In the morning hours of April 22, 1945, trying to save themselves because they knew they were threatened with liquidation, about six hundred physically weak and tortured, practically bare-handed prisoners attacked, in a desperate attempt to escape, Ustasha guards. Most of them were mercilessly killed, and only about a hundred of them survived.
At the commemoration of the 81st anniversary of the release of prisoners from the death camp in Jasenovac, last week at the largest and most terrible Ustasha execution site from the Second World War, the top of Croatian politics gathered, led by Prime Minister Plenković and Speaker of the Parliament Jandroković (the President of the Republic of Croatia Milanović sent his envoy), to honor all the imprisoned prisoners and commemorate all the victims of this unprecedented Ustasha crime. Even on this occasion - as the then president of the Republic of Croatia Kolinda Grabar Kitarović and the former head of the HDZ Tomislav Karamarko decided in 2015, to their own, but also to the shame of Croatian politics - there were no official speeches by representatives of the state government, nor representatives of the victims' peoples (Serbs, Jews and Roma). According to the documentation that has been researched and precisely (by name and surname) established, 83.145 people were listed (in addition to 4255 Croatian anti-fascists) killed in the Jasenovac camp in the most monstrous way, of whom undoubtedly the most were Serbs, almost 50.000, followed by Roma, for whom it is (still) the most difficult to establish how many of them really perished, because, as it was (confirmed) by the few survivors witnesses, did not keep strict records of the so-called liquidations. of Roma transports, since they are often, immediately upon admission to the camp, without any enumeration, they would be collectively killed and thrown into the Sava (a little more than 16.000 have been enumerated so far), and Jews (more than 13.000). Serious researchers of the Ustasha genocide, such as Prof. Dr. Ivo Goldstein, note that the list is not final and that it is well-founded that the number of victims from Jasenovac is much higher and reaches up to 120 thousand killed.
PLAYING WITH NUMBERS
In Croatia, therefore, the ruling political elite reluctantly gathers once a year in order to, when it has to, for the sake of the world and not for itself, to "disguise" the memorial to the victims of the camp in Jasenovac and on that occasion mumble something about the Ustasha crimes, necessarily diminishing them by "linking" them to the crimes of all the totalitarian regimes of the last century, whereby, as a rule, the emphasis is not on the Ustasha but on the communist atrocities. While in the Republic of Croatia the number of victims of the "Jasenova myth" is reduced to the maximum and is increasingly minorized (the number of those killed and not tortured in the camp does not exceed 7000 people, maliciously insinuates the pseudo-scientific, Ustasha-like dredge), in the neighboring Republika Srpska, with mandatory patronage (undoubtedly also instructions) from Belgrade, led by President Vučić and with the assistance of Patriarch Porfiri, the number of those killed is increased to the maximum. Without any real, relevant evidence, there is talk of 700 murdered camp inmates, of which at least 500 were Serbs, which was recently (19. April), at this year's commemoration of the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Ustasha Genocide, the Serbian head of state, in the presence of the head of the SNSD Milorad Dodik and his ruthless entity team, appealed to strengthen the unity of the Serbian people in the future through the memory of the Serbian victims, while also announcing the accelerated construction of a magnificent memorial center in Donja Gradina, which will be open to everyone, and not selectively, as is being done by the current Croatian government, since "many from the top of the Republic of Serbia and Republika Srpska are not allowed to visit Jasenovac". But that's not all, as in every good advertisement there is more: the Montenegrin Assembly, led by its president and pronounced Chetnik Andrija Mandić (persona non grata in the Republic of Croatia), decided to commemorate the Day of Remembrance of the Genocide Victims in Jasenovac, Mauthausen and Dachau with a symbolic program, for the first time since June 2024. a resolution on genocide was adopted in Podgorica. All of this, if it were not tragic, would be comical and nothing more than a bad show in order to bewitch the "ordinary people", so it is a cheap, but therefore more dangerous, joint Croatian-Serbian political game with a clear goal: to continue with the strong fanning of the so-called Jasenovac myth in order to maximally strengthen one's own position on the "home ground" with eyeless chauvinistic manipulations, strengthen (relativize, and then rehabilitate) retrograde nationalist ideological "values", undoubtedly marked by the tragic legacy of the Second World War, i.e. "values" that every decent person, a citizen of the former SFRY, should be ashamed of and/or resolutely condemn. But, unfortunately, that number of "decent" citizens on all sides of the former SFRY is decreasing more and more rapidly, and the orthodox, nationalist disbanded brothers and a bunch of fake and hysterical patriots, with the encouragement and hate speech of their political elites, are increasingly conquering the public space, thus opening a Pandora's box of old evils that ultimately resulted in mass crimes in these areas, such as those in Jasenovac, but also those during the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s in Vukovar, Srebrenica, etc.
THE JASENOVAC MYTH
In truth, the Jasenovac myth (about the Ustasha genocide against Serbs) gained wider "citizenship rights" in the former state only after Tito's death, only to escalate before, during and after the collapse of the SFRY. Of course, the Jasenovac myth in the Croats, that is, the Serbs, implies completely opposite points of view; Croatian nationalists and revisionists claim that everything is made up and that there was no genocide, so Nina Obuljen Koržinek, the current Minister of Culture in Plenković's government, talks about the Holocaust against the Jews, the genocide against the Roma, but only when she mentions the murdered Serbs, she talks about a "mass crime". Everyone in the Republic of Croatia knows that it is a lie, that the Ustasha were primarily targeted by Serbs, but the ruling right persists in that lie, because it is also one of the ways to relativize the Ustaše and the NDH and ultimately portray the partisans, communists and Serbs as criminals, and Pavelić and his gang of butchers as fighters for the freedom and independence of Croatia, perhaps on the wrong side of history, but sincerely convinced that they are fighting for the right cause.
In the Great Serbian, nationalist narrative, the Ustasha genocide against the Serbs (p)remained an ideal tool for the reconstruction and expansion of Great Serbian myths in terms of exaggerating the number of victims, as well as for the non-existent Vatican conspiracy, which was particularly insisted on by Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović, who saw the Roman Catholic Church as the main initiator of the Ustasha genocide. Of course, both narratives are only the obverse and reverse of the same "methodical lie" with opposite signs, but also an extremely effective way of mobilizing nationalist forces, who see in every Croat a (at least hidden) Ustasha, i.e. in every Serb a Chetnik who does nothing but dream of conquering and conquering Croatia, i.e. taking revenge on the Ustasha for the crimes committed against the "weaker Serbs". And so, despite the historical facts, the Jasenovac myth spreads like a weed and grows stronger, in fact we see it, we are witnesses how the rulers in Zagreb, Belgrade, Banja Luka, and now in Podgorica, each for their own reasons, carefully nurture it, not bothering at all what and how much damage it does to (good) neighborly relations, but actually mostly to their own people.
At the same time, Plenković boasted that his government had invested considerable funds in the revitalization of the Jasenovac complex and announced a scientific project of the Ministry of Science and Education whose goal is "systematic research on the victims of the 20th century." Unfortunately, despite the investments, the complex still seems neglected; the new administration of Juspa (acting director Sara Lustig), led by the president of the Administrative Council, Matea Brstila Rešetar, by order of the Ministry of Culture, removed all public information boards in the memorial area on which the term "genocide" appeared in the same sentence as Serbs. Anyone who does not know the real extent of Ustasha crimes will not know the real truth: that Jasenovac was not a labor camp for re-education or isolation of opponents of the NDH, but rather an extermination camp, a death camp.
MONTENEGRIN PLAYS
In this context, honoring the Montenegrins by commemorating the Jasenovic victims, as the Croatian Government did, seems reckless, to say the least; although in this particular case it is about the Great Serbian subterfuge of Vučić's coward's egg, performed by Andrija Mandić and his Chetnik brothers (Milan Knežević, Aleksa Bečić, etc.), Zagreb should not have let itself be "caught" by this transparent political hook. Namely, in addition to Jasenovac, in Podgorica, reverence was also shown to the victims of the Mauthausen and Dachau camps, so the Germans did not think of reacting. In spite of everything, Montenegrins, just like Serbs, have the right to talk about Jasenovac, and the Republic of Croatia should by no means act unnecessarily defensive on these issues. In Podgorica, a war is being waged between the Provucic and pro-European currents, both sides are extremely exclusive, and it was on this basis that the mentioned resolution was passed.
On the other hand, in Belgrade, Vučić, whenever he needs the support of public opinion and the mobilization of progressives, when he feels that his popularity is falling or he needs to blame the students and their struggle for the overthrow of his regime, he lashes out at Croatia, talks about the danger of the Serbs in the Republic of Croatia, which is undoubtedly true, but far more and more dangerous than that, democracy and civil society are threatened in Croatia. In an extremely primitive way, Vučić, without any basis, accuses the Republic of Croatia (and the EU as well) of interfering in the internal affairs of Serbia (he especially targets Tonino Picula, the EU Parliament's rapporteur for Serbia), warns that Zagreb is helping the "blockaders" and, which is particularly absurd, announces the possibility of a Croatian military attack on Serbia. Why, with what, with what forces; so the Croatian army is not even able to fill a permanent professional staff of 15.000 soldiers, let alone attack anyone. Just as the Croatian right-wingers are "turned on" by the Serbs and Vučić, so Croatia is an almost hysterical fixation for him that he cannot get rid of, and it serves him well on the domestic political level as well. But what is common on all sides of this grotesquely sad story is that, even before World War II, the brilliant Austrian thinker Karl Kraus summed it up with the words: "Each country is waging war against its own culture, instead of waging a war against its own non-culture."
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