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Summary: Jasenovac: The Largest Concentration Camp in Croatia and Bosnia
Comment: Jasenovac was the largest concentration camp and death camp in Croatia and Bosnia, in the Balkans, during World War II and the Holocaust. The camp was run by Croatian ultra-nationalists known as the Ustashi, made up of Croat Roman Catholics and Bosnian Muslims. The extermination camp was set up by the NDH, the Independent State of Croatia, which included Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. The NDH was a Nazi and fascist regime that was allied to Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini established the NDH, but the Croatian and Bosnian Muslim leaders of the NDH were Nazis and fascists themselves who were allies of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. Indeed, in the Ustasha NDH the Croatians and Bosnian Muslims, unlike other New Order states, ran the death and concentration camps themselves, not the Germans or Italians. The leader of the NDH Ustasha state was Croatian Poglavnik Ante Pavelic, who was born in Bosnia-Hercegovina, and the Vice-President was Dzafer-beg Kulenovic, a Bosnian Muslim. In the NDH, the Croatian Roman Catholic and Bosnian Muslim regime committed genocide against the Serbian Orthodox, Jewish, and Roma populations.
The historiography on Jasenovac is consistent and unanimous in acknowledging that Croats and Bosnian Muslims committed genocide against Serbs, Jews, and Roma. The only issue of dispute is the exact number of victims. Ustasha apologists and Croatian nationalists minimize the numbers while Serbian, Jewish, and Roma victims cite the maximalist figures. No one knows the exact numbers. But everyone knows that a genocide was committed against Serbs, Jews, and Roma. The genocide committed at Jasenovac was one of the most horrific and horrendous crimes of inhumanity during World War II and the Holocaust.
The Croatian regime initiated and instituted a systematic and planned policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing (ciscenje) against the over 3 million Orthodox Serbs living in the NDH. The policy of genocide came to be known as ethnic cleansing or cleansing, ciscenje. On June 23, 1941, this policy of ethnic cleansing was officially announced by Victor Gutic, Ustasha Governor of Western Bosnia, which was a majority Serbian region. In a speech at Banja Luka, Gutic announced that Ante Pavelic intended to make Banja Luka the capital of the NDH but before the city had to be "thoroughly cleansed of Serbian dirt." He announced that he was going to use an "iron broom" to sweep until Banja Luka and Bosanska Krajina (Western Bosnia) "had been cleansed of the last Serb."
Ante Pavelic (1889-1959), the President or Poglavnik of the NDH, enunciated the policy of ethnic cleansing when he gave a speech on August 14, 1941, in Vukovar in Srem:
"This is now the Ustashi and Independent State of Croatia, it must be cleansed of Serbs and Jews. There is no room for any of them here. Not a stone upon a stone will remain of what once belonged to them."
The Roman Catholic Croats, allied with and supported by the Vatican, established an alliance with Bosnian Muslims in the NDH to ethnically cleanse and to exterminate the Orthodox Serbs. The Vatican sent an emissary or Papal Legate to the NDH government, G. Ramiro Marcone, and the Pope, Pius XII, met with Pavelic and Ustasha leaders. Croatian Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac of Zagreb supported the genocidal Ustasha regime and its policies. From April to November, 1941, the Vice-President of the NDH was Bosnian Muslim Osman Kulenovic from Bihac. From November, 1941 to April, 1945, the Vice-President of the NDH was his brother Dzafer Kulenovic. Dzafer Kulenovic ordered that the Serbian Orthodox Church at Brcko be destroyed, the cemetery dug up, and the bones of the Orthodox Serbs be dispersed. In the Croat-Muslim NDH, not even the dead were spared.
The exact number of persons who were murdered in Jasenovac and the other concentration camps is not known.
In Bespuca povjesne zbiljnosti (The Wasteland of Historical Reality), Croatian ultra-nationalist and Jasenovac genocide denier Franjo Tudjman stated that "about 60,000 perished in all the camps and prisons." According to Tudjman, 30,000 victims died at the Jasenovac camp. In 1952, the Union of Jewish Councils of Yugoslavia, relying on the reports of Jewish survivors, concluded that, in the Jasenovac camp alone, "500,000-600,000 people were slaughtered, among whom were about 20,000 Jews." Menachem Shelah in The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (1990) gives the following figure: "Some six hundred thousand people were murdered at Jasenovac, mostly Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and opponents of the Ustasha regime. The number of Jewish victims was between twenty thousand and twenty-five thousand." The Ustasha commander at Jasenovac, Frater Miroslav Filipovic-Majstorovic, during questioning after the war, stated that "according to reports of Maks Luburic... about a half million Serbs were killed in the NDH during these four years." On October 20, 1994, Brussels Archbishop Cardinal Godfried Danneels in an interview to Vatican Radio, stated that "even today it is impossible to say how many Serbs were assassinated in Croatian concentration camps in World War II, but for certain the number must have been over half a million persons."
Franjo Tudjman, a Holocaust denier and revisionist, has also stated that 900,000 Jews perished in the Holocaust, and that the figure of 6 million is inaccurate and exaggerated. He further accused Israel of perpetrating a genocide against the Palestinians, and called the Jews of Israel "Judeo-Nazis". Although a Holocaust denier and a rabid anti-Semite, Tudjman was invited to the opening of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC in 1993 by the US State Department. Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel would neither meet with him nor speak with him: "I never spoke to Franjo Tudjman. In fact, I refused to meet him."
The total numbers of those murdered at the Jasenovac camp are not known and will continue to be distorted, manipulated, and denied. But what is not in dispute is the fact that a genocide was committed at Jasenovac, one of the most horrific acts of genocide in the 20th century.
The historical and scholarly historical accounts of the genocide committed at Jasenovac have been censored, suppressed, and covered-up in the U.S. and the West. There are two mainstream accounts of the genocide committed at Jasenovac: Genocide in Satellite Croatia, 1941-1945: A Record of Racial and religious Persecutions and Massacres by French historian Edmond Paris, published in 1961 by the American Institute for Balkan Affairs, and Vladimir Dedijer's The Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican: The Croatian Massacre of the Serbs during World War II, published in 1992 by Prometheus Books in New York. Dedijer was a Communist Partisan who edited the newspaper of the Yugoslav Communist Party, Borba, War. He also wrote Tito Speaks, War Diaries, The Road to Sarajevo, and Tito. He was Josip Broz Tito's confidant and wrote his biography. These two accounts are, however, marginal and fringe accounts, translations of French and Yugoslav historians.
The historical accounts of the Jasenovac camp and the genocide committed there remain largely untold, suppressed, covered-up, and censored. This is why Jasenovac and the Holocaust in Yugoslavia is an essential and important collection and contribution in our understanding and knowledge of what happened at Jasenovac and why. This is a vital and indispensable starting point for anyone who seeks to comprehend and understand the Yugoslav conflicts and civil wars of the 1990s.
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Summary: A credible testimony about WWII crimes commited in Jasenovac konzlager
Comment: First-hand testimony of survivors and eyewitnesses is compiled in this shocking and graphic account of the crimes committed during World War II at the largest death camp in Yugoslavia.
Vladimir Dedijer, a close associate of Tito, has collected irrefutable documentary and photographic evidence, attesting to thousands of atrocities and the complicity of the Catholic Church in these crimes.
Needless to say that Dedijer was a visiting professor on many world-renown universities (Yale, Harward, Sorbonne, for example) and the Chairman and President of Sessions at the 1966 Russell Tribunal.
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Summary: The hidden genocide
Comment: This book is about a secret episode of the 20th century history.
The genocide of serbian populace in the Independant State of Croatia was part of the hidden agenda of the Vatican. The leaders of the horrendous massacres were often members of the croatian clergy and fascit-clericals leaders. very documented with shocking pictures.
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Summary: Never to be forgotten
Comment: I never wrote an review before but i couldnt stop myself now.After reading some of the 1 star reviews i was bursting with anger! It certanly seems that Croatians (only they could rate this brilliant work with 1 star) are trying to discredit this book and reduce its star rating, thinking that in that way somehow they would be able to hide their dark and evil past from a public spotlight. It is so clear and obvious that most of them have never even read this book, they have nothing to say about substance, but they are rather inventing fairytales about author, reducing numbers of victims by quoting only "Croatian sources" or blaming "everything on Serbian propaganda". So, as a Spanish Catholic, who has served 3 years in UN peacekeeping force in Balkans i will tell you that this book is extraordinary! Author is not a "Serb communist" but rather a Yugoslav Jew, greatly respected all over the world.He was a visiting professor of history at Cornell, Brandeis, Harvard, and the University of Michigan. He was also a member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and president of the Bertrand Russell Tribunal of Human Rights in the Federal German Republic.
Then, this book was not writen recently, but rather couple of decades before Civil War in Yugoslavia broke out, so it has NOTHING TO DO with any kind of propaganda. And numbers are, as somebody already said here, much more reduced than increased. This is a quote from Simon Wiesenthal site:
" JASENOVAC: The largest concentration and extermination camp in Croatia. It was set up in 1941 and functioned until 1945.Some 600,000 people were murdered there. In 1945, the remaining prisoners were killed and the camp was blown up to hide the evidence of mass murder."(http://motlc.learningcenter.wiesenthal.org/pages/t034/t03448.html)
And if you can not belive that Vatican is not so much involved in Croatian affairs even today -please check this: http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/09/20/wponte20.xml (Vatican accused of shielding Croatian war criminal)
So once you get this book and start reading you will see how indisputable it is. And you will change your view and opinion on present situation in Balkans, as we all did after reading it.This book is truly a very rare and precious work on holocaust in Balkans. And if you want more- check some of the list on amazon that follow this book.
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Summary: Don't waste your time with it:
Comment: Written by a Serbian with strong links to Communism.
Maybe half these English people that read this book actually have ties to Communism themselves. Figures are unrealistic by Dedijer, even this is supported by the Isreali/Croatian Jewish communities.
Interesting how there's no mention that half of the Croatian people (if not more) were actual Domobrani (National Guard) that opposed Nazi'ism and the Ustasha. And then there's the Partizans.
No need for an apology: Isn't the world still awaiting an apology by the English for slaughtering 100's of thousands Croats,Slovens,Hungarians, and Gypsies in Bleiburg? And.... then there's the Serbs. Possibly that's why the U.S woke up to them, and gave them a wake up call. Here, Here for the French and Scots!
There's many other better invested books with realistic truth and figures written by many others, including Croats and Serbs alike.
Invest in those before reading Dedijers book and placing your last thoughts and judgement on it. Serbian mastery in Propaganda is still strong and very alive.
You bought this book (Waste of money in my opinion), though you'd be stupid and naive to leave your open mindness and opinions on one book alone.
Ex-Montenegran (Still part of Serbia, though not for long).
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