Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia

Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia
Part of World War II in Yugoslavia
Sisak children's concentration camp Forced mass baptism in Mikleuš (clockwise from top) Expelled Serbs marching out of town Stone Flower, a monument in the Jasenovac death camp Adolf Hitler meets Ante Pavelić Sisak children's concentration camp Forced mass baptism in Mikleuš Aloysius Stepinac on trial
Location	Independent State of Croatia (Axis-occupied Yugoslavia)
Date	1941–1945
Target	Serbs
Attack type	Genocide, ethnic cleansing, deportation, forced conversion
Deaths	several estimates 217,000 300,000—350,000 200,000—500,000
Perpetrators	Ustaše
Motive	Anti-Serb sentiment, Greater Croatia, anti-Yugoslavism, Croatisation

The Genocide of the Serbs (Serbo-Croatian: Genocid nad Srbima, Геноцид над Србима) was the systematic persecution of Serbs which was committed during World War II by the fascist Ustaše regime in the Nazi German client Independent State of Croatia (NDH) between 1941 and 1945. It was carried out through executions in death camps, as well as through mass murder, ethnic cleansing, deportations, forced conversions, and war rape. This genocide was simultaneously carried out with the Holocaust in the NDH, by combining Nazi racial policies with the ultimate goal of creating an ethnically pure Greater Croatia.

Following the defeat of the Central Powers in World War I and the collapse of Austria-Hungary, the provisional state which was formed on the southern territories of the Empire which joined the Allies-associate Kingdom of Serbia to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The state was ruled by the Serbian Karađorđević dynasty. The 6 January Dictatorship and the later anti-Croat policies of the Serb-dominated Yugoslav government in the 1920s and 1930s fueled the rise of nationalist and far-right movements. This culminated in the rise of the Ustaše, the most extreme of these movements, and the implementation of its disproportionate and genocidal anti-Serbian policies during the Second World War. The Ustaše was an ultranationalist, fascist and terrorist organization that was founded by Ante Pavelić. At its core, the Ustaše held a deep ethnic hatred of Serbs and Serbian centralized power. Prior to the Second World War, the party organized an uprising in 1932 and assisted in the assassination of King Alexander I.

Following the Nazi German-led Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, a German puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) was established, comprising most of modern-day Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as parts of modern-day Serbia and Slovenia, ruled by the Ustaše. The Ustaše's goal was to create an ethnically homogeneous Greater Croatia by eliminating all non-Croats, with the Serbs being the primary target but Jews, Roma and political dissidents were also targeted for elimination. In addition to Nazi racial theory and fascism, the Ustaše ideology incorporated Roman Catholicism and Croatian nationalism. Large scale massacres were committed and concentration camps were built, the largest one was the Jasenovac camp, which was notorious for its high mortality rate and the barbaric practices which occurred in it. Furthermore, the NDH was the only Axis puppet state to establish concentration camps specifically for children. The regime systematically murdered approximately 200,000 to 500,000 Serbs, with most authors agreeing on a range of around 300,000 to 350,000 fatalities. At least 52,000 perished at Jasenovac. 300,000 Serbs were further expelled and at least 200,000 more Serbs were forcibly converted, most of whom de-converted following the war. Proportional to the population, the NDH was one of the most lethal regime in the 20th century

Mile Budak and other NDH high officials were tried and convicted of war crimes by the communist authorities. Concentration camp commandants such as Ljubo Miloš and Miroslav Filipović were captured and executed, while Aloysius Stepinac was found guilty of forced conversion. Many others escaped, including the supreme leader Ante Pavelić, most to Latin America. The genocide was not properly examined in the aftermath of the war, because the post-war Yugoslav government did not encourage independent scholars out of concern that ethnic tensions would destabilize the new communist regime. Nowadays, оn 22 April, the anniversary of the prisoner breakout from the Jasenovac camp, Serbia marks the National Holocaust, World War II Genocide and other Fascist Crimes Victims Remembrance Day, while Croatia holds an official commemoration at the Jasenovac Memorial Site.

Historical background

Many scholars claimed that the ideological foundation of the Ustaše movement, reaches back to the 19th century, when Ante Starčević established the Party of Rights, as well as when Josip Frank seceded his extreme fraction from it and formed his own the Pure Party of Rights. Starčević was a major ideological influence on the Croatian nationalism of the Ustaše, he 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 to be Croats who had been converted to Islam and Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Starčević called the Serbs an “unclean race”, a “nomadic people” and “a race of slaves, the most loathsome beasts”, while co-founder of his party, Eugen Kvaternik, denied the existence of Serbs in Croatia, seeing their political consciousness as a threat. He was cited as “father of racism”, while some Ustaše ideologues have linked Starčević's racial ideas to Adolf Hitler's racial ideology.

Frank’s party embraced Starčević’s position that Serbs are an obstacle to Croatian political and territorial ambitions, and then the aggressive anti-Serb attitudes became one of the main characteristics of the party. The followers of the ultranationalist Pure Party of Right were known as the Frankists (Frankovci) and they would become the main pool of members of the subsequent Ustaše movement. Following the defeat of the Central Powers in World War I and the collapse of Austria-Hungarian Empire, the provisional state which was formed on the southern territories of the Empire which joined the Allies-associate Kingdom of Serbia to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later known as Yugoslavia), ruled by the Serbian Karađorđević dynasty. Historian John Paul Newman explained the influence of the Frankists, as well as the legacy of the World War I on the Ustaše ideology and later genocidal means. Many war veterans had fought at various ranks and on various fronts on both the ‘victorious’ and ‘defeated’ sides of the war. Serbia suffered the biggest casualty rate in the whole world, while Croats fought in the Austro-Hungarian army and two of them served as military governor of Bosnia and occupied Serbia. They both endorsed Austria–Hungary’s denationalizing plans in Serb-populated lands and supported the idea of incorporating a tamed Serbia into Empire. Newman stated that Austro-Hungarian officers' “unfaltering opposition to Yugoslavia provided a blueprint for the Croatian radical right, the Ustaše”. The Frankists blamed Serbian nationalists for the defeat of Austria-Hungary and opposed the creation of Yugoslavia, which was identified by them as a cover for Greater Serbia. Мass Croatian national consciousness appeared after the establishment of a common state of South Slavs and it was directed against the new Kingdom, more precisely against Serbian predominance within it.

Early 20th century Croatian intellectuals Ivo Pilar, Ćiro Truhelka and Milan Šufflay influenced the Ustaše concept of nation and racial identity, as well as the theory of Serbs as an inferior race. Pilar, historian, politician and lawyer, placed great emphasis on racial determinism arguing that Croats had been defined by the “Nordic-Aryan” racial and cultural heritage, while Serbs had "interbred" with the "Balkan-Romanic Vlachs”. Truhelka, archeologist and historian, claimed that Bosnian Muslims were ethnic Croats, who, according to him, belonged to the racially superior Nordic race. On the other hand, Serbs belonged to the “degenerate race” of the Vlachs. The Ustaše promoted the theories of historian and politician Šufflay, who is believed to have claimed that Croatia had been "one of the strongest ramparts of Western civilization for many centuries", which he claimed had been lost through its union with Serbia when the nation of Yugoslavia was formed in 1918.

The outburst of Croatian nationalism after 1918 was one of the one of the main threats for Yugoslavia’s stability. During the 1920s, Ante Pavelić, lawyer, politician and one of the Frankists, became the leading advocate of Croatian independence. In 1927, he secretly contacted Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy and founder of fascism, and presented his separatist ideas to him. Pavelić proposed an independent Greater Croatia that should cover the entire historical and ethnic area of the Croats. In that period, Mussolini was interested in Balkans with the aim of isolating Yugoslavia, by strengthening Italian influence on the east coast of the Adriatic Sea. British historian Rory Yeomans claimed that there are indication that Pavelić had been considering the formation of some kind of nationalist insurgency group as early as 1928.

Ante Pavelić, one of the Frankists and the leading advocate of Croatian independence in interwar Yugoslavia, founded the Ustaše movement

In August 1928, Stjepan Radić, the leader of the largest and most popular Croatian party Croatian Peasant Party, was assassinated in the country's parliament by a Montenegrin Serb leader and former Chetniks member Puniša Račić, after a tense argument. The assassination provoked violent student protests in Zagreb. Trying to suppress the conflict between Croatian and Serbian political parties, King Alexander I proclaimed a dictatorship with the aim of establishing the “integral Yugoslavism” and single Yugoslav nation. The introduction of the royal dictatorship, especially among the Croats and Macedonians, brought separatist forces to the scene. Historian Jozo Tomasevich explains that, the 6 January Dictatorship and the later anti-Croat policies of the Serbian-dominated Yugoslav government in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as, the assassination of Stjepan Radić were largely responsible for the creation, growth and nature of Croatian nationalist forces, which culminated in right-wing ultranationalist movements such as the Ustaše movement and ultimately its anti-Serbian policies. The Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Movement (Croatian: Ustaša – Hrvatski revolucionarni pokret) emerged as the most extreme movement of these. The Ustaše was created in late 1929 or early 1930 among radical and militant student and youth groups, which existed from the late 1920s. Precisely, the movement was founded by jurnalist Gustav Perčec and Ante Pavelić. They were driven by a deep hatred of Serbs and Serbdom and claimed that, "Croats and Serbs were separated by an unbridgable cultural gulf" which prevented them from ever living alongside each other. Pavelić accused the Belgrade government of propagating “a barbarian culture and Gypsy civilization”, claiming they were spreading “atheism and bestial mentality in divine Croatia”. Supporters of the Ustaše planned genocide years before World War II, for example one of Pavelić's main ideologues, Mijo Babić, wrote in 1932 that the Ustaše "will cleanse and cut whatever is rotten from the healthy body of the Croatian people". In 1933, the Ustaše 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.

Historian Rory Yeomans explains that Ustaše officials constalty emphasized crimes against Croats by Yugoslav government and security forces, although many of them were imagined, though some of them real, as justification for the their envisioned eradication of the Serbs. Political scientist Tamara Pavasović Trošt, commenting on historiography and textbooks, listed the claims that terror against Serbs arose as a result of “their previous hegemony” as an example of the relativisation of Ustaše crimes. Historian Aristotle Kallis explained that anti-Serb prejudices were a "chimera" which emerged through living together in Yugoslavia with continuity with previous stereotypes.

The Ustaše functioned as a terrorist organization as well. The first Ustaše center was established in Vienna, where brisk anti-Yugoslav propaganda soon developed and agents were prepared for terrorist actions. They organized the so-called Velebit uprising in 1932, assaulting a police station in the village of Brušani in Lika. In 1934, the Ustaše cooperated with Bulgarian, Hungarian and Italian right-wing extremists to assassinate King Alexander while he visited the French city of Marseille. Pavelić's fascist tendencies were apparent. The Ustaše movement was financially and ideologically supported by Benito Mussolini. During the intensification of ties with Nazi Germany in the 1930s, Pavelić's concept of the Croatian nation became increasingly race-oriented.

Independent State of Croatia

Kingdom of Yugoslavia's ethnic map 1940
  Serbs (incdluding Montenegrin Serbs)
  Croats
  Bosnian Muslims
  Germans (Danube Swabians)

Occupation and partition of Yugoslavia after the Axis invasion

In April 1941, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was invaded by the Axis powers. After Nazi forces entered Zagreb on 10 April 1941, Pavelić's closest associate Slavko Kvaternik, proclaimed the formation of the Independent State of Croatia(NDH) on a Radio Zagreb broadcast. Meanwhile, Pavelić and several hundred Ustaše volunteers 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" (German: Führer, English: Chief leader). The NDH combined most of modern Croatia, all of modern Bosnia and Herzegovina and parts of modern Serbia into an "Italian-German quasi-protectorate". Serbs made up about 30% of the NDH population. 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.

— Milovan Žanić, the minister of the NDH government, on 2 May 1941.

The Ustaše became obsessed with creating an ethnically pure state. As outlined by Ustaše ministers Mile Budak, Mirko Puk and Milovan Žanić, the strategy to achieve an ethnically pure Croatia was that:

1. One-third of the Serbs were to be killed
2. One-third of the Serbs were to be expelled
3. One-third of the Serbs were to be forcibly converted to Catholicism

The Ustaše movement received limited support from ordinary Croats. In May 1941, the Ustaše had about 100,000 members who took the oath. However, local support for Ustaše violence was larger than the number of members could suggest. Since Vladko Maček called on the supporters of the Croatian Peasant Party to respect and co-operate with the new regime of Ante Pavelić, he was able to use the apparatus of the party and most of the officials from the former Croatian Banovina. Initially, Croatian soldiers who had previously served in the Austro-Hungarian army held the highest positions in the NDH armed forces.

Historian Irina Ognyanova stated that the similarities between the NDH and the Third Reich included the assumption that terror and genocide were necessary for the preservation of the state. Viktor Gutić made several speeches in early summer 1941, calling Serbs "former enemies" and "unwanted elements" to be cleansed and destroyed, and also threatened Croats who did not support their cause. Much of the ideology of the Ustaše was based on Nazi racial theory. Like the Nazis, the Ustaše deemed Jews, Romani, and Slavs to be sub-humans (Untermensch). They endorsed the claims from German racial theorists that Croats were not Slavs but a Germanic race. Their genocides against Serbs, Jews, and Romani were thus expressions of Nazi racial ideology. Adolf Hitler supported Pavelić in order to punish the Serbs. Historian Michael Phayer explained that the Nazis’ decision to kill all of Europe's Jews is estimated by some to have begun in the latter half of 1941 in late June which, if correct, would mean that the genocide in Croatia began before the Nazi killing of Jews. Jonathan Steinberg stated that the crimes against Serbs in the NDH were the “earliest total genocide to be attempted during the World War II”.

Andrija Artuković, the Minister of Interior of the Independent State of Croatia, signed into law a number of racial laws. On 30 April 1941, the government adopted “the legal order of races” and “the legal order of the protection of Atyan blood and the honor of Croatian people”. Croats and about 750,000 Bosnian Muslims, whose support was needed against the Serbs, were proclaimed Aryans. Donald Bloxham and Robert Gerwarth concluded that Serbs were primary tartet of racial lawas and murders. The Ustaše introduced the laws to strip Serbs of their citizenship, livelihoods, and possessions. Similar to Jews in the Third Reich, Serbs were forced to wear armbands bearing the letter “P”, for Pravoslavac (Orthodox). Ustaše writers adopted dehumanizing rhetoric. In 1941, the usage of the Cyrillic script was banned, and in June 1941 began the elimination of "Eastern" (Serbian) words from the Croatian language, as well as the shutting down of Serbian schools. Ante Pavelić ordered, through the "Croatian state office for language", the creation of new words from old roots (some which are used today), and purged many Serbian words.

Concentration and extermination camps

See also: Jasenovac concentration camp and Concentration camps in the Independent State of Croatia

Head of Serbian Orthodox priest and Ustaše

The Ustaše set up temporary concentration camps in the spring of 1941 and laid the groundwork for a network of permanent camps in autumn. The creation of concentration camps and extermination campaign of Serbs had been planned by the Ustaše leadership long before 1941. In Ustaše state exhibits in Zagreb, the camps were portrayed as productive and "peaceful work camps", with photographs of smiling inmates.

Serbs, Jews and Romani were arrested and sent to concentration camps such as Jasenovac, Stara Gradiška, Gospić and Jadovno. There were 22–26 camps in NDH in total. Historian Jozo Tomasevich described that the Jadovno concentration camp itself acted as a "way station" en route to pits located on Mount Velebit, where inmates were executed and dumped.

The largest and most notorious camp was the Jasenovac-Stara Gradiška complex, the largest extermination camp in the Balkans. An estimated 100,000 inmates perished there, most Serbs. Vjekoslav "Maks" Luburić, the commander-in-chief of all the Croatian camps, announced the great "efficiency" of the Jasenovac camp at a ceremony on 9 October 1942, and also boasted: "We have slaughtered here at Jasenovac more people than the Ottoman Empire was able to do during its occupation of Europe."

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

Bounded by rivers and two barbed-wire fences making escape unlikely, the Jasenovac camp was divided into five camps, the first two closed in December 1941, while the rest were active until the end of the war. Stara Gradiška (Jasenovac V) held women and children. The Ciglana (brickyards, Jasenovac III) camp, the main killing ground and essentially a death camp, had 88% mortality rate, higher than Auschwitz's 84.6%. A former brickyard, a furnace was engineered into a crematorium, with witness testimony of some, including children, being burnt alive and stench of human flesh spreading in the camp. Luburić had a gas chamber built at Jasenovac V, where a considerable number of inmates were killed during a three-month experiment with sulfur dioxide and Zyklon B, but this method was abandoned due to poor construction. Still, that method was unnecessary, as most inmates perished from starvation, disease (especially typhus), assaults with mallets, maces, axes, poison and knives. The srbosjek ("Serb-cutter") was a glove with an attached curved blade designed to cut throats. Large groups of people were regularly executed upon arrival outside camps and thrown into the river. Unlike German-run camps, Jasenovac specialized in brutal one-on-one violence, such as guards attacking barracks with weapons and throwing the bodies in the trenches. Some historians use a sentence from German sources: “Even German officers and SS men lost their cool when they saw (Ustaše) ways and methods.”

The infamous camp commander Filipović, dubbed fra Sotona ("brother Satan") and the "personification of evil", on one occasion drowned Serb women and children by flooding a cellar. Filipović and other camp commanders (such as Dinko Šakić and his wife Nada Šakić, the sister of Maks Luburić), used ingenious torture. There were throat-cutting contests of Serbs, in which prison guards made bets among themselves as to who could slaughter the most inmates. It was reported that guard and former Franciscan priest Petar Brzica won a contest on 29 August 1942 after cutting the throats of 1,360 inmates. Inmates were tied and hit over the head with mallets and half-alive hung in groups by the Granik ramp crane, their intestines and necks slashed, then dropped into the river. When the Partisans and Allies closed in at the end of the war, the Ustaše began mass liquidations at Jasenovac, marching women and children to death, and shooting most of the remaining male inmates, then torched buildings and documents before fleeing. Many prisoners were victims of rape, sexual mutilation and disembowelment, while induced cannibalism amongst the inmates also took place. Some survivors testified about drinking blood from the slashed throats of the victims and soap making from human corpses.

Monument at the Mirogoj Cemetery in Zagreb dedicated to the children from Kozara who died in Ustaše concentration camps

Children's concentration camps

See also: Children in the Holocaust

The Independent State of Croatia was the only Axis satellite to have erected camps specifically for children. Special camps for children were those at Sisak, Đakovo and Jastrebarsko, while Stara Gradiška held thousands of children and women. Historian Tomislav Dulić explained that the systematic murder of infants and children, who could not pose a threat to the state, serves as one of the important illustration of the genocidal character of Ustaša mass killing.

The Holocaust and genocide survivors, including Božo Švarc, testified that Ustaše tore off the children's hands, as well as, “apply a liquid to children’s mouths with brushes”, which caused the children to scream and later die. The Sisak camp commander, aphysician Antun Najžer, was dubbed the "Croatian Mengele" by survivors.

Diana Budisavljević, a humanitarian of Austrian descent, carried out rescue operations and saved more than 15,000 children from Ustaše camps.

List of concentration and death camps

• Jasenovac (I–IV) — around 100,000 inmates perished there, at least 52,000 Serbs
• Stara Gradiška (Jasenovac V) — more than 12,000 inmates lost their lives, mostly Serbs
• Gospić — between 24,000 and 42,000 inmates died, predominantly Serbs

Stara Gradiška concentration camp

• Jadovno — between 15,000 and 48,000 Serbs and Jews perished there
• Slana and Metajna — between 4,000 and 12,000 Serbs, Jews and communists died
• Sisak — 6,693 children passed through the camp, mostly Serbs, between 1,152 and 1,630 died
• Danica — around 5,000, mostly Serbs, were transported to the camp, some of them were executed
• Jastrebarsko — 3,336 Serb children passing through the camp, between 449 and 1,500 died
• Kruščica — around 5,000 Jews and Serbs were interred at the camp, while 3,000 lost their lives
• Đakovo — 3,800 Jewish and Serb women and children were interred at the camp, at least 569 died
• Lobor — more than 2,000 Jewish and Serb women and children were interred, at least 200 died
• Kerestinec — 111 Serbs, Jews and communists were captured, 85 were killed
• Sajmište — the camp at the NDH territory operated by the Einsatzgruppen and since May 1944 by Ustaše; between 20,000 and 23,000 Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascists died here
• Hrvatska Mitrovica — the concetration camp in Sremska Mitrovica

Massacres

See also: List of mass executions and massacres in Yugoslavia during World War II

A large number of massacres were committed by the NDH armed forces, Croatian Home Guard (Domobrani) and Ustaše Militia.

File:Ustaše sawing off the head of a Serb civilian.jpg

Ustaše sawing off the head of a Serb civilian, Branko Jungić

The Ustaše Militia was organised in 1941 into five (later 15) 700-man battalions, two railway security battalions and the elite Black Legion and Poglavnik Bodyguard Battalion (later Brigade). They were predominantly recruited among the uneducated population and working class.

In the summer of 1941, Ustaše militias and death squads burnt villages and killed thousands of civilian Serbs in the country-side in sadistic ways with various weapons and tools. Men, women, children were hacked to death, thrown alive into pits and down ravines, or set on fire in churches. Some Serb villages near Srebrenica and Ozren were wholly massacred while children were found impaled by stakes in villages between Vlasenica and Kladanj. The Ustaše cruelty and sadism shocked even Nazi commanders. A Gestapo report to Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, dated 17 February 1942, stated:

Increased activity of the bands [of rebels] is chiefly due to atrocities carried out by Ustaše units in Croatia against the Orthodox population. The Ustaše committed their deeds in a bestial manner not only against males of conscript age, but especially against helpless old people, women and children. The number of the Orthodox that the Croats have massacred and sadistically tortured to death is about three hundred thousand.

Charles King emphasized that the concentration camps losing their central place in the Holocaust and genocide research because a large proportion of victims perished in mass executions, ravines and pits. He explained that the actions of the German allies, including the Croatian one, and the town- and village-level elimination of minorities also played a significant role.

Central Croatia

On 28 April 1941, approximately 184–196 Serbs from Bjelovar were summarily executed, after arrest orders by Kvaternik. It was the first act of mass murder committed by the Ustaše upon coming to power, and presaged the wider campaign of genocide against Serbs in the NDH that lasted until the end of the war. A few days following the massacre of Bjelovar Serbs, the Ustaše rounded up 331 Serbs in the village of Otočac. The victims were forced to dig their own graves before being hacked to death with axes. Among the victims was the local Orthodox priest and his son. The former was made to recite prayers for the dying as his son was killed. The priest was then tortured, his hair and beard was pulled out, eyes gouged out before he was skinned alive.

Between 29 and 37 July 1941, 280 Serbs were killed and thrown into pits near Kostajnica. A large scale massacres took place in Staro Selo Topusko, Vojišnica and Vrginmost About 60% of Sadilovac residents lost their lives during the war. More than 400 Serbs were killed in their homes, including 185 children. On 31 July 1942, in the Sadilovac church the Ustaše under Milan Mesić's command massacred more than 580 inhabitants of the surrounding villages, including about 270 children.

Glina

Main article: Glina massacres

On 11 or 12 May 1941, 260–300 Serbs were herded into an Orthodox church and shot, after which it was set on fire. The idea for this massacre reportedly came from Mirko Puk, who was the Minister of Justice for the NDH. On 10 May, Ivica Šarić, a specialist for such operations traveled to the town of Glina to meet with local Ustaše leadership where they drew up a list of names of all the Serbs between sixteen and sixty years of age to be arrested. After much discussion, they decided that all of the arrested should be killed. Many of the town's Serbs heard rumors that something bad was in store for them but the vast majority did not flee. On the night of 11 May, mass arrests of male Serbs over the age of sixteen began. The Ustaše then herded the group into an Orthodox Church and demanded that they be given documents proving the Serbs had all converted to Catholicism. Serbs who did not possess conversion certificates were locked inside and massacred. The church was then set on fire, leaving the bodies to burn as Ustaše stood outside to shoot any survivors attempting to escape the flames.

A similar massacre of Serbs occurred on 30 July 1941. 700 Serbs were gathered into a church under the premise that they would be converted. Victims were killed by having their throats cut or by having their heads smashed in with rifle butts. Between 500–2000 other Serbs were later massacred in neighbouring villages by Vjekoslav "Maks" Luburić's forces, continuing until 3 August. In these massacres specifically males 16 years and older were killed. Only one of the victims, Ljubo Jednak, survived by playing dead.

Lika

On 6 August 1941, the Ustaše killed and burned more than 280 villagers in Mlakva, including 191 children. Between June and August 1941, about 890 Serbs from Ličko Petrovo Selo and Melinovac were killed and thrown in the so-called Delić pit.

During the war, the Ustaše massacred more than 900 Serbs in Divoselo, more than 500 in Smiljan, as well as more than 400 in Široka Kula near Gospić. On 2 August 1941, the Ustaše trapped about 120 children and women and 50 men who tried to escape from Divoselo. After a few days of imprisonment, where women were raped, they were stabbed in groups and thrown into the pits.

Slavonia

Sava Šumanović's house in Šid, who was tortured and killed together with 150 fellow citizens

On 21 December 1941, approximately 880 Serbs from Dugo Selo Lasinjsko and Prkos Lasinjski were killed in the Brezje forest. On the Serbian New Year, 14 January 1942, the biggest slaughter of the civilians from Slavonia started. Villages were burned, and about 350 people were deported to Voćin and executed.

Syrmia

In August 1942, following the joint military anti-partisan operation in the Syrmia by the Ustaše and German Wehrmacht, it turned into a massacre by the Ustaše militia that left up to 7,000 Serbs dead. Among those killed was the prominent painter Sava Šumanović, who was arrested along with 150 residents of Šid, and then tortured by having his arms cut off.

Bosnian Krajina

In August 1941 on the Eastern Orthodox Elijah's holy day, who is the patron saint of Bosnia and Herzegovina, between 2,800 and 5,500 Serbs from Sanski Most and the surrounding area were killed and thrown into pits which have been dug by victims themselves.

During the war, the NDH armed forces killed over 7,000 Serbs in the municipality of Kozarska Dubica, while the municipality lost more than half of its pre-war population. The biggest massacre was committed by the Croatian Home Guard in January 1942, when the village Draksenić was burned and more than 200 were people killed.

In February 1942, the Ustaše under Miroslav Filipović's command massacred 2,300 adults and 550 children in Serb-populated villages Drakulić, Motike and Šargovac. The children were chosen as the first victims and their body parts were cut off.

Garavice

Main article: Garavice

Garavice Memorial Park

From July to September 1941, some 15,000 Serbs were massacred along with some Jews and Roma victims at Garavice, an extermination location near Bihać. On the night of 17 June 1941, Ustaše began the mass killing of previously captured Serbs, who were brought by trucks from the surrounding towns to Garavice. The bodies of the victims were thrown into mass graves. A large amount of blood contaminated the local water supply.

Herzegovina

On 9 May 1941, approximately 400 Serbs were rounded up from several villages and executed in a pit behind a school in the village of Blagaj. From 4–6 August 1941, 650 women and children killed by being thrown into the Golubinka pit near Šurmanci. Also, hand grenades were thrown at dead bodies. Some 4000 Serbs later massacred in neighbouring places during that summer.

In the Livno Field area, the Ustaše killed over 1,200 Serbs includiing 370 children. In the Koprivnica Forest near Livno, around 300 citizen were tortured and killed. About 300 children, women and the elderly were killed and thrown into the Ravni Dolac pit in Donji Rujani.

Drina Valley

Some 70-200 Serbs massacred by Muslim Ustaše forces in Rašića Gaj, Vlasenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 22 June and 20 July 1941, after raping women and girls. Many Serbs were executed by Ustaše along the Drina Valley for a months, especially near Višegrad. Jure Francetić's Black Legion killed thousands of defenceless Bosnian Serb civilians and threw their bodies into the Drina river. In 1942, about 6,000 Serbs were killed in Stari Brod near Rogatica and Miloševići.

Sarajevo

During the summer of 1941, Ustaše militia periodically interned and executed groups of Sarajevo Serbs. In August 1941, they arrested about one hundred Serbs suspected of ties to the resistance armies, mostly church officials and members of the intelligentsia, and executed them or deported the to concentration camps. The Ustaše killed at least 323 people in the Villa Luburić, a slaughter house and place for torturing and imprisoning Serbs, Jews and political dissidents.

Expulsion and ethnic cleansing

Expulsions was one of the pillar of the Ustaše plan to create a pure Croat state. The first to be forced to leave were war veterans from the World War I Macedonian front who lived in Slavonia and Syrmia. By mid-1941, 5,000 Serbs had been expelled to German-occupied Serbia. The general plan was to have prominent people deported first, so their property could be nationalized and the remaining Serbs could then be more easily manipulated. By the end of September 1941, about half of the Serbian Orthodox clergy, 335 priests, had been expelled.

The Drina is the border between the East and West. God’s Providence placed us to defend our border, which our allies are well aware and value, because for centuries we have proven that we are good frontiersmen.

— Mile Budak, the minister of the NDH government, August 1941.

Advocates of expulsion presented it as a necessary measure for the creation of a socially functional nation state, and also rationalized these plans by comparing it with population the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey. The Ustaše set up holding camps, with the aim of gathering a large number of people and deporting them. The NDH government also formed the Office of Colonization to resettle Croats on reclaimed land. During the summer of 1941, the expulsions were carried out with the significant participation of the local population. Many representatives of local elites, including Bosnian Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Germans in Slavonia and Syrmia, played an active role in the expulsion.

An estimated 120,000 Serbs were deported from the NDH to German-occupied Serbia, and 300,000 fled by 1943. By the end of July 1941 according to the German authorities in Serbia, 180,000 Serbs defected from the NDH to Serbia and by the end of September that number exceeded 200,000. In that same period 14,733 persons were legally relocated from the NDH to Serbia.In October 1941, organized migration was stopped because the German authorities in Serbia forbid further immigration of Serbs. According to documentation of the Commissariat for Refugees and Immigrants in Belgrade, in 1942 and 1943 illegal departures of individuals from NDH to Serbia still existed, numbering an estimated 200,000 though these figures are incomplete.

Religious persecution

See also: Catholic clergy involvement with the Ustaše and Persecution of Eastern Orthodox Christians

Group of Serb civilians forcibly converted at a church in Glina, after which their throats were slit or heads bashed in, as part of a massacre campaign in the area.

The Ustaše viewed religion and nationality as being closely linked; while Roman Catholicism and Islam (Bosnian Muslims were viewed as Croats) were recognized as Croatian national religions, Eastern Orthodoxy was deemed inherently incompatible with the Croatian state project. They saw Orthodoxy as hostile because it was identified as Serb. On 3 May 1941 a law was passed on religious conversions, pressuring Serbs to convert to Catholicism and thereby adopt Croat identity. This was made on the eve of Pavelić's meeting with Pope Pious XII in Rome. The Catholic Church in Croatia, headed by archbishop Aloysius Stepinac, greeted it and adopted it into the Church's internal law. The term "Serbian Orthodox" was banned in mid-May as being incompatible with state order, and the term "Greek-Eastern faith" was used in its place. By the end of September 1941, about half of the Serbian Orthodox clergy, 335 priests, had been expelled.

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

— the chief Ustaše ideologist Mile Budak, 13 July 1941.

File:Ustaše ruše pravoslavnu crkvu u Banja Luci 1941.jpg

Demolition of the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Banja Luka by Ustaše

Ustaše propaganda legitimized the persecution as being partially based on the historic Catholic–Orthodox struggle for domination in Europe and Catholic intolerance towards the "schismatics". Following the Serb insurgency which was provoked by the Ustaše's reign of terror, killings and deportation campaign, the State Directorate for Regeneration launched a program in the autumn of 1941 which was aimed at the mass forced conversion of the Serbs. Already in the summer, the Ustaše had closed or destroyed most of the Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries and deported, imprisoned or murdered Orthodox priests and bishops. The conversions were meant to Croatianize and permanently destroy the Serbian Orthodox Church.

The Vatican was not opposed to the forced conversions. On 6 February 1942, Pope Pious XII privately received 206 Ustaše members in uniforms and blessed them, symbolically supporting their actions. On 8 February 1942 envoy to the Holy See Rusinović said that 'the Holy See joyed' over forced conversions. In a 21 February 1942 letter to Cardinal Luigi Maglione, the Holy See's secretary encouraged the Croatian bishops to speed up the conversions, and he also stated that the term "Orthodox" should be replaced with the terms "apostates or schismatics". Many fanatical Catholic priests joined the Ustaše, blessed and supported their work, and participated in killings and conversions.

In 1941–1942, some 200,000 or 240,000–250,000 Serbs were converted to Roman Catholicism, although most of them only practiced it temporarily. Converts would sometimes be killed anyway, often in the same churches where they were re-baptized. 85% of the Serbian Orthodox clergy was killed or expelled. In Lika, Kordun and Banija alone, 172 Serbian Orthodox churches were closed, destroyed, or plundered. On 2 July 1942, the Croatian Orthodox Church was founded in order to replace the institutions of the Serbian Orthodox Church, after the matter of forced conversion had become extremely controversial.

The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust described that the bishops' conference that met in Zagreb in November 1941 was not prepared to denounce the forced conversion of Serbs that had taken place in the summer of 1941, let alone condemn the persecution and murder of Serbs and Jews. Many Catholic priests in Croatia approved of and supported the Ustaše's large scale attacks on the Serbian Orthodox Church, and the Catholic hierarchy did not issue any condemnation of the crimes, either publicly or privately. In fact, The Croatian Catholic Church and the Vatican viewed the Ustaše's policies against the Serbs as being advantageous to Roman Catholicism.

List of persecuted head officials of the Serbian Orthodox Church

Platon Jovanović's relics in the Church of the Holy Trinity, Banja Luka

Bishops and metropolitans of the Serbian Orthodox Church dioceses in the Independent State of Croatia were targeted during religious persecutions:

• Sava Trlajić, the Bishop of the Eparchy of Gornji Karlovac — tortured and killed in 1941
• Platon Jovanović, the Bishop of the Eparchy of Banja Luka — tortured and killed in 1941
• Petar Zimonjić, the Metropolitan of the Metropolitanate of Dabar-Bosna — tortured and killed in 1941
• Dositej Vasić, the Metropolitan of the Metropolitanate of Zagreb and Ljubljana — died in 1945 as result of wounds from torture by Ustaše, before he was banished to Serbia
• Nikola Jovanović, the Bishop of the Eparchy of Zahumlje and Herzegovina — died in 1944, after he was beaten by the Ustaše and expelled to Serbia
• Irinej Đorđević, the Bishop of the Eparchy of Dalmatia — interned to Italian captivity

The role of Aloysius Stepinac

A cardinal Aloysius Stepinac served as Archbishop of Zagreb during World War II and pledged his loyalty to the NDH. Scholars still debate the degree of Stepinac's contact with the Ustaše regime. Mark Biondich stated that he was not an “ardent supporter” of the Ustahsa regime legitimising their every policy, nor an “avowed opponent” publicly denounced its crimes in a systematic manner. While some clergy committed war crimes in the name of the Catholic Church, Stepinac practiced a wary ambivalence. He was an early supporter of the goal of creating an Catholic Croatia, but soon began to question the regime's mandate of forced conversion.

Historian Tomasevich praised his statements that were made against the Ustaše regime by Stepinac, as well as his actions against the regime. However, he also noted that these same statements and actions had shortcomings in respect to Ustaše's genocidal actions against the Serbs and the Serbian Orthodox Church. As Stepinac failed to publicly condemn the genocide waged against the Serbs by the Ustaše earlier during the war as he would later on. Tomasevich stated that Stepinac's courage against the Ustaše state earned him great admiration among anti-Ustaše Croats in his flock along with many others. However this came with the price of enmity of the Ustaše and Pavelić personally. In the early part of the war, he strongly supported a Yugoslavian state organized with federal lines. It was generally known that Stepinac and Pavlović thoroughly hated each other. The Germans considered him Pro-Western and “friend of the Jews” leading to hostility from German and Italian forces.

On 14 May 1941, Stepinac received word of an Ustaše massacre of Serb villagers at Glina. On the same day, he wrote to Pavelić saying:

Aloysius Stepinac with two Catholic priests at the funeral of President of the NDH Parliament Marko Došen in September 1944

I consider it my bishop's responsibility to raise my voice and to say that this is not permitted according to Catholic teaching, which is why I ask that you undertake the most urgent measures on the entire territory of the Independent State of Croatia, so that not a single Serb is killed unless it is shown that he committed a crime warranting death. Otherwise, we will not be able to count on the blessing of heaven, without which we must perish.

These were still private protest letters. Later in 1942 and 1943, Stepinac started to speak out more openly against the Ustaše genocides, this was after most of the genocides were already committed, and it became increasingly clear the Nazis and Ustaše will be defeated. In May 1942, Stepinac spoke out against genocide, mentioning Jews and Roma, but not Serbs.

Tomasevich wrote that while Stepinac is to be commended for his actions against the regime, the failure of the Croatian Catholic hierarchy and Vatican to publicly condemn the genocide "cannot be defended from the standpoint of humanity, justice and common decency". In his diary, Stepinac said that "Serbs and Croats are of two different worlds, north and south pole, which will never unite as long as one of them is alive", along with other similar views. Historian Ivo Goldstein described that Stepinac was being sympathetic to the Ustaše authorities and ambivalent towards the new racial laws, as well as that he was “a man with many dilemmas in a disturbing time”. Stepinac resented the interwar conversion of some 200,000 most Croatian Catholics to Orthodoxy, which he felt was forced on them by prevailing political conditions. In 2016 Croatia's rehabilitation of Stepinac was negatively received in Serbia and Republika Srpska, an entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Toll of victims and genocide classification

During the war as well as during Tito's Yugoslavia, various numbers were given for Yugoslavia's overall war casualties. Estimates by Holocaust memorial centers also vary. The historian Rory Yeomans concluded that the most conservative estimates state that 200,000 Serbs were killed by Ustaše death squads but the actual number of Serbs who were executed by the Ustaše or perished in Ustaše concentration camps may be as high as 500,000. Jozo Tomasevich said that the exact number of victims in Yugoslavia is impossible to determine. Sabrina P. Ramet estimated that at least 300,000 Serbs were "massacred by the Ustaše".

In the 1980s, calculations of World War II victims in Yugoslavia were made by the Serb statistician Bogoljub Kočović and the Croat demographer Vladimir Žerjavić. Tomasevich described their studies as being objective and reliable. Kočović estimated that 370–410,000 Serbs died in the NDH during the war. He did not estimate the number of Serbs who were killed by the Ustaše, saying that in most cases, the task of categorizing the victims would be impossible. Žerjavić estimated that the total number of Serb deaths in the NDH was 322,000, of which 125,000 died as combatants, while 197,000 were civilians. Žerjavić estimated that a total of 78,000 civilians were killed in Ustaše prisons, pits and camps, including Jasenovac, 45,000 civilians were killed by the Germans, 15,000 civilians were killed by the Italians, 34,000 civilians were killed in battles between the warring parties, and 25,000 civilians died of typhoid. The number of victims who perished in the Jasenovac concentration camp remains a matter of debate, but current estimates put the total number at around 100,000, about half of whom were Serbs.

Raphael Lemkin, the initiator of the Genocide Convention described the Ustaše crimes against Serbs as genocide

Tomislav Dulić stated that Serbs in NDH suffered among the highest casualty rates in Europe during the World War II. The genocide scholar Israel Charny lists the Independent State of Croatia as the third most lethal regime in the twentieth century, killing an average of 2.51% of its citizens per year. Charny's definition of domestic democide doesn't only include genocide, but also politicide and mass murder, as well as forced deportation causing deaths and famine or epidemic during which regime withhold aid or act in a way to make it more deadly. American historian Stanley G. Payne stated that direct and indirect executions by NDH regime were an “extraordinary mass crime”, which in proportionate terms exceeded any other European regime beside Hitler's Third Reich. He added the crimes in the NDH were proportionately surpassed only by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and several of the extremely genocidal African regimes. Raphael Israeli wrote that “a large scale genocidal operations, in proportions to its small population, remain almost unique in the annals of wartime Europe.”

In Serbia as well as in the eyes of Serbs, the Ustaše atrocities constituted a genocide. Many historians and authors describe the Ustaše regime's mass killings of Serbs as meeting the definition of genocide, including Raphael Lemkin who is known for coining the word genocide and initiating the Genocide Convention. Croatian historian Mirjana Kasapović explained that in the most important scientific works on genocide, crimes against Serbs, Jews and Roma in the NDH are unequivocally classified as genocide.

Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, stated that “Ustasha carried out a Serb genocide, exterminating over 500,000, expelling 250,000, and forcing another 250,000 to convert to Catholicism”. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, also, mentioned that leaders of the Independent State of Croatia committed genocide against Serbs, Jews, and Roma. Presidents of Croatia, Stjepan Mesić and Ivo Josipović, as well as Bakir Izetbegović and Željko Komšić, Bosniak and Croat member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, also described the persecution of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia as a genocide.

In the post-war era, the Serbian Orthodox Church considered the Serbian victims of this genocide to be martys. As a result, the Serbian Orthodox Church commemorates the Holy New Martys of Jasenovac Concentration Camp on 13 September.

Aftermath

The Yugoslav communist authorities did not use the Jasenovac camp as was done with other European concentration camps, most likely due to Serb-Croat relations. They recognized that ethnic tensions stemming from the war could had the capacity to destabilize the new communist regime, tried to conceal wartime atrocities and to mask specific ethnic losses. The Tito's government attempted to let the wounds heal and forge "brotherhood and unity" in the peoples. Tito himself was invited to, and passed Jasenovac several times, but never visited the site. The genocide was not properly examined in the aftermath of the war, because the Yugoslav communist government did not encourage independent scholars. Historians Marko Attila Hoare and Mark Biondich stated that Western world historians don't pay enough attention to the genocide committed by Ustaše, while several scholars described it as lesser-known genocide.

World War II and especially its ethnic conflicts have been deemed instrumental in the later Yugoslav Wars (1991–95).

Trials

File:Ljubo Miloš suđenje 1948.jpg

Ljubo Miloš en route to his trial

Mile Budak and a number of other members of the NDH government, such as Nikola Mandić and Julije Makanec, were tried and convicted of high treason and war crimes by the communist authorities of the SFR Yugoslavia. Many of them were executed. Miroslav Filipović, the commandant of the Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška camps, was found guilty for war crimes, sentenced to death and hanged.

Many others escaped, including the supreme leader Ante Pavelić, most to Latin America. Some emigrations were prevented by the Operation Gvardijan, in which Ljubo Miloš, the commandant of the Jasenovac camp was captured and executed. Aloysius Stepinac, who served as Archbishop of Zagreb was found guilty of high treason and forced conversion of Orthodox Serbs to Catholicism. However, some claim the trial was "carried out with proper legal procedure".

In its judgment in the Hostages Trial, the Nuremberg Military Tribunal concluded that the Independent State of Croatia was not a sovereign entity capable of acting independently of the German military, despite recognition as an independent state by the Axis powers. According to the Tribunal, "Croatia was at all times here involved an occupied country". The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide were not in force at the time. It was unanimously adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948 and entered into force on 12 January 1951.

Andrija Artuković, Minister of Internal Affairs and Minister of Justice of the NDH who signed a number of racial laws, escaped to the United States after the war and he was extradited to Yugoslavia in 1986, where he was tried in the Zagreb District Court and was found guilty of a number of mass killings in the NDH. Artuković was sentenced to death, but the sentence was not carried out due to his age and health.

Ratlines, terrorism and assassinations

See also: Ratlines (World War II aftermath) and Terrorism in Yugoslavia

With the Partisan liberation of Yugoslavia, many Ustaše leaders fled and took refuge at the college of San Girolamo degli Illirici near the Vatican. Catholic priest and Ustaše Krunoslav Draganović directed the fugitives from San Girolamo. The US State Department and Counter-Intelligence Corps helped war criminals to escape, and assisted Draganović (who later worked for the American intelligence) in sending Ustaše abroad. Many of those responsible for mass killings in NDH took refuge in South America, Portugal, Spain and the United States. Luburić was assassinated in Spain in 1969 by an UDBA agent; Artuković lived in Ireland and California until extradited in 1986 and died of natural causes in prison; Dinko Šakić and his wife Nada lived in Argentina until extradited in 1998, Dinko dying in prison and his wife released. Draganović also arranged Gestapo functionary Klaus Barbie's flight.

Among some of the Croat diaspora, the Ustaše became heroes. Ustaše émigré terrorist groups in the diaspora (such as Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood and Croatian National Resistance) carried out assassinations and bombings, and also plane hijackings, throughout the Yugoslav period.

Controversy

Revisionism in modern-day Croatia

Further information: Genocide denial and Far-right in Croatia

Some Croats, including politicians, have attempted to minimise the magnitude of the genocide perpetrated against Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia. Historian Mirjana Kasapović concluded that there are three main strategies of historical revisionism in the part of Croatian historiography: the NDH was a normal counter-insurgency state at the time; no mass crimes were committed in the NDH, especially genocide; the Jasenovac camp was just a labor camp, not an extermination camp.

By 1989, the future President of Croatia, Franjo Tuđman (who had been a Partisan during World War II), had embraced Croatian nationalism, and published Horrors of War: Historical Reality and Philosophy, in which he questioned the official number of victims killed by the Ustaše during the Second World War. In his book, Tuđman claimed that fewer than thirty-thousand people died at Jasenovac. Some scholars and observers accused Tudjman of racist statements, “flirting with ideas associated with the Ustaše movement” and downplaying the number of victims in the Independent State of Croatia.

Nonetheless, in his book, he did confirm that genocide happened:

It is a historical fact that the Ustaše regime of NDH, in its implementation of the plan to reduce the 'hostile Serb Orthodox people in Croatian lands', committed a large genocidal crime over the Serbs, and proportionately even higher over the Roma and Jews, in the implementation of Nazi racial politics.

In 2006, a video was leaked showing Croatian President Stipe Mesić giving a speech in Australia in the early 1990s, in which he said that the Croats had "won a great victory on April 10th" (the date of the formation of the Independent State of Croatia in 1941), and that Croatia needed to apologize to no one for Jasenovac. Later on, Mesić apologized for his indecent statement and stated that he undoubtedly considered anti-fascism to be the basis of modern-day Croatia, appreciated Yugoslav Partisans and considered it necessary to "reaffirm anti-fascism as a human and civilization commitment in the function of the unavoidable condition for the building of a democratic Croatia, a country of equal citizens." In 2017, two new videos Mesić from 1992 were made public in which he stated that Jasenovac wasn't a death camp and praised Ustashe minister Andrija Artuković.

Left: Josip Pečarić; Right: Josip Jurčević
The most prominent genocide deniers

On 17 April 2011, in a commemoration ceremony, Croatian President Ivo Josipović warned that there were "attempts to drastically reduce or decrease the number of Jasenovac victims", adding, "faced with the devastating truth here that certain members of the Croatian people were capable of committing the cruelest of crimes." 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... 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."

Croatian historian and politician Zlatko Hasanbegović, who previously served as the country's Minister of Culture in 2016, has been accused of downplaying the crimes of the Ustaše and trying to rehabilitate their ideas in his work. In 1996, Hasanbegović wrote at least two articles in the magazine "The Independent State of Croatia", edited by the small far-right Croatian Liberation Movement party (HOP), in which he glorified the Ustaše as heroes and martyrs and denied crimes committed by the regime. In response, Hasanbegović denied being an apologist for the regime, stating that Ustaša crimes during the Second World War were "the biggest moral lapse" of the Croatian people in their history and that his words were taken out of context for political manipulation. An old black-and-white photo also resurfaced from the 1990s, published in the same magazine of Hasanbegović wearing a cap with what is allegedly an Ustaše Militia badge. He claimed the photo had been manipulated and that he wore a black cap of the Croatian Defence Forces (HOS).

Croatia's far-right often advocates the false theory that Jasenovac was a "labour camp" where mass murder did not take place. One prominent peddler is the far-right NGO "The Society for Research of the Threefold Jasenovac Camp". Its members include journalist Igor Vukić and academic Josip Pečarić who have written books promoting this theory. The Ideas promoted by its members have been amplified by mainstream media interviews and book tours. The last book, "The Jasenovac Lie Revealed" written by Vukić, prompted the Simon Wiesenthal Center to urge Croatian authorities to ban such works, noting that they "would immediately be banned in Germany and Austria and rightfully so". When asked if the society engaged in genocide denial, Vukić responded by saying "When it’s about genocide, it is often linked to Serbs. If it’s about that, we do deny it". Menachem Z. Rosensaft, the general counsel of the World Jewish Congress, condemned the affirmative column about Vukić's book written by Milan Ivkošić in the Večernji list, emphasizing that “there are horrific realities of history that must not be questioned, distorted or denied by anyone”.

Anti-Cyrillic Graffiti depicting the “U” symbol of the Ustaše

Since 2016, anti-fascist groups, leaders of Croatia's Serb, Roma and Jewish communities and former top Croat officials have boycotted the official state commemoration for the victims of the Jasenovac concentration camp because, as they said, Croatian authorities refused to denounce the Ustaše legacy explicitly and they downplayed and revitalized crimes committed by Ustaše. In 2017, the Amnesty International reported that discrimination against ethnic minorities in Croatia remained widespread. They also pointed out hate speech, public officials "evoking fascist ideology" and difficulties in implementing the use minority languages and script in some towns. However the Croatian courts regularly prosecuted cases of defamation and insult to the honour and reputation of persons. These offences were classified as serious criminal offences under the Criminal Code. According to the 2018 European Commission against Racism and Intolerance report, racist and intolerant hate speech in public discourse is escalating in Croatia; and the main targets are Serbs, LGBT persons and Roma. Furthermore, there is a growing rise of nationalism, particularly among the youth, which primarily takes the form of praising the fascist Ustaše regime. The responses of the Croatian authorities to these incidents cannot be considered fully adequate.

Croatian Wikipedia

The Croatian Wikipedia has received attention from international media for promoting a fascist worldview as well as a bias against Serbs by means of historical revisionism and negating or diluting the severity of the crimes that were committed by the Ustaše regime. The controversy erupted in September 2013 when a group of exiled Wikipedians started a Facebook page in order to discuss the takeover of the Croatian Wikipedia by right-wingers, bringing the issue to the attention of Croatian and Serbian news outlets. The issue was reported by Croatia's daily Jutarnji list and even made its print edition's front page on 11 September 2013. In one pertinent example, the Croatian page on the Jasenovac concentration camp refers to the camp as both a “collection camp” and a labor camp, and it downplays the crimes that were committed at Jasenovac, as well as the number of victims who died there, and it also relies on right-wing media and private blogs as references. Apart from whitewashing the crimes and vices of World War II-era criminals, the same thing is done for contemporary Croatian politicians and public figures.

Revisionism in the Croat diaspora

In 2008, in Melbourne, Australia, a Croat restaurant held a celebration to honour Ustaše 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", Dr. Efraim Zuroff, of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, stated. According to local press reports, a large photograph of Pavelić was hung in the restaurant, T-shirts with his picture and pictures of two other commanders who served in the 1941–45 Ustaše government were offered for sale at the bar, and the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia was celebrated. Zuroff noted that this was not the first time in which Croatian émigrés in Australia had openly defended Croat 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.

Commemoration

An exhibition dedicated to the Jasenovac victims, Banja Luka

Israeli President Moshe Katsav visited Jasenovac in 2003. His successor, Shimon Peres, paid homage to the camp's victims when he visited Jasenovac on 25 July 2010 and laid a wreath at the memorial. Peres dubbed the Ustaše's crimes a "demonstration of sheer sadism".

The Jasenovac Memorial Museum reopened in November 2006 with a new exhibition designed by a 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 then-Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY), 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 the Balkans.

Memorial museum for victims of massacre in Stari Brod, Rogatica

Nowadays, оn 22 April, the anniversary of the prisoner breakout from the Jasenovac camp, Serbia marks the National Holocaust, World War II Genocide and other Fascist Crimes Victims Remembrance Day, while Croatia holds an official commemoration at the Jasenovac Memorial Site. Serbia and Bosnian entity of Republika Srpska hold a joint central commemoration at the Donja Gradina Memorial Zone.

In 2018, an exhibition named “Jasenovac – The Right to Remembrance” was held in the Headquarters of the United Nations in New York City within the marking of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, with the main goal of to foster a culture of remembrance of Serb, Jewish, Roma and anti-fascist victims of the Holocaust and genocide in the Jasenovac camp. On 22 April 2020, the president of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić had an official visit to the memorial park in Sremska Mitrovica, dedicated to the victims of genocide on the territory of Syrmia.

Commemoration ceremonies honoring the victims of the Jadovno concentration camp have been organized by the Serb National Council (SNV), the Jewish community in Croatia, and local anti-fascists since 2009, while 24 June has been designated as a "Day of Remembrance of the Jadovno Camp" in Croatia. On 26 August 2010, the 68th anniversary of the partial liberation of the Jastrebarsko children's camp, victims were commemorated in a ceremony at a monument in the Jastrebarsko cemetery. It was attended by only 40 people, mainly members of the Union of Anti-Fascist Fighters and Anti-Fascists of the Republic of Croatia. The Republic of Srpska Government holds a commemoration at the memorial site of the victims of the Ustaše massacres in the Drina Valley.

In culture

Literature

• Jama, a poem condemning the crimes of the Ustaše, written by Ivan Goran Kovačić
• Eagles Fly Early, a novel about children role in assisting the Partisans in the resistance against the Ustaše, written by Branko Ćopić

Art

The illustration of Zlatko Prica and Edo Murtić with the verses of Ivan Goran Kovačić's poem Jama

• Zlatko Prica and Edo Murtić illustrated scenes from the Ivan Goran Kovačić's poem Jama

Theater

• Golubnjača, a play by Jovan Radulović about ethnic relations in neighboring villages in the years after the Ustaše crimes

Films

• 1955 – Šolaja, a film about Serb rebellion against the genocide, directed by Vojislav Nanović
• 1960 – The Ninth Circle, a film directed by France Štiglic, includes scenes from the Jasenovac camp
• 1966 – Eagles Fly Early, film based on the eponymous novel directed by Soja Jovanović
• 1967 – Black Birds, a film about a group of prisoners of Stara Gradiška concentration camp, directed by Eduard Galić
• 1984 – The End of the War, a film about Serbian man takes his son to find and kill members of the Ustaše militia who tortured and killed his wife and mother, directed by Dragan Kresoja
• 1988 – Braća po materi, a film about Ustaše atrocities told through the story of two half-brothers, a Croat and a Serb, directed by Zdravko Šotra
• 2016 – Prva trećina – oproštaj kao kazna, a short feature film about the Žile Friganović's massacres, directed by Svetlana Petrov
• 2019 – The Diary of Diana B., a biographical film about aid operation of Diana Budisavljević for the rescue of more than 10,000 children from concentration camps, directed by Dana Budisavljević
• 2020 – Dara in Jasenovac, a film about a girl who survived the Jasenovac camp, directed by Predrag Antonijević

TV Series

• 1981 – Nepokoreni grad, a TV series about Ustaše terror campaign, including the Kerestinec camp, directed by Vanča Kljaković and Eduard Galić

Music

• Some survivors claim that the lyrics of the famous song Đurđevdan was written on a train that took prisoners from Sarajevo to the Jasenovac camp.
• The Thompson, a popular Croatian rock band has garnered controversy for its purported glorification of Ustahe regime in their songs and concerts, and the most famous such song is Jasenovac i Gradiška Stara.

See also

• Anti-Eastern Orthodox sentiment
• Catholic clergy involvement with the Ustaše

Sources

Books

• Avramov, Smilja (1995). Genocide in Yugoslavia. BIGZ.
• Baker, Catherine (2015). The Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. Macmillan International Higher Education. ISBN 9781137398994.
• Bartulin, Nevenko (2013). The Racial Idea in the Independent State of Croatia: Origins and Theory. BRILL. ISBN 9789004262829.
• Bataković, Dušan T., ed. (2005). Histoire du peuple serbe [History of the Serbian People] (in French). Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme.
• Bellamy, Alex J. (2013). The Formation of Croatian National Identity: A Centuries-Old Dream?. Manchester University Press. ISBN 9781847795731.
• Biondich, Mark (2007a). "Controversies Surrounding the Catholic Church in Wartime Croatia, 1941–45". The Independent State of Croatia 1941–45. Routledge. pp. 31–59.
• Bulajić, Milan (2002). Jasenovac: The Jewish–Serbian Holocaust (the role of the Vatican) in Nazi-Ustasha Croatia (1941–1945). Belgrade: Fund for Genocide Research, Stručna knjiga.
• Bulajić, Milan (1994a). Tudjman's "Jasenovac Myth": Genocide against Serbs, Jews and Gypsies. Belgrade: Stručna knjiga.
• Bulajić, Milan (1994b). The Role of the Vatican in the break-up of the Yugoslav State: The Mission of the Vatican in the Independent State of Croatia. Ustashi Crimes of Genocide. Belgrade: Stručna knjiga.
• Bulajić, Milan (1992). Misija Vatikana u Nezavisnoj Državi Hrvatskoj: "Politika Stepinac" razbijanja jugoslovenske države i pokatoličavanja pravoslavnih Srba po cijenu genocida : stvaranje Civitas Dei—Antemurale Christianitatis. Politika.
• Bulajić, Milan (1992b). Never Again: Ustashi Genocide in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) from 1941-1945. University of Michigan.
• Bulajić, Milan (1992). Tudjman's "Jasenovac Myth": Ustasha Crimes of Genocide. Belgrade: The Ministry of information of the Republic of Serbia.
• Bulajić, Milan (1988–1989). Ustaški zločini genocida i suđenje Andriji Artukoviću 1986. godine. Vol. I–IV. Rad.
• Batchelor, Dahn A. (2012). Whistling in the Face of Robbers: The Life and Times of Dahn A. Batchelor. iUniverse. ISBN 9781462028153.
• Christia, Fotini (2012). Alliance Formation in Civil Wars. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139851756.
• Dakina, Gojo Riste (1994). Genocide Over the Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia: Be Catholic Or Die. Institute of Contemporary History.
• Dedijer, Vladimir (1992). The Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican: The Croatian Massacre of the Serbs During World War II. Amherst: Prometheus Books. ISBN 9780879757526.
• Dedijer, Vladimir (1987). Vatikan i Jasenovac: dokumenti. Rad.
• Djilas, Aleksa (1991). The Contested Country: Yugoslav Unity and Communist Revolution, 1919–1953. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674166981.
• Đurić, Veljko (1991). Прекрштавање Срба у Независној Држави Хрватској: Прилози за историју верског геноцида. Београд: Алфа.
• Fischer, Bernd J. (2007). Balkan Strongmen: Dictators and Authoritarian Rulers of South-Eastern Europe. Purdue University Press. ISBN 978-1-55753-455-2.
• Glišić, Venceslav (1970). Teror i zločini nacističke Nemačke u Srbiji 1941-1944. Belgrade: Rad.
• Goldstein, Ivo (1999). Croatia: A History. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. ISBN 9781850655251.
• Goldstein, Ivo (2001). Holokaust u Zagrebu. Novi liber. ISBN 9781850655251.
• Goldstein, Slavko (2013). 1941: The Year That Keeps Returning. New York Review of Books. ISBN 9781590177006.
• Hoptner, Jacob B. (1962). Yugoslavia in Crisis, 1934-1941.
• Hory, Ladislaus; Broszat, Martin (1964). Der kroatische Ustascha-Staat 1941–1945. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt.
• Janjetović, Zoran (2008). "Die Vertreibungen auf dem Territorium des ehemaligen Jogoslawien" [The Expulsions from the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia]. In Bingen, Dieter; Borodziej, Włodzimierz; Troebst, Stefan (eds.). Vertreibungen europäisch erinnern? [Do You Remember the European Expulsions?] (in German). Wiesbaden, Germany: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. pp. 153–157. ISBN 9780231700504.
• Jevtić, Atanasije (1990). Velikomučenički Jasenovac: ustaška tvornica smrti : dokumenti i svedočenja. Glas crkve.
• Kljakić, Slobodan (1991). A Conspiracy of Silence: Genocide in the Independent State of Croatia and Concentration Camp Jasenovac. Ministry of Information of the Republic of Serbia.
• Kočović, Bogoljub (2005). Sahrana jednog mita: žrtve Drugog svetskog rata u Jugoslaviji [Burial of a Myth: World War II Victims in Yugoslavia]. Beograd: Otkrovenje. ISBN 9788683353392.
• Korb, Alexander (2010a). "A Multipronged Attack: Ustaša Persecution of Serbs, Jews, and Roma in Wartime Croatia". Eradicating Differences: The Treatment of Minorities in Nazi-Dominated Europe. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 145–163.
• Korb, Alexander (2010b). "Integrated Warfare? The Germans and the Ustaša Massacres: Syrmia 1942". In Shepherd, Ben (ed.). War in a Twilight World: Partisan and Anti-Partisan Warfare in Eastern Europe, 1939–1945. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-29048-8.
• Greif, Gideon (2018). Jasenovac - Auschwitz of the Balkans. Knjiga komerc. ISBN 9789655727272.
• Krestić, Vasilije (1998). Through genocide to a greater Croatia. BIGZ.
• Krestić, Vasilije (2009). Dosije o genezi genocida nad Srbima u NDH. Prometej.
• Kurdulija, Strahinja (1993). Atlas of the Ustasha genocide of the Serbs 1941–1945. Foundation for truth of Serbs. ISBN 9788679410023.
• Lemkin, Raphael (2008). Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Clark, New Jersey: The Lawbook Exchange. ISBN 9781584779018.
• Levy, Michele Frucht (2011). "'The Last Bullet for the Last Serb': The Ustaša Genocide against Serbs: 1941–1945". In Crowe, David (ed.). Crimes of State Past and Present: Government-Sponsored Atrocities and International Legal Responses. Routledge. pp. 54–84.
• Lituchy, Barry M., ed. (2006). Jasenovac and the Holocaust in Yugoslavia: Analyses and Survivor Testimonies. New York: Jasenovac Research Institute.
• McCormick, Robert B. (2014). Croatia Under Ante Pavelić: America, the Ustaše and Croatian Genocide. London-New York: I.B. Tauris.
• Mirković, Jovan (2014). Злочини над Србима у Независној Држави Хрватској – фотомонографија [Crimes against Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia]. Belgrade: Svet knjige. ISBN 9788673964652.
• Mitrović, Jeremija D. (1991). Највећи злочини садашњице: Патње и страдање српског народа у Независној држави Хрватској од 1941–1945. Дечје новине. ISBN 9788636704868.
• Mojzes, Paul (2008). "The Genocidal Twentieth Century in the Balkans". In Jacobs, Steven L. (ed.). Confronting Genocide: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Lanham: Lexington Books. pp. 151–182.
• Mojzes, Paul (2011). Balkan Genocides: Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the 20th Century. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781442206632.
• Novak, Viktor (2011a). Magnum Crimen: Half a Century of Clericalism in Croatia. Vol. 1. Jagodina: Gambit. ISBN 9788676240494.
• Novak, Viktor (2011b). Magnum Crimen: Half a Century of Clericalism in Croatia. Vol. 2. Jagodina: Gambit. ISBN 9788676240494.
• Paris, Edmond (1961). Genocide in Satellite Croatia, 1941–1945: A Record of Racial and Religious Persecutions and Massacres. Chicago: American Institute for Balkan Affairs.
• Paris, Edmond (1988). Convert— or die!: Catholic persecution in Yugoslavia during World War II. Chick Publications.
• Pavlowitch, Stevan K. (2008). Hitler's New Disorder: The Second World War in Yugoslavia. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231700504.
• Ramet, Sabrina P. (2006). The Three Yugoslavias: State-Building and Legitimation, 1918–2005. New York: Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253346568.
• Ramet, Sabrina P.; Listhaug, Ola, eds. (2011). Serbia and the Serbs in World War Two. Palgrave Macmillan UK. ISBN 9780230347816.
• Ramet, Sabrina (2007). The Independent State of Croatia 1941-45. New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415440554.
• Kolstø, Pål (2011). "The Serbian-Croatian Controversy over Jasenovac". Serbia and the Serbs in World War Two. pp. 225–246.
• Phayer, Michael (2000). The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253337252. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Ungváry, Krisztián (2011). Vojvodina under Hungarian rule.
• Rapaić, Mirko (1999). Lička tragedija: hrvatski zločini genocida nad srpskim narodom 1941. do 1945. Srpska reč. ISBN 9788649100343.
• Rivelli, Marco Aurelio (1998). Le génocide occulté: État Indépendant de Croatie 1941–1945 [Hidden Genocide: The Independent State of Croatia 1941–1945] (in French). Lausanne: L'age d'Homme.
• Rivelli, Marco Aurelio (1999). L'arcivescovo del genocidio: Monsignor Stepinac, il Vaticano e la dittatura ustascia in Croazia, 1941–1945 [The Archbishop of Genocide: Monsignor Stepinac, the Vatican and the Ustaše dictatorship in Croatia, 1941–1945] (in Italian). Milano: Kaos.
• Rivelli, Marco Aurelio (2002). "Dio è con noi!": La Chiesa di Pio XII complice del nazifascismo ["God is with us!": The Church of Pius XII accomplice to Nazi Fascism] (in Italian). Milano: Kaos.
• Roberts, Walter R. (1973). Tito, Mihailović and the Allies 1941–1945. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 9780813507408.
• Rogel, Carole (2004). The Breakup of Yugoslavia and Its Aftermath. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-313323-57-7.
• Sedlar, Jean W. (2007). The Axis Empire in Southeast Europe, 1939–1945. BookLocker.com. ISBN 9781601452979.
• Simić, Sima (1958). Прекрштавање Срба за време Другог светског рата. Титоград: Графички завод.
• Škiljan, Filip (2014). Organizirana prisilna iseljavanja Srba iz NDH (PDF). Zagreb: Srpsko narodno vijeće. ISBN 9789537442132.
• Skoko, Savo (1991). Pokolji hercegovačkih Srba '41. Belgrade: Stručna knjiga.
• Stanišić, Mihailo (1999). Slom, genocid, odmazda. Službeni list SRJ.
• Tomasevich, Jozo (1975). War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: The Chetniks. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-0857-9.
• Tomasevich, Jozo (2001). War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-7924-1.
• Jonassohn, Kurt; Björnson, Karin (1998). Genocide and Gross Human Rights Violations: In Comparative Perspective. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4128-2445-3.
• Carmichael, Cathie; Maguire, Richard C. (2015). The Routledge History of Genocide. The Routledge. ISBN 9781317514848. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Kallis, Aristotle (2008). Genocide and Fascism: The Eliminationist Drive in Fascist Europe. Routledge. ISBN 9781134300341.
• Suppan, Arnold (2014). Hitler - Beneš - Tito: Konflikt, Krieg und Völkermord in Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa. Austrian Academy of Sciences.
• Ognyanova, Irina (2000). "Nationalism and National Policy in Independent State of Croatia (1941–1945)". In Rogers, Dorothy; Joshua, Wheeler; Zavacká, Marína; Casebier, Shawna (eds.). Topics in Feminism, History and Philosophy, IWM Junior Visiting Fellows Conferences, Vol. 6. Vienna, Austria: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag.
• Kenrick, Donald (2006). The Final Chapter. University of Hertfordshire Press. ISBN 9781902806495.
• Barbier, Mary Kathryn (2017). Spies, Lies, and Citizenship: The Hunt for Nazi Criminals. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 9781612349718.
• Bloxham, Donald; Gerwarth, Robert (2011). Political Violence in Twentieth-Century Europe. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139501293. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Israeli, Raphael (2013). The Death Camps of Croatia: Visions and Revisions, 1941-1945 Europe. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 9781412849753. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Domenico, Roy Palmer; Hanley, Mark (2006). Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Politics: L-Z. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 9780313338908. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Adeli, Lisa Marie (2009). Resistance to the Persecution of Ethnic Minorities in Croatia and Bosnia During World War II. Greenwood Publishing Group Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN 9780773447455. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Shepherd, Ben (2012). Terror in the Balkans. Harvard University Press.
• Weiss-Wendt, Anton (2010). Eradicating Differences: The Treatment of Minorities in Nazi-Dominated Europe. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 9781443824491.
• Touval, Saadia (2001). Mediation in the Yugoslav Wars: The Critical Years, 1990-95. Springer. ISBN 9780230288669.
• Trencsényi, Balázs; Kopecek, Michal (2007). National Romanticism: The Formation of National Movements: Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe 1770–1945, volume II. Budapest: Central European University Press. ISBN 9786155211249.
• Yeomans, Rory (2011). ""For us, beloved commander, you will never die!" Mourning Jure Francetić, Ustasha Death Squad Leader". In Haynes, Rebecca; Rady, Martyn (eds.). In the Shadow of Hitler: Personalities of the Right in Central and Eastern Europe. London: I.B. Tauris. ISBN 978-1-84511-697-2.
• Yeomans, Rory (2012). Visions of Annihilation: The Ustasha Regime and the Cultural Politics of Fascism, 1941–1945. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. ISBN 9780822977933.
• Yeomans, Rory (2015). The Utopia of Terror: Life and Death in Wartime Croatia. Boydell & Brewer. ISBN 9781580465458.
• Žerjavić, Vladimir (1993). Yugoslavia: Manipulations with the Number of Second World War Victims. Zagreb, Croatia: Croatian Information Centre. ISBN 0-919817-32-7.
• Vajagić, Predrag M. (2013). Istorijska analiza osnivanja i funkcionisanja Dunavske banovine u Kraljevini Jugoslaviji (pdf). Novi Sad: Filozofski fakultet Univerziteta u Novom Sadu, odsek za istoriju. Retrieved 27 April 2020.
• Jonassohn, Kurt (1998). Genocide and Gross Human Rights Violations: In Comparative Perspective. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4128-2445-3. Retrieved 28 April 2020.
• Bellamy, Alex J. (2003). The Formation of Croatian National Identity: A Centuries-old Dream. Manchester University Press. ISBN 9780719065026.
• Bideleux, Robert; Jeffries, Ian (2007). The Balkans: A Post-Communist History. Routledge. ISBN 9781134583287.
• Carmichael, Cathie (2012). Ethnic Cleansing in the Balkans: Nationalism and the Destruction of Tradition. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-47953-5. Retrieved 28 April 2020.
• Weiss Wendt, Anton (2010). Eradicating Differences: The Treatment of Minorities in Nazi-Dominated Europe. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 9781443824491.
• Hoare, Marko Attila (2006). Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia: The Partisans and the Chetniks 1941–1943. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-726380-8.
• Greer, Joanne Marie; Moberg, David O. (2001). Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion.v.10. Brill. ISBN 9780762304837.
• Schindley, Wanda; Makara, Petar (2005). Jasenovac: proceedings of the First International Conference and Exibit on the Jasenovac Concentration Camps, October 29-31, 1997, Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York. Dallas Pub. ISBN 9780912011646.
• Jacobs, Steven L. (2009). Confronting Genocide: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Lexington Books. ISBN 9780739135891.
• Bürgschwentner, Joachim; Egger, Matthias; Barth-Scalmani, Gunda (2014). Other Fronts, Other Wars?: First World War Studies on the Eve of the Centennial. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-24365-1.
• Trbovich, Ana S. (2008). A Legal Geography of Yugoslavia's Disintegration. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199715473.
• Charny, Israel (1999). Encyclopedia of Genocide: A-H. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9780874369281.
• Cvetković, Dragan (2009). Bosna i Hercegovina: numeričko određenje ljudskih gubitaka u Drugom svetskom ratu. Belgrade. ISBN 9788686831019.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Barić, Nikola (2019). Historiae patriaeque cultor. Slavonski Brod. ISBN 978-953-8102-23-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Velikonja, Mitja (2003). Religious Separation and Political Intolerance in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Texas A&M University Pres. ISBN 9781585442263.
• Zatezalo, Đuro (2005). "Radio sam svoj seljački i kovački posao": svjedočanstva genocida. Zagreb: SKD Prosvijeta. ISBN 953-6627-79-5.
• Zatezalo, Đuro (1989). Kotar Gospić i Kotar Perušić u narodnooslobodilačkom ratu, 1941-1945. Karlovac: Historijski arhiv u Karlovcu. ISBN 978-8680783048.
• Abtahi, Hirad; Boas, Gideon (2005). The Dynamics of International Criminal Justice: Essays in Honour of Sir Richard May. Leiden, The Netherlands: BRILL. ISBN 978-90-474-1780-4.
• Ravlić, Slaven (1997). "Andrija Artuković". In Dizdar, Zdenko; Grčić, Marko; Ravlić, Slaven; Stuparić, Darko (eds.). Tko je tko u NDH. Zabreg, Croatia: Minerva. pp. 11–12. ISBN 978-953-6377-03-9.
• Ciment, James; Hill, Kenneth (2012). Political Violence in Twentieth-Century Europe. Routledge. ISBN 9781136596216. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Horvitz, Leslie Alan; Catherwood, Christopher (2014). Encyclopedia of War Crimes and Genocide. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 99781438110295. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: length (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Journals

• Antonijević, Nenad (2003). "Stradanje srpskog i crnogorskog civilnog stanovništva na Kosovu i Metohiji 1941. godine". Dijalog Povjesničara-istoričara. 8: 355–369.
• Antonijević, Nenad M. (2016). "Ратни злочини на Косову и Метохији: 1941–1945. године". Универзитет у Београду, Филозофски факултет.
• Bartulin, Nevenko (October 2007). "Ideologija nacije i rase: ustaški režim i politika prema Srbima u Nezavisnoj Državi Hrvatskoj 1941–1945" (PDF). Radovi (in Croatian). 39 (1): 209–241. Retrieved 9 January 2015.
• Bartulin, Nevenko (2008). "The Ideology of Nation and Race: The Croatian Ustasha Regime and its Policies toward the Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia 1941–1945". Croatian Studies Review. 5: 75–102.
• Biondich, Mark (2005). "Religion and Nation in Wartime Croatia: Reflections on the Ustaša Policy of Forced Religious Conversions, 1941–1942". The Slavonic and East European Review. 83 (1): 71–116. JSTOR 4214049.
• Biondich, Mark (2006). "Controversies Surrounding the Catholic Church in Wartime Croatia, 1941–45". Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions. 7 (4): 429–457. doi:10.1080/14690760600963222.
• Biondich, Mark (2007b). "Radical Catholicism and Fascism in Croatia, 1918–1945". Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions. 8 (2): 383–399. doi:10.1080/14690760701321346.
• Boban, Ljubo (1993). "Kada je i kako nastala Država Slovenaca, Hrvata i Srba" [When and how did the State of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs come into existence (Summary)]. Journal of the Institute of Croatian History. 26 (1): 187–198.
• Byford, Jovan (2007). "When I say "The Holocaust," I mean "Jasenovac": Remembrance of the Holocaust in contemporary Serbia". East European Jewish Affairs. 37 (1): 51–74. doi:10.1080/13501670701197946.
• Cvetković, Dragan (2011). "Holokaust u Nezavisnoj Državi Hrvatskoj – numeričko određenje" [Holocaust in Independent State of Croatia] (PDF). Istorija 20. Veka: Časopis Instituta Za Savremenu Istoriju. 29 (1): 163–182. doi:10.29362/ist20veka.2011.1.cve.163-182. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 August 2016. Retrieved 8 August 2017.
• Hehn, Paul N. (1971). "Serbia, Croatia and Germany 1941–1945: Civil War and Revolution in the Balkans". Canadian Slavonic Papers. 13 (4): 344–373. doi:10.1080/00085006.1971.11091249.
• Kataria, Shyamal (2015). "Serbian Ustashe Memory and Its Role in the Yugoslav Wars, 1991–1995". Mediterranean Quarterly. 26 (2): 115–127. doi:10.1215/10474552-2914550.
• Krestić, Vasilije (1986). "O genezi genocida nad Srbima u NDH". Književne Novine. 15.
• Levy, Michele Frucht (2009). ""The Last Bullet for the Last Serb": The Ustaša Genocide against Serbs: 1941–1945". Nationalities Papers. 37 (6): 807–837. doi:10.1080/00905990903239174.
• Lisac, A. L. (1956). "Deportacije Srba iz Hrvatske 1941". Historijski Zbornik. 9: 125–145.
• McCormick, Rob (2008). "The United States' Response to Genocide in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941–1945". Genocide Studies and Prevention. 3 (1): 75–98. doi:10.1353/gsp.2011.0060.
• Newman, John Paul (2017). "War Veterans, Fascism, and Para-Fascist Departures in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 1918–1941". FASCISM. 6: 42–74. doi:10.1163/22116257-00601003. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Newman, John Paul (2014). "Serbian and Habsburg Military institutional legacies in Yugoslavia after 1918". First World War Studies. 5: 319–335. doi:10.1080/19475020.2014.1001519. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Pavasović Trošt, Tamara (2018). "Ruptures and continuities in nationhood narratives: reconstructing the nation through history textbooks in Serbia and Croatia". Nations and Nationalism: 1–25. doi:10.1111/nana.12433. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Dulić, Tomislav (2006). "Mass killing in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941–1945: a case for comparative research". Journal of Genocide Research. 8: 255–281. doi:10.1111/nana.12433. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Mirković, D. (2000). "The historical link between the Ustasha genocide and the Croato-Serb civil war: 1991‐1995". Journal of Genocide Research. 2 (3): 363–373. doi:10.1080/713677614.
• Škiljan, F. (2007). "Stradanje Srba u Jasenovcu u Drugom svjetskom ratu". Pro Tempore: časopis Studenata Povijesti. 4: 40–46.
• Škiljan, F. (2004). "Hate speech in Independent State of Croatia during WWII". Ljetopis Srpskog Kulturnog Društva Prosvjeta. 9: 243–.

• Škiljan, Filip (2010). "Stradanje Srba, Židova i Roma u virovitičkom i slatinskom kraju tijekom 1941. i početkom 1942. godine". Scrinia Slavonica. 10. Hrvatski institut za povijest - Podružnica za povijest Slavonije, Srijema i Baranje: 360–362.
• Stojanović, Aleksandar (2017). "A Beleaguered Church: The Serbian Orthodox Church in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) 1941–1945". Balcanica. 48 (48): 269–287. doi:10.2298/BALC1748269S.
• Vukčević, Slavko (1995). "Ratni zločini i genocid u Jugoslaviji od 1941. do 1945. godine" [War crimes and genocide in Yugoslavia from 1941 till 1945]. Vojno Delo. 47 (3): 192–200.
• Vuković, Slobodan V. (2004). "Uloga Vatikana u razbijanju Jugoslavije". Sociološki Pregled. 38 (3): 423–443. doi:10.5937/socpreg0403423V.
• Yeomans, Rory (2005). "Cults of Death and Fantasies of Annihilation: The Croatian Ustasha Movement in Power, 1941–45". Central Europe. 3 (2): 121–142. doi:10.1179/147909605x69383.
• Pavlović, Marko (2012). Časlav Ocić (ed.). "Jugoslovenska kraljevina prva evropska regionalna država" (pdf). Zbornik Matice srpske za društvene nauke. 141. Novi Sad: Matica srpska: 503–521. ISSN 0352-5732. Retrieved 27 April 2020.
• Byford, Jovan (2014). "Remembering Jasenovac: Survivor Testimonies and the Cultural Dimension of Bearing Witness". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 28 (1): 58–84. doi:10.1093/hgs/dcu011.
• Odak, Stipe; Benčić, Andriana (2016). "Jasenovac — A Past That Does Not Pass: The Presence of Jasenovac in Croatian and Serbian Collective Memory of Conflict". East European Politics and Societies and Cultures. 30 (4): 805–829. doi:10.1177/0888325416653657.
• Sokol, Anida (2014). "War Monuments: Instruments of Nation-building in Bosnia and Herzegovina". Croatian Political Science Review. 51 (5): 105–126.
• Balić, Emily Greble (2009). "When Croatia Needes Serbs: Nationalism and Genocide in Sarajevo, 1941-1942". Slavic Review. 68 (1): 116–138. doi:10.2307/20453271.
• Perrone, Fiorella (2017). "The Horror in the Balkans. Civilian Victims in the Second World War in the Former Yugoslavia". L'Osservatorio.
• Kasapović, Mirjana (2018). "Genocid u NDH: Umanjivanje, banaliziranje i poricanje zločina". Politička misao : časopis za politologiju. 55 (1): 7–33. doi:10.20901/pm.55.1.01.
• King, Charles (2012). "Can There Be a Political Science of the Holocaust?". Perspectives on Politics. 10 (2): 323–341. doi:10.1017/S1537592712000692.
• Payne, Stanley G. (2006). "The NDH State in Comparative Perspective". Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions. 7 (4): 409–415. doi:10.1080/14690760600963198. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Sadkovich, James (2010). "Forging Consensus: How Franjo Tuđman Became an Authoritarian Nationalist". Review of Croatian history. 6 (1): 7–35. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Other

• SANU (1995). Genocid nad Srbima u II svetskom ratu. Muzej žrtava genocida i Srpska književna zadruga.
• Schindley, Wanda; Makara, Petar, eds. (2005). Jasenovac: Proceedings of the First International Conference and Exhibit on the Jasenovac Concentration Camps. Dallas Publishing. ISBN 9780912011646.
• Gutman, Israel, ed. (1990). "Ustase". Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Vol. 4. Macmillan.
• Latinović, Goran (2006). "On Croatian history textbooks". Association of Descendants and Supporters of Victims of Complex of Death Camps NDH, Gospić-Jadovno-Pag 1941.
• Bergholz, Max (2012). "None of us Dared Say Anything: Mass Killing in a Bosnian Community during World War Two and the Postwar Culture of Silence" (PDF). University of Toronto.
• Deutschland Military Tribunal (1950). Trials of war criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law no. 10 : Nuernberg Oct. 1946 – April 1949 Vol. 11 The High Command case. The Hostage case. Case 12. US v. von Leeb. Case 7. US v. List. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office. OCLC 247746272.

External links

• "Genocide in Croatia 1941–1945" (PDF). Serbian National Defense Council of Canada; Serbian National Defense Council of America. 1976. OCLC 26383552.