Croatia Remembers WWII Concentration Camp Victims

Survivors and relatives of the tens of thousands who died in the World War II Jasenovac concentration camp run by Croatia’s pro-Nazi Ustasha regime gathered to pay tribute.

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Monument to those who died at Jasenovac.

Photo: Bern Bartsch/Wikicommons.

Several hundred people including top Croatian politicians gathered on Sunday at the monument to the Jasenovac victims to lay wreaths and attend a memorial service.

“At this site, a crime that was genocide was committed and it will always be painful and we will never forget it,” Croatian President Ivo Josipovic told the ceremony.

The commemoration marked the 69^th anniversary of an attempted breakout from the camp in 1945, as the war neared its end, when hundreds of prisoners staged a revolt and tried to escape. The majority of them were killed.

Josipovic warned that there had been threats against the memorial centre at Jasenovac.

“The Jasenovac memorial centre is the only cultural institution which is constantly under police protection because of threats. It means that the evil has not vanished, that it is here and it’s lurking,” he said.

“The crimes committed in Jasenovac and other camps across Europe remind us of the devastating potential of totalitarianism, which can also be identified in the world, in Europe and in our country today,” he added.

The detention camp was one of the cruellest in occupied Europe, run by Croatia’s fascist Ustasha regime.

According to a list of victims compiled by the Jasenovac memorial’s historians, 83,301 people were killed at the camp, among them more than 20,000 women and more than 20,000 children under 14 years old. However official history in the former Yugoslavia taught that the death toll was around 700,000.

Mostly Serbs, but also Jews, Roma and anti-fascists were among the victims.

Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said that EU membership was a guarantee that such crimes would not be repeated.

“Croatia, a member of the European Union, a modern, traditional and liberal state, develops and fosters the rights of minorities. This Croatia is a guarantee that atrocities such as those committed at Jasenovac will never again happen and must not happen,” Milanovic told the ceremony.

He also said that the Croats who stood up against the Ustasha regime should be remembered.

“We have to repeat that and repeat it to our children all the time,” Milanovic said.