Looking at the facts in Croatia during 1935-1940 and 1941-1945, various ethnic groups such as Serbs, Croats, Jews, Muslims and Roma lived in peaceful harmony. Then a new regime emerged allowing a dormant but subdued mistrust between ethnic groups to erupt suddenly in a small country throughout its small communities. We see now familiar, if not identical, signs and behaviors in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa with terrorism and anti-Semitism on a rapid rise.

The Jasenovac guards were recruited from young peasants, both Muslims and Christian Croats, to do the “policing” of the camps, where they were converted from farm workers to guards and ultimately murderers encouraged by the supervision of the Ustase. Those were the facts then, now serving as a warning for present events. Today young men and women from comfortable homes and stable European countries are embarking in increasing numbers to create the new Jasenovac genocide via Syria and Iraq in Europe by using the internet for information and recruiting by ISIS personnel.

What we are trying to do is stop this reoccurring madness before it is too late, by all means, for the sake of us all.

Today’s Impact

Today Jasenovac is located in the newly created state of Croatia, whose government has vandalized the site and refused to acknowledge the horrors that took place there. The failure of some leading Western academic and humanitarian institutions to fully recognize the historic dimensions of Jasenovac is a shameful omission that will tarnish their reputations forever. But the enormity of the crimes committed at Jasenovac, the fact that the majority of the victims were Serbs who were killed simply for being Serbs, and the fact that the perpetrators included the Catholic Church, have made it an extraordinary and explosive issue that Holocaust deniers and historical revisionists cannot successfully manipulate for long should we focus all of our energies on bringing the truth to light. In doing so, we shall also unravel the whole ball of lies told about the history of Yugoslavia. From the Brochure of the Jasenovac Research Institute, written by JRI Research Director Barry Lituchy, (c) 2000.

From August 1941 to April 1945, hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, and Romas, as well as anti-fascists of many nationalities, were murdered at the death camp known as Jasenovac. Estimates of the total numbers of men, women and children killed there range from 300,000 to 700,000. And yet, despite the scale of the crimes committed there, most of the world has never heard of Jasenovac.

Following the Nazi invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the “Independent State of Croatia” was established as a pro-Nazi government. It was dedicated to a clerical-fascist ideology influenced both by Nazism and extreme Roman Catholic fanaticism. On coming to power, the Ustashe Party dictatorship in Croatia quickly commenced on a systematic policy of racial extermination of all Serbs, Jews and Romas living within its borders.

Jasenovac was actually a complex of five major and three smaller “special” camps spread out over 240 square kilometers (150 square miles) in south-central Croatia. Along with hundreds of thousands of Serbs, some 25,000 Jews and at least 30,000 Romas were murdered in these camps. The names of some 20,000 murdered children of all three nationalities collected thus far by historians provides only a hint of the scale of the crimes committed there against children.

Jasenovac is also known for having been one of the most barbaric death camps of the Holocaust for the extreme cruelty in which its victims were tortured and murdered. Jasenovac was not the only death camp in fascist occupied Yugoslavia, but it was by far the largest and the one in which a majority of the some one-million victims of racial genocide in World War II fascist Croatia were exterminated.

But its significance also lies in the way in which the crimes have been concealed. Historians have called Jasenovac “the dark secret of the Holocaust” and “the suppressed chapter of Holocaust history.” Public recognition of the tragedy that occurred there has been suppressed either partially or completely by governments and institutions for a variety of reasons.

Today Jasenovac is located in the newly created state of Croatia, whose government has vandalized the site and refused to acknowledge the horrors that took place there. The failure of some leading Western academic and humanitarian institutions to fully recognize the historic dimensions of Jasenovac is a shameful omission that will tarnish their reputations forever.

But the enormity of the crimes committed at Jasenovac, the fact that the majority of the victims were Serbs who were killed simply for being Serbs, and the fact that the perpetrators included the Catholic Church, have made it an extraordinary and explosive issue that Holocaust deniers and historical revisionists cannot successfully manipulate for long should we focus all of our energies on bringing the truth to light. In doing so, we shall also unravel the whole ball of lies told about the history of Yugoslavia. From the Brochure of the Jasenovac Research Institute, written by JRI Research Director Barry Lituchy, (c) 2000.