Ever since May, when I wrote the text “Jasenovac yesterday, today, tomorrow…”, I feel that I owe an explanation to readers outside of Serbia about what Jasenovac is. The veteran investigative journalist, Danko Vasović, did it better than I could ever do…

Jasenovac was a system of extermination camps in the independent Croatian state, established under the auspices of Nazi Germany in the period 1941–1945. It was the third largest camp in the territories controlled by Hitler’s Reich, but the worst in terms of monstrous ways of killing Serbs, Jews and Gypsies. According to the data presented at the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1946, over 700,000 people were killed in the camp in the most brutal way. Later investigations of the mounds, until the collapse of Tito’s Yugoslavia, increased the number to 840,000 victims, which is confirmed by the distinguished Israeli historian Gideon Greif. During the Titoist regime, the mention of the word ‘genocide’ was avoided because of the so-called the policy of ‘brotherhood and unity’, and since the re-establishment of Croatian independence, the process of denying the Ustasha genocide and shameless revision of history begins.

Danko Vasović made a documentary about this horrific genocide, which the treacherous government in Serbia successfully concealed, avoiding any discussion in public and refusing to establish the Museum of Genocide in Jasenovac. The film was shown publicly for the first time on September 11th and 12th on ‘Russia Today’, and in it the episode of genocide against the Serbian people in the area of the Kozara mountain was highlighted. From there, 68,000 people were taken to the death camp, including 22,000 children listed by name. A key role in the extermination of the Serbian people of Kozara was played by Kurt Waldheim – the SS officer who was in charge of that operation – the same one who later became the Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs in Austria (1968–1970), United Nations Secretary General for two terms (1972–1981), and the President of Austria (1986–1992)!

But that is not the only sensation in the documentary film ‘Jasenovac’. The Nazi independent Croatian state was the only one in the history of the world to have a concentration camp for children… Vasović documents the most terrible episodes using German military archives and journalistic reports of German and Italian citizens. In terms of cruelty and sadistic treatment of their victims, only the Ukrainian nationalists of Stepan Bandera came close to Ante Pavelić’s Croatian Ustasha.

Due to copyright restrictions, this video so far can only be viewed on RT’s live feed. Time of broadcast will be available on RT’s schedule page, but here you can see an interview with the author, Danko Vasović:

Until Danko’s film is more widely available online, I leave you the documentary film on the same topic “Jasenovac – the cruelest death camp of all times” made in 1983 for Yugoslav Television by screenwriter Duško Lončar and director Lordan Zafranović. WARNING: The film is full of very disturbing scenes:

Hiding this horrific genocide caused the absence of a sense of responsibility for the crime in the Croatian political and intellectual ‘elite’. While Germany was fighting the ghosts of its past, the aforementioned groups in ‘European’ Croatia are proud of their Nazism today. Because of this mindset, it is possible that the Croatian historian Slavica Stojan, writer and member of the Presidency of Matica Hrvatska, without shame and any consequences compare the Serbs with bugs that need to be eradicated: “They (Serbs) are a type of aggressive-invasive mob that simply does not give up. Just like these worse bugs that crawl into the house. That's why we have to act.”

Readers from the Serbian language area can find out more details about the history of hiding this genocide from an interview with a living witness – Danko Vasović:

The attitude towards the Ustasha victims in Jasenovac shows better than anything else the treacherous nature of the regime in Belgrade. And better than anything else, it heralds a new evil that is being prepared for the Serbs…