The anniversaries of important events from the Second World War on the territory of Yugoslavia are often the cause of polemics due to their different views and interpretations. Often, the use of incorrect information and/or semi-information, which is skilfully manipulated, is used to make sense of "undesirable" facts, and through them the wider context of events, in order to achieve political goals through the creation of new narratives. The system of the Jasenovac concentration camp and the issue of the number of its victims occupy a special place in those polemics.
The Jasenovac camp system, which existed from the end of August 1941 until the end of April 1945, was the largest concentration camp in southeastern Europe and certainly the largest concentration camp that was not organized or managed by Nazi Germany. Formed after the closure of the Gospić group of camps, the Jasenovac camp was supposed to take over its role as an extermination camp, but it was also given the role of a labor camp. A location was chosen that was next to railway communications, in a place next to a river, near defended bridges, a terrain that was swampy, therefore easy to defend and, importantly, a place in an area where two-fifths of the Serbian national corps in the NDH lived . The scope of the crimes committed in the Jasenovac camp clearly determined it as a death camp and placed it at the very top of the list of concentration camps in terms of the number of victims.
Before entering into any discussion about the number of victims in NDH and Jasenovac, it should always be kept in mind that behind those numbers there are people, victims with completed, interrupted or unfinished biographies, that any number, no matter how big it is, should to be seen as a sum of individual extinguished lives, so one, plus one, then another, then another again...
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The suffering of the civilian population in concentration camps during the Second World War represented a significant segment of the total human losses suffered by Yugoslavia, and as such it was the subject of research in Yugoslav historiography, as well as in the historiography of the successor states. However, the quantity of published works was not followed by the same quality, and all of them (works) influenced the creation of an image of the camp that often did not correspond to the real picture. Estimates of total losses, and estimates of the number of victims in Jasenovac varied, changed, and until now the question has remained open.
IMG-3184Reception and robbery of prisoners / Photo: Wikipedia.org
Determining the number of victims of Yugoslavia in the war was negatively influenced by the long-standing ideological idea about the Second World War. Socialist Yugoslavia never made a complete list of those who died during the Second World War, and that is why there is open space for various guesses, impersonation of victims, manipulations, both scientific and political, as well as for the creation of new myths.
In 1964, the state tried to determine the victims on the territory of Yugoslavia with the census "Victims of the War 1941-1945". It was determined that 597.323 people died, of which 134.464 died in internment (22,51%). The census commission determined that a number of omissions were made during the preparation of the census, and concluded that it included 56-59% of the persons that should have been included. Since the list of victims was primarily created for the purpose of collecting war damages from Germany, and the number of victims in the war was far from the expected and until then valid number of 1.706.000, it was decided to ban its use and all material was handed over to the Archives of Yugoslavia at keeping The ban lasted almost thirty years, until 1992. The loss of time reduced the possibility of determining the true number of victims due to the biological disappearance of witnesses, and thus the initiated revision of the census was considerably more difficult.
Using a variety of archival materials, literature and survey forms, the Federal Bureau of Statistics, with the assistance of the Museum of Genocide Victims, began work on revising the census in 1995 by identifying new persons and checking the existing data in the census by crossing it with data from other sources. The idea is that the revision includes all persons who lived on the territory of Yugoslavia, regardless of national, religious, ethnic, political and military affiliation, which would correct the basic methodological error of not listing "collaborators".
Since 2002, the Museum of Genocide Victims has been auditing the census independently, as a permanent project. Yes, the number of about 660.000 victims from the territory of Yugoslavia has now been determined by name, of which about 89.000 lost their lives in Jasenovac.
Having been involved in this business for a long time, I am of the opinion that we will probably never reach the final number of victims in Yugoslavia, and therefore not even the number of victims in Jasenovac, but we can reliably determine the lowest number of victims, so that it will be possible to say "not less than ...". This will at least partially prevent manipulation of the number of victims. It is even more important that we pay respect to the victims by rescuing them from oblivion, thus making the Museum a guardian of their memory.
A quarter of all civilians
Apart from the main question of how many died in Jasenovac, an important question for researchers is what is the internal structure of the victims in the camp, and what is their relationship with the total civilian losses from the territory of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH).
Although it is incomplete, the list of "Victims of the War 1941-1945" is very indicative because it opens up the possibility of analysis on a very representative sample. The previous experience with the presentation of the achieved results of the census revision shows that they were mostly mistakenly (or perhaps intentionally) considered final, and were presented as such in the historiographical literature and media. An estimate of the number of victims was made, and all analyzes were performed on the basis of the calculated number of victims and presented in comparison with the data from the population census.
IMG-3183Ustashas and Volksdeutschers at one of the gates of the Jasenovac camp in 1942 / Photo: Museum of Genocide Victims
According to the 1931 census, 5.559.420 inhabitants lived on the territory of the NDH, which was 39,90% of the population of Yugoslavia. The national structure of the population was extremely heterogeneous: three-fifths were members of the state-forming nations of Croats and Muslims (who were treated as Croats of the Islamic religion), while one-third were represented by Serbs, with minimal participation of other nationalities, among which the participation of Jews and Roma was significant.
All the antagonisms, all the opposites and divisions, of a national, political, ideological, religious, linguistic, cultural, economic nature, which existed in the pre-war society in this territory, gained extreme values during the war and to a certain extent participated in the creation of conditions for the mass suffering of the population. . Among the NDH civilians killed were 66,48% Serbs, 10,20% Croats, 7,77% Muslims, 5,83% Jews, 4,86% Roma, 1,26% of other nationalities and 3,60% of unspecified nationalities.
During the 44 months of existence of the Jasenovac camp system, between 122.279 and 130.120 people were killed, according to estimates, so that a quarter of all the civilians of the then Independent State of Croatia lost their lives there. The purpose of forming a concentration camp as an institutional form for the elimination of certain peoples from the NDH population, in part or in whole, as well as for dealing with political and ideological opponents of the NDH, determined the national structure of the losses in Jasenovac. Three-fifths (62,98%) of the total losses in Jasenovac were represented by Serbs, one-sixth (15,47%) by Roma, one-seventh (14,66%) by Jews, one-twentieth (4,91%) by Croats, with minimal participation in the losses ( 1,11% or 0,87%) Muslims and members of other and unknown nationalities.
The desire to destroy a people
The clearly expressed desire of the Ustasha to destroy certain peoples already at the beginning of the war is visible in the dynamics of suffering in Jasenovac inmates of different nationalities. Thus, in the first two years of the war, i.e. during the first 16 months of the camp's existence, almost all the Roma and Jews (92,88% and 88,23%), as well as four fifths of the Serbs (79,97%) were killed ). On the other hand, half of the Croats (48,59%) and Muslims (53,32%) who died in it lost their lives in the last two years of the war.
IMG-3182Home Guard escorting peasants from Kozora to one of the Jasenovac camps, summer 1942. / Photo: Museum of Genocide Victims
The role of the Jasenovac camp system in the destruction of the various peoples of the NDH was not equal. For Jews and Roma, who were predestined for extermination by racial laws, Jasenovac was the central place of suffering, where 78,08% of the victims of the Roma and 61,68% of the victims of the NDH lost their lives. The mass terror carried out against the Serbian people throughout the NDH had all the features of the crime of genocide, and Jasenovac had a prominent place in the implementation of that crime.
In Jasenovac, a quarter of all martyred civilians of Serbian nationality from the NDH (23,24%) lost their lives, making it the largest execution site and the primary place of their suffering. But we should not lose sight of the fact that the majority of Serb victims in the NDH (68,25%) were killed in the villages where they lived (on their doorsteps), i.e. in locations in their immediate vicinity or in neighboring settlements. In Jasenovac, 11,81% of Croatian civilians lost their lives, 3,50% of Muslim civilians, and 4,39% of civilians of other and unknown nationalities died.
The paradigm of genocide
With its character, number of victims, monstrosity, Jasenovac certainly represents a paradigm of genocide carried out on the territory of the NDH, but one should not fall into the trap of generalization that leads to neglecting the suffering in all other places in the NDH and beyond.
Is the insistence on Jasenovac reducing the blame to a few hundred or a few thousand "crazy, pathologically ill" guys in the camp, in order to carry out the tacit abolition of the entire NDH state system? And who would benefit from it?
On the other hand, the imposition of such a story about Jasenovac pushed into the background or completely suppressed the memory of suffering in numerous other places and camps. I am primarily referring to the Gospić group of camps (Gospić, Jadovno, Pag) which existed for only a few months, during which only Serbs and Jews were killed in them, and achieved a death rate twice as high as in Jasenovac.
Scientific research
In addition to determining the number of victims in Jasenovac by name, other scientific research, such as forensic and anthropological, was also carried out. They, by subsequent deformation of the obtained data, led us to those "unreasonably" large numbers. I do not rule out the possibility of new research based on modern methodological principles, moreover, I believe that it would be useful. In those investigations, one should go to the last discovered grave, and not draw conclusions based on a few excavated probes (in 1964, the forensic-anthropological commission exhumed the remains of 284 victims from 7 probes, of which 192 were in one grave).
Georadar surveying of the land should be done beforehand to accurately establish burial places, confirm known ones and discover new ones. Forensic and anthropological methods have their limitations in solving this problem. Many grave sites were destroyed over time on floodplains on both sides of the Sava River. In many tombs, the corpses were covered with lime, which led to the decay of the earth's remains, or they were burned, so that it is not possible to perform their analysis today. Perhaps the biggest objection to these methods is that they can lead to the determination of a certain number of victims, their gender and age, but not what, for example, the national, social, political, religious structure of the victims are, which are very important to us historians in order to create a complete pictures about the camp.
Manipulation of numbers
The manipulation of the number of victims in Jasenovac is a very complex issue, in which numerous motives and interests are intertwined on the one hand, and ignorance, mythomania and inexperience in approaching the problem on the other.
The magnitude of the crime committed in Jasenovac led to its development into a paradigm of total suffering. In a way, that paradigm began to live a life of its own, by itself, separated and isolated from the general context of suffering. We are witnesses to the fact that today in public opinion the suffering in Jasenovac is equated with the total suffering in the Independent State of Croatia, and that the total losses in the camp are often equated with Serbian victims. This raises the question of whether that process was spontaneous or perfidiously imposed, and what was the role of the state, that is, some republics and their elites (political, scientific...), in that process.
Some began to increase the number of victims, "pumping" it to the point of meaninglessness (800.000, 1.100.000 and finally 1.400.000). Others tried to minimize the number of victims (from a few thousand to Tuđman's 40.000) and thereby deny the suffering in general and primarily the suffering of Serbs.
Their motives are different, but their goal seems to be the same. With a little effort it is not difficult to rationally refute their claims, but it is very difficult to get them to accept it. Unfortunately, supporters of one side or the other are numerous and deeply rooted in the public.
The author is a museum adviser to the Museum of Genocide Victims
"Time" number 1599, 26.08.2021.
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