Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia

II]] | image = Serbs expelled.jpg | image size = 220px | caption = Serbs living in the Independent State of Croatia, who have been expelled from their homes, march out of town carrying large bundles. | alt = | map = | map_size = | map_alt = | map_caption = | location = Independent State of Croatia
Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia
Hungarian-occupied territories | target = Serbian civilians | coordinates = | date = 1941–1945 | time = | timezone = | type = Mass murder
Ethnic cleansing
Deportation
Forced conversion etc. | fatalities = Estimates vary; statistical analyses show that between 197,000 and 580,000 people were killed; 500,000 | injuries = | victim = | perps = Ustaša government of the Independent State of Croatia, Albanian collaborationists, Axis occupation forces | perp = | perpetrators= | perpetrator = | susperps = | susperp = | weapons = | numparts = | numpart = | dfens = | dfen = | footage = | motive = Racial laws that also caused The Holocaust in Croatia and Porajmos }}

The World War II persecution of Serbs refers to the widespread persecution of Serbs that included extermination, expulsions and forced religious conversions of large numbers of ethnic Serbs by the Ustaše regime in the Independent State of Croatia, and killings of Serbs by Albanian collaborationists and Axis occupying forces during World War II.

The numbers of Serbs persecuted by the Ustaše were very large, but the exact extent is the subject of much debate and estimates vary widely. Yad Vashem estimates over 500,000 murdered, 250,000 expelled and 200,000 forcibly converted to Catholicism. The estimate of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is that the Ustaša authorities murdered between 320,000 and 340,000 ethnic Serb residents of Croatia and Bosnia during the period of Ustaše rule, out of which between 45,000 and 52,000 were murdered in the Jasenovac concentration camp.

Terminology

In Serbian historiography, this persecution has also been referred to as the Serbian Genocide (Serbian Cyrillic: Геноцид над Србима у Другом светском рату, Genocid nad Srbima u Drugom svetskom ratu).

The description of the persecution of Serbs in World War II as genocide has been challenged by David Bruce MacDonald.

Background

Creation of Yugoslavia

File:Princip arrest.jpg

Gavrilo Princip being arrested by the police after the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Following the Serbian Revolution, Serbia became a de facto independent state and in 1878 became fully independent from the Ottoman Empire.

In 1908, Austria-Hungary precipitated the Bosnian crisis by officially annexing the former Ottoman territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which it had occupied since 1878. This angered the Kingdom of Serbia and its patron, the Pan-Slavic and Eastern Orthodox Church Russian Empire. Russian political manoeuvring in the region destabilised peace accords that were already fracturing in what was known as "the powder keg of Europe".

In 1912 and 1913 the First Balkan War was fought between the Balkan League and the fracturing Ottoman Empire. The resulting Treaty of London further reduced the Ottoman Empire's territory, creating an independent Albanian State while enlarging the territorial holdings of Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece. When Bulgaria attacked both Serbia and Greece on 16 June 1913, it lost most of Macedonia to Serbia and Greece and the whole of Southern Dobruja to Romania in the 33-day Second Balkan War, further destabilising the region.

On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian-Serb student and member of the organization known as Young Bosnia, assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Yugoslav nationalism escalated and cemented in the Balkans following the assassination and the subsequent Austro-Hungarian invasion of Serbia and the outbreak of World War I. Yugoslav nationalists called for the independence and unification of the Yugoslav nationalities of Austria-Hungary along with Serbia and Montenegro into a single Yugoslav state. Dalmatian Croat politician Ante Trumbić became a prominent Yugoslav nationalist leader during the war, and led the Yugoslav Committee that lobbied the Allies to support the creation of an independent Yugoslavia. Trumbić faced initial hostility from Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić who preferred an enlarged Serbia over a unified Yugoslav state, however both Pašić and Trumbić agreed to a compromise which was delivered at the Corfu Declaration on 20 July 1917 that advocated the creation of a united state of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes that would be led by the Serbian House of Karađorđević.

Serbian soldiers enter Zagreb, 1918.

As the Habsburg Empire dissolved, a pro-Entente National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs took power in Zagreb on 6 October 1918. On 29 October, a Yugoslavist Croatian Sabor (parliament) declared independence and vested its sovereignty in the new State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs and two days later it declared its wish to enter into a state of union with Serbia and Montenegro. Soon afterward on 5 November, the National Council in Zagreb asked the Serbian military for help in controlling the anarchy that was erupting in Croatia. Because help did not arrive before the end of November, the National Council again asked the Serbian army for help because: "The population is in revolt. We have total anarchy and only the Serbian Army can restore order".

The Yugoslav Committee was given the task of representing the new state abroad. However, quarrels broke out immediately about the terms of the proposed union with Serbia. Svetozar Pribićević, a Croatian Serb, a leader of the Croatian-Serbian Coalition and vice-president of the state, wanted an immediate and unconditional union. Others (non-Serbs), who favoured a federal Yugoslavia, were more hesitant. The leader of the opposition was Stjepan Radić, who demanded the creation of a South Slavic Confederacy in which there would be three heads of state: the Serbian king, the Croatian ban and the president of the Slovenian national council. In his opinion, the confederacy was to have only ministers for foreign affairs, for defense and for the distribution of food. This proposition was rejected by the National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs as an example of separatism. The National Council, whose authority was in fact limited, feared that Serbia would simply annex the former Habsburg territories; on the other hand, the Italians were moving to take more territory than they had been allotted in London Pact.

Political opinion was divided, and Serbian ministers said that if the Croats insisted on their own republic or a sort of independence, then Serbia would simply take areas inhabited by the Serbs and already controlled by the Serbian Army. After much debate and after Syrmia, which was under control of the Serbian army, declared secession, the National Council agreed to a unification with Serbia, although its declaration stated that the final organization of the state should be left to the future Constituent Assembly which would make final decisions only with a two-thirds majority.

The Kingdom was formed on 1 December 1918 under the name "Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes" ([Краљевина Срба, Хрвата и Словенаца / Kraljevina Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca] Error: {{Lang-xx}}: text has italic markup (help), Croatian: Kraljevina Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca, Slovene: Kraljevina Srbov, Hrvatov in Slovencev) or Kingdom of SHS (Краљевина СХС / Kraljevina SHS) for short. The new Kingdom was made up of the formerly independent kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro (which had unified in the previous month), and of a substantial amount of territory that was formerly part of Austria–Hungary, the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. The lands previously in Austria–Hungary that formed the new state included:

• Croatia, Slavonia and Vojvodina from the Hungarian part of the Empire,
• Carniola, part of Styria and most of Dalmatia from the Austrian part, and
• the crown province of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The new government tried to integrate the new country politically and economically, a task made difficult because of:

• the diversity of language (chiefly disagreements between Serbian and Croatian speakers over standardising Serbo-Croat);
• ethnicities, and religions in the new state;
• the different history of each region (characterised by centuries of subjugation by different rulers, e.g., Venice, Hungary, Austria, Ottoman Empire); and
• differences in economic development among regions (a more developed north spanning Slovenia, northern Croatia and northern Serbia, than a poorer south which encompassed Dalmatia, Montenegro and southern Serbia).

The creation of the state was supported by pan-Slav nationalists and Serbian nationalists. For the pan-Slavic movement, all of the South Slav (Yugoslav) people had united into a single state and hoped that the peoples would unite as Slavs and abandon past differences. For Serbian nationalists, the desired goal of uniting the majority of the Serb people across the Balkans into one state was also achieved. Furthermore, as Serbia already had a government, military, and police force, it was the logical choice to form the nucleus of the Yugoslav state.

Puniša Račić assassinates Stjepan Radić in the Legislative Assembly.

Universal Newsreel's film-reel about King Alexander I's assassination.

Yugoslavia participated in the Paris Peace Conference with Trumbić as the country's representative. Trumbić successfully vouched for the inclusion of most Yugoslavs of the former Austria-Hungary to be included within the borders of Yugoslavia but failed to secure the inclusion of 500,000 Slovenes and Croats who were placed under Italian rule with the Treaty of Rapallo of 1920.

The formation of the constitution of 1921 sparked tensions between the different Yugoslav nationalities. Trumbić opposed the 1921 constitution and over time grew increasingly hostile towards the Yugoslav government that he saw as being centralized in the favour of Serb hegemony over Yugoslavia.

On 20 June 1928, in the Legislative Assembly, Puniša Račić, a member of People's Radical Party from Montenegro, got up, drew out a revolver and went on to shoot several people, including Stjepan Radić—the leader of the Croatian Peasant Party (Hrvatska Seljačka Stranka). Radić was left for dead and indeed had such a serious stomach wound that he died several weeks later at the age of 57.

Not long after that, on 6 January 1929, using as a pretext the political crisis triggered by the shooting, King Alexander abolished the Constitution, prorogued the Parliament and introduced a personal dictatorship (known as the January 6 Dictatorship, Šestosiječanjska diktatura, Šestojanuarska diktatura). He also changed the name of the country to Kingdom of Yugoslavia and changed the internal divisions from the 33 oblasts (županije) to nine new banovinas on 8 October.

During an official visit to France in 1934, King Alexander I of Yugoslavia was assassinated in Marseille by a member of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization – an extreme nationalist organization in Bulgaria that had ties with the Ustaše movement: a nationalist, terrorist group that hated the Serbs and wanted Croatia to be independent of Yugoslavia.

Ustaše

Main article: Ustaše

Name

The word Ustaša (plural: Ustaše) is a variation of the Croatian word ustanik (plural: ustanici). It is derived from the verb ustati (Croatian for rise up). Their name derives from the intransitive verb ustati which means "to rise up," hence Ustaša would mean an insurgent, or a rebel. This name did not have fascist connotations during their early years in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia as the term "ustat" was itself used in Herzegovina to denote the insurgents from the Herzegovinian rebellion of 1875. "Pučki-ustaša" was a military rank in the Imperial Croatian Home Guard (1868–1918). The full original name of the organization appeared in April 1931 as the Ustaša - Hrvatska revolucionarna organizacija or UHRO (Ustaše - Croatian revolutionary organization), though in 1933 it was renamed the Ustaše - Hrvatski revolucionarni pokret (Ustaše - Croatian revolutionary movement) which it kept until World War II.

Ideology

The ideology of the Ustaše movement was a blend of Nazism and Croatian nationalism. The Ustaše supported the creation of a Greater Croatia that would span to the River Drina and to the outskirts of Belgrade. The movement emphasized the need for a racially "pure" Croatia and promoted the extermination of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies.

In 1933, the organization presented "The Seventeen Principles" that formed the official ideology of the movement. The Principles stated the uniqueness of the Croatian nation, promoted collective rights over individual rights, and declared that people who were not Croat by "blood" would be excluded from political life. The Principles called for the creation of a new economic system that would be neither capitalist nor communist. The Principles emphasized the importance of the Roman Catholic Church and the patriarchial family as means to maintain social order and morality.

One of the major ideological influences of the Croatian nationalism of the Ustaše was 19th century Croatian activist Ante Starčević. Starčević was an advocate of Croatian unity and independence and was both anti-Habsburg and anti-Serb. He envisioned the creation of a Greater Croatia that would include territories inhabited by Bosniaks, Serbs, and Slovenes, considering Bosniaks and Serbs as Croats who had been converted to Islam and Orthodox Christianity while considering the Slovenes to be "mountain Croats". He argued that the large Serb presence in territories claimed by a Greater Croatia was the result of recent settlement, encouraged settlement by Habsburg rulers, and influx of groups like Vlachs who took up Orthodox Christianity and identified themselves as Serbs.

The Ustaše used Starčević's theories to promote the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Croatia and recognized Croatia as having two major ethnocultural components: Catholic Croats and "Muslim Croats", as the Ustaše saw the Islam of the Bosnian-Muslims as a religion which "keeps true the blood of Croats."

Armed struggle, genocide and terrorism were glorified by the Ustaše.

History

File:Velika Hrvatska (Hrvatski Domobran).jpg

A map of Greater Croatia in a 1939 article of the newspaper Hrvatski Domobran, which was associated with the Ustaše organization of the same name, Hrvatski Domobran, that sought the recruitment of Croat emigres in Argentina and other countries. This article depicts the borders of the Independent State of Croatia a full two years before its creation.

In October 1928, after the assassination of Stjepan Radić, the President of the Croatian Peasant Party in the Yugoslav Assembly, a group named the Croat Youth Movement was founded by Branimir Jelić in the University of Zagreb. A year later, Ante Pavelić was invited by the 21-year-old Jelić into the organization as a junior member. A related movement, the Domobranski Pokret, which had been the name of the legal Croatian Army in Austria-Hungary, began publication of Hrvatski Domobran, a newspaper dedicated to Croatian national matters. They sent Hrvatski Domobran to the United States to garner support for the group from Croatian Americans. The organization around the Domobran tried to engage with and radicalize moderate Croats, using Radić’s murder to stir up emotions in the country. By 1929, however, two divergent political streams had formed within Croatia: some supported the Pavelić view that only violence could secure Croatia's national interests; however, the Croatian Peasant Party, led then by Vladko Maček, successor to Stjepan Radić, had much greater support among Croats.

Various members of the Croatian Party of Rights contributed to the writing of the Domobran, until around Christmas 1928 when the newspaper was banned by the authorities of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In January 1929, when the King banned all national parties, and the radical wing of the Party of Rights was exiled, among them Ante Pavelić, Gustav Perčec and Branimir Jelić. This group was later joined by several other Croatian exiles. In 1931, Albert Einstein and Heinrich Mann drew international attention to the murders of Radić and a Croatian college professor Milan Šufflay, in which they accused the King of complicity in a published protest. The appeal was addressed to the Paris-based Ligue des droits de l'homme (Human Rights League) and made the front page of the New York Times on May 6, 1931. On 20 April 1929, Pavelić and others co-signed a declaration in Sofia, Bulgaria together with members of the Macedonian National Committee, asserting that they would pursue "their legal activities for the establishment of "political freedom and complete independence for both Croatia and Macedonia." Due to this, the Court for the Preservation of the State in Belgrade sentenced Pavelić and Perčec to death on 17 July 1929. The exiles started organizing support for their cause among the Croatian diaspora in Europe, North and South America. In January 1931, they named their revolutionary organization the "Ustaše".

Prelude

Gathering of Ustaše members in Zagreb, showing how the Croatian Fascist organization was quick to adopt the Nazi salute.

Prior to and during the extermination campaign against the Serb people during World War II, mass propaganda was initiated by the Germans and their Croatian and Albanian collaborators as to dehumanize the Serbs and to justify their extermination just as had been done to the Jews previously.

Prior to the Axis Invasion of Yugoslavia, the Nazi propaganda-machine revived the First World War jingle "Alle Serben müssen sterben" (All Serbs Must Die), which was popular in Vienna in 1914 (also occurring as: Serbien muß sterbien). The jingle was commonly chanted by Ustaše-supporters during the Second World War.

Another popular slogan used by the Ustaše was, Srbe na vrbe!, meaning "Hang Serbs from the willow trees". It is hate speech calling for the extermination of Serbs. The slogan originates from an xenophobic and racist poem by the Slovene politician Marko Natlačen published in 1914, at the beginning of the First World War.

It was popularized before World War II by Mile Budak, the chief architect of the Ustaše ideology against Serbs, and during World War II there were mass hangings of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia, as part of the Holocaust and the Ustaše's persecution of the Serbs.

Invasion of Yugoslavia

Main article: Invasion of Yugoslavia

In October 1940, Fascist Italy had attacked Greece only to be forced back into Albania. German dictator Adolf Hitler recognised the need to go to the aid of his ally, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Hitler did this not only to restore diminished Axis prestige, but also to prevent the United Kingdom from being able to bomb the Romanian oilfields from which Germany obtained most of her oil.

Following agreements with Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria that they would join the Axis, Hitler put pressure on Yugoslavia to join the Tripartite Pact. Fearing an invasion by the Axis Powers, Regent Prince Paul signed the Tripartite Pact on 25 March 1941, pledging cooperation with the Axis. Because of Paul's enormously unpopular decision, massive anti-Fascist and anti-German demonstrations took place in Belgrade.

On 27 March, the regime of Prince Paul was overthrown by a military coup d'état. The 17-year-old Peter II was declared to be of age and placed in power. General Dušan Simović became his Prime Minister. The Kingdom of Yugoslavia withdrew its support for the Axis de facto without formally renouncing the Tripartite Pact.

Hitler became furious at what he interpreted to be "Yugoslavia's Betrayal". On 6 April 1941, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was invaded from all sides by the Axis powers and was conquered only 11 days later. On the day of the invasion, almost all of the non-Serb inhabitants of Yugoslavia refused to fight, instead welcoming the Nazis as liberators from supposed "government oppression."

Occupation and partition of Yugoslavia after the Axis invasion.

Parts of the Kingdom were annexed by various Axis nations and the rest was divided into zones of occupation as follows:

• Third Reich - Slovenia was annexed by the Reich and the Banat was occupied and placed under semi-autonomous rule by its German minority.
• Hungary occupied Bačka, Baranja, Međimurje and Prekmurje.
• Bulgaria occupied the territory of today's Republic of Macedonia), and some additional areas.
• Italy annexed parts of modern-day Croatia, occupied Montenegro, and also the Kosovo region in which Albanians formed a majority, both of which were governed as a protectorate along with Albania.
• Germany imposed military administration on an area roughly corresponding to modern-day Serbia, known as the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia, and installed a puppet government which was led for most of the occupation by Milan Nedić.
• An Axis puppet state was established, under Ustaše rule, which embraced most of the territory of present-day Croatia and the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This Axis satellite was known as the Independent State of Croatia (NDH, Nezavisna Država Hrvatska).

Ustaše persecution in the Independent State of Croatia

The Order for Serbs and Jews to move out of their homes in Zagreb, Croatia and a warning of forcible expulsions of both Serbs and Jews who failed to comply.

On 10 April, the most senior home-based Ustaše, Slavko Kvaternik, took control of the police in Zagreb and in a radio broadcast that day proclaimed the formation of the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH). Meanwhile, Ante Pavelić and several hundred Ustaše left their camps in Italy and travelled to Zagreb, where Pavelić declared a new government on 16 April 1941. He accorded himself the title of "Poglavnik" — a Croatian approximation to "Führer" and translating to something like "Headman" in English. The Independent State of Croatia was declared to be on Croatian "ethnic and historical territory".

This country can only be a Croatian country, and there is no method we would hesitate to use in order to make it truly Croatian and cleanse it of Serbs, who have for centuries endangered us and who will endanger us again if they are given the opportunity

— Miroslav Žanić, the minister of the NDH Legislative council, on 2 May 1941,

Under Ante Pavelić's leadership and command, the Ustaše subjected ethnic Serbs, together with much smaller minorities of Jews and Roma, to a campaign of genocidal persecution.

Jasenovac concentration camp

Main article: Jasenovac concentration camp

The Srbosjek ("Serb cutter"), an agricultural knife worn over the hand that was used by the Ustaše for the quick slaughter of inmates.

The Ustaše slaughtered their victims with a merciless tenacity which appalled and disgusted both friends and foes alike. A large portion of the atrocities occurred in the notorious Jasenovac concentration camp. It was the largest extermination camp in the Balkans and among the largest in Europe.

The Ustaše interned, tortured and brutally executed men, women and children in the camp. Serbs constituted the majority of inmates. Upon arrival at the camp, the prisoners were marked with colors, similar to the use of Nazi concentration camp badges: blue for Serbs, and red for communists (non-Serbian resistance members), while Roma had no marks. In several instances, inmates with blue badges were killed immediately upon arrival because of their Serbian ethnicity and most Serb inmates considered it to be the only reason for their imprisonment.

The Serbs were predominantly brought from the Kozara region, where the Ustaše captured areas that were held by Partisan guerrillas. These were brought to the camp without sentence, almost destined for immediate execution, accelerated via the use of machine-guns. Besides sporadic and random killings and deaths due to the poor living conditions, many inmates arriving at Jasenovac were scheduled for systematic extermination. An important criterion for selection was the duration of a prisoner's anticipated detention. Strong men capable of labor and sentenced to less than three years of incarceration were allowed to live. All inmates with indeterminate sentences or sentences of three years or more were immediately scheduled for execution, regardless of their fitness.

The so-called "manual-means-of-execution", the Ustaše's favorites, were executions that took part in utilizing sharp or blunt craftsmen tools: knives, saws, hammers, etc. The preferred manual-weapon of many Ustaše guards was the Srbosjek (or Serbcutter). This knife was originally a type of agricultural knife manufactured for wheat sheaf cutting.

The upper part of the knife was made of leather, as a sort of a glove, designed to be worn with the thumb going through the hole, so that only the blade protruded from the hand. It was a curved, 12 cm long knife with the edge on its concave side. The knife was fastened to a bowed oval copper plate, while the plate was fastened to a thick leather bangle. Its agricultural purpose was to make it easier for the field workers to cut wheat sheaves open before threshing them. The knife was fixed on the glove plate in order to prevent injuries and to prevent taking care of a separate knife in order to improve the work speed.

These mass-executions took place in various locations:

• Granik: Granik was a ramp used to unload goods of Sava boats. In winter 1943-44, season agriculture laborers became unemployed, while large transports of new internees arrived and the need for liquidation, in light of the expected Axis defeat, were large. Therefore, "Maks" Luburić devised a plan to utilize the crane as a gallows on which slaughter would be committed, so that the bodies could be dumped into the stream of the flowing river. In the autumn, the Ustaše NCO's came in every night for some 20 days, with lists of names of people who were incarcerated in the warehouse, stripped, chained, beaten and then taken to the "Granik", where weights were tied to the wire that was bent on their arms, and their intestines and neck were slashed, and they were thrown into the river with a blow of a blunt tool in the head. The method was later enhanced, so that inmates were tied in pairs, back to back, their bellies were cut before they were tossed into the river alive.
• Gradina: The Ustaše utilized empty areas in the vicinity of the villages Donja Gradina and Ustice, where they encircled an area marked for slaughter and mass graves in wire. The Ustaše slew victims with knives or smashed their skulls with mallets. When gypsies arrived in the camp, they did not undergo selection, but were rather concentrated under the open skies at a section of camp known as "III-C". From there the gypsies were taken to liquidation in Gradina, working on the dike (men) or in the corn fields in Ustice (women) in between liquidations. Thus Gradina and Ustica became Roma mass grave sites. Furthermore, small groups of gypsies were utilized as gravediggers that actually participated in the slaughter at Gradina. Thus the extermination at the site grew until it became the main killing-ground in Jasenovac. Grave sites were also located in Ustica and in Draksenic.
• Mlaka and Jablanac: Two sites used as collection and labor camps for the women and children in camps III and V, but also as places where many of these women and children, as well as other groups, were executed at the Sava bank in between the two locations.
• Velika Kustarica: According to the state-commission, as many as 50,000 people were killed here in the winter amid 1941 and 1942. There is more evidence suggesting that killings took place there at that time and afterwards.

On the night of 29 August 1942, the prison guards made bets among themselves as to who could slaughter the largest number of inmates. One of the guards, Petar Brzica, boasted that he had cut the throats of about 1,360 new arrivals. A gold watch, a silver service, a roasted suckling pig and a bottle of Italian wine were among his rewards. Others who confessed to participating in the bet included Ante Zrinušić, who killed some 600 inmates, and Mile Friganović, who gave a detailed and consistent report of the incident. Friganović admitted to having killed some 1,100 inmates. He specifically recounted his torture of an old man named Vukasin; he attempted to compel the man to bless Ante Pavelić, which the old man refused to do, even after Friganović had cut off his ears, nose and tongue after each refusal. Ultimately, he cut out the old man's eyes, tore out his heart, and slashed his throat.

In April 1945, as Partisan units approached the camp, the camp's Croatian Fascist supervisors attempted to erase traces of the atrocities by working the death camp at full capacity. On 22 April, 600 prisoners revolted; 520 were killed and 80 escaped. Before abandoning the camp shortly after the prisoner revolt, the Ustaše killed the remaining prisoners and torched the buildings, guardhouses, torture rooms, the "Picili Furnace", and all the other structures in the camp. Upon entering the camp, the Partisans found only ruins, soot, smoke, and the skeletal remains of thousands of victims.

Stara Gradiška concentration camp

File:Transport zensk in otrok.JPG

Women and children being escorted to a concentration camp

The Stara Gradiška concentration camp was built at the site of the Stara Gradiška prison. The camp was specially constructed for women and children and it became notorious for the crimes committed against them. Examples included the torture that took place in cellar 3, in the "Gagro Hotel", where inmates were starved, tortured and then strangled to death using piano-wire.

The camp was guarded by the Ustaše and several female Croatian nurses. Inmates were killed using different means, including firearms, mallets, machetes and knives. At the "K", or "Kula" unit, Jewish and Serbian women, with weak or little children, were starved and tortured at the "Gagro Hotel", a cellar in which Ustaša Nikola Gagro used as a place of torture.

View of the Stara Gradiška concentration camp which was formerly an Austro-Hungarian fortress.

Other inmates were killed using poisonous gas. The first to be gassed were the women and children that arrived from camp Djakovo with gas vans that Simo Klaić called "green Thomas". The method was later replaced with stationary gas-chambers with Zyklon B and sulfur dioxide. Gas experiments were conducted initially at veterinary stables near the "Economy" unit, where horses and then humans were killed using sulphur dioxide and later Zyklon B. Gassing was also tested on children in the yard, where the camp commandant, Ustaša sergeant Ante Vrban, viewed its effects. Most gassing deaths occurred in the attics of "the infamous tower", where several thousand children from the Kožara region were killed in May and 2,000 more in June 1942. Subsequently, smaller groups of 400-600 children, and a few men and women, were gassed. At his trial, Vrban stated:

"Q. And what did you do with the children

A. The weaker ones we poisoned

Q. How?

A. We led them into a yard ... and into it we threw gas

Q. What gas?

A. Zyklon."

According to witness Milka Zabičić, the gassing stopped due to a scheduled visit by a Red Cross delegation in 1943, which did not arrive until June 1944.

Sisak children's concentration camp

In the town of Sisak, situated near Jasenovac, the Ustaše's presence was vigilant. Early in 1942, the local synagogue was vandalized and robbed utterly by Croat extremists, and the building was later transformed to house a worker's hall. The inhabitants of Sisak were quickly brought to the Ustaše's attention, and those of them that were of Serbian and other, non-Croat kinship were tormented.

A large camp was later erected and it held more than 6,600 Serbian and Roma children throughout World War II. The children, aged between 3 and 16, were housed in abandoned stables, ridden with filth and pests. Malnutrition and dysentery seriously impaired their health. They were fed daily with a portion of thin gruel and treated horribly by their captors.

Jastrebarsko concentration camp

The camp housed Serbian children between the ages of one month to fourteen years and was operational for two months in 1942. The camp was set up specifically for Serb children from the Kožara region of Croatia. During its two months of operation, 1,018 children died in the camp. Ilovara Francis, a gravedigger who was paid "per piece", claimed to have buried 768 children in a six-week period. Meanwhile, another 1,300 children were transported to Jasenovac. On 26 August 1942, the Yugoslav Partisans liberated the camp, freeing approximately 700 children.

Jadovno concentration camp

The Jadovno concentration camp was located in а valley near Mount Velebit. It occupied an area of 1250 square meters and was fenced with barbed wire 4 meters high. The guards were posted 1 km all around the concentration camp's barbed wire. Prisoners, mostly Serbs, arrived from the town of Gospić where the Ustaše selected their victims.

The Jadovno victims association states that in 132 days in the camp 40,123 victims were killed. Among them 38,010 were Serbs, 1,998 were Jews, 88 Croats, 11 Slovenes, 9 Muslims, 2 Hungarians, 2 Czechs, 1 Russian, 1 Roma and 1 Montenegrin.

Atrocities

File:Ustasa-saw.jpg

Ustaše sawing off the head of Serb Branko Jungić

The atrocities committed by the Ustaše stunned many observers. Brigadier Sir Fitzroy MacLean, Chief of the British military mission to the Partisans commented, "Some Ustaše collected the eyes of Serbs they had killed, sending them, when they had enough, to the Poglavnik ['head-man'] for his inspection or proudly displaying them and other human organs in the cafés of Zagreb."

The Ustaše also cremated living inmates, who were sometimes drugged and sometimes fully awake, as well as corpses. The first cremations took place in the brick factory ovens in January, 1942. Engineer Hinko Dominik Picilli perfected this method by converting seven of the kiln's furnace chambers into more sophisticated crematories. Some bodies were buried rather than cremated, however, as was discovered by exhumations of bodies after the war.

A large number of massacres were committed. The most notable ones were:

• Gudovac massacre — 184–196 Serbs were massacred by the Ustaše.
• Glina massacre — 260 Serbs were herded into a church and killed by gunfire. Those who converted to Catholicism were spared.
• Javor massacre — Hundreds of Serbs massacred in Javor, near Srebrenica and Ozren.
• Korita massacre — 176 Serbs were massacred and their bodies were thrown into a pit called the Koritska Jama.
• Kosinj massacre — Approximately 600 Serbs massacred by the Ustaše.
• Metković massacre — 280 Serbs killed by the Ustaše in Metković on 25 June 1941.
• Otecac massacre — 331 Serbs were executed by the Ustaše, including a Serbian Orthodox priest who was forced to convert to Catholicism before having his heart cut out of his chest.
• Prebilovci massacre — Approximately 650 Serbs were executed by the Ustaše.

Religious persecution

Serbian civilians who are being forced to convert to Catholicism by the Ustaše regime stand in front of a baptismal font in a church in Glina

The Ustaše recognized both Roman Catholicism and Islam as the national religions of Croatia, but held the position that Eastern Orthodoxy, as a symbol of Serbian identity, was their greatest foe. They never recognized the existence of the Serb people on the territories of Croatia or anywhere else in the world, for that matter – they referred to them only as "Croats of the Eastern faith." They also called Bosnian-Muslims "Croats of the Islamic faith," but they had a much stronger dislike of ethnic-Serbs.

The Ustaše in power banned the use of the expression "Serbian Orthodox faith" and mandated the use of the expression "Greek-Eastern faith" in its place. Hundreds of Serbian Orthodox Christian churches were closed, destroyed, or plundered during Ustaše rule. On 2 July 1942, the Croatian Orthodox Church was founded to replace the institutions of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Persecution in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia

Kragujevac

Germans escorting people from Kragujevac and its surrounding area to be executed.

Between 18–21 October 1941, men and boys were rounded up by German soldiers and members of the Serbian Volunteer Command from the vicinity of Kragujevac, Serbia. All males from the town between the ages of sixteen and sixty were assembled, including high school students, and 2,778 victims were selected from amongst them and shot. Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel had issued an order on 16 September 1941, applicable to all of occupied Europe, to kill 50 communists for every wounded German soldier and 100 for each German soldier killed. German soldiers were attacked in early October by the Communist Partisans and by Chetniks under Draža Mihajlović near Gornji Milanovac, and the massacre was a direct reprisal for the German losses in that battle. In addition, the German High Command was furious because the bodies of the German soldiers had reportedly been mutilated by the guerrillas, so it was decided that the punishment must be particularly harsh.

A German report stated that: "The executions in Kragujevac occurred although there had been no attacks on members of the Wehrmacht in this city, for the reason that not enough hostages could be found elsewhere.

Vojvodina

Main article: Occupation of Vojvodina, 1941-1944

During the four years of occupation, Axis forces committed numerous war crimes against the civilian population in Vojvodina where about 50,000 people were murdered and about 280,000 arrested, violated or tortured. The victims were mostly Serbs but also included Jews and Roma.

File:Novosadska racija 1942 1.jpg

Hungarian soldiers executing Serbian and Jewish civilians in 1942

During the four years of occupation, the Axis forces committed numerous war crimes against civilian population: about 50,000 people in Vojvodina were murdered and about 280,000 were arrested, violated or tortured. The victims belonged to several ethnic groups that lived in Vojvodina, but the largest number of the victims were of the Serb, Jewish and Roma ethnicity.

1942 raid

Main article: 1942 raid in southern Bačka

The most notable war crime during the occupation was the mass murder of the civilians, mostly of Serb and Jewish ethnicity, performed by Hungarian Axis troops in January 1942 raid in southern Bačka. The total number of civilians killed in the raid was 3,808. Locations that were affected by the raid included Novi Sad, Bečej, Vilovo, Gardinovci, Gospođinci, Đurđevo, Žabalj, Lok, Mošorin, Srbobran, Temerin, Titel, Čurug and Šajkaš.

Total number of victims

According to historian Dragoljub Živković, approximately 55,000 civilians died in Vojvodina during the Axis occupation.

According to demographer Slobodan Ćurčić, the total number of the people killed by the occupants between 1941 and 1944 in the entire Vojvodina was 55,285, including:

• 18,193 people who were killed directly
• 19,004 people who were sent to concentration camps and killed there
• 4,168 people who were sent to forced labour and killed there
• 3,286 people who were mobilized and later killed
• 10,634 killed members of the resistance movement

Albanian role and Kosovo

"The Kosovars are 850,000 Albanians, strong of body, firm in spirit, and enthusiastic about the idea of a Union with their Homeland. Apparently, the Serbians are terrified of them. Today one must…chloroform the Yugoslavians. But later on one must adopt a politics of deep interest in Kosovo. This will help to keep alive in the Balkans an irredentist problem which will polarize the attention of the Albanians themselves and be a knife at the back of Yugoslavia.."

Galeazzo Ciano, then the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Benito Mussolini's son-in-law, speaking of Albanian irredentist claims to Kosovo as valuable to Italy's objectives, 1939.

During World War II, with the fall of Yugoslavia in 1941, Italians placed the land inhabited by ethnic Albanians under the jurisdiction of an Albanian quisling government. That included Kosovo.

Kosovo's inclusion into a geo-political Albanian entity was followed by extensive persecution of non-Albanians (mostly Serbs) by Albanian fascists. Most of the war crimes were perpetrated by the Skenderbeg SS Division and the Balli Kombëtar.

"We should endeavor to ensure that the Serb population of Kosovo should be removed as soon as possible . . . All indigenous Serbs who have been living here for centuries should be termed colonialists and as such, via the Albanian and Italian governments, should be sent to concentration camps in Albania. Serbian settlers should be killed."

Mustafa Kruja, the then Prime Minister of Albania, June 1942.

In April 1943, Heinrich Himmler created the 21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Skanderbeg manned by Albanian and Kosovar Albanian volunteers. From August 1944, the division participated in operations against the Yugoslav Partisans and in massacring the local Serb inhabitants. SS-Brigadeführer August Schmidthuber, one of the commanders of the division, was captured in 1945 and turned over to Yugoslav authorities. He was put on trial in February 1947 by a Yugoslav military tribunal in Belgrade, on charges of participating in massacres, deportations and atrocities against civilians. The tribunal sentenced him to death by hanging. He was executed on 27 February 1947.

Overall, it is estimated that some 40,000 to 60,000 Serbs were killed and another 200,000 driven out of Kosovo in a mass-exodus during the Second World War

Controversy

Attitudes in modern-day Croatia

Today, many notable Croats and Croatian politicians have expressed the intent to minimise the seriousness of the crimes committed against ethnic-Serbs in the name of the Croatian people. This is mostly because Croatia has no laws against historical revisionism or Holocaust denial.

Notably, the lead-singer of Thompson, a Croatian rock band known for its ultra-nationalist, Fascist and Serbophobic lyrics, Marko Perković, has on numerous occasions expressed feelings of sympathy towards the Ustaše movement.

File:Thompson Maksimir 17.6.2007 3.jpg

A young couple wearing Ustaše insignia before a Thompson concert in Zagreb, Croatia on 17 June 2007.

In the 90's Thompson was documented singing old Ustaše song, which lyrics include:

Oj Ustaše braćo mila, duboka je voda Drina.

Drinu treba pregaziti, i Srbiju zapaliti.

Which roughly translates to:

Hey, Ustaše, my dear brothers, the Drina river is deep.

We should cross it, and set fire to Serbia!

In June 2007, the Simon Wiesenthal Center posted a letter to then-President of Croatia, Stipe Mesić, in which it expressed "its sense of outrage and disgust in the wake of a massive show of fascist salutes, symbols and uniforms at a rock concert by popular ultra-nationalist Croatian singer "Thompson" attended by 60,000 people in Zagreb." However, Mesić himself has gone on record and has made comments supportive of the Ustaše and Croatian nationalism. In December 2006, a controversy arose when a video was leaked showing him giving a speech in Australia in the early 1990s, where he said that the Croats "won a great victory on April 10th" (when the fascist and genocidal Independent State of Croatia was formed). He also stated that Croatia needed to apologize to no one for the crimes that Croat fascists committed in the Jasenovac concentration camp.

It is also not uncommon to hear ultra-nationalist Croats chant, "Ubi Srbina", or "Kill the Serb" during football/soccer matches.

Denial and historical revisionism

Franjo Tuđman, the late President of Croatia

In 1989, the future President of Croatia, Franjo Tuđman, published his most famous work, Horrors of War: Historical Reality and Philosophy (Croatian: Bespuća Povijesne Zbiljnosti; literal translation Wastelands of Historical Reality) in which he questioned the official numbers of victims killed by the Ustaše during the Second World War. In the book, Tuđman claims without providing evidence that less than thirty-thousand people were killed in Jasenovac. Tuđman is the same person who estimated that a mere 900,000 Jews (instead of six million) had perished in the Holocaust. Tuđman's views and his government's open toleration of Ustaša symbols frequently strained relations with Israel.

On 6 October 2009, the Croatian extreme right-wing NGO, the Croatian Cultural Movement (HUP), declared its intention to erect a monument in honour of former Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić in Zagreb adjacent to the capital's centre square. The Israeli director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center slammed the proposed monument, saying it "constitutes an outrageous falsification of Croatia's World War II history and is an insult to the memory of "... the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians – Serbs, Jews, Roma." He went on to say that the decision to erect the monument reflected "historical revisionism of the worst sort imaginable and a whitewash of the horrific crimes committed by the NDH-Independent State of Croatia as state policy. It is simply inconceivable that a country on the verge of entry to the European Union would allow such a monument to be erected in its capital city or anywhere else on its territory."

In the Croatian Diaspora, there have been several incidents of denial and historical revisionism. The most notable occurrence was in 2008, in Melbourne, Australia, when a restaurant with owners of Croatian descent held a celebration to honour Ustaša leader Ante Pavelić. The event was an "outrageous affront both to his victims and to any persons of morality and conscience who oppose racism and genocide," the Simon Wiesenthal Center's chief Nazi-hunter and Israel director Dr. Efraim Zuroff stated. According to local press reports, a large photograph of Pavelić was hung in the restaurant, T-shirts with his picture and that of two other commanders in the 1941-1945 Ustaše government were offered for sale at the bar, and the establishment of the "Independent State of Croatia" was celebrated. Zuroff noted this was not the first time that Croatian émigrés in Australia had openly defended Croatian Nazi war criminals. "It is high time that the authorities in Australia find a way to take the necessary measures to stop such celebrations, which clearly constitute racist, ethnic, and anti-Semitic incitement against Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies,"

Position of the Roman Catholic Church

"The Ustaša movement is based on religion. Therefore, our acts stem from our devotion to religion and to the Roman Catholic church."

Mile Budak, 13 July 1941.

For the duration of the war, the Vatican kept up full diplomatic relations with the genocidal Independent State of Croatia and even granted Pavelić an audience with its papal nuncio in the capital Zagreb. The nuncio was briefed on the efforts of the Ustaše to convert ethnic-Serbs to Roman Catholicism.

Some former priests, mostly Franciscans, particularly in, but not limited to, Herzegovina and Bosnia, took part in the atrocities themselves. Miroslav Filipović was a Franciscan friar (from the Petrićevac monastery) who joined the Ustaše on 7 February 1942 in a brutal massacre of 2,730 Serbs of the nearby villages, including 500 children. He was subsequently dismissed from his order and defrocked. Filipović later became the Chief Guard of the Jasenovac concentration camp where he was nicknamed "Fra Sotona" ("Friar Satan"). When he was hanged for war crimes, he wore his Franciscan robes.

Ustaše gold

The Ustaše had sent large amounts of gold that it had plundered from Serbian and Jewish property owners during World War II into Swiss bank accounts. Of a total of 350 million Swiss Francs, about 150 million was seized by British troops; however, the remaining 200 million (ca. 47 million dollars) reached the Vatican. In October 1946, the American intelligence agency SSU alleged that these funds are still held in the Vatican Bank. This issue is the theme of a recent class action suit against the Vatican Bank and others.

Commemoration

File:Kragujevac - V3.jpg

"Broken Wing" - a monument to those who were killed in the Kragujevac massacre.

The Jasenovac Memorial Museum reopened in November 2006 with a new exhibition designed by the Croatian architect, Helena Paver Njirić, and an Educational Center designed by the firm Produkcija. The Memorial Museum features an interior of rubber-clad steel modules, video and projection screens, and glass cases displaying artifacts from the camp. Above the exhibition space, which is quite dark, is a field of glass panels inscribed with the names of the victims.

The New York City Parks Department, the Holocaust Park Committee and the Jasenovac Research Institute, with the help of US Congressman Anthony Weiner, established a public monument to the victims of Jasenovac in April 2005 (the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of the camps.) The dedication ceremony was attended by ten Yugoslavian Holocaust survivors, as well as diplomats from Serbia, Bosnia and Israel. It remains the only public monument to Jasenovac victims outside of the Balkans.

To commemorate the victims of the Kragujevac massacre, the whole of Šumarice, where the killings took place, was turned into a memorial park. There are several monuments there: the monument to killed schoolchildren and their teachers, the "Broken Wing" monument, the monument of pain and defiance and the monument "One Hundred for One", the monument of resistance and freedom.

Desanka Maksimović wrote a poem about the massacre titled Krvava Bajka ("A Bloody fairy tale").

Victims

Total number

Historians have had difficulty calculating and agreeing on the number of victims. The first figures to be offered by the state-commission of Croatia ranged from around 500,000 to 600,000 people killed. The official estimate of the number of victims in Yugoslavia was 700,000; however, beginning in the 1990s, the Croatian side began suggesting substantially smaller numbers. The exact numbers continue to be a subject of great controversy and hot political dispute, with the Croatian government and Croatian institutions pushing for a much lower number even as recently as September 2009.

The train which carried prisoners to Jasenovac.

The estimates vary due to lack of accurate records, the methods used for making estimates, and sometimes the political biases of the estimators. In some cases, entire families were exterminated, leaving no one to submit their names to the lists. On the other hand, it has been found that the lists include the names of people who died elsewhere, whose survival was not reported to the authorities, or who are counted more than once on the lists.

The casualty figures for the whole of Yugoslavia sways between the maximum 1,700,000 and the more conservative figures between 1,500,000 or one million.

An accurate number of all people killed at the Jasenovac camp might not ever be known but current estimates are around the 100,000 mark.

Historical documentation sources

The documentation from the time of Jasenovac revolves around the different sides in the battle for Yugoslavia: The Germans, Italians and Ustaše on the one hand, and the Partisans and the Allies on the other. There are also sources originating from the documentation of the Ustaše themselves and of the Vatican. These sources are at times considered contemporary because German and Ustaše sources tend to exaggerate, but the comparison of all different sources can give a reliable portrait of the historical truth.

German generals issued reports of the number of victims as the war progressed. German military commanders gave different figures for the number of Serbs, Jews and others killed by the Ustaše on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia. They circulated figures of 400,000 Serbs (Alexander Löhr); 350,000 Serbs (Lothar Rendulic); around 300,000 (Edmund Glaise von Horstenau); in 1943; "600-700,000 until March 1944" (Ernst Fick); 700,000 (Massenbach). Hermann Neubacher stated:

The recipe, received by the Ustaše leader and Poglavnik, the president of the Independent State of Croatia, Ante Pavelić, resembled genocidal intentions from some of the bloodiest religious wars: "A third must become Catholic, a third must leave the country, and a third must die!" This last point of the Ustaše's program was accomplished. When prominent Ustaše leaders claimed that they slaughtered a million Serbs (including babies, children, women and old men), that is, in my opinion, a boastful exaggeration. On the basis of the reports submitted to me, I believe that the number of defenseless victims slaughtered to be three-quarters of a million.

Italian soldiers, who were overwhelmed and disgusted by the atrocious slaughter, also reported similar figures to their commanders. The Vatican's sources also speak of similar figures, that is, for an example, of 350,000 ethnic-Serbs slaughtered by the end of 1942 (Eugen Tisserant

The Ustaše themselves gave more exaggerated assumptions of the number of people they killed. Vjekoslav "Maks" Luburić, the commander-in-chief of all the Croatian camps, announced the great "efficiency" of the Jasenovac camp at a ceremony as early as October 9, 1942. During the banquet which followed, he reported with pride, obviously intoxicated: "We have slaughtered here at Jasenovac more people than the Ottoman Empire was able to do during its occupation of Europe." Other Ustaše sources give more canon estimations: a circular of the Ustaše general headquarters that reads: "the concentration and labor camp in Jasenovac can receive an unlimited number of internees". In the same spirit, Miroslav Filipović-Majstorović, once captured by Yugoslav forces, admitted that during his three months of administration, 20,000 to 30,000 people died. Since it became clear that his confession was an attempt to somewhat minimize the rate of crimes committed in Jasenovac, having, for an example, claimed to have personally killed 100 people, extremely understated, Miroslav's figures are evaluated so that in some sources they appear as 30,000-40,000.

"We have slaughtered here at Jasenovac more people than the Ottoman Empire was able to do during its occupation of Europe."

Vjekoslav "Maks" Luburić, at a ceremony on 9 October 1942.

A report of the National Committee of Croatia for the investigation of the crimes of the occupation forces and their collaborators, dated November 15, 1945, which was commissioned by the new government of Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito, stated that 500,000-600,000 people were killed at the Jasenovac complex. These figures were cited by researchers Israel Gutman and Menachem Shelach in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust from 1990 and Simon Wiesenthal Center. Menachem Shelach will in his book speak that number, of some 300,000 bodies being found and exhumed is reliable Mosa Pijade and Edvard Kardelj used this number in the war reparations meetings. Thus the proponents of these numbers were subsequently accused of artificially inflating them for purpose of obtaining war reparations. All in all, The state-commission's report has been the only public and official document about number of victims during 45 years of second Yugoslavia.

The state's total war casualties of 1,700,000 as presented by Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Treaties, were produced by a math student, Vladeta Vučković, at the Federal Bureau of Statistics. He later admitted that his estimates included demographic losses (i.e., also factoring in the estimated population increase), while actual losses would have been significantly less. This number of victims has been refused by Germany during war reparations talks.

Živanović: a contemporary forensic source

Between 22 and 27 June 1964, exhumations of bodies and the use of sampling methods was conducted at Jasenovac by Vida Brodar and Anton Pogačnik from Ljubljana university and Srboljub Živanović from Novi Sad university. During the Yugoslav Wars, Serbian anthropologist Srboljub Živanović published what he claimed were the full results of the studies, which in his words has been suppressed by Tito's government in the name of Brotherhood and Unity, in order to put less emphasis on the crimes of the Ustaše. According to Živanović, the research gave strong support to the victim counts of more than 500,000, with estimates of 700,000-800,000 being realistic, stating that in every mass grave there are 800 skeletons.

Victim lists

• The Jasenovac Memorial Area maintains a list of the names of 80,914 Jasenovac victims, including 45,923 Serbs, 16,045 Romanies, 12,765 Jews, 4,197 Croats, 1,113 Bosnian Muslims and 871 people of some other ethnicities. The memorial estimates total deaths at 85,000 to 100,000.

• The Belgrade Museum of the Holocaust keeps a list of the names of 80,022 victims (mostly from Jasenovac), including approximately 52,000 Serbs, 16,000 Jews, 12,000 Croats and 10,000 Romanies.

• Antun Miletić, a researcher at the Military Archives in Belgrade, has collected data on Jasenovac since 1979. His list contains the names of 77,200 victims, of which 41,936 are Serbs.

• In 1998, the Bosniak Institute published SFR Yugoslavia's final List of War Victims from the Jasenovac Camp (created in 1992). The list contained the names of 49,602 victims at Jasenovac, including 26,170 Serbs, 8,121 Jews, 5,900 Croats, 1471 Romanies, 787 Bosnian Muslims, 6,792 of unidentifiable ethnicity, and some listed simply as "others". Another list from that institution, naming victims that died between April and November 1944, lists 4,892 names.

Estimates by Holocaust institutions

The Yad Vashem center claims that more than 500,000 Serbs were murdered in Croatia, 250,000 were expelled, and another 200,000 were forced to convert to Catholicism. including those who were killed at Jasenovac. The same figures are concluded by the Simon-Wiesentall center. Thus Menachem Shelach and Israel Gutman conclude at "the encyclopedia of the holocaust":

"Some six hundred thousand people were murdered at Jasenovac, mostly Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and opponents of the Ustaše regime. The number of Jewish victims was between twenty thousand and twenty-five thousand, most of whom were murdered there up to August 1942, when deportation of the Croatian Jews to Auschwitz for extermination began." (Entry in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, edited by Israel Gutman, vol.1, 1995, pp.739-740)"

On the other hand, however, as of 2012, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates that the Ustaše regime murdered between 45,000 and 52,000 ethnic Serbs in Jasenovac between 1941 and 1945, and that during the period of Ustaše rule, a total of between 320,000 and 340,000 ethnic Serbs were killed in Croatia or Bosnia

Statistical estimates

In the 1980s, calculations were done by Serb statistician Bogoljub Kočović, and by Croat economist Vladimir Žerjavić, who claimed that total number of victims in Yugoslavia was less than 1,700,000 which was the official estimate at the time, both concluding that the number of victims was around one million. Žerjavić calculated furthermore, claiming that the number of victims in the Independent State of Croatia was between 300,000 and 350,000, including 80,000 victims in Jasenovac, as well as thousands of deaths in other camps and prisons. Kočović, who made an estimate of the total number of victims, accused Žerjavić of being motivated by nationalism.

However, these estimates have been dismissed as biased and unreliable especially on the Serbian side. The mere 0.1% change of the (unknown) birth rate would contribute more to the number of victims than Žerjavić's claim of the number of Serbs killed in Jasenovac (50,000) and his calculation has a deficiency rate of 30%. Žerjavić has been dismissed as a nationalist even by Kočović, and his estimates of the number of fatalities in the Bosnian War of the '90s (300,000 killed) was three times greater than ICTY data and Bosnian official estimates after the war (100,000 killed), and sheds light on problems with his credibility. He was accused by some Croatian historians of being a plagiarist and the 'court statistician'.

Commentators in Serbia criticized these estimates as far too low, since the demographic calculations assumed arbitrarily that the growth rate for Serbs in Bosnia (which was absorbed by the Independent State of Croatia during the Second World War) was equal to the total growth rate throughout the former Yugoslavia (1.1% at the time). According to Serbian sources, however, the actual growth rate in this region was 2.4% (in 1921-1931) and 3.5% (in 1949-1953). This method is considered very unreliable by critics because there is no reliable data on total births during this period, yet the results depend strongly on the birth rate - just a change of 0.1% in birth rate changes the victim count by 50,000. According to the census, the number of Serbs between last prewar (1931) and first post war (1948) census has gone up from 1,028,139 to around 1,200,000. The Yugoslav Federal Bureau of Statistics has in 1964 created list of World War II victims with 597,323 names and deficiency estimated at 20-30% which is giving between 750,000 and 780,000 victims. Together with estimated 200,000 killed collaborators and quislings, the total number would reach about one million. This Yugoslav Federal Bureau of Statistics list was declared a state secret in 1964 and it was published only in 1989.

Aftermath

After World War II, the remaining Ustaše went underground or fled to countries such as Australia, Canada, the United States and Germany, with the assistance of Roman Catholic churches and their grassroots supporters

Yugoslav President Marshal Josip Broz Tito never visited the sites where massacres of Serbs took place, particularly Jasenovac, as he sought to make the people of Yugoslavia forget the Ustaše's crimes in the name of "brotherhood and unity". This policy has continued to modern times, as is evidenced by the insufficient amount of media-attention that Fascist war-crimes in the former-Yugoslavia have received.

Israeli President Moshe Katsav visited Jasenovac in 2003. Israeli President Shimon Peres visited Jasenovac on 25 July 2010. He dubbed the Ustaše's crimes to be a "demonstration of sheer sadism".

On 17 April 2011, in a commemoration ceremony, current-Croatian President Ivo Josipović warned that there were, "attempts to drastically reduce or decrease the number of Jasenovac victims." He added, "faced with the devastating truth here that certain members of the Croatian people were capable of committing the cruelest of crimes, I want to say that all of us are responsible for the things that we do." At the same ceremony, then Croatian Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor said, “there is no excuse for the crimes and therefore the Croatian government decisively rejects and condemns every attempt at historical revisionism and rehabilitation of the fascist ideology, every form of totalitarianism, extremism and radicalism,” and added, “Pavelić’s regime was a regime of evil, hatred and intolerance, in which people were abused and killed because of their race, religion, nationality, their political beliefs and because they were the others and were different.”.

Notable war-criminals

Ustaša Maks Luburić relaxing with a German officer in the Stara Gradiška concentration camp.

• Ante Pavelić, leader of Croatia during the Second World War, shot by Blagoje Jovović, a Montenegrin Serb working for the Yugoslavian secret service, near Buenos Aires, Argentina on 9 April 1957. Pavelić later died of his injuries in a hospital in Madrid, Spain.
• Dido Kvaternik, was considered the second most important person in Croatia, after Ante Pavelić. Died in a car accident along with his two daughters in 1962, in Argentina.
• Miroslav Majstorović, an Ustaša infamous for his command periods in Jasenovac and Stara-Gradiška, named "Fra Satana" (Father Satan) for his cruelty and Christian upbringing, was captured by the Yugoslav communist forces, tried and executed in 1946.
• Maks Luburić was the commander of the Ustaška Odbrana, or Ustaše Defense, thus being held responsible for all crimes committed under his supervision in Jasenovac, which he visited approximately two to three times per month. He fled to Spain, but was assassinated by a Yugoslav agent in 1969.
• Mile Budak, a Croatian politician, executed for war crimes and crimes against humanity on 7 June 1945.
• Dinko Šakić fled to Argentina, but was eventually extradited, tried and sentenced, in 1999, by Croatian authorities to 20 years in prison, dying in prison in 2008.
• Petar Brzica was an Ustaša officer who, on the night of 29 August 1942, allegedly slaughtered over 1,360 people. Brzica's fellow Ustaše also took part in that crime, as part of a competition of throat cutting. Brzica is also known for having killed an inmate by beating him, on the departure of administrator Ivica Matković, in March 1943. Brzica's post-war fate is unknown.

See also

• Anti-Serb sentiment
• Glina, Croatia
• Occupation of Vojvodina, 1941-1944
• Kragujevac massacre
• The Holocaust

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