Page 32 - EXPOTIME!Sept2017

Museums in Eastern Europe

Utz Anhalt

Jasenovac camp memorial and museum:
an open wound in Croatia

Jasenovac, a small town near to the border to Bosnia, on third of the Serbs in the state should be exterminated,
became the place of the biggest killing camp in Yugosla- another third would become refugees and the rest would
via during WWII. The extermination camp complex, camp have to convert to the Roman-Catholic church” 3
farms and execution sides extended from Krapje through
Jasenovac to Jablanac, and from the River Strug to the On 2nd May 1941, the Ustasha minister Milovan Zanic de-
River Sava in the South. 1 clared: “There is no method which we will, as Ustasha,
not use to make this country really Croatian and to clean
Estimations of victims range from around 80,000 to 700,000 it from Serbs.” And the Ustasha commander of Banja
4
deads. The Yugoslavian partisan and historian Vladimir Luka, Gutic declared: “I got the command to extinct the
Dedijer who called Jasenovac the “Yugoslavian Auschwitz” Serbs totally. Exterminate them, whereever you meet
estimated that 200,000 Serbs were killed here as well as them.” 5
tens of thousand Jews, Gypsies and anti-fascists. Today, it
is a memorial and museum. The perpetrators: a fascist puppet regime

It all begann, when the Nazi government declared war
against Yugoslavia in June 1941 and defeated the official
forces in a few days. Afterwards, the occupied state was
divided between Germany, Italy, Albania, Hungary and
Bulgaria. Ante Pavelić, the leader of the Ustasha, “found-
ed” the puppet state of Croatia on a territority with 6
million people: 50% of them were Croatians, 30% Serbs,
12% Muslims, 6% Slovenians, Italians, Hungarians, Roma
and Jews.

From the first day, the aim of the Ustasha was a “homog-
enous Catholic and Croatian ethnic community”, and they
tried to achieve it with systematic killing of Serbs, Gypsies
and Jews while the majority of Croatians and Muslims sup-
Aerial photograph of today's memorial and museum (top ported the Croatian fascists. The Ustasha fantasized about
right) of the concentration camp Jasenovac. the Croatians as being “Germanic Arians” who were de-
Photo: Jasenovac Memorial site scended from al lost tribe of Goths or even from Persia.
In the racist fantasies, the “Croatian skull” was a long one
A concentration camp made to kill Serbs, Gyp- while the “Serbian skull” was regarded as round. Later, a
sies, Jews and political opponents simple measure of the human skulls decided wether they
were people to be killed as “subhumans” or not. 6
The official counting of the Jasenovac memorial research
lists 83,145 people who died at the camp, not all of them Genocide and forced conversion
were murdered by the Ustasha regime, many of them
died because of the "conditions". Statistics speak of 57,627 The Ustasha alliance between racist fascists and radical
Serbs, 16,173 Gypsies, 13,116 Jews and around 6,229 po- Catholic clergy indeed planned and executed a combina-
litical opponents. 2 tion of genocide, ethnic cleansing and forced conversion.
The Ustasha minister for education said: “The base of the
The associate analysist Ioannis Michaletos writes: “The Ustasha movement is the religion. For Jews, Gypsies and
short-lived (1941-1944) independent Croatian state in Serbs we have three million bullets... In this way the new
WWII performed an incredible cruelty against the Serbian Croatia will delete all Serbs and will be 100% catholic in
7
citizens… The infamous Croatian Dr. Mile Budak had al- ten years.” Immediately, Pavelics followers slaughtered a
ready established a plan by which by the end of the war … number of orthodox bishops to eliminate possible leaders

32
EXPOTIME!, issue August/September 2017