Jasenovac

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From Dr. Milan Bulajic, Director
19 April 2001
Dear Readers of the JRI Website,

After publication in Croatia of the book The Case of Shakich - Disinformation or Malintentions (Slučaj Šakić), I was forced to speed up my book The Jasenovac Trial - The Case of the Dinko Shakich. I had been an officialy accredited observer at the Zagreb trial in 1999 for both Yugoslavia and Republika Srpska.

I am happy to inform you that my manuscript is in the process of printing and soon it will be published (about 400 pages). What follows below is an English translation of the book's preface: "Preface to the 'Balkan Auschwitz'."

Having in mind all "Disinformations," I think that this article might be useful for discussion and for lectures, when and where you think it convinient.

Sincerely,

Milan Bulajić, Belgrade

"PREFACE TO THE BALKAN AUSCHWITZ"

(Preface to the soon to be released book: The Jasenovac Trial -The Case of Dinko Sakic, by Milan Bulajic)

After the extradition of Dinko Šakić (Shakich), the former commander of Jasenovac (the system of Croatian Ustashe camps of genocide), I gave a lecture at the Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles' "Museum of Tolerance" under the title “The Belated Yugoslav (Croatian) Nuremberg.” Unfortunately, the trial conducted in 1999 against the Ustashe criminal Dinko Šakić held at the District Court in Zagreb, and whose extradition had been demanded by the Yugoslav Government, fell far short of this expectation.

The commander of the Jasenovac camps was neither accused nor sentenced for the crimes of genocide committed against the Orthodox Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies (Romas), for that would have signified a verdict on the Ustashe terrorist organization and on the genocidal Independent State of Croatia, which is said to be “the manifestation of the historical aspirations of the Croatian people.” Instead, he was accused and sentenced for war crimes against civilians, against political adversaries. But can 19,432 children, aged from one day to 14 years, be considered political adversaries?! “Bulajić claims that Šakić should have been put on trial for genocide. Bulajić’s current claims are probably based on the long-standing attempts of the Serbian ideologists (the best known is Vasilije Krestić) who promote the thesis of the genocidal character of the Croatian people,” was the comment of Vjesnik in its editorial entitled “Bulajić on his old path.”

The qualification of a crime is a matter of utmost importance. We must recall that in 1986 the Ustashe Interior Minister, Dr. Andrija Artuković, was not sentenced either for the crime of genocide or for the Jasenovac concentration camps which he had established, or for war crimes, or even for an ordinary murder!

Šakić was not put on trial for the system of the camps of genocide in Jasenovac. He was accused and sentenced only for the crimes which he had committed as a commander of the Jasenovac camps - from May to October 1944 - regardless of the fact that he himself declared that he had been in the Jasenovac camps from February 18, 1942.

For the repeated genocide against the Serbs in Croatia in 1995, during the "Flash" (Bljesak) and "Storm" (Oluja) war operations, Professor Zvonimir Šeparović, a renowned victimologist and the Foreign Minister in the "War Government" of Croatia, and later on the Minister of Justice of the Republic of Croatia, says that they were the "crimes of a typically criminal self-interest nature." At the same time he points out that on September 14 1999 he "lodged the indictment against Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) for crimes of genocide against Croatia and for war reparations.2 That these are the qualifications of Croatia as a state is confirmed by the statement of the Chief Prosecutor, Slavko Zadnik, that in the "Flash" and "Storm" there were no war crimes.3

Before the trial of Dinko Šakić started, Viktor Ivančić published a book A Full Stop on U - The Šakić Case: The Anatomy of a Scandal.4

In it he wrote: "Contrary to the generally accepted view, the trial of Dinko Šakić makes no sense if it is not at the same time a process on one state - the Independent State of Croatia - and on its basic political doctrine. However, everything has been done to make this process pointless, to reduce it to the mere cynicism of criminal law, and to protect the collective image of the ISC - that black link in the contemporary Croatian nation-building - from all its negative effects.

"Within that effort the most scandalous fact in the 'Šakić Case' appeared: the fact that the commander of the biggest and cruelest concentration camp in the ISC was not indicted for genocide, although that crime is evident in all respects. However, the introduction of such a term would have taken the trial to unexpected diversions, to the regions of the nightmares of Croatian nation-building. But that cannot be allowed either by the current Croatian authorities or the Croatian nation which has been for the entire ten years after the fall of Communism, impregnated with an ideological spider web, in which those who 'breathe differently' vanish like flies.

'Croatia has put Šakić on trial only because it was made to by the world: without big troubles Croatia would not put Ustashe on trial', said in his interview to the Feral Tribune Anto Nobilo, the former deputy of the Chief Prosecutor, who took part in the process against the war criminal Andrija Artuković. "... But if Šakić were tried for genocide, the essence of the Independent State of Croatia would be considered, and the starting point would be that it was the State which legalized the genocide, and that its crucial political orientation was genocide. If the indictment started from this, then all those who participated in that repressive apparatus and who were aware that with their actions they supported the committing of the genocide, would be responsible for the crimes of genocide..."

"There is no doubt that the character of the concentration camps in the ISC, and before all of Jasenovac, was genocidal: their existence implied the extermination (or rather, the elimination from life accompanied with the worst possible human humiliation) of the members of other races or nations, and only after that of the political adversaries of the regime. . ."5

The Ustashe official in the women’s camp of Stara Gradiška, Nada Šakić (Esperanza) Tambić de Bilanović, the step-sister of the Ustashe criminal Max Luburić, Dinko’s wife, decorated by the Ustashe leader Ante Pavelić, was arrested in Argentina at the extradition request of Yugoslavia, but she was extradited to Croatia since she had acquired Croatian citizenship before that! On February 1, 1999 the District Prosecution of Zagreb reported their giving up the further persecution of Nada Šakić “for the investigation has not confirmed that the suspicion for her committing the crimes is justified.” The decision was made three months before the expiration of the investigation, and no witness from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Republic of Serbia (Bosnia) had been heard. The convicted Dinko Šakić was exempted from paying the court expenses “for he must support his wife,” the decorated Ustashe Nada, the war criminal from the women’s camp of Stara Gradiška!

While the Republic of Croatia, without any real legal justification, was setting free the Ustashe criminal of genocide Nada Šakić, and while it was refusing to bring to trial the Ustashe criminals Ivo Rojnica and Mirko Eterović, in the Republic of France a trial was started against the Nazi criminal Aloysius Bruner (88), so that the crimes of the Holocaust should not be forgotten. This also means that the ill intent of forgetting the crimes of genocide against the Serbs, Jews, and Romas, committed by the Croatian Ustashe, does exist.

Šakić was accused of only 2 000 victims, and sentenced for only a few hundred. Through the State attorney, Mr. Šantek, I managed to submit books - the incomplete register of the victims of the genocide committed in the Jasenovac camps, 78 163 persons (47 123 Serbs, 10 521 Jews, 5 836 Romas), the project of the Museum of the Victims of Genocide and of the Federal Institute of Statistics. I informed them about the project of Mr. Dragoje Lukić - 19 432 children, aged from one day to 14 years, who were the victims in the Jasenovac camps (I asked the academician Miloš Macura to demographically calculate how many families were destroyed through these children). These submitted documents were not even mentioned at the trial carried out at the Zagreb Court. The unofficial statement of the Croatian Parliament Commission for the Victims of the War and the postwar Periods said that only 2 238 people were killed in the Jasenovac camps, of which 293 were Jews (although the letter sent by the President of Yad Vashem to Franjo Tuđman says that in the Extermination Camp of Jasenovac 25 000 Jews were most brutally killed)!

One day before the trial at the District Court in Zagreb my book “Jasenovac - the Ustashe Camp of Death - ‘Serbian Myth?’ was presented. At the proposal of the Attorney General the author of the book “The Genesis of the Jasenovac Myth” was summoned to the Court as an expert for the main hearing against the accused Šakić, and the author of the four-volume book “The Ustashe Crimes of Genocide - trial versus Andrija Artuković in 1986” and “The Jasenovac Myth of Franjo Tuđman” was not accepted! The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which cannot be said to be pro-Serbian, accepted Bulajić not only as a witness-expert, but also his documents on the Jasenovac camps as the proofs of the roots of the present-day tragedy of all the peoples of Yugoslavia and the new genocide.

Originally the State attorney did not call for any witness from the FR of Yugoslavia or the Republic of Serbia (Bosnia). Only at the intervention of the lawyer Prodanović did he accept five witnesses, of which one was from the Republic of Serbia (Bosnia). Only three of them showed up at the Court. No Roma was called to take the stand. Some witnesses did not dare show up at the Zagreb Court.

The book by a university professor of mathematics, Josip Pečarić, “The Serbian Myth about Jasenovac” is marked by two subtitles, “The Hiding of the Truth about the Belgrade Concentration Camps - Banjica and Sajmište (the Fairground).” In view of the fact that the editors of this extremely Serbophobic pamphlet are the Croatian Information Center and Croatian Historic Institute, my comment was that it was “the Cohen-Pečarić ideology of genocide” in contemporary Croatia. Pečarić answered back with the book “The Serbian Jasenovac Myth II - about Bulajić’s ideology of the genocide of the Croatian authors”, and with public suggestions that Bulajić should be declared a war criminal!1

Not even after 55 years has it been established what the Nazi-Ustashe Independent State of Croatia really was. The Croatian (CDU) leader, Dr. Franjo Tudjman, in his book “Wastelands of the Historical Reality” claims that Jasenovac was a “labor camp.” The same view is held by Dinko Šakić, who supports Tuđman.

The Ustashe camp of death and extermination at the place of Jasenovac is only one (Camp IIIC) in the system of camps of the genocide, set up by the Croatian Ustashe with the name Jasenovac. The inner part of this system of death camps occupies between 210 and 240 km.2, from Stara Gradiška and further along the “path of death” on either side of the Sava River, the Croatian and the Bosnian (i.e. Serbian) sides, to Kostajnica, where we find the largest place of execution in the Balkans. This monster system originated in Gospić, at Jadovno (Mount Velebit) and in the Island of Pag. During the Kozara Offensive it included Prijedor, Sisak, Slavonska Požega, Đakovo, Lepoglava, Lobograd, Jastrebarsko, Gornja Rijeka, and Garešnica. The communication between the death camps of Jasenovac and the Nazi Camp at the Fairground in Belgrade, on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia, was established. Attempts are being made to declare the Fairground Camp the Serbian camp of the Jewish Holocaust. To Jasenovac were brought the victims from 3 830 places (Antun Miletić), children from 1 107 places (Dragoje Lukić), which practically includes the whole genocidal Ustashe ISC!

The State Attorney of Croatia, who had not accused Šakić of the crimes of genocide, nor brought the Jasenovac camp into the court, declared: “According to the results of the hearing of evidence, not only because of the large number of the victims, but for extremely inhuman and brutal treatments, it can be concluded that the Jasenovac Camp, especially during the years 1941-1942, when civilians were systematically liquidated in it, was a camp of death.”2

According to Yad Vashem - the “concentration and extermination camp of Jasenovac of the Croatian Ustashe” was a part of the plan of Germany to exterminate the Jewish nation (Vernichtungslager).3

The essence of the matter lies in the responsibility for the mass crimes of genocide in the system of the Ustashe camps of genocide - Jasenovac. The number of the victims stands in direct relationship to the question of responsibility, for only a few hundred of the Ustashe emigration could not have committed so many mass crimes. The Domobran (defensive) units, which Tuđman tried to present as the regular Croatian Army, took part in carrying out the genocide program against the Orthodox Serbs, Jews, and Romas. The responsibility of the Independent State of Croatia, as an executor of the crimes, is undeniable. That was also the conclusion of the State Commission of Croatia which was in charge of establishing the crimes of the occupying forces and their home allies. With the Agreement on the normalization of the relations between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Croatia (Article 5), the continuity of the former Croatian statehood was confirmed.

The German State still rejects its responsibility for the crimes of genocide in the Jasenovac camps, on the territory of the Ustashe ISC: When the survivor of the death camp of Jasenovac, Božo Švarc,4 claimed and filed for compensation on June 5 2000, he was answered that the Claims Conference was bound by the instructions of the German Republic - by the lists of the camps of Reichsfuhrer SS, published by International searching service of the International Red Cross Committee.

This is an attempt by Germany to get rid of its responsibility for the Independent State of Croatia, which in its turn does not accept any responsibility for the crimes it committed. This accounts for the incredible fact that on the list of the concentration camps we find Jajinci near Belgrade, but not Jasenovac. However, in accordance with the current international law, Germany as an occupying force bears full responsibility for the crimes committed on the territory occupied by it. The creation of the Independent State of Croatia, from the point of view of international law, is a worthless act.

Since the Ustashe camps of genocide at Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška are not on the list, the restitution right is denied.5 The survivors of the cruelest camps of genocide can be recognized by Germany only the status of so called "ghetto dwellers"! (Ghettohaft angesehen wird).6

This is the essence of the problem: while the Jewish organizations managed to get billions of dollars of compensation for the victims of the Holocaust, demanding only from Austria 18 billion dollars -- the Roma and Serbian victims did not get anything. The Jewish captives of the Jasenovac camps are paid the compensation, and the Serbian and the Roma victims of the same camps are not! Despite this, two separate legal firms in the United States (Zimmerman and Reed in Minneapolis, Mn, and Easton and Levy in Cincinnati, Ohio) have filed compensation lawsuits in the American District Court in California (George Živković, et al. v. Vatican Bank, et al.). But such a lawsuit has not been submitted by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia or the Republic of Serbia (Bosnia)!

The authorities turned a deaf ear to all the warnings addressed to the public opinion - “The question of the compensation for the victims of genocide in the Second World War,” “The German ‘ranking’ of Jasenovac by order of Hitler,” “In whose strong rooms is the gold of the Ustashe?” (Politika, August 13 and 18, and September 11 2000)! The responsibility of the Catholic clergy in Croatia is also undeniable. The same applies to the International Committee of the Red Cross, and to the United Nations. Here lies the reasons for hiding the truth about the system of the camps of genocide - Jasenovac!

On the other hand, it is necessary to establish the real resistance of the Croatian people to the Ustashe project of genocide against the Orthodox Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies (Romas). It is necessary to disclose the truth about the just people (righteous among nations) in the Independent State of Croatia who saved the Orthodox Serbs and Romas, risking their own lives. (Here we bear in mind the group of about one hundred sisters of the Red Cross of Diana Budisavljević, who saved many Serbian children from the Jasenovac camps of Stara Gradiška, Jablanac, Mlaka. Eleven of these women were killed - Sara Abigam in Jasenovac).

The Second International Conference on “Jasenovac - the system of the Croatian Ustashe camps of genocide” was held in Banja Luka, the Republic of Serbia (Bosnia), and near the worst places of execution in the Balkans - Donja Gradina, from 8 to 10 of May 2000. The Conference reviewed the Zagreb trial versus the ex-commander of the Jasenovac Camp - Dinko Šakić, and the dilemma Jasenovac - labor camp or the system of the Croatian Ustashe camps of genocide. The conclusion was reached: “Jasenovac was a system of the Croatian Ustashe camps of genocide against the Orthodox Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies (Romas), in which the liquidations of the anti-fascist Croatian and other Yugoslav nations’ fighters were carried out. The maximum possible sentence for Dinko Šakić, according to the Croatian laws, was cheered, but it was pointed out that he should have been sentenced for the crimes of genocide, not for war crimes against the civilian population. “We appeal to all the governments and organizations involved in the search for truth about the Holocaust in the world to help reopen the prosecution of Nada Šakić for the crimes committed in the Jasenovac camps, and to organize the arrest of the former Ustashe war criminals against which the charges have not been brought yet: General Hinko Pičili, Colonel Janko Džal, Chief of Staff Ivo Rojnica, Captain Mirko Eterović and others.”7

The head of the Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, Ephraim Zuroff, visited the President of the Republic of Croatia, Stipe Mesić, on January 16 2001, demanding the reopening of the case versus Nada Šakić, and bringing charges against Ivo Rojnica, the sometime Chief of Staff in Dubrovnik.8 The Federal Justice Minister, Petar Jojić, did not even answer the suggestions of the Victims of Genocide Museum. The former President of the FRY, Slobodan Milošević, did not answer the letter of the Victims of Genocide Museum, nor was it done by his Prime Minister Mirko Marjanović. President Vojislav Koštunica did not answer the appeals of the Museum, either. The new Prime Minister of Serbia, Zoran Djindjić, did not manage to send his answer, too. The four ministers of Culture of the Republic of Serbia, who were in charge of the Victims of Genocide Museum, otherwise the members of SPS, SPO, and DOS, did not even want to receive the director of the Museum. The publication of this book has been made possible due to the director of the “Stručna knjiga!”

The Prime Minister of the Republic of Srpska, Milorad Dodik, who made the holding of the Second International Conference on Jasenovac from 8 to 10 of May, signed the Contract on delivering all the documents and three dimensional objects of the Jasenovac Memorial Area to the United States Memorial Museum of the Holocaust in Washington (October 27 2000), although that same Museum had refused to put up any exhibition about Jasenovac, and also agreed to return the documents to the republic of Croatia. The “Yad Vashem” Museum of Holocaust in Jerusalem, following the policy of the Museum of Holocaust of the USA in Washington, also refused to accept the exhibition of Jasenovac, although it is registered in the holiest hall of “Memories” together with the most infamous camps of death, Auschwitz, Dachau etc. When I asked a high representative of Israel how to explain the refusal of “Yad Vashem” to show the exhibition of Jasenovac, he simply answered: “I am ashamed of it!”

In the very center of Belgrade, the exhibition halls of the The Museum of Genocide Victims at 11 Nikola Pašić Square, were broken into on May 23, 2000 by the director of the Historical Museum of Yugoslavia, Ranko Bugarčić, who threw out the Exhibition “The Concentration Camp of Jasenovac 1941-1945.” Six months later the First Municipal Court refused the formal complaint of the Museum of Genocide Victims for the violation of property, even charging the Museum to pay the expenses!

On December 12, 2000, the Zagreb magazine “Nacional” published “an exclusive interview from the Remetinec Prison,” with “the ex-commander of the Concentration Camp of Jasenovac and one of the most infamous Croatian war criminals in this century,” Dinko Šakić, who through the Internet sent a message to the Croatian people and to the whole world: “If I could return to the past and if the circumstances were the same, once more I would join the Ustashe Movement. After all, I have never given up the membership of the Ustashe Movement, my Ustashe oath to the Croatian people ties me to the end of my life. . .”

In that interview the convicted Croatian Ustashe criminal quotes the book “The Šakić Case” by Marijana Cota (Zota).9 This fact speaks for itself, for it is the only book about the trial to Dinko Šakić.

The main purpose of the book is explained by its subtitle, “Disinformation or Malintentions?,” which “proves that Šakić has been planted in Croatia as a political instrument,” and that “witnesses are, in fact, a part of the Jasenovac mythology, whose purpose is not to testify against the accused Dinko Šakić only, but against Croatia and the Croatian people.10

Tudjman’s “Jasenovac Mythology”, which “was started as early as in 1942 by Tito himself,”11 “the Serbian mythology about the alleged Croatian guilt,” “further satanization of Croatia”, has been mentioned 18 times. To the question, “What reason could Wiesenthal’s office have to direct their activities toward the political discreditation of one people and its young State?” the following answer has been given: “It is well known that the main protagonists of this ‘sensational discovery’ were Ephraim Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and Milan Bulajić, the director of the Museum of Genocide Victims.12 Quoting the data of the State Commission, which “on May 11 1945 visited Jasenovac, and in 1946 made a list of the total number of 15 792 Jasenovac victims from the territory of the People’s Republic of Croatia,” the author continues, “Bulajić’s statement that there were 19,544 children victims of Jasenovac, is really silly.”13 This “‘pearl’ of the Jasenovac mythology” was proved by Dragoje Lukić in the book “Jasenovac - the tomb of 19 432 little girls and boys” - in which all the names and the identification data are presented.14

“The myth which was created about the Ustashe Jasenovac, aimed at destroying the very thought of creating the Croatian state, as well as at the cover-up of the Communist crimes and at the extortion of the war reparations. That Serbo-Chetnik myth about Jasenovac, was mostly a psychological instrument against the Croatians.”15 Then the following conclusion is drawn: “It is more than obvious that with the disappearance of the Jasenovac myth in the former Yugoslavia, the Croats would have become independent and nobody could have stopped them in their struggle for Croatia. . . This is why the famous Šakić became interesting to the Serbo-Chetniks, Communists, and other enemies of the Croatian state only when the sovereign Croatian state was established. The aim of the Šakić scenario is, in fact, to restore the Jasenovac mythology, so that through the verdict to him their lies would be confirmed. Once again they would have the ‘grounds’ to satanize the Croatian future and the new generations of youth in Croatia.”16

“Šakić was ‘discovered’ just when Cardinal Stepinac was beatified, when the mass tombs of the Croatians, mainly civilian victims of the Serbian armed aggression of Croatia were discovered, and when the Serbian barbarians cleansed Kosovo.”17

In the book “The Šakić Case” the Bulajić-Zuroff accusations are called ‘stupid’, for “during the investigation procedure nobody of 26 witnesses could bring Nada Šakić together with any accusation of Zuroff and Bulajić” about the alleged crimes.” In the Decision on carrying out the investigation against Nada Šakić, issued by the examining magistrate of Zagreb on July 28, 1998, she was suspected, as a member of “The First Ustashe Defense Battalion”, of physical violence and of torturing the women prisoners in the Camp of Stara Gradiška from October 19, 1942 to the beginning of 1945. She would shut the women prisoners in cells without food or water, and torture them through the starvation. Together with other Ustashe jailers she separated the weaker and older women prisoners, and their children for the execution, which was carried out in the so-called death transports.

The Ustashe führer's decision on the decoration of the “Ustashe officer of Stara Gradiška, Nada,” of March 27 1944 has been preserved. She was decorated with the “iron medal of King Zvonimir’s Crown on the war ribbon .”18 On July 30 1998 the Government of the Republic of Croatia demanded from the Government of Argentina the extradition of Nada (Esperanza) Tambić de Bilanović Šakić “for there is a well-founded suspicion that she committed crimes against humanity and international law - war crimes against the civilian population.” The fact remains that no witness, either from the FR Yugoslavia (9 verified testimonies were delivered diplomatically) or the Republic of Serbia (Bosnia) (12 verified testimonies), was taken into consideration. Consequently, it is not true that none of the interrogated witnesses connected Nada Šakić with the Ustashe crimes. Even at the trial of Dinko Šakić at the District Court in Zagreb several witnesses bore testimonies about the responsibility of Nada Šakić. After the meeting between the President of the Republic of Croatia, Franjo Tuđman, and the President of the Jewish B'nai B'rith organization, Tommy Baer, the latter said: "Tuđman told me that Nada Šakić should not have been released."19

Without commenting on the "disinformation and ill will " in " The Šakić Case", we have to point to some fallibility's: The director of the State Archives of Croatia, Josip Kolanović, did not send a request to the director of the Museum of Genocide Victims, Milan Bulajić, "who did not even deign to answer the official request of the State Archives of Croatia."20 It is not true that "the major part of the material stuff of Jasenovac, taken away from Croatia, ended in the Museum of Genocide Victims", nor is it true that Milan Bulajić "did not deliver any post-war material stuff."21 To the questions, "Why does Mr. Bulajić not present his 'everyday data' at the trial versus Dinko Šakić, for they would certainly be of great help,"22 and "why did Mr. Baer not make Mr. Bulajić deliver the 'list' at least to the Court, if not to the State Archives of Croatia,"23 the answer is as follows: Milan Bulajić, in the capacity of an officially accredited observer at the trial against Dinko Šakić during the main hearing on May 11, 1999 (while Miloš Despot was testifying), with the permission of the Court Vice President, Damir Kos, delivered to the State Prosecutor, Radovan Šantek, the results of the research of the Museum of Genocide Victims and of the Federal Institute of Statistics, "The Jasenovac Victims," with the list of 78 163 victims. A separate excerpt with the names of 4,892 victims from the April-November 1944 period had been delivered to the investigating magistrate of the District Court of Zagreb through the Justice Ministries of FR Yugoslavia and Croatia.

Croatian public opinion and Marijana Cota should ask the Croatian authorities why this was not presented to them. Instead of checking her accusations, Marijana Cota writes about "Bulajić's desperate fear of the truth about Jasenovac," about "further spreading of the Serbo-Communist thesis on the genocidal character of the Croatians and on the Ustashe crimes."24 In order to make "these gentlemen" appear conspiratorial, Cota asserts that "on a few occasions Zuroff visited Bulajić in Belgrade, returning with the 'necessary documents' against Dinko and Nada Šakić."25 Unfortunately, the truth is that the director of the Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, Ephraim Zuroff, has never visited Belgrade, although he has been to Croatia several times, his last visit to Zagreb taking place in January of 2001.

In one chapter of the book, which is of utmost importance, the author makes an attempt to prove that Jasenovac was at first only a "labor camp," and then a "labor and detention camp of the ISC," that "in the Independent State of Croatia happened nothing what would be contrary to the accepted and familiar norms." The author further states that the convicts of Stara Gradiška were engaged in the public works at the irrigation system of Lonjsko polje. "As early as in 1941 the Chetnik and Bolshevik rebellion against the State authorities and order took place." Marijana Cota procedes in the same fashion, asserting that, "The detention and labor camp of Jasenovac was formed four months after the beginning of the Chetnik genocide against the Croatian population in the ISC," which is absolutely false, for there were earlier death camps in Gospić, Jadovno, and the Island of Pag. "The laws in the ISC were never passed to eliminate the national minorities, but to ensure peace which was broken by the Communist and Chetnik outlaws whose only aim was to destroy the Croats and the Independent State of Croatia. Namely, the existence of the Croatian State was unacceptable for the Serbs."26 "It must be said that Croatia had signed the obligation on introducing the racial laws, imposed on it by Germany, but these laws were never completely applied in practice."27 "We must bear in mind that the ISC authorities were equally strict to all the law violators, on rare occasions condemning them to death or sending them to the Detention and labor camp of Jasenovac."28 Cota follows Tuđman's thesis that in the Camp "the inner self-management was in the hands of the convicts. . . The Labor Management was interested in the normal functioning of all plants, in the smooth running of the production, and this could be achieved only if the workers were well fed and fit. It is why those who did hard jobs were given additional meals, the food being brought from the nearby farms on which the Economy department prisoners worked. . . In the ISC there never existed any 'death camp' as it is interpreted within the Yugoslav myth on the 'genocidal character' of the Croatians. Jasenovac was a labor and detention camp, in which the production was going on, both for the civilian and army necessities of the ISC. It is the truth with which Communists and anti-Fascists cannot reconcile!!"29

Why is all this happening?!?! There must be an answer. For the truth about Jasenovac should be above all the ideological approaches, above the political programs of parties, since it is the question of humanity and of international law!

Everybody swears to speak the truth, and above all those who exclaim in the Holy Writ, “The truth shall make you free!” But the truth cannot be reached. The First International Conference on Jasenovac, held in New York from October 29 to 31, 1997 suggested the formation of a three member Yugoslav-Croatian Parity Commission for establishing the truth about Jasenovac (Eng. Vladimir Žervajić, Dr. Milan Bulajić, and Conference Coordinator Dr. Bernard Klein). This suggestion was met in Croatia with indignation as just one more “Serbian fraud.” At the Second International Conference on Jasenovac, held in Banja Luka on May 10, 2000, an International Expert Commission on Jasenovac was formed. It is the right way of establishing the truth and to the advantage of not only Serbs, Jews, and Romas, but of the Croatian and Muslim peoples too, for understanding the roots of the current tragedy of all the Yugoslav peoples is the only way to help bring about the normalization of their relations in the Balkans.

Footnotes:

1) The author is the director of the Museum of Genocide Victims in Belgrade; he was an officially accredited observer of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and of the Republic of Serbia (Bosnia), at the trial against Ustashe Dinko Šakić conducted at the District Court of Zagreb from March 4 to October 4 1999.

2) Zlatko Crnčec, “Interview: Zvonimir Šeparović, the Foreign Minister in the War Government, about the crimes and responsibilities of Croatia and about the Hague Tribunal”, Vjesnik, January 29 2001, p. 7.

3) It has been stated that after the “Flash” and “Storm” the police brought 3,978 criminal charges, and that 1,949 sentences were pronounced, but none for the crime of genocide. Sergej Abramov, “Intervju: Slavko Zadnik, v.d. državnog odvjetnika, uoči dolaska Carle del Ponte: U ‘Bljesku’ i ‘Oluji’ nije bilo ratnih zločina”, Novi list, January 11 2001, p. 7.

4) Viktor Ivančić, “Točka na U - Slučaj Šakić: Autonomija jednog skandala”, Feral Tribune, Split, 1998 p. 164.

5) Op. cit. pp. 32-33.

6) Josip Jurčević, “Nastanak jasenovačkog mita - Problem proučavanja žrtava Drugog svjetskog rata na području Hrvatske”, Sveučilište u Zagrebu, Hrvatski studij - Studia Croatica, Biblioteka “Povijest”, sv. 1, Zagreb 1998, p. 202.

7) Hrvatsko slovo, Zagreb, July 21 2000, “The academician Pečarić demands that Milan Bulajić be proclaimed a war criminal”.

8) The District Court of Zagreb, the Minutes of September 22 1999, from the continuation of the main hearing, No. V K-242/98-230.

9) Yad Vashem, a letter to dr Franjo Tuđman, President of the Republic of Croatia, May 26 1996, signed by Avner Shalev and dr Joseph Burg.

10) Božo Švarc, 120 Vojvode Stepe, 11040 Beograd.

11) Internationaler Suchdienst (International Tracing Service) - Verzeichnis der Haftstatten unter dem Reichsfuhrer - SS (1933-1945), p. 784.

12) Central and Eastern European Fund for Holocaust Survivors (CEEF) , Conference on Jewish Material Claims agaianst Germany, Inc., Sophienstr 26-D-60847 Frankfurt/Main - Lehmann’s letter of July 12 and 20 2000.

13) The Conference Declaration, points 1 and 6.

14) Jutarnji list (The Morning Papers), Zagreb, January 19 2001.

15) Marijana Cota, “The Šakić Case - Disinformation and Ill Will”, The Home Club of the Bosnian Posavina, Zagreb 1999, p. 136.

16) Prof. Dr.. Stjepan Blažinović, “Preface”, op. cit. p. 5.

17) Marijana Cota, op. cit. p. 115

18) Milan Bulajić is mentioned 44 times in the book “The Šakić Case”, Ephraim Zuroff and Bulajić together are mentioned 19 times, Zuroff alone 3 times; the witnesses from Yugoslavia, Mihailo Marić 9 times, Josip Erlich 9 times, and Miloš Despot 4 times. Marijana Cota draws a conclusion: “Along with these books especially interesting is the book of the greatest genocidologist and mythologist of the Jasenovac history, Milan Bulajić, entitled “The Jasenovac Myth of Franjo Tuđman . Genocide against the Serbs, Jews, and Romas”, which so absurd and full of manipulations with the historical data, that Josip Pečarić in his analysis of Bulajić’s ‘pearls’ has managed to write the whole book, The Serbian Myth about Jasenovac”(op. cit. p. 124). Cf. Milan Bulajić - “’The Serbian Myth about Jasenovac’ by Prof. Josip Pečarić and ‘The Hiding of the Truth about the Belgrade Concentration Camps’ - the Cohen-Pečarić Ideology of Genocide” in “Jasenovac - the Ustashe Death Camp, the Serbian Myth?”, Belgrade, 1999, pp. 753-824.

19) Op. cit. pp. 87-88.

20) Dragoje Lukić, “They Were only Children - Jasenovac, the Tomb of 19 432 Little girls and Boys”, GrafoMark, Laktaši, the Museum of Gernocide Victims, 2000, I - 240, II - 296 pages.

21) Op. cit. p. 126.

22) Op. cit. p. 18.

23) Op. cit. p. 14.

24) Oč. 896-Zv. . . Kol-1944, signed by the Ustashe leader and the Military Minister.

25) Jutarnji list (The Morning Papers), Zagreb, March 6 1999, on the front page.

26) “The Šakić Case”, op. cit. p. 116.

27) Op. cit. p. 31

28) Op. cit. p. 88.

29) Op. cit. p. 119.

30) Op. cit. p. 119.

31) Op. cit. p. 65.

32) Op. cit. p. 105.

33) Op. cit. p. 107.

34) Op. cit. p. 111.

35) “Jasenovac - Labor and Detention Camp during the ISC - What was Jasenovac in the ISC? Op. cit. pp. 99-103.

In Belgrade, February 2001, (c) Milan Bulajić.

(English translation edited in New York by Barry Lituchy)