The list of children rescued by Diana Budisavljević from the camps of the Independent State of Croatia in 1942 will be available to all interested parties from Wednesday, April 26, and for the next ten days in the atrium of the National Museum of Serbia in Belgrade.
On a kind of "Serbian Schindler's List" from 80 years ago, there are names of around 5.800 Serbian children. The Museum of Genocide Victims also announced that this document has attracted a lot of interest from the media from the region, but also from the whole of Europe, so it is expected that in the coming days a lot of attention will be directed towards the atrium of the National Museum.
The list that will be presented to the public was and remains Diana Budisavljević's biggest wish.
Out of about 12.000 children that Diana saved in total, only about 300 of them are alive today. The Museum of Genocide Victims made an effort to publish the list of children and present some other facts to the public, specifically the collection of artifacts from the Second World War from the territory of Croatia.
On Diana's list of children, in addition to their birth dates, you can also find their rights, and not the names that the little ones received upon adoption from Croatian families.
The director of the Museum of Genocide Victims, Dejan Ristić, pointed out in an interview with Blic that many of the descendants of these children will need a significant list in order to find their roots.
"The list is very meticulously written, which the officials of the institution for deaf children made for him. They contain the serial number, first and last name of the child, age, father's and mother's name, the camp from which the child was taken with the date, as well as information about the adoptive parent, i.e. the Croatian family to which the child was given. All children were adopted on the territory of the then NDH. Now that we've found the list, let's move on. We have indications that there is other material and we will never stop searching," Ristić said, stressing that it was believed that the list had been destroyed a long time ago.
Among the artifacts arranged on the table in the atrium, there was a knife used by the Ustasha for slaughter, better known as the "Srbosek". No one who sees it will care if they know what it was for and for whom it was used.
"It was very painful, especially the first time you see it live, when you pick it up just to explore it. He has that leather bandage that is put on his arm and is fastened in that way so that the villains are more efficient in committing crimes," Ristic told Blic.
In the atrium of the National Museum, visitors will be able to view, among other things, photos of Serbian officers from the camp. Ristic says that the treatment of the officers was not as cruel as in the death camps, and that now a clear insight has been gained into how the camp worked for them.
By the way, the materials that were acquired last year more than in the previous 30 years since the establishment of the Museum, will be used for both exhibition and research. It is about thousands of artifacts.
I.Đ./Blic
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