WHEN I SAY “THE HOLOCAUST,” I MEAN “JASENOVAC”

1. Shafir, “Between Denial and ‘Comparative Trivialisation’;” Braham, Anti‐Semitism and the Treatment of the Holocaust in Post‐Communist Eastern Europe; idem, The Treatment of the Holocaust in Hungary and Romania during the Post‐Communist Era; Volovici, “Antisemitism in Post‐Communist Eastern Europe.”

2. This is partly because, unlike in many other parts of Eastern Europe, for much of the post‐1945 period Yugoslavia’s Communist authorities allowed greater public recognition to be paid to the specifically Jewish tragedy of the war period (see Gitelman, “History, Memory and Politics”, 26; Gordiejew, Voices of Yugoslav Jewry). As a result, with the onset of post‐Communism Yugoslavia remained, by and large, off the radar of critical scholarship.

3. For a detailed discussion of this topic in the context of Serbian Orthodox Culture see Byford, “‘Serbs Never Hated the Jews’” and Potiskivanje i poricanje antisemitizma, especially Chapter 5.

4. Milan Koljanin, Nemački logor na Beogradskom Sajmištu; for the history of the Holocaust in Serbia generally, see Manoschek, “The Extermination of Jews in Serbia”; Browning, Fateful Months; Božović, Stradanje Jevreja u okupiranom Beogradu; Romano, Jevreji Jugoslavije 1941–1945; Lebl, Do ‘konačnog rešenja’.

5. The speech delivered by Zoran Lilić at the ceremony also mentioned “Jews, Serbs, Roma, women, children and partisans” who died at the camp, without specifically referring to the Holocaust or the role of Sajmište in the history of Hitler’s Final Solution.

6. Nikolić et al., Istorija za III razred gimnazije prirodno‐matematičkog smera i IV razred gimnazije opšteg i društveno‐jezičkog smera. This book contains also a controversial interpretation of the Nazi occupation of Serbia. It offers a favourable portrait of the head of the collaborationist government, Milan Nedić, and a positive evaluation of the Chetinks, whose patriotism is contrasted with the unpatriotic fanaticism of Tito’s partisans. The book reflects the broader revisionist trends in the interpretation of the history of World War II which followed the fall of Milošević in 2000.

7. Rajić et al., Istorija za 8.razred osnovne škole, 160.

8. Bečanović and Stojanović, Istorijska čitanka za 8. razred osnovne škole, 111–15.

9. The book that came under criticism from Nikolić is the final volume in the Teaching Modern Southeast European History series, published under the auspices of the Centre for Democracy and Cooperation in South Eastern Europe (Erdelja, Workbook 4: The Second World War).

10. Nikolić and Rajić, “Balkanska povest sa oksfordskim akcentom.” In 2002, the publishing house of the Serbian Ministry of Education published Nikolić’s book Fear and Hope in Serbia, 1941–1944, which examines everyday life in Serbia under Nazi occupation. Consistent with the views on the Holocaust expressed on other occasions, Nikolić completely omits to mention the fate of Jews, the community that had most to fear and least to hope for during the years of Nazi occupation; Nikolić, Strah i Nada u Srbiji.

11. The focus of this paper is the treatment of the Holocaust outside Serbia’s Jewish community, so institutions and bodies affiliated to that community are not considered. Jewish community organisations involved in Holocaust commemoration include the Belgrade‐based Jewish Historical Museum (the only institution in Serbia specifically devoted to the preservation of Holocaust memory), the Union of Jewish Communities of Serbia and local community organisations in Belgrade, Zemun, Niš, Apatin, Novi Sad and Zrenjanin. For information about the activities of the Jewish Historical Museum see Mihajlović, “The Jewish Historical Museum, Belgrade” and Mihajlović and Džidić, “Prikupljanje i istraživanje građe o holokaustu u Jevrejskom istorijskom muzeju u Beogradu.”

12. Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, Education on the Holocaust and on Anti‐Semitism. In addition to the two institutions examined here, the report also mentions the Jewish Historical Museum and the Fund for Genocide Research, a private research foundation established in 1992. The Jewish Historical Museum is not considered, for reasons stated earlier, whereas the Fund for Genocide Research had been a subsidiary of the Museum of Genocide Victims for more than a decade. The founder and proprietor of the Fund is Milan Bulajić, who was also the director of the Museum of Genocide Victims between 1992 and 2002. During that period the two institutions effectively functioned as a single entity.

13. Shafir, “Between Denial and ‘Comparative Trivialisation’.”

14. The number of victims of Jasenovac represents one of the most contentious issues in the historiography of the former Yugoslavia. Estimates range from 40,000 to 700,000. The figure of approximately 100,000, which is not considered definitive but the best approximation based on current evidence, resulted from the research reported in Cvetković and Graovac, Ljudski gubici Hrvatske.

15. Although founded in 1992, the museum began to function in its present form three years later. The delay was caused by the controversy surrounding the museum’s location. The Act of Parliament that established the museum cited the city of Kragujevac as the museum’s base, while the Director Milan Bulajić insisted on it being based in Belgrade. In 1995, Bulajić accepted a compromise solution whereby the museum would be registered in Kragujevac, but the research base would be in Belgrade. As a result, the museum is currently registered at two addresses, one in Kragujevac, the other in Belgrade.

16. The two were introduced in the same Act of Parliament: “Zakon o osnivanju Muzeja žrtava genocida,” Službeni Glasnik, no. 49 (1992).

17. It appears that Bulajić’s relationship with the media was much stronger than with government officials: his correspondence over the years with ministers of the state reveals a continuous sense of frustration at his employer’s failure to share his faith in the museum and the conviction that this institution was one of profound national significance. See Bulajić, Deset godina Muzeja žrtava genocida.

18. “Zakon o osnivanju Muzeja žrtava genocida.”

19. Bulajić argued that otherwise the institution would be “abandoning its basic orientation.” Speech at the gathering to mark the tenth anniversary of the Museum of Genocide Victims, cited in Bulajić, Deset godina Muzeja žrtava genocida, 10. See also the recent pamphlet Muzej žrtava genocida, containing a summary of the museum’s activities, ⟨http://www.jasenovac.info/biblioteka/muzej_zrtava_genocida.pdf⟩ (accessed 20 September 2006).

20. Milan Bulajić was sacked in October 2002 by the then Deputy Prime Minister Žarko Korać, and replaced by the historian Nenad Đorđević. Since then, Bulajić’s activity has been confined to running the Fund for Genocide Research, which he now regards as separate from the museum and as the “only active and legitimate institution dedicated to the research of genocide committed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia” (see Bulajić, “On the Day of Remembrance of Genocide Victims”). He remains active in the organisation of public commemorations of the Day of Remembrance for Genocide Victims.

21. “Saopštenje za javnost sa sjednice Odbora za Jasenovac Svetog arhijerejskog Sinoda Srpske Pravoslavne Crkve,” Information Service of the Serbian Orthodox Church, 19 July 2005.

22. Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), Education on the Holocaust and on Anti‐Semitism, 52. The ODIHR report specifically states that the five examples of good practice included in the report do not constitute an exhaustive list, but a selection of “positive models” that might be used in other countries. However, in the opening address to the participants of the acclaimed workshop, the Coordinator of the Jasenovac Committee Hieromonk, Jovan Ćulibrk, stated that the “OSCE placed this workshop among the top five most important Holocaust education events in the world [sic] in 2005” (“Otvoren seminar o Jasenovcu za nastavnike bogoslovija u Banjoj Luci”).

23. Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, Education on the Holocaust and on Anti‐Semitism, 109.

24. As early as the late 1980s, and therefore before the onset of the dissolution of Yugoslavia, a Commission of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, tasked with the of gathering of historical material pertaining to “the genocide against the Serbian and other nations in Yugoslavia in the 20th Century,” proposed the creation of a Museum of Genocide which would be based in Belgrade. Although nothing came out of these early efforts, Milan Bulajić sees the Academy’s Commission (which ceased to function in June 1994) as the forerunner of the Museum of Genocide Victims. For a brief account of the commission’s activity see Sinbœk, “Mentioning the War.”

25. Extracts from the transcript of the parliamentary debate are published in Bulajić, Deset godina Muzeja žrtava genocida, 481–95.

26. Another MP, Miladin Tošić, proposed the name “Museum of Genocide Victims—Serbian Golgotha.”

27. Bulajić, Deset godina Muzeja žrtava genocida, 483.

28. “Zakon o osnivanju Muzeja žrtava genocida.”

29. Bulajić, Deset godina Muzeja žrtava genocida, 487.

30. Letter to Patriarch Pavle of the Serbian Orthodox Church, 4 November 2001, in Bulajić, Deset godina Muzeja žrtava genocida, 342.

31. Ibid., 483.

32. Mirković, Genocid u XX veku na prostorima jugoslovenskih zemalja. Twenty‐nine of the 38 conference papers were specifically about genocide against the Serbian people. There was only one paper devoted to the Holocaust in Serbia and one to the genocide against Roma, in Jasenovac.

33. Krestić, “O vremenu nastanka, uzrocima i ciljevima genocidne politike u Hrvatskoj;” for the background to the stereotype of Croats as “genocidal” see Milosavljević, U tradiciji nacionalizma.

34. Throughout the 1990s the Director of the Museum of Genocide Victims liaised with representatives of Serbia’s Ministry of Education with the aim of introducing the topic of genocide into the school curriculum. In 1997, the Ministry issued a recommendation (no. 632‐00‐1/97‐01, 20 February 1997) that the Day of Remembrance (22 April) should be commemorated with a lesson dedicated to the topic of genocide. The fact that Bulajić’s 1997 book Tuđman’s Jasenovac Myth: Jasenovac, The System of Ustashe Concentration Camps and other similar literature were proposed as a teaching tool suggests that, once again, the events in the NDH were the salient theme to be commemorated on that day (see Bulajić, Deset godina Muzeja žrtava genocida, 319).

35. “Istina o genocidu—uslov mira i stabilnosti,” press release issued by the government of Serbia, 28 March 2005, ⟨http://www.srbija.sr.gov.yu/vesti/vest.php?id=23901⟩.

36. In 1995 the Serbian government organised an exhibition staged at the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Belgrade on the subject of “Genocide against Serbs 1941–1945 and 1991–1995,” which drew direct parallels between the past and the present.

37. Bulajić, Deset godina Muzeja žrtava genocida, 17.

38. Bulajić, “Srbi u Muzeju holokausta,” 46–47.

39. Bulajić, Deset godina Muzeja žrtava genocida, 24, 411. Also Bulajić’s letter to Slobodan Milošević, 2 June 2000, ibid., 295.

40. Letter dated 6 June 2000, cited in Bulajić, Deset godina Muzeja žrtava genocida, 298. On another occasion Bulajić announced that his activities “instituted a change in the attitude of powerful Jewish organisations”; ibid., 254.

41. The equation of Serbian and Jewish victimisation through the reference to “Serbian and Jewish” or “Jewish and Serbian Holocaust in Croatia” has featured in Bulajić’s writing since the early 1990s. In 1992, Bulajić submitted to the municipal authorities in Belgrade a proposal for a memorial at Sajmište to be called “The Serbian and Jewish Holocaust Museum” which would be devoted primarily to Serbs but also to Jews who perished in “Yugoslavia” during the Second World War.

42. “Izveštaj direktora: Upravni odbor 6.marta 2002,” in Bulajić, Deset godina Muzeja žrtava genocida, 465.

43. Macdonald, Balkan Holocausts; Gordiejew, Voices of Yugoslav Jewry; Živković, “The Wish to Be a Jew;” Sekelj, “Antisemitism and Jewish Identity in Serbia after the 1991 Collapse of the Yugoslav State.”

44. “Saopštenje za javnost sa sjednice Odbora za Jasenovac Svetog arhijerejskog Sinoda Srpske Pravoslavne Crkve,” Information Service of the Serbian Orthodox Church, 19 July 2005. Patriarch Pavle also identified, as the Committee’s main mission, the preservation of the memory of Jasenovac “the New Babylon, the symbol of the totality of Serbian martyrdom in the Second World War”; see “Poruka srpskog Patrijarha najvišim zvanićnicima Izraela povodom pedesetogodišnjice postojanja Memorijalnog centra Jad Vašem,” Information Service of the Serbian Orthodox Church, 26 September, 2003.

45. The symbolic link between Jasenovac and Kosovo is apparent also in the initiative of the Serbian Orthodox Church for the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Genocide in the 20th Century to be commemorated not on 22 April, the day of the breakout from Jasenovac, but on St Vitus Day, the anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 (see Bulajić, Deset godina Muzeja žrtava genocida, 31).

46. “Otvoren seminar o Jasenovcu za nastavnike bogoslovija u Banjoj Luci,” announcement on the website of the Jasenovac Committee of the Synod of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church, ⟨http://www.jasenovac.info/?lang=sr&s=seminar⟩ (accessed 15 September 2006).

47. Ibid.

48. “Saopštenje za javnost sa sjednice Odbora za Jasenovac Svetog arhijerejskog Sinoda Srpske Pravoslavne Crkve,” Information Service of the Serbian Orthodox Church, 19 July 2005.

49. For the examination of the political dimension of the memory of the New Martyrs and of Jasenovac generally in the discourse of the Serbian Orthodox Church, see Perica, Balkan Idols; Radić, “Crkva i ‘srpsko pitanje’”; Tomanić, Srpska crkva u ratu i ratovi u njoj.

50. “Saopštenje za javnost sa sjednice Odbora za Jasenovac Svetog arhijerejskog Sinoda Srpske Pravoslavne Crkve,” Information Service of the Serbian Orthodox Church, 19 July 2005.

51. Ćulibrk, “The Remembrance of the Common Suffering as the Path to the Future.”

52. Ibid.

53. “Poruka srpskog Patrijarha najvišim zvaničnicima Izraela povodom pedesetogodišnjice postojanja Memorijalnog centra Jad Vašem,” Information Service of the Serbian Orthodox Church, 26 September, 2003. Because of the assumed equivalence between Serbian and Jewish suffering, Serbian victims of Jasenovac are seen as constituting a part of Holocaust memory. In the letter, the Patriarch expressed hope that “joint suffering [of Serbs and Jews] will find its place in the new museum at Yad Vashem.”

54. Ćulibrk, “The Remembrance of the Common Suffering as the Path to the Future.”

55. “Poruka srpskog Patrijarha najvišim zvaničnicima Izraela povodom pedesetogodišnjice postojanja Memorijalnog centra Jad Vašem,” Information Service of the Serbian Orthodox Church, 26 September, 2003.

56. Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust, 50.

57. Ćulibrk, “The Remembrance of the Common Suffering as the Path to the Future.”

58. Anon., Novi Sveštenomučenici i Mučenici Pravoslavne Crkve; Mileusnić, Sveti Srbi.

59. In representations of Jasenovac in Serbian public discourse, the status of that camp as a place of national martyrdom is frequently augmented through the suggestion that even the Nazis were appalled by the brutality of Ustashe. For instance, in the aforementioned article by Kosta Nikolić and Suzana Rajić (see note 10), the authors accentuate Serbian suffering vis‐à‐vis the Holocaust by noting that Herman Neubacher, the German Foreign Office plenipotentiary for Southeastern Europe, wrote in his diary that “the destruction of Orthodox Serbs [in the NDH] … is one of the worst atrocities in history.” The fact that Neubacher did not consider the Ustashe policy towards Jews an atrocity clearly escaped the attention of Nikolić and Rajić.

60. Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust, 50.

61. Ćulibrk, “Srpska Pravoslavna Crkv7a i Jasenovac.”

62. Shafir, “Between Denial and ‘Comparative Trivialisation’.”

63. “U Banja Luci počeo trodnevni seminar o Jasenovcu,” Information Service of the Serbian Orthodox Church, 20 October, 2005.

64. “Drugi dan seminara o Jasenovcu,” press release, Jasenovac Committee of the Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church, 20 October 2005, ⟨http://www.jasenovac.info/?lang=sr&s=seminar_201005⟩ (accessed 23 September 2006).

65. “Treći dan seminara o Jasenovcu za nastavnike bogoslovija Srpske pravoslavne crkve,” press release, Jasenovac Committee of the Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church, 20 October 2005 ⟨http://www.jasenovac.info/?lang=sr&s=seminar_211005⟩ (accessed 23 September 2006).

66. Ćulibrk, “The Remembrance of the Common Suffering as the Path to the Future.”

67. Ibid.

68. Ćulibrk, “Srpska Pravoslavna Crkva i Jasenovac.”

69. Džomić, “Marović i izmišljeni holokaust u Srbiji.”

70. “Govor predsjednika Marovića na skupu povodom otvaranja novog Muzeja holokausta Jad Vašem u Jerusalimu,” 16 March 2005, ⟨http://www.predsednik.gov.yu/press/vest.php?id=832sr⟩ (in English: ⟨http://www1.yadvashem.org/new_museum/serbia.pdf⟩) (accessed 20 September 2006).

71. Džomić “Marović i izmišljeni holokaust u Srbiji.”

72. “Poruka srpskog Patrijarha najvišim zvaničnicima Izraela povodom pedesetogodišnjice postojanja Memorijalnog centra Jad Vašem,” Information Service of the Serbian Orthodox Church, 26 September 2003.

73. For a summary of arguments regarding the uniqueness of the Holocaust, see Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust, especially 39–67.

74. Linenthal, Preserving Memory, 255.

75. Maier, The Unmasterable Past, x.

76. Berenbaum, After Tragedy and Triumph, 29–30.