In preparation for the commission of crimes, Ustashe leaders held
many rallies where the Croats were pitted against the Serbs with inflammatory
speeches. The press served as an important method in the achievement of this
retroactively, and the sentence for this offence was death.

- The Legal Decree on Courts Marshal of 17 May 1941 and the Legal Decree on an
impromptu Court Marshal of 24 June 1941 were intended to ensure as effective as
possible carrying out of terror, based on the previous legal decree. Such courts
pronounced only one type of sanctions - the death penalty to be executed three hours
after the sentence was passed.
[These] methods were initially applied on a massive scale, especially against the Seibs and
Jews, and later on, against the Croats as well. Thousands of innocent people - only because
they were born as Orthodox Christians or Jews, or simply because they were not Ustashe were killed by firing squads or slain for no reason whatsoever. ime Balen, Paveli,
Zagreb, 1952, p. 65.
The Legal Decree on the Prohibition of the Cyrillic Script of 25 April 1941 revoked the
right of Serbs to use their own alphabet;
The Legal Decree on Protecting Croatian People's Property of 18 April 1941, as well as
three legal decrees of 30 April 1941 - on citizenship, on race and on the protection
of Aryan blood and honour of the Croatian people, embodied a number of
provisions on discrimination against Jews and Roma;
The Legal Decree on Sending Disobedient and Dangerous Persons to Forced Labour
at Concentration and Labour Camps, dated 25 November 1941, introduced a system
of camps run by the Ustashe Surveillance, as one of the legal characteristics of this
state. No legal remedy was available against decisions based on this legal decree;
The Legal Decree on the Confiscation of the Property of Persons Disturbing Public
Peace and Order, dated 27 December 1941, formalized robbery in the name of the
Croatian state;
- The Legal Decree on the Suppression of Violent and Punishable Acts against the
State, Certain Individuals or Property, dated 20 July 1942, was a response to the
increasingly spreading of the Serb rebellion in the NDH, which extended the
sending to camps of the families of persons "disturbing public law and security or
violating peace and tranquility of the Croatian people";
- The Legal Decree on the Nationalization of Jewish Property, dated 30 October
1942, had a title which spoke for itself.
See Annex 2. The full texts of these decrees are available in Croatian in Zbornik
zakona i naredaba Nezavisne Drave Hrvatske, izdanje Ministarstva pravosudja i

bogotovlja, Zagreb, 1941 i 1942 [Code of Legal Decrees and Orders of the
Independent State of Croatia, edition of the Ministry for Justice and Religion,
Zagreb, 1941- 1942]; also available at http://www.crohis.com/izvori/ustzk.pdf.
561
plan. 22 What followed immediately were the dismissals of Serbs from public services; the imposition of a ban on their movement; Serbs had to wear special bands
around their arms; and eventually they were expelled from the country. 23
402.
The State policy concerning the Serbs was decreed by Dr. Mladen Lorkovi,
the NDH Minister of Foreign Affairs, in his speech in Donji Miholjac on 6 June 1941.
He said:
Croatian people must clean itself from all elements which are its misfortune; which
are foreign and strange to that people; which dissolute the fresh powers of that
people; which were pushing that people from one evil to another through decades
and centuries. Those are our Serbs and our Jews. 24
403.
On 22 July 1941, the genocidal policy was clearly announced by Mile Budak,
Minister of Religion and Education of the Independent State of Croatia, in his widely
documented speech at Gospi Town:
"For the rest - Serbs, Jews and Gypsies - we have three million bullets. We will kill
one part of the Serbs, the other part we will resettle, and the remaining ones we will
convert to the Catholic faith, and thus make Croats of them. 25
Genocide Against the Serbs

404. The Independent State of Croatia perpetrated genocide against the
Serbs on a massive scale. 26 The parts that follow will present basic information about the ways in which this was carried out.
22 As early as 11 April 1941, an editorial comment published in the leading daily of

the Croatian People branded Serbs collectively as the greatest and perennial enemy
of Croats, sounding a warning that they will be judged by the righteous Croatian
people. Quoted by F. Jeli-Buti, Ustae i NDH [Ustashe and the Independent State
of Croatia], Zagreb, 1977, p. 163.
23 Ibid. p. 165.
24 The speech was published in Croatian People on 28 June 1941. Quoted by F. JeliButi, Ustae i NDH [Ustashe and the Independent State of Croatia], Zagreb, 1977, p.
164, note 95.
25 M. Peren, Ustashes camps [Ustaki logori], Zagreb, 1990, p. 20; also see, H. Neubacher,
Sonderaufrsgsudost 1940-45, Bericht eines fligenden Diplomaten (1956), p. 18 and ICTY,
Tadi, IT-94-1-T, Trial Chamber Opinion and Judgement, 7 May 1997, para. 62.
26 Accurate figures will probably never be known, but it is clear that Pavelics
Ustashe massacred huge numbers of Serbs wherever they could be found. Central
562
Massacres and Death Camps

405. The Ustashe committed the first massacres in the spring of 1941, killing 196 Serbs at the village of Gudovac near Bjelovar and around 400 at the
village of Blagaj near Slunj. 27 In the following months, the mass-killings became commonplace, particularly in Herzegovina: thus, in June 1941 Ustashe
executed 140 Serb peasants near Ljubinje; 180 Serbs from village Korita near
Gacko; another 160 Serbs near Ljubinje; a further 80 Serbs near Gacko; approximately 280 Serbs near Opuzen; 90 Serbs near Ljubuko, etc. 28
406. Approximately two thousand Serbs were executed in the town of
Glina, in central Croatia. Firstly, the Ustashe arrested and shot several hundred Serbs from the Glina area in May 1941. Most of the Serb population
then went into hiding in the forests. The Ustashe responded by offering to
spare those Serbs who would convert to Roman Catholicism. Many Serbs
took up this offer and presented themselves at the local church in Glina, in
August 1941. After the last one had entered into the church, the doors
locked shut. The Ustashe began to massacre the victims using knives and
clubs. Hundreds of Serbs were brutally killed. Only one of the victims, Ljuban Jednak, survived by pretending to be dead. 29
407. Jadovno was set up as a death camp in May 1941 in the open, on
Mount Velebit, in Croatias Lika region. Many Serbs and Jews from the Gospi town prison were temporarily deported to Jadovno in order to await
their turn for execution. From 11 May to 21 August 1941, Jadovno was the
place where thousands of victims were killed. Estimations of the number of
Intelligence Agency (CIA), Balkan Battlegrounds: A Military History of the Yugoslav

Conflict 1990-1995 (2002), Vol. I, p. 81 (Peace Palace Library).
27 I. Goldstein, Nezavisna Drava Hrvatska 1941: put prema katastrofi (The

Independent State of Croatia 1941: A Road to Disaster), in I. Graovac (ed.), Dijalog
povijesniara-istoriara (Dialogue of Historians), No. 7, Friedrich Naumann Stiftung,
Zagreb, 2002, p. 144.
28 M. Peren, Ustashes camps [Ustaki logori], Zagreb, 1990, pp. 38-39; see also F. JeliButi, Ustae i NDH [Ustashe and the Independent State of Croatia], Zagreb, 1977, pp.
166-167.
29 Statement no. 33 of the State Commission for the Determination of the Crimes of the
Occupation Forces and their Collaborators, D. no. 406/45, dated 2 March 1945.
563
victims made by historians vary from 15-25,000 30 to 35,000, 31 and even

40,000. 32
408. Besides Jadovno, there were other camps for Serbs, Jews, Roma and
anti-fascist Croats in the Independent State of Croatia.33 A massive armed
rebellion of Serbs in Eastern Herzegovina in June 1941 accelerated the preparations for a solution of the Serbian question through concentration
camps. The most notorious one was the Jasenovac camp complex, which
will be discussed below.
409. In addition to the listed camps, there were special camps for children
who were separated from their parents. Such camps existed in the town of
Sisak and a small place called Jastrebarsko, on the road between Zagreb and
Karlovac, in which children were detained in dire conditions. In Sisak, 5,000
- 7,000 Serbian, Jewish and Roma children were sent to the camp, according
to the estimates made by historians. 34 Some 1,600 of these children died in
the camp itself. 35 In the period from 12 July to 26 August 1942, a total of 3,336
30 M. Peren, Ustashe s camps [Ustaki logori], Zagreb, 1990, p. 102.

1977, p. 186.
32 Djuro Zatezalo, Jadovno, Kompleks ustakih logora 1941 (Jadovno: A Complex of
Ustashe Camps, 1941), Vol. I, Muzej rtava genocida (Genocide Victims Museum),
Belgrade, 2007, pp. 382-383 stating that 40,123 people, including 38,010 Serbs, 1,988 Jews
and 124 other nationalities were killed in Jadovno.
33 They were established already in the spring of 1941, in a place called Danica near
Koprivnica, in the island of Pag (which also served for the extermination of Serbs and
Jews from the areas of Lika and Dalmatia); in Lobograd, in Zagorje region, Tenja near
Osijek, and in Travnik and Djakovo. Furthermore, pre-war prisons in Lepoglava
near Varadin, Kerestinec near Zagreb and Kruica near Vitez were also used for
this purpose (M. Peren, Ustashes camps [Ustaki logori], Zagreb, 1990, p. 44.).
35 Ibid., p. 291. This is how General Edmund Glaise von Horstenau, the representative of
the German army in Serbia and Croatia, described his experience with the inspection of
the Sisak concentration camp in November 1942:
We now went into the concentration camp in a converted factory. Frightful
conditions! Few men, many women and children, without sufficient clothing,
sleeping on stone at night, pining away, wailing and crying! ... And then the worst of
all: a room along whose walls, lying on straw which had just been laid down because
of my inspection, something like fifty naked children, half of them dead, the other
half dying. One should not forget that the inventors of the KZ were the British in the
564
children were sent to Jastrebarsko. 36 In the words of the gravedigger Franjo

Ilovar, who was paid for his labour by the number of bodies he buried, in less
than a month and a half, 468 children died of starvation and disease in the
camp. 37
2. Jasenovac
410. In July 1941, the Ustashe government decided to build a new complex
of camps, which stretched along the banks of the River Sava, in Slavonia. 38
Jasenovac was the largest complex of concentration camps in the Independent State of Croatia during the Second World War, 39 and as such it needs to
be addressed separately.
411. As was the case in other concentration camps in the Independent State
of Croatia, the Serbs constituted the majority of prisoners in Jasenovac,
where they found themselves alongside Jews, Roma and anti-Fascist Croats.
412. The majority of inmates in Jasenovac were destined to perish in systematic executions that took place at various locations in the camps complex. Killings were conducted with cruelty and outright sadism. 40 In order
Boer War. However, such places have reached their peak of abomination here in
Croatia, under the Poglavnik installed by us. The most wicked of all must be
Jasenovac, where no ordinary mortal is allowed to peer in. (Translated from
Peter Broucek (editor), Ein General in Zweilicht: Die Erinnerungen von Edmund
Glaise von Horstenau, Vienna, 1980, Vol. 3, p. 167).
37 Notebook of Franjo Ilovar, a grave digger, exibited in the Musem Kozara,
Mrakovica, reprinted in R. Milosavljevic, Deji ustaki koncentracioni logor
Jastrebarsko (Jastrebarsko. The Ustashe Concentration Camp for Children), 2009, p. 81.
38 For a map of the location of the Jasenovac concentration camps, see A. Mileti,
Koncentracioni logor Jasenovac 1941-1945. Dokumenti [Concentration Camp Jasenovac
1941-1945. Documents] (1986).
39 F. Jeli-Buti, Ustae i NDH [Ustashe and the Independent State of Croatia],
Zagreb, 1977, p. 186. This complex of camps was composed of Camp no. I (Krapje), Camp
no. II (Broica), Camp no. III (Brick Factory also known as Jasenovac, Camp of
Death), Labour Camp. No. IV (Tannery) and Camp no. V (Stara Gradika), with some
places of mass-executions: Mlaka, Jablanac, Utica, Koutarica, Granik and the
biggest one - Gradina.
38 This is how the witness Jakob Finzi described his experience at the camp:
565
to accelerate the executions, from 1942 the Ustashe cremated corpses of

many of their victims, as well as live inmates. 41
413. The Report of the State Commission of Croatia for the Investigation
of the Crimes of the Occupation Forces and their Collaborators, dated 15
November 1945, stated as follows:
[I]t is not possible to answer the question of precisely how many victims died
in Jasenovac. Few prisoners who spent some time in the camp were released,
and less than a hundred managed to break out of the camp in the final moments.
It was pointed out earlier that the Ustashe sent prisoners to Jasenovac for
labor, but it has also been stated that many transports of men, women and
children arrived at Jasenovac only to be taken inside and liquidated by the
Ustashe, or killed nearby without being seen inside the camp at all.
The most intense years of the Ustashe terror and mass crimes were 1941
and 1942. The whole of 1943 and half of 1944 were marked by relative moderation, which means that mass executions of inmates were not carried out
as often and on such a scale as before. From August of 1944 until April of
1945, large transports began to arrive and liquidations were repeated again
en masse. ...
We will mention below some fifty mass crimes carried out by the Ustashe in
Jasenovac, and if we add the number of prisoners who were killed
individually to the number of victims killed in mass executions, we arrive at
the figure of approximately 500,000 to 600,000 [emphasis added].
I worked as an undertaker in the camp graveyard only for ten days. During that
period of time I buried corpses without heads, without arms, with crushed skulls,
with missing fingers and toes, with nails driven into their chest, with missing
sexual organs, mutilated corpses black and blue from beatings. During those ten days
we buried about 3,000 corpses. Among them I recognized the corpses of five undertakers
finished off by the Ustashe. Zemaljska komisija Hrvatske za utvrivanje zloina
okupatora i njihovih pomagaa, Zloini u logoru Jasenovac [The State Commission
of Croatia for the Determination of the Crimes of the Occupation Forces and their
Collaborators, Crimes in the Jasenovac Camp], Zagreb, 1946, p. 26 (State
Commission of Croatia).
39 A. Mileti, Koncentracioni logor Jasenovac 1941-1945. Dokumenti [Concentration
Camp Jasenovac 1941-1945. Documents] (1986), Vol. I, pp. 30,
566
As we have pointed out, it will never be possible to determine the exact

number of victims swallowed up by Jasenovac. However, based on the research conducted by this State Commission, we can conclude that the above
figure approaches reality. 42
414. This estimation was accepted by the Yugoslav Government, and thus
became the sole official estimation of the number of Jasenovac victims. The
estimation of hundreds of thousands of victims has been accepted and cited
by the Yad Vashem Encyclopedia of the Holocaust 43 and by Israel Gutman. 44
The large number of victims in the Jasenovac camp of death was confirmed
by many witnesses who testified before the different international and domestic courts.
415. In this context, it should be noted that the exact number and ethnic
origin of victims in the Jasenovac camp and in the Independent State of
Croatia has been the subject of a bitter debate, in particular in the years
before the armed conflict in Croatia in 1991. As one could expect, this debate was not confined to academia and it has had serious political repercussions. Indeed, the late President of Croatia, Dr. Franjo Tuman, made a
name for himself at the time when he was a dissident and a historian, by
advocating an extreme downward revision of the number of victims. 45 It is
worth noting that President Tudjman in 1993 again stirred passions by proposing that the remains of the Ustashe killed by the Yugoslav Partisans in
42 Report of the State Commission of Croatia, op.cit., p. 33.
43 Encyclopedia Entries, International School for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem Jasenovac, available at - http://www1.yadvashem.org/education/entries/english/29.asp
44 Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, edited by Israel Gutman, Vol. 1, 1995, pp. 739740, available at - http ://www.jasenovac.org/whatwas jasenovac.php
45 See K. Pfeifer, Croatia - Tudjman and the genesis of Croatian revisionism, Searchlight
Magazine, 2003 (Annex 10). Tumans estimation is based on the work of the Croatian
researcher Vladimir erjavi, who used statistical methods to obtain information that
between 83,000 and 100,000 people were killed at Jasenovac, see Memorial, para. 2.53.
However, the District Court in Zagreb, which tried and convicted Dinko Ljubomir aki,
one of the commandants of the Jasenovac camp, in 1998, did not accept erjavis analysis
and results. Namely, the court expert Dr. Josip Jurevi, lecturer on the general history of
the twentieth century at Croatian University in Zagreb, denied erjavis and all other
demographic estimations, concluding that all of them, given the present level of research,
were not scientifically based. The District Court in Zagreb, Trial of Dinko Ljubomir aki,
Judgement No. V K-242/98-257, dated 1 October 1999, p. 34.
567
1945 be reburied together with the victims of the Ustashe at Jasenovac. 46 This
met with resistance, both from the Serbs and anti- Fascist Croats.
Conclusion
416. The total number of victims of genocide in the Independent State of
Croatia is difficult to precisely establish. It is however a well-known fact
that sometimes entire villages perished without an eye-witness to testify
later about the victims. In particular, it is difficult to establish the precise
number of the victims who were killed in the largest death camp in Jasenovac. Leaving aside discussions about the exact number of victims, the fact
that genocide was committed against the Serbs in the Independent State of
Croatia during World War II is not seriously contested.
417. The genocide left an indelible mark on the consciences of the Serbs
in Croatia and elsewhere. The events leading to the conflict of 1991-1995
and the conflict itself cannot be understood without taking this into account.
However, as already mentioned, the Memorial fails to discuss either this
genocide or the Independent State of Croatia in any meaningful detail.
418. As will be discussed in the next section, Serbian and Croatian nationalism went hand in hand as the crisis in the former SFRY aggravated to the
level of an armed conflict. For their own purposes, both nationalisms made
references to the genocide of 1941-1945 and the Independent State of Croatia. It is not contested that Serbian nationalists misused the recollections of
these past events, although the claims made in this regard by the Applicant
are not always accurate, as will be demonstrated in the next section. What
is important in the present context, however, is that the Memorial completely fails to mention the role that the Croatian nationalism had in the
events that are the subjectmatter of the present dispute and in particular
its rehabilitation of the Independent State of Croatia, Ustashe movement
and its symbols.
46 Speech of Dr. Franjo Tuman at the Second Congress of the Croatian Democratic Party,
October 1993, cited in Viktor Ivani, Toka na U , Split, 1998 (Annex 11).
568
3.2. ANNEXES OF THE COUNTERSUIT ON THE SECOND WORLD

W AR (INCLUDING J ASENOVAC)
The second volume of the countersuit of the Republic of Serbia is dedicated
to the Second World War. This volume has two parts, 12 annexes, on 230
pages, of which 4 annexes (4, 5, 6 and 7), 105 pages and 26 photographs refer
to the Jasenovac camp.
Below is the number, name and a brief summary of each annex:
The Independent State of Croatia 1941-1945 and Genocide against
Serbs, Jews and Roma /Historical Sources/
Annex 1: Map of the Independent State of Croatia 1941- 1945
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Croatia_41_45.gif
Annex 2: Excerpts from the Legal Decrees of the lndependent State of Croatia
LEGAL DECREE ON DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE AND THE STATE
LEGAL DECREE ON THE PROHIBITION OF THE CYRILLIC SCRIPT
LEGAL DECREE ON COURTS MARSHAL
LEGAL DECREE ON THE PROTECTING OF CROATIAN PEOPLE'S PROPERTY
LEGAL DECREE ON CITIZENSHIP
LEGAL DECREE ON THE RACE
LEGAL DECREE ON THE PROTECTION OF THE ARIAN BLOOD AND HONOUR OF
THE CROATIAN PEOPLE
LEGAL DECREE ON SENDING DISOBEDIENT AND DANGEROUS PERSONS TO
FORCED LABOUR AT CONCENTRATION AND LABOUR CAMPS
- Authorisation of the Mayor of the City of Zagreb to make decisions, Zagreb, 11th April
1941
- Legal Decree on Extraordinary People's Courts, Zagreb, 17th April 1941
- Legal Decree on the Prohibition of the Cyrillic Script, Zagreb, 25th April 1941
- Order of the Ministry of the Interior on the Implementation of the Legal Decree on the
Prohibition of the Cyrillic Script, Zagreb, 25th April 1941
- Legal Decree on Courts-Martial, Zagreb, 17th May 1941
- Legal Decree on the Protection of Croatian People's Property, Zagreb, 19th April 1941
- Legal Decree on the Real Estate of so-called Volunteers, Zagreb, 28th April 1941
- Legal Decree on Citizenship, Zagreb, 20th April 1941
- Legal Decree on Race, Zagreb, 30th April 1941
569
- Legal Decree on the Protection of Aryan Blood and the Honour of the Croatian People,
Zagreb, 30th April 1941
- Order on the Establishment of the Community for Technial Oils, Zagreb, 22th November
1941
- Legal Decree on Sending Disobedient and Dangerous Persons to Forced Labour in
Concentration and Labour Camps, Zagreb, 25th November 1941
- Legal Decree on the Authorisation for the Delegation of Duties from the Ministry to the
Great Parishes, Zagreb, 25th November 1941
- Legal Decree on the Confiscation of Property of Persons Disturing Public Peace and
Order, Zagreb, 27th December 1941
- Procurement of Rationed Medications Amendment of Order, Zagreb, 20th June 1942
- Legal Decree on Combating Violent Criminal Acts agaist the State, Individual Persons or
Property .
Annex 3: Fikreta Jeli-Buti, Ustashe and the Independent State oj Croatia, Zagreb, 1977,
pp. 166-167, 185-187
Annex 4: Report ofthe S tate Commission of Croatia for the Investigation of the Crimes of
the Occupation Forces and Their Collaborators,
Crimes in the Jasenovac Camp, Zagreb, 1946; translated by Sinisa Djuric
Annex 5: Map of the Jasenovac Concentration Camps
Annex 6: Photos from the Jasenovac Concentration Camps
Annex 7: Photos ofthe Children Victims of the NDH Concentration Camps
SECTION II: The 1990s Croatian Historical Revisionism and the

Revival of the Ustashe Principles /Excerpts from Contemporary
Literature and Original Sources/
Annex 8: Chronology of the Ustashe Movement after World War II
Annex 9: Efraim Zuroff, Operation Last Chance, New York, 2009, pp. 131- 150
Annex 10: Karl Pfeifer, Croatia - Tudjman and the Genesis of Croatian Revisionism,
Searchlight Magazine, 2003
Annex 11: Viktor Ivani, Toka na U, Split, 1998, pp.113-115, 132-133
Annex 12: Excerpts from Aleksa Cjakovi, lnterview with Dinko Ljubomir aki, former
Commandant of the Jasenovac Camp, I did my duty (Obav(jao sam svoju dunost),
published in Magazin, Zagreb, 1995
570
4. THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR

HEARING (INCLUDING JASENOVAC)
Public sitting held on Monday 10 March 2014, at 10 a.m., at the
Peace Palace,
Mr. Saa Obradovi, First Counsellor of the Embassy of the
Republic of Serbia in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, former Legal
Adviser of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as Agent f The
Government of the Republic of Serbia
8. This accusation for sui-genocide does not stay alone as a paradox of the
Croatian case. I have a duty to inform the Court that the people of Serbia
today mainly believe that the Croatian false Application is a kind of the
historical irony. Namely, both Croats and Serbs knew very well what
genocide was
the horrific crimes committed in Jasenovac, Jadovno, Jastrebarsko and other
notorious Ustasha concentration camps of World War II (WW II). The tragic
experience of the Serb people in the Nazi Independent State of Croatia and
genocide committed against Serbs, Jews and Roma people from 1941 to 1945
are described in Serbias Counter-Memorial as part of the factual background
of this case 47. Our presentation is supported by the reliable historical
sources 48. A chronology of the Ustasha movement after WW II, which was
considered as a permanent terrorist threat to Titos Yugoslavia from 1945 to
1990, is presented in Annex 8 with the Counter-Memorial. Without this piece
of information, one can fully understand neither the significance of the 1990s
appearance of Dr. Franjo Tudjman as a new political leader in Croatia who
advocated the reconciliation between Croatian communists and neo-Ustasha
movements, nor the uprising reaction of the Serbs in Croatia to that policy 49.
9. Although no acknowledgment of the WW II genocide is to be found
anywhere in the Croatian written pleadings, the Respondent observes that
Counter-Memorial of Serbia (CMS), paras. 397-420.
See CMS, fn. 260293, pp. 137144 and Anns. 17 to the Counter-Memorial.
49 CMS, paras. 426-442.
47
48
571
the Applicant has neither contested nor denied the presentation of facts
concerning the Nazi Government in Croatia between 1941 and 1945, its intent
to destroy the Serb people under its authority, and the existence of the
Ustashas view that Serbs were a threat to the Croatian national identity.
Consequently, the Respondent considers that the historical background
related to the crime of genocide committed in the independent State of
Croatia is therefore not in dispute between the Parties.
Public sitting held on Tuesday 11 March 2014, at the Peace Palace,

Mr. Christian J. Tams, LL.M., Ph.D. (Cambridge), Professor of
International Law, University of Glasgow, comme conseillers of The
Government of the Republic of Serbia
35. Mr. President, Members of the Court, the Genocide Convention was not
drawn up to regulate the past. It did not regulate the Holocaust; it was drawn
up to prevent future holocausts. It codifies, as Croatia reminds us, an existing
crime. But its focus is on prevention; on creating an international rgime
against genocide; and on allowing the States of the world, whatever their past,
to join that rgime. Croatias construction of the Genocide Convention
ignores all this.
36. And in fact, Croatia is very open about this. In its written pleadings, it
expressly states that the Convention would apply to World War II
gnocidaires 50. I note that Professor Crawford did not reiterate that point
when he spoke last week but it is made in the pleadings and, indeed, it seems
to follow from Croatias approach to retroactivity. But, if the Convention
applies to World War II gnocidaires, where would one stop? It would
probably govern events during World War I as well or indeed during the
process of colonization. And while Croatia never says so expressly,
presumably all this could be litigated before this Court as could be questions
relating to the duty to prevent genocide, which is capable, says Professor
Crawford, of encompassing past events. Dismissing Serbias concerns as
formalistic, Croatia advances an argument that would permit decade-old
and century-old conflicts to be brought before this Court. Now, whether this
50
RC, para. 7.11.
572
would be desirable, I do not know and it does not matter. But it is most
certainly not what the drafters of the Convention had in mind. Nothing in
the very nature of the treaty la nature mme du trait requires the
Convention to be applied retroactively.
42. By way of illustration, permit me to refer you to Nehemiah Robinsons

pioneering study on the Genocide Convention, first published in 1949, then
republished in 1960: To Robinson, it could hardly be contended that the
[Genocide] Convention binds the signatories to punish offenders for acts
committed previous to its coming into force for the given country 51.
43. Fifty years later, my colleague, Professor William Schabas, in his book on
genocide agreed: There is nothing in the Genocide Convention to suggest a
different intention [in the sense of Article 28 VCLT] . . . The simple fact is
that the Genocide Convention is not applicable to acts committed before its
effective date. 52
44. Mr. President, the views of Robinson and Schabas are shared by State
parties. I will merely refer you to one example, but it is recent, and it is
unequivocal: in 2010, the German Government said this, in the German
Parliament you see it on the screen: [screen on]
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide of 9 December 1948 has entered into force on 12 January 1951. For
the Federal Republic of Germany it has entered into force on 22 February
1955. [And here comes the crucial passage] It does not possess retroactive
effect. 53
45. Mr. President, Members of the Court, could it be clearer? And, to return
to the point I made earlier, were it otherwise, would Germany have ratified
Robinson, The Genocide Convention, 1960, p. 114.

W.A. Schabas, Genocide in International Law, 2008, p. 643; footnote omitted.
53 See Deutscher Bundestag [German Federal Parliament] doc. No. 17/1956 (2010), p. 5;
emphasis added. The German original reads: Die Konvention ber die Verhtung und
Bestrafung des Vlkermordes vom 9. Dezember 1948 ist am 12. Januar 1951 in Kraft
getreten. Fr die Bundesrepublik Deutschland ist sie seit dem 22. Februar 1955 in Kraft.
Sie gilt nicht rckwirkend.
51
52
573
the Convention without a temporal reservation? Would other States responsible or accused of past atrocities have ratified the Convention? As the Court
said in 1951, the drafters and the General Assembly wanted the Convention
to be definitely universal in scope as many States as possible [said this
Court] should participate 54. Professor Crawford on Friday emphasized the
Conventions object and purpose. But the argument he put forward would
undermine the drafters vision of a treaty definitely universal in scope. And
it runs counter to generally-accepted principles governing the temporal
scope of treaties agreed in the ILC and at Vienna, applied since 1969 and
regularly endorsed by this Court. Croatias retroactivity claim must fail.
Public sitting held on Thursday 13 March 2014, at the Peace Palace,

Mr Saa Obradovi
2. Mr. President, distinguished Members of the Court, Operation Storm was
not an isolated event. That was not a mere war incident. The operation was
prepared well in advance 55 as reported by General Janko Bobetko in his book,
and represented one of the key events in the deep tragedy of the Yugoslav
peoples at the breakdown of their country.
3. When the international criminal tribunals judge upon massive crimes such
as genocide or crimes against humanity, it is common to start any discussion
with a historical and political background of those crimes. In that regard, the
Respondent has provided the Court with a significant number of documents.
Without a due overview of that background 56, a court of law cannot fully
understand how a spiral of crimes between Croats and Serbs developed and
kept going on for such a long time in history, in spite of the decades of the
seemingly peaceful socialist rule, and how that spiral reached its peak in
Operation Storm in 1995. If this Court did not know what had occurred in
Yugoslavia during World War II, in particular in the Independent State of
Croatia, it would not be able to understand those words of the young Croat
Reservations to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide, Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 1951, p. 24.
55 See Croatian General J. Bobetko, All My Battles, p. 407; Ann. 50 to the Counter-Memorial
of Serbia (CMS).
56 See CMS, paras. 397-420; CMS, Anns. 1-12.
54
574
soldier who, entering Knin on 5 August 1995, met witness Hill, the United
Nations Military Police Commander of Sector South, and told him that he
had been waiting for this since 1945 57. Nor how it was possible that over two
million books were destroyed as unsuitable in the infamous Croatian 1990s
process of librocide because they were written by Serbian authors, or they
were printed in Cyrillic alphabet, or simply because they were about
Yugoslavia 58.
4. Nor can the words of the Croatian President on Brioni Island be rightly
understood without the knowledge of his ideological background, which is
described as proto-fascist by Mr. Efraim Zuroff, Director of the Simon
Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, in his book Operation Last Chance 59.
142. Furthermore, several statements of the Croatian State Leadership given

ex post facto confirmed the intent they had during Operation Storm. In his
euphoric speech in Knin on 26 August 1995 President Tudjman declared:
[T]here can be no return to the past, to the times when they the Serbs were
spreading cancer in the heart of Croatia, cancer which was destroying the
Croatian national being and which did not allow the Croatian people to be the
master in its own house . . . 60
143. That statement of President Tudjman is quite similar to the statement of
Dr. Mladen Lorkovi, Minister of Foreign Affairs, who said:
Croatian people must clean itself from all elements which are its misfortune;
which are foreign and strange to that people; which dissolute from one evil
Gotovina et. al, IT-060-90, Transcripts, 27 May 2008, p. 3751; Ann. 44 to the Rejoinder of
Serbia (RS).
58 4See Slavic Review, Vol. 72, No. 2, Summer 2013, Ante Leaja: Unitavanje knjige u
Hrvatskoj 1990-ih (Destruction of the Book in Croatia in 1990s), available in English on:
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.5612/
57
slavicreview.72.2.0361?uid=3738736&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21102533799611.
5CMS, Ann. 9.
202BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, 28 Aug. 1995, Monday, Part 2 Central Europe,
the Balkans; Former Yugoslavia; Croatia; EE/D2393/C. Available at: http://emperorsclothes.com/docs/tudj.htm; video available at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOqB4sQ5am4.
59
60
575
to another through decades and centuries. Those are our Serbs and our
Jews.
The only difference between the two statements is that the last one was
published in the newspaper Croatian People 50 years ago, on 28 June 1941,
at the beginning of the World War II genocide against Serbs, Jews and Roma
people in the Independent State of Croatia.
144. Thus, the Applicants Head of State considered that the Serbs were
spreading cancer in the heart of Croatia. The same metaphor was used by
Croatian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hrvoje arini, in his conversation
with the United States Ambassador Mr. Peter Galbraith, when they, after
Operation Storm, discussed the opportunities for Serbs to come back to their
homes in Krajina. According to Galbraith, who testified in Gotovina, arini
said the following: We cannot accept them to come back. They are a cancer
in the stomach of Croatia. 61 The difference between the two statements can
be found rather in the location of Krajina in the Croatian national body than
in the attitudes of the two State officials towards the Serbs as such.
145. In our Rejoinder, Professor Schabas explained this choice of metaphor,
its meaning and poisonous language which direct to the elimination of the
group of people 62.
146. It is quite difficult to advocate today that these attitudes of the Croatian
President and the Minister for Foreign Affairs appeared no earlier than
Operation Storm was over. No, Mr. President, there is no doubt that these
statements given ex post facto reflected their attitudes towards the Serbs
from Croatia in general, the attitudes that existed at the time when the
operation was being planned at Brioni. The Respondent has noticed that the
Applicant has so far not adduced a single word to explain these statements of
its State leadership. It speaks something for itself.
61
62
Gotovina et al., Testimony of witness Peter Galbraith, 23 June 2008, Transcripts, p. 4939.
RS, para. 786.
576
Public sitting held on Friday 14 March 2014, at the Peace Palace,

M. William Schabas, O.C., membre de la Royal Irish Academy,
professeur de droit international la Middlesex University
(Londres), comme conseillers of The Government of the Republic of
Serbia
31. Mr. President, Members of the Court, I now turn to the Brioni meeting,
the Brioni transcript. In the annals of genocide, ethnic cleansing and related
atrocities, it is rare to be able to pinpoint a meeting where a plan to destroy a
group was prepared, presented and discussed. The celebrated example, of
course, is the Wannsee Conference of February 1942. This meeting of senior
Nazis plotted the destruction of the Jews in Europe using the notorious
euphemism of the final solution. Some so-called historians who deny or
trivialize the persecution and destruction of the Jews argue that the
conference was ambiguous, anodyne and insignificant, and that the words
used and the records kept defy interpretation, raising questions about what
was meant rather than providing answers. But taken in its context, including
the racist campaign that preceded it as well as an understanding of the
tragedy that followed, there is no doubt about the core of what was decided
at Wannsee.
32. Is Brioni any different? The Applicant argues that the meeting has been
misrepresented, that the records are complete and equivocal. In passing, it
should be noted that when the Brioni transcript appears to be helpful, for
example in its suggestion that an escape route be left, the Applicant is more
than happy to rely upon it163. The Applicant also claims that our case stands
or falls on Brioni, as if evidence of a planning meeting is required in order to
make a case that genocide has been committed. But were that the case, the
Applicant would be better to fold its tents and return home, because there is
no such planning meeting alleged in the Application.
33. As it was with Wannsee, in understanding the significance of Brioni the
context is everything. But I would submit that the fog of the meetings
transcript lifts when framed by what we know about what came after as well
as what came before.
577
Public sitting held on Tuesday 18 March 2014,

Ms Vesna Crni-Groti, Professor of International Law, University
of Rijeka, as Agent of The Government of the Republic of Croatia
6. The account you heard last week a revisionist history had no basis in
reality. The findings of the Trial Chamber and the Appeals Chamber
thoroughly vindicate the Applicants position in these proceedings.
17. The findings in the Gotovina judgement concerning President Tumans

intent, demonstrate that the Brioni Minutes record a discussion about the
preparation of a lawful military operation. The Applicant notes with deep
regret the comments made by Professor Schabas last week equating those
who deny any genocidal reading of the Brioni Minutes, with Holocaust
deniers who reject the historical facts about the Wannsee Conference. This
is all the more so given Professor Schabass own statements outside this
courtroom that there was no genocide in Srebrenica 63. It is a matter of
particular regret that Professor Schabas should cast aspersions on the
integrity of those who do not view the Brioni Minutes in the manner that he
or his client chooses to see them, including Judge Theodor Meron, himself a
Holocaust survivor, and Judge Patrick Lipton Robinson, former President of
the ICTY and a candidate for election to this Court. Professor Schabass
charge is both serious and unworthy of this courtroom.
28. The Respondent seeks to justify its own earlier actions by claiming that
the Serbs in Croatia were only reacting to the election of President Tuman
and their fear of a recurrence of World War II crimes being committed
against them. This is wrong. The Serb populations fear was created by the
hate-speech campaign against Croats and their demonization as Ustasha, as
we demonstrated in our claim.
William A. Schabas, Was Genocide Committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina? First

Judgments of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, 25
Fordham International Law Journal 23, 2001, pp. 45, 46, 47.
63
578
29. Moreover, Mr. Obradovis claim that Serbs were only reacting to
President Tuman is also false. The Serb rebellion in Croatia goes back to at
least 1989, well before President Tuman was elected. In July 1989 near
Knin, thousands of Serbs gathered, carrying photos of Slobodan Milosevic
and Chetnik iconography from World War II, chanting This is Serbia!
These are people who believed their one country was Serbia, not
Yugoslavia as Mr. Obradovi claimed. The event followed a series of similar
staged events of the people in other parts of the former Yugoslavia where
Serbs lived such as in Kosovo, in Vojvodina and Montenegro - and it caused
anxiety among the Croatian population. Why were they rebelling in 1989 not
just in Croatia but across former Yugoslavia? Mr. President, Members of the
Court, it was Serbian nationalism and the drive for Greater Serbia that
destroyed Yugoslavia and brought a war to Croatia that Croatia did not want.
Public sitting held on Friday 28 March 2014

Mr. Wayne Jordash, Q.C., Barrister, Doughty Street Chambers,
London, Partner at Global Rights Compliance, as Counsel and
Advocates of The Team of The Government of the Republic of
Serbia
11. However, as the Respondent has consistently argued, this onedimensional perspective is demonstrably false. It is a caricatured tale of the
dissolution of the former Yugoslavia and the genesis of the violence that
begins with a James Bond villain in the guise of Miloevi, surrounded by his
henchmen, eelj and others, stoking the fires of extremist Serbian
nationalism with terrible genocidal consequences.
12. The problem, of course, with this account is that the Applicant removes
every trace of Tumans poisonous rgime from this convenient pastiche.
Public sitting held on Friday 28 March 2014

M. William Schabas, O.C., membre de la Royal Irish Academy,
professeur de droit international la Middlesex University
(Londres), comme conseillers of The Government of the Republic of
Serbia
579
5. There is plenty of evidence that Tudjman intended to settle Croats in the

Krajina. This evidence is crucial because there was a single obstacle standing
in the way of Tudjmans plans. Close to 200,000 Serbs were already living
there. The operation Storm is described in Croatias pleadings as a war of
liberation. That may have been one objective. But the other was creating
lebensraum (living space) for hundreds of thousands of Croats.
Public sitting held on Tuesday 1 April 2014,

Mr. Philippe Sands, Q.C., Professor of Law, University College
London, Barrister, Matrix Chambers, London, as Counsel and
Advocates of The Government of the Republic of Croatia
9. Equally unhappy was Professor Schabass return to the events of January
1942 64. It may be that a retraction of sorts was made: clumsy and
inappropriate, his words, might be said to be words of understatement. But
perhaps we were not alone in feeling discomforted by the impression that
what counsel gave with one hand he then took away with the other, with most
unfortunate references to Tudjmans final solution 65, and lebensraum 66.
Sir Keir Starmer has said more than enough about the Brioni Minutes, and
so has the ICTY.
CR 2014/24, p. 21, para. 39 (Schabas).

CR 2014/24, p. 21, para. 39 (Schabas).
66 Ibid., p. 11, para. 5 (Schabas).
64
65
580
6. REACTIONS TO THE HEARING OF THE SECOND

WORLD WAR BEFORE THE ICJ
TUMAN
POLITIKA, 3RD MARCH 2014. SCHABAS:

THE TRIAL IN THE HAGUE IS A TRIAL TO
In an interview given to Politika, Schabas said that Serbia's lawsuit against

Croatia for genocide has a strong foothold in the provocative, racist
statements by Franjo Tuman, his extremist views, as well as history that
goes back to the Second World War, which along with the conduct of the
Croatian Army during the Operation 'Storm' represents a strong case of
genocide.
VEERNJI LIST, 14TH M ARCH 2014.

EKS: CROATIA SHOULD WITHDRAW ITS UNCONDITIONAL SUPPORT FOR S ERBIA' S ACCESSION TO THE
EU
I think Serbia's countersuit is a result of the need to have any sort of reaction
and to counter Croatia's suit for genocide. The arguments presented by
Serbia in its own genocide suit are pretty weak and inconclusive, especially
when they claim Croatia is the successor of the NDH, although neither the
world nor the Croatian Constitution say so. Croatia is not the legal successor
of the NDH and cannot be held accountable for the Ustasha NDH regime. It
is a spin that has persistently sought in the last 70-odd years to present the
Croatian people as genocidal and is hoped to play on the judges' emotions. All
in all, those arguments are very thin on the ground, argues Vladimir eks,
adding that Croatia's state policy was not genocidal, and that the atrocities
committed during Operation Storm, before or after it are individual
crimes, not crimes staged through the Croatian state government policy. On
the other hand, the Serbian crimes are the result of Serbia's state policy, says
eks.
581
DNEVNO.HR, 15TH MARCH 2014.

OOPS, KARAMARKO WOULD RATHER WITHDRAW HIS SUPPORT FOR S ERBIA' S ACCESSION
TO THE EU... D O YOU KNOW HOW HE FELT
ABOUT IT BEFORE?
Tomislav Karamarko is angry with the lies Serbia's legal team has been
telling The Hague Tribunal.
Serbia has used illegitimate means in its defense and withdrawing our
unreserved support for Serbia's accession to the EU is certainly one of the
measures to consider, says Karamarko, adding that he believes the goal of
Operation Storm was not ethnic cleansing but that it was a legitimate action
for the liberation of Croatian territory from an aggressor. Enough of this
venting on our fight for freedom , he said on the eve of the celebration of
the 24th anniversary of the HDZ in Virovitica.
Karamarko is right about many things because the legal team of Serbia has
capitalised on loopholes and brought Jasenovac and the NDH out of
mothballs, all in order to prove the genocidal character of Croats. He is also
right when he says the withdrawal of support for Serbia's joining the EU
should be considered, which now wholeheartedly undermines us, airing the
dirty laundry of the dirty Croats before the entire world. We do need to
consider the withdrawal, but Karamarko has already had his chance to do it
and blown it...
TANJUG, 16th March 2014.

CROATIA'S PRIME MINISTER ZORAN MILANOVI ARGUES THAT THE EVENTS IN CROATIA
DURING THE 1990S ARMED CONFLICT CANNOT
BE EQUATED WITH THE HOLOCAUST
Asked to comment on the trial taking place before the International Court in
The Hague in regard to Croatia's and Serbia's mutual genocide suits, and on
the fact Serbia has equated the events in Croatia during the latest armed
conflict with the Holocaust, Milanovi said:
582
We know what the truth is. That's not true, Milanovi said curtly, as
reported by the Hina agency.
N OVI LIST, 17TH MARCH 2014.

INTERVIEW WITH VESNA CRNI-GROTI:
SERBIA FANS ETHNIC HATRED AGAIN
The other side constantly mentions the Ustashas and Second World War,
Jasenovac and the NDH, as if repeating the pattern we all remember from the
late 1980's and the early 1990's, when the crimes committed in the past were
brought out of mothballs as a rationale for revenge. Can the crime of genocide
be justified by an earlier crime of genocide?
- Of course not. In the case of Serbia , we can see how historical facts can be
manipulated to distort the truth, with bloody consequences. I am sorry my
Serbian colleagues have opted for the same rhetoric in 2014.
H RVATSKI TJEDNIK, 24TH MARCH 2014.

ANTE NAZOR 67: THE FABRICATIONS USED BY THE
SERBIAN LEGAL TEAM TAKE US BACK TO THE TIME OF
M ILOSEVI'S RULE THE CONTINUITY OF THE GREAT
SERBIA POLICY
This insistence on the links between the NDH of World War II and the
present-day Republic of Croatia is unfounded in several respects. The
Constitution of the Republic of Croatia is clear about it. And not just the
Constitution. Such rhetoric - in the style of Serbia all the way to Tokyo and the fallacy of relevance, i.e., falsification of history, is no foundation for
a more peaceful future in the region. Not to mention comparing the Brioni
meeting with the decisions intended to permanently solve the Jewish
question, which takes the exposition of the Serbian team in the International
Court at The Hague to the level of senseless squabble, without reason or
dignity, between petty bourgeois idlers in a smoky tavern. The sources
clearly indicate that the cause of the war in Croatia in 1991 should not be
The author is director of the Croatian Memorial-Documentation Centre for the Homeland
War.
67
583
sought in the previous existence of the NDH, but the continuity of the Great
Serbia policy, or the content of the Great Serbia projects and documents
drawn up before 1941.
POLITIKA, 25TH MARCH 2014. STEVAN

OREVI, THE IRONY OF THE HAGUE FATE
The crimes of ethnic cleansing committed in the Operations 'Storm' and
'Flash', given their scope, methods used to carry them out and the clear
intention behind them, possess certain elements of the crime of genocide, as
incriminated by the provisions of the said Genocide Convention.
They are continual and repetitive, that is, they bear a resemblance to the
crimes committed against the Serbian people in the NDH. Unfortunately, the
crimes committed between 1941 and 1945 in Jasenovac and other killing
fields were not tried appropriately before the international community at
Nuremberg in 1946 or later. It is an irony of the fate of the generations who
lived in WWII to see Croatia sue Serbia for genocide. Unfortunately, there
have been too many unilateral decisions and attitudes of international bodies
and other countries detrimental to Serbia, too many such statements in the
media about its war crimes and accountability for the armed conflicts in
Yugoslavia. Different standards have been applied in identical situations. It is
in the interest of future generations that all crimes committed by and against
the two sides are duly acknowledged and evaluated in a court of law.
The author is the retired Professor of International Law and International
Relations of the Faculty of Law, Belgrade University.
VESTI, 1ST APRIL 2014.

IT IS OFFENSIVE TO CALL THE NAZIS AND
TUMAN SIMILAR
Croatia's legal representative (Vesna Crni-Groti) pointed out that it was
absolutely inappropriate for members of the Serbian team to suggest the
policy of the Croatian President Franjo Tuman towards the Serbs was
similar to the final solution of the Jewish question of the Nazis in the
Second World war.
584
POLITIKA, 2ND APRIL 2014.

THERE WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN THE OPERATION 'S TORM' WITHOUT THE B RIONI [ MEETING, T/ N]
The Hague: My goal was not to suggest there was a similarity between the
Operation Storm and the Nazi Holocaust. Instead, I explained that the
minutes of the meetings, such as those held in Brioni and Wannsee, may be
the subject of a benign interpretation, if observed outside the context of the
events, says Professor William Schabas, member of our legal team, to
Politka, commenting on the accusations he has received from the Croatian
side in the last few days.
We know the meaning of the term the 'final solution' used at the Wannsee
Conference because we know the context in which it was used, from the time
of the Nazi anti-Semitism that preceded the conference, to the policy of
extermination which ensued. Some have tried to present the Brioni meeting
as irrelevant. Such was the proposition by the Appeals Chamber of the ICTY
in the Gotovina case and of course, that was the Croatian position during the
hearing before the ICJ. But when that meeting is placed in context, in full
awareness of Tuman's racist attitudes and his clear intention to vacate the
Krajina so Croats could be settled across an area that had been inhabited by
Serbs for generations, and also taking into account all that has happened,
there can be no doubt about what the significance and meaning of the Brioni
meeting was, explains Professor Schabas.
7 EXPECTATIONS
RTS, 5TH M ARCH 2014, M ORNING N EWS
Savo trbac, President of the Veritas Documentation and Information
Centre, believes that Serbia has achieved success by the mere fact it has had
a chance to present all evidence of the crimes committed against the Serbs so
far collected before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
No crime against the Serbs has been covered by verdicts of international
courts, says trbac, noting that the complete documentation collected by the
Serbian side will now become world heritage.
585
Even if the court finds that there was no genocide against the Serbs, it will
still change the perception of the Serbs being the only perpetrators , said
trbac in the RTS News.
Savo trbac, President of the Veritas Documentation and Information
Centre, stated today that the dispute between Croatia and Serbia cannot
worsen the relations between the two countries; on the contrary, he believes
they can be improved and says in its first hearing Croatia did not say
anything we do not already know.
Resolving disputes in courts of law is civilised. It is best for the court to
decide whether or not there was genocide on one side or the other. This can
only improve the relations between the two countries. None of the two
nations would have been happy with a political agreement because the
political elite are changeable both in Croatia and here, said trbac in his
appearance on the RTS.
INTERNATIONAL RADIO SERBIA, 10TH M ARCH
2014. T HE HAGUE TRIAL: SERBIA' S ARGUMENTS
trbac pointed out that there are three options. After the main hearing the court
may decide genocide was committed by both sides, by one of the sides, or that it
never occurred.
According to him, many experts believe that the third solution is the most objective
one - that no genocide was committed by either side.
It is normal for the Serbian legal team to believe that we will be able to prove that
genocide was committed against the Krajina Serbs at the time, during and after
Operation 'Storm', given the number of casualties, refugees, how return has been
made impossible for the people, how their property has been destroyed, said trbac.
If the Court , however, concludes no genocide was committed by either side, trbac
believes it will be good for the Serbs if an answer is given to the question what it is
exactly when, as he put it, more than 400,000 people are banished, more than 7,000
killed, when their property is destroyed and they are still prevented from returning
to their homes 18 years after the war.
586
SLOBODNA DALMACIJA, SPLIT, 1ST APRIL 2014.

END OF THE HEARINGS IN THE GENOCIDE LAWSUIT: I N S ERBIA, ONE STILL HEARS MYTHS
THAT V UKOVAR WAS LIBERATED
Serbia's main legal representative Saa Obradovi said that Belgrade maintains its
stance Operation 'Storm' was a genocidal campaign, and expects to hear the same
from the court.
Hardly anyone can be satisfied when defending his or her country against charges
of genocide, but we have stuck to the plan and the Croatian side did not say or do
anything unexpected, and I have full confidence in the judges to make the right
decision, said Obradovi.
But regardless of whether the court accepts our lawsuit, we have achieved a major
goal and told the truth about the persecution of the Serbs in the Operation 'Storm'
and the war in general, he added.
Crni-Groti says the people in Serbia need to open their eyes, relinquish their
myths of lost wars and as they approach the EU, get rid of their misconceptions
about the events in the 1990s.
That will be the beginning of reconciliation in the former Yugoslavia . If we stay in
the grip in our myths, we can expect the repetition of the same series of events in
20, 30, 50 years, which will be a tragedy," warned the Professor of International Law
from Rijeka.
Croats find it hard to forget what happened in 1991, but they have discarded their
misconceptions, as evidenced by their full membership in the EU. Serbia should go
the same way, leave its misconceptions behind and join the countries of Europe,
says Crni-Groti.
TANJUG, 1ST APRIL 2014,

OBRADOVI: I EXPECT CROATIA TO BE SENTENCED
No statute of limitation should be applicable to war crimes. We
will do it for the sake of not only Serbian or Croatian victims, but
of all mankind. It is both Serbia and Croatia's duty, and it is the
precondition for reconciliation, said Obradovi.
He agreed with his Croatian colleague Vesna Crni Groti that there has to be a
reconciliation, but based on historical facts, in which sense he reminded us Serbia
offered Croatia, in its 2010 submission to the ICJ, to reach an agreement about the
587
disputable facts relating to the dead and alive and leave it to the court to decides
whether or not the crime of genocide was committed, but no answer ever came from
Croatia.
The other side kept silent, because the agreement required that we also talk about
the Serbian victims, not only the Croatian ones, concluded Obradovi.
He commented on today's hearing of the Croatian defense team, saying it was a case
of fallacy of relevance, due to the lack of arguments and the existance of evidence of
the mass killings of Serbs.
Vesna Crni Groti, head of the Croatian legal team, said today that her team
responded in the best and most convincing manner to all allegations of Serbia's
counterclaims of genocide and said she expected the court to reject the
counterclaims, noting that they were not there to defend the Independent State of
Croatia (WWII NDH) .
We are here to represent the interests of Croatia and it is not our job to defend the
NDH. It is neither necessary nor possible to do so, Crni Groti said after the
hearing before the International Court of Justice in The Hague in the dispute
between Serbia and Croatia on mutual genocide suits in the period 1991 to 1995
inclusive.
She believes evoking the NDH is part of the bellicose rhetoric from the time of
Slobodan Miloevi intended to villify Croats.
Responding to the reporter's question, Crni Groti said Croatia has relinquished its
delusions of the past and that its full membership in the European Union is a
confirmation of it.
According to her, Serbia should do the same thing give up on its misconceptions
and join European countries.
POLITIKA, 2ND APRIL 2014.

THERE WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN THE
STORM WITHOUT THE BRIONI [MEETING,
T/N]
(From an interview with Professor W. Schabas)
How do you feel about this hearing?
The public hearing is an important part of the proceedings before the International
Court of Justice. It is an opportunity to clarify the evidence and law, and to focus
attention to specific issues. I think Serbia has taken advantage of this opportunity. It
588
was capable of countering the shortcomings of the Croatian case. Also, Serbia found
a clear and eloquent way to explain to the public the nature of the Croatian attacks
during the Operation Storm. During the proceedings, the Serbian team was
dignified and professional, which earned it the respect of the judges and everyone
attending the proceedings.
How important will the decision of the ICJ be for any future cases? We see how
frequently the court's decision from 2010 is referred to, the one which ruled that
the Declaration of Independence of Kosovo was not against international law. It is
now being used by Crimea and Venice and Scotland...
It is impossible to speak about the importance of the decision for future cases before
we have actually had it. Many of the judges of this court believe it is their role to
improve the law. This means that when passing judgments, they do not only have in
mind an actual dispute between the parties concerned, but also how it can contribute
to the improvement of legislation. When returning its verdict in Bosnia and Herzegovina's suit against Serbia in 2007, the court usefully clarified on how to interpret
Article 2 of the Genocide Convention. A relatively restrictive and conservative
approach to the interpretation of genocide was then adopted. In my submissions I
have tried to show that this approach has generally been accepted and used since
2007. I have asked the judges not to be reluctant now either, but to follow the
approach they took back in 2007.
589
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JASENOVAC - THE SIXTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

GENOCIDE AND CRIMES OF NDH

Association "JASENOVAC-DONJA GRADINA"

GENOCIDE AND CRIMES OF

NEZAVISNA DRAVA HRVATSKA

AGAINST SERBS, JEWS AND ROMA

Banja Luka, 2014

Dragana Mijatovi -Tomaevi

Paul Isaac Hagouel, Ph.D

Jean Toschi Marazzani Visconti

Ana Krini Lozica

Prof. Dr. Marko p. Atlagi mr Dalibor m. Elezovi

PhD Mladenka Ivankovi

Zorka Skiba, ne Deli

ON THE OCCASION OF THE SIXTH

The Sixth International Conference on Jasenovac will be held in Banja Luka

The Sixth Conference on Jasenovac, like the previous ones, is international,

Like on the previous occasions, this Book of Proceedings was published in

In Banja Luka, 5nd May 2014

PhD Srboljub ivanovi1

CROATIAN ROMAN CATHOLIC AND

President of The International Commission for the Truth on Jasenovac

administrator of the local post office, followed by Mahmut ampara,

By the end of World War II communist authorities in the former Yugoslavia

According to the words of a Yugoslav diplomat Vladimir Velebit from the

appropriate museum in Kragujevac, is trying to fill out this information by

PhD Vladimir Umelji

THE SENSITIVE ISSUE OF

HISTORICAL SCIENCE, MATHEMATICAL

number was derived from valuable primary historical sources. It remains an

have not prevented those horrible atrocities, the accountability for

against the Orthodox population, of whom according to Ustasha

Nrnberger Dokumente, NOKW, 376.

Nazi Commander-in-Chief for Serbia, General Bader, said on 5th February

THE NUMBER OF VICTIMS IN THE JASENOVAC

L. Horry and M. Broszat: Der kroatische Ustascha-Staat 1941-1945, Schriftenreihe der

One of his co-sufferers, Dr N. Nikoli, estimated the number of the killed at

Compare: M. Bulaji, Ustaki zloini genocida II, Vol. 2, Beograd, 1988.

ARI RUSILA, JASENOVAC HOLOCAUST PROMOTED BY VATICAN

In 1993, the Austrian historian Hans Safrian published another report by

Srboljub ivanovi, Jasenovac, Srpska knjiga, Beograd, International Slovenian Academy

THIS CONTRIBUTION ALONE IS PRICELESS.

Compare: Niall Ferguson (ed.): Virtuelle Geschichte. Historische Alternativen im 20.

Gubici stanovnitva Jugoslavije u Drugome svjetskom ratu, Zagreb, 1989, p. 39.

Compare: www. http://forum.b92.net/topic/50758-ukupan-broj-ustaskih-zrtava/

is about the devaluation of numerically inexact and poorly documented

Yad Vashem, 21 December 2010: 4 Million Victims of Holocaust Identified; de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust.

2009) estimates around 200,000 Roma were deliberately killed or died

CONCLUDING IMPLICATIONS OF THE ISSUE OF

from Jasenovac. The difference in this case, roughly speaking, is about

See also: [http://www.knjigainfo.com/index.php?gde=@http 3A//www.knjigainfo.com

PhD Svetozar Livada

THE VICTIM IS ALWAYS RIGHT

WHY DID PARTISAN UNITS NOT

I would like to say that my brigade, 2nd Moslavina Brigade, on 29 t h March

had factories working for them, while we would get possession of

STATEMENTS OF THE RESPONSIBLE PARTISAN

Obrad Stiovi, Commander of the Kozara Partisan detachment:

great defeat, a blow from which we would hardly recover. We

Veljko Kovaevi, one of the commanders of the 6th Slavonia Corps:

Josip Maar oa and Boko Siljegovi, commanderand commissar of the

In a saved latter of the Headquarters of the 5th Krajina strike brigade

Jefto ai was born in Novska, that is near Jasenovac