Survivors Confront a Legacy of Killings
Vesna Peric Zimonjic DONJA GRADINA, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Apr 18 (IPS) - About 150 survivors of the Jasenovac concentration camp of World War II stood in silence at the memorial for victims here Sunday. They came to recall what had happened here 60 years ago, and to see how memories of those days fed more recent conflicts. Jasenovac was the biggest "factory of death" in the Balkans. Some of the survivors who gathered were just lucky; others had joined the break-out from the camp April 22, 1945 when it became obvious that the war was coming to an end, and that the Nazi puppet Independent State of Croatia (NDH) was falling apart. Donja Gradina, situated in north-western Bosnia-Herzegovina close to the Croatia border was part of a complex of five concentration camps that came to be known as Jasenovac. Some areas of the old camp are in the territory of modern Croatia. The story of Jasenovac is little known outside former Yugoslavia. At least 200,000 prisoners died there, but the true number was never established, and the perpetrators were never punished. The victims were mostly Orthodox Serbs from Croatia and Bosnia, but also Jews, Gypsies and anti-fascist Croats. Like many other historians in former Yugoslavia, Slobodan Markovic believes that pushing those crimes under the carpet left fertile ground for revengeful nationalism that led to wars of the 1990s and the disintegration of the six-member Yugoslav federation along ethnic lines. "The controversy of Jasenovac, which is to say the unsolved problems of the past, teach us a lesson in how things should not be done," Markovic told IPS. "Facing the truth is painful, but without clarification, there is fertile ground for manipulation and getting even in the worst sense." Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina emerged as new, independent nations in the wars of the 1990s. Local Serbs opposed the independence drive, backed by Serbia proper and its leader at the time, Slobodan Milosevic. "The historic and justified fears of Serbs (in Croatia and Bosnia) were abused and manipulated, and we had the wars of the 1990s," Markovic said. Crammed in small, improvised barracks, many died of hunger and exhaustion. Thousands were killed by guards in gruesome ways. The NDH was a creation of the Ustashi movement led by Ante Pavelic, a close friend and ally of Adolf Hitler. Pavelic's state was created after German troops overran the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in April 1941. The rest of the kingdom, Serbia, Slovenia, Macedonia and Montenegro, fell under German occupation. The NDH had a population of 6.3 million, with 3.3 million Catholic Croats. The 1.9 million Serbs were the largest minority, followed by more than 700,000 Muslims of Slav origin, 40,000 Jews and 30,000 Gypsies. Like the Nazi regime, the NDH believed in 'ethnic purity'. That meant persecution of non-Croats. The end of the Ustashi state in 1945 and the victory of communist-led partisans did not mean the end of their ideology. Its leaders fled to South America after the war. Many Ustashi guards fled to the U.S. or Canada, and nourished the dream of an independent Croat state for decades. Late Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, who led his country to independence in 1991, relied heavily on the support of Croatian exiles. Remnants of the Ustashi regime resurfaced when he began the independence drive. He claimed in his book 'Wastelands of Historic Reality' that "only" 50,000 people were killed in Jasenovac. Nationalist Serb politicians claimed that at least 700,000 Serbs became victims in Jasenovac. The number was widely exploited in the hate propaganda against Croatia's independence drive. "The whole idea of this ceremony was not about numbers," professor of history Vladimir Lukic told IPS in Banja Luka in the Republic of Srpska, the Serb entity in modern Bosnia. "It is about the things that should never happen again." Croatian film director Lordan Zafranovic says a lot remains to be done in his country to free it from the World War II shadow. "The problem is that so many things from the past remain unclear in Croatia," Zafranovic told Belgrade media. "That is what Europe sees, the Europe which is celebrating anti-fascism. It expects modern Croatia to say farewell to fascism and start a sincere life of anti-fascism." Croatia is among the countries of former Yugoslavia expected to join the European Union (EU) by 2009. Zafranovic's anti-fascist film 'Blood and Ashes of Jasenovac' was never shown on Croatian TV since it was made more than 15 years ago. Dragan Cavic, president of the Serb entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina called for reconciliation and clarification. "Instead of seeking balance in crimes committed, it is high time for people who have been in conflict until only yesterday to start seeking balance in justice to deal with perpetrators of crimes," he said. It is mostly Bosnian Serbs burdened with heavy accusations of crimes against Muslims and Croats in the wars of the 1990s that took 250,000 lives, mostly of non-Serbs. "Establishing the truth in the far and recent past can bring relief to all the nations here," Cavic said. (END/2005) http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=28336 Serbian News Network - SNN [email protected] http://www.antic.org/
