The atrocities at Jasenovac shocked even the Nazis Posted on 05/05/2005 10:25:27 AM PDT by Destro
Last Updated: Monday, 25 April, 2005, 17:03 GMT 18:03 UK
Balkan 'Auschwitz' haunts Croatia
Survivors of a World War II death camp have been mourning the victims of Croatia's Nazi puppet regime. As the BBC's Nick Hawton and Marko Kovac report, war crimes committed long before the atrocities of the 1990s still haunt Croatia as it seeks EU membership.
The atrocities at Jasenovac shocked even the Nazis
In the vast open field, on the banks of the Sava River, the survivors came to pay their respects.
Sixty years ago, this was the scene of some of the worst atrocities of World War II.
The Jasenovac death camp came to be known as "the Auschwitz of the Balkans".
Even the Nazis were shocked by what happened here. Today's survivors glance at the point on the river where so many of their friends and colleagues were brutally murdered.
To their left is the huge concrete monument, shaped into the petals of an opening flower, in honour of the dead.
Some people have tears in their eyes. Many carry flowers. Everyone has their own memories.
"I was arrested because my parents were partisans fighting the fascist regime," says 69-year old Serb Slavko Milanovic.
"My mother had to hide me in bed sheets every morning because Ustasha were separating children and taking them away."
Many of the children were murdered.
Hitler ally
Jasenovac was run by the Croatian Fascist Ustasha allied to Adolf Hitler.
Their victims were Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and Croats opposed the regime.
"There was a brick factory in the camp. It had a big oven that would be heated up and people were thrown in alive." says Slavko.
"They would dig graves, put prisoners in and then hit them with hammers until they died. Concrete was then poured over."
At the commemoration, survivors and their families listen to anniversary speeches by politicians and organisers.
But their minds take them far away from this place - to World War II and those who died as victims of the cruel regime.
No one really knows how many died here. Serbs talk of 700,000. Most estimates put the figure nearer 100,000.
In the post-war communist years, investigations into such crimes were forbidden. The regime did not want to rock the delicate stability of the new Yugoslavia.
"It is very important that we teach our children values that can prevent this catastrophe happening again," says Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader to the hundreds gathered.
"The victory of anti-fascism over fascism is a victory for values which are threaded into modern Europe and modern Croatia."
And it is modern Croatia that is very much on Mr Sanader's mind.
EU accession
This week, Croatia will try to reignite its attempts to join the European Union, at meetings with EU officials in Luxembourg.
In March, accession talks were put on hold because the EU believed modern Croatia was not doing all it could to hand over a general wanted for war crimes during the 1990s.
General Ante Gotovina has been on the run for years. The EU believes Croatia could do more to find him.
But while some people are having trouble resolving modern war crimes, for others it is the old war crimes that prey on their minds.
Croat Simo Klaic, 80, spent three years at Jasenovac in 1942-45.
Today, like every anniversary, he is here to remember his friends who died in the camp.
"This should never, ever happen again - anywhere," he says.
"And let's remember, during the 1940s, there were people who just did not know what the Ustasha were doing here.
"But then there were also those who did know what was being done here - and did nothing," he says.
Looks like you were raised in a philo-Semitic household.
My parents also had a few of H Golden's books. "2¢ Plain" among them
I can't believe you posted a shot of that faked prison photo. The photographer took the photos while we was standing inside a small unused pen at a refugee camp.
Was ongoing slaughter in the former Yugoslavia, on all sides, faked? In Yugoslavia there were no good guys.
Your gross misrepresenting those photos without verifying their integrity shows your ineptness.
A lot of people were in various parts of Yugoslavia during the 1990's. Russians were there fighting for the Serbs. Germans were there fighting for the Croats. Iran even sent Islamic terrorist to fight on the side of the Muslims in Bosnia & Kosovo. As I stated previously nobody's hands are clean, not one side nor the other.
If you can be a bit more specific. In terms of World War Two or the Balkan wars of the 1990's?
"Your gross misrepresenting those photos without verifying their integrity shows your ineptness."
"those photos"? Which photos?
Funny you are the only one making such unsubstantiated comments.
Which side are you speaking of. Which year? Next you will tell everyone, everything that took place in Yugoslavia from 1941 forward is simply a huge invention.
I do not have a 'side' in the brutal wars that took place in the Balkans, do you?
'I believe all of us can clearly recall identical film footage and news photos of the ethnic factions seeking revenge on each other during the Balkan wars of the 1990's.' (also the 1940's)
Which photo are you speaking of and the era would help since you have not supplied any info other than "photo" thus how can I begin to respond?
The title of this thread is "Balkan 'Auschwitz' haunts Croatia" Is that the problem?
I would ask you, are the people in any of the photos from WWII onward, are they forged or faked in any way. What is the your problem, the photos of the Nazis, their countless victims? It happened just like it happened in Poland, France, Italy, Norway and Eastern Europe.
Were people on all sides butchering each other in the former Yugoslavia during the early 1940's, and then again in the 1990's?
use your fricking brain and not "overthink" what the question is, numbnuts.
You are abusive and should not be allowed on FR.
oh please! grow some think skin, will ya, platoon boy? waaaah!
Do not post me anything again.
You're lack of intellectual honesty is abusive.
What's the matter, you didn't like the fact I did not pick sides in the Balkan/Yugoslav wars but simply presented historic data coupled with photographs? All sides have dirty hands.
Yeah.... right.
mr espy is thin-skinned, bewarned, he cries.
During WWI Croatian soldiers of the A-H Army committed atrocities against the Serbian population in Croatia and Bosnia. They would do the same some 25 years later - to a much greater extent - in WWII.
700,000 Serbs perished in Croatian concentration camps during WWII.
That's "your" and not "you're", Mr. Intellectual
Monty's upset that you dared to post photos depicting Serbian Chetniks cavorting with Nazi officers...and pictures don't lie
Not much for 'out of the box' thinking are you?
Surely Joey you jest?
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