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Wednesday December 5 1:24 PM ET Croatia Faces Up to Nazi Death Camp Past By Zoran Radosavljevic JASENOVAC, Croatia (Reuters) - Croatia on Wednesday reinstalled exhibits and archives from a concentration camp its pro-Nazi government set up in 1941, in a move to show it was coming to terms with darker aspects of its history. The items were returned by the Washington Holocaust Memorial museum, where they were sent for safekeeping in 2000, some years after being taken from the site by retreating Serb forces who occupied the Jasenovac area during Yugoslavia's bitter collapse. The Museum commended the reformist Croatian government for deciding to take back the exhibits recounting the brutality of pro-German Croatian commanders of the camp, 100km (60 miles) southeast of Zagreb, toward Jews, Serbs and Gypsies. ``We commend the Croatian government for its commitment to honestly confront its terrible past,'' Sara Bloomfield, museum director, said in a letter read at a ceremony at the Jasenovac Memorial center attended by a few camp survivors. Rebel Croatian Serbs who captured the territory around Jasenovac when Croatia proclaimed independence in 1991, moved the items across the Sava river to Bosnian Serb areas in the face of an advance by Zagreb government troops in 1995. The previous nationalist government of the late President Franjo Tudjman had tolerated the revival of Ustasha symbols and Tudjman himself appeared to play down Croatian responsibility for the Holocaust in one of his books. He changed those elements in his writings after pressure from the West and Jewish groups but other nationalists were accused of downplaying the crimes of the Ustashe and of trimming the numbers of those who died in Jasenovac. DEATH TOLL Some 85,000 inmates -- Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and anti-Fascist Croats -- are estimated by independent historians to have perished in the camp, set up and run by Nazi-allied Ustasha authorities who ruled Croatia in 1941-45. Many had died of starvation, exhaustion or illness, or had been gunned, knived or bludgeoned to death. Slavko Goldstein, a prominent member of Croatia's small Jewish community and of the Jasenovac museum management, said the truth about the camp had been ``diminished and distorted in school books and many other publications in the last decade.'' ``The truth, the whole truth, is the only way for this terrible tragedy that still burdens our politics to move to the realm of history and remembrance,'' Goldstein said. ``I am pleased to confirm this site, in all its dignity, as a place of remembrance but also of warning,'' said Croatian Culture Minister Antun Vujic who helped organize the return of items. Jasenovac commander Dinko Sakic -- the last known living Nazi-era camp commander -- was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 1999 by a Croatian court for crimes against humanity after he was extradited from Argentina. ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
