Jasenovac

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Greetings to the Jerusalem Conference from the Jasenovac Research Institute
Presented by Darko Trifunovic, JRI Director
29 December 2002

Distinguished colleagues and participants,

It is my honor to serve as the representative of the Jasenovac Research Institute to this 11th International Conference on the Holocaust and 3rd Jasenovac Conference. On behalf of the Board of Directors of the JRI I wish to send our greetings.

The Jasenovac Research Institute (JRI) is a U.S.-based non-profit foundation dedicated to building public awareness about the Holocaust in Yugoslavia and seeking justice for its Victims and Survivors. The JRI was formed shortly after the First International Conference and Exhibition on the Jasenovac Concentration Camps held in New York City in October of 1997. JRI members were centrally involved in helping to organize that conference. In the nearly five years since the JRIs founding we have organized many public events and symposia to promote awareness of Jasenovac and have published works on the subject on the internet. JRI members also participated in the Second International Conference on Jasenovac held in Banja Luka in 2000.

The JRI has provided expert consultants to US News & World Report in researching its groundbreaking article A Vow of Silence, which examined the Vaticans role in Ustashe crimes, also to CNN in the production of their program on the Sakic trial, and to Stephen Spielbergs Shoah Foundation in the gathering of Serbian Survivor testimony for its Holocaust visual history project. Our foundation was instrumental in launching a landmark North America based effort to obtain restitution for Yugoslav Holocaust victims, being named as a plaintiff along with two Serbian Americans and a Yugoslav Jew in a class-action lawsuit that seeks damages from the Vatican institutions who laundered the Ustashe treasury and helped Ustashe criminals escape into exile. We have helped enlist new plaintiffs in this case.

A recent project initiated by the JRI is the securing of a permanent monument to the Victims of Jasenovac and the Holocaust in Yugoslavia at the Holocaust Memorial Park at Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, New York. This will be the first public monument to Jasenovac victims in North America. We held a commemoration ceremony at the park April 21st last, timed to coincide as closely as possible with the anniversary of the breakout attempt by Jasenovac inmates, at which a memorial stone to Jasenovac was dedicated and a draft inscription unveiled. The ceremony featured speeches by Holocaust Survivors who serve on our board of Directors, including Ms. Eva Deutsch-Costabel, a Jewish Survivor of the Holocaust in NDH Croatia.

We have received approval from the Parks committee for the monument, and we hope to have the stone inscribed and laid presently. The JRIs goal is to have the memorial ceremony serve as an annual focus of remembrance and educational activities on Jasenovac both in New York City and throughout the country.

One of our Directors, Dr. Norman Markowitz of Rutgers University, has a long-time involvement with other scholars in a program of Holocaust education based at the City University of New York. Dr. Markowitz was a lead organizer of and presenter at a conference on Holocaust education in New York City last fall. JRI Directors Eva Costabel and Barry Lituchy also represented the JRI at the conference also. At this conference the teaching of Jasevovac was discussed by Dr. Markowitz as an example of a neglected and poorly understood aspect of the Holocaust which deserves much greater attention both at the level of scholarship and public education.

Currently, the JRI is compiling for publication on our website what we believe will be the most comprehensive bibliography on Jasenovac as well as video testimony of Jasenovac Survivors. Our website is easy to remember -
www.jasenovac.org

The JRIs mission demands above all else the close combining of research with activism and advocacy. We do not want to see the story of Jasenovac become the province of sterile and purely academic debate, but rather make this story mark a quest for justice and redress for its Victims and its Survivors, so that Serbs and the other Balkan peoples martyred at Jasenovac can well and truly say Never Again!

I look forward to our upcoming exchanges and hope very much to learn and profit from your experiences in this important work we are doing together.

Thank you.