Page 34 - EXPOTIME!Sept2017

Museums in Eastern Europe

of control) acts to kill all members of a people with the lished by the NSDAP after German forces occupied Yugo-
declared aim to extinct this group, independent from the slavia. The Serbian genocide committed by the Ustasha
place where these people live, independent from their was directly depending on the Holocaust, tens of thou-
age, sex, profession or political worldview. The only cri- sand of the approx. six million Jews killed in the Shoah
terion to find the victims is their cultural context. This were murdered by the Ustasha.
makes the difference to all other acts of warfare even if
whole populations are killed in attacks. Genocide is not Secondly, the ideology of the Ustasha was a Croatian var-
identical with ethnical cleansings and deportations, even iant of the Nationalsozialismus in Germany: They shared
if they are combined with massacres because here is the the idea of a homogenous racial state, ruled by a “mas-
aim to push the victims out of the country and not to ex- ter-race”, they shared the idea that Slavs (in Yugoslavia:
tinct them. With regard to the strictest definition of the the Serbs) and Jews were “subhumans” being in a “race
term "genocide", the mass murdering of Serbs was one of struggle” with the “Caucasian race”, and had to be either
th
the five big genocides of the 20 cent. enslaved or exterminated.

The Yugoslavian Auschwitz There were differences of course: The Nazis had a good
relationship with the Vatican because both shared, for
In opposition to the common misuse of the term Auschwitz different reasons, the same concept of the enemy: Jews,
for agitation, Dedijer is right calling Jasenovac the “Yugo- Slaws and communists. But while the antisemitism of the
slavian Auschwitz” ‒ politically, historically and ethically. 11 Nazis had some roots in Christian anti-jewish stereotypes,
some leading Nazis like Heinrich Himmler were explicitly
First, the extermination camp in Jasenovac was part of anti-catholic because they considered the Roman Catho-
the Nazi Holocaust system: Jews who were not directly lic church as infiltrated by Jews and as an enemy of the
murdered by the Croatian fascists were deported to the “Germanic race”. Hitler himself collected antisemitic ideas
killing centres of the German SS. The Ustasha government in the propaganda of racist esoterics with catholic back-
acted only officially independent but had been estab- ground in Vienna (and in the texts of Martin Luther), and

A recent aerial view of the memorial and museum surrounded by greenery. Photo: Memorial

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EXPOTIME!, issue August/September 2017