Behind the Croat Mockery of Jasenovac Death Camp Complex
1940s — Fascist Croatia committed a genocide against Serbs, Jews and Gypsies: Entrance into Jasenovac death camp number 3, with the sign presenting it as a “Labor Service of the Ustasha Defense - Concentration Camp No. III” The coat of arms above is inscribed: “Everything For the Fuhrer, Ustasha Defense.”
Croatian Holocaust Denial Encouraged by Shameful Silence
On November 27, 2006, Croatian government has opened a new “memorial” at the site of the notorious Jasenovac death camp complex in Western Slavonia. The “democratic” Croatian government apparently made sure the “Ustashas [Croat Nazis] would’ve been proud” of this shameful exhibit, as one of the Jewish survivors of the Croat WWII bestiality commented at the time.
While Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, Efraim Zuroff, criticized organizers of the exhibition for failing to name any of the perpetrators of horrendous Jasenovac mass murders, for omitting to explain background of the furious extermination of the Croatia’s Serbian, Jewish and Roma population and Ustasha ideology that led to pathological hatred and genocide, Zuroff seemed to accept the scandalous reduction of a number of the people murdered in Jasenovac death camp complex, leaving an overall impression that Croatia is making steps in the right direction after all.
Another researcher, who has dedicated more than a decade to unveiling the truth about Serbian plight and demonization during the civil wars in the 1990s, and about the true nature of Ustasha pathology successfully revived in the 1990s — Jared Israel — was as insulted with none-to-mild reaction to what amounts to Croat Holocaust denial on a state level, as most Serbs are. Covering the mockery of Croat exhibit, Mr. Israel also analyzed Efraim Zuroff’s response and has subsequently published an interview with one of the Jasenovac survivors, President of Serbia’s Organization of Survivors, Mrs. Smilja Tisma.
1990s — Neo-Nazi Croatia committed another pogrom of its Serbian population: Elderly Serbs mutilated by Croat forces in Serbian Krajina, September 4, 1995, “Operation Storm”.
Since almost no one really objects to Croatia erasing over 700,000 of its WWII victims from the history books, is it any wonder Croats repeated the genocide of Krajina Serbs less than 50 years later? And if this latest pogrom of Croatia’s Serbian population remains hidden and denied, why shouldn’t we expect a yet another repeat in few decades down the road?
In the interview by Jovan Skendzic, as well as in her December 22, 2006 open letter to Belgrade daily Politika, Mrs. Tisma confirms the charges against Croatian death camp “memorial,” as a disgraceful attempt to minimize, obscure and effectively erase the memory of the hundreds of thousands of innocent victims of Ustasha bestiality, while erecting a mockery of a sanitized and hollow “exhibit.”
Jasenovac Death Camp Survivor: “Far More Than Shameless”
Excerpt from an interview with Smilja Tisma, one of the few remaining Holocaust survivors in Serbia, about the new Croat Jasenovac “Museum”
They pretend that it is a Museum and a new presentation - but it is not a Museum. You enter into dark corridors, dark rooms with only weak electric bulbs illuminating the so-called exhibits. At the places of presentation there are monitors that show photographs in a loop. For example, one depicts the transport of miserable, poor children. You do not know who these children are, or where they are from, or where they are being taken, or whom they belong to. You do not know what is happening or where.
At other places you will have to squat down almost to the floor, as there is a bulb there, or bend all the way down, if you are able to bend so much and have had the luck to notice the light in the first place. Bending, you will read a label telling you what will be presented. After this you will have to wait what feels like ten minutes until the presentation starts and then you will have to quickly read the text they show on the monitor.
It is inaccessible for an average person and even worse for old, frail individuals who are already under considerable anxiety, as their families perished here.
At another place, just by chance, I noticed a panel which claims that sixty-nine thousand people perished in the Jasenovac death camp. That’s a fraction of the real number. The Serbs are presented seventh on the list of groups that were killed, after others, such as Slovenes and Slovaks, who in fact comprised a small percentage of the victims and who were killed because of politics, not because of their ethnicity, whereas hundreds of thousands of Serbs were murdered in an attempt to eliminate the Serbian people.
Entire interview with Smilja Tisma, at Emperor’s Clothes