Thank you giving me the opportunity to give this short speech on the Holocaust in Croatia and the rescuing of the Holocaust survivors by the Allied forces including the Americans. As I get older and there are fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors remaining I become aware that I am not only a survivor but a witness to the Holocaust.
One broad interpretation of the Holocaust refers to the planned murder of Jews and other groups targeted by the Nazi Regime including Roma and Serbs.
The atrocities were committed by Nazis both German and local Croat Nazis. The basic activities by Nazis was to create places of imprisonment, forced labor and executions primarily of the Serbs, Non Catholic Christians and Jews with the goal of creating the ethnically clean territory to be completed for the Independent State of Croatia during the period 1941 to 45.
The recent events in Dayton, Ohio and El Paso, Texas to me seem to indicate that history starts to repeat itself in America.
We have to do something about it and quick.
Myself, my mother and sister spent two years in the Italian run Concentration Camp on the Island of Rabb in the Adriatic where the prisoners received minimum food, shelter and sanitary facilities which were hardly adequate.
The beginning of the Holocaust for my family was the imprisonment of my father in 1941 at the famous Jasenovac Concentration Camp in Bosnia with the most horrific conditions. Worse still the terror and torcher was a daily event. Unfortunately my father was one of the first victims of the Holocaust horror. The Holocaust in Croatia and other countries of Europe started with only a few Nazis with evil intentions and escalated to incredible horrors, loss of life and loss of a generation of which I am still a survivor.
Without the help of the Americans and the Allies who helped us with Care Packages during the incarceration.
Then in 1943 the invasion of Italy that liberated us from the camp on the Island of Rabb followed by the victory in Europe in 1945 that opened the gates of freedom and started a new life for those who survived, including me.
Looking at the lessons of the Holocaust and the events around the world at the present time the most we have to be aware of is the behavior of small supremist groups that follow the early Holocaust scenario with the potential to explode into a 21st Century Holocaust.