And so, of course I wrote to the Jerusalem Post Editor on 25 August 2021 alerting them to Ivo Goldstein’s lies presented to the public through the Jerusalem Post but, as could well be expected, the Jerusalem was not interested in correcting the lies to their readers, they appear more interested in expanding on them, or maintaining them.
Jerusalem Post preferred to publish an opinion piece written by the frequently obnoxious Efraim Zuroff, where he attacks WWII Croatia and, as per usual always tries to make WWII Serbia grand and fair even though it was one of the first countries in Europe that declared itself Jundnfrei/ Jew Free, by May to August 1942 when Serbs brought to slaughter and extermination 94% of its Jews. Zuroff and the likes will keep telling you that it was not the Serbs who exterminated these Jews, that it was the German occupiers, and yet the absolute fact is that the German occupying forces did not know who was Jewish, and who was not! It was the Serbian Milan Nedic Government who knew who the Jews were!
And Zuroff will tell you that he “was very well acquainted with the horrors of the camp (Jasenovac), since I had been very actively involved more than two decades ago, in facilitating the extradition from Argentina and prosecution in Zagreb of Dinko Šakic, one of its commanders…”, but Efraim Zuroff will not tell you that in his said work hunting WWII Nazis and their alleged collaborators he followed religiously, at least victim number of stories and manner of deaths, the fabricated stories concocted by the communists and Serbs. And Zuroff will call anyone a revisionist if their researched truth points to the lies and distortions of WWII reality peddled to the world since 1945 by Yugoslav and Serb communists but also by those like he himself. He will shower Ivo Goldstein with praises and yet the lies Ivo Goldstein has come out with are absolutely depraved and not fit for human consumption as far as I am concerned.
And so, on 25 August 2021 I sent this letter to the Editor of the Jerusalem Post believing they would want to correct the lie Ivo Goldstein had written and they published:
“…Then, I also refer to the Editorial ‘Don’t hijack the Holocaust’, published 22 August 2021 in which the public is told: ‘Last week The Jerusalem Post published in these pages an opinion piece which unfortunately failed to go through a sufficient vetting system. We sincerely regret this error. The oped, written by an Australian under the name of David Goldman, was titled: ‘This disgraceful mocking of the Holocaust needs to stop now.’ In it, he ridiculed and belittled Croatian Holocaust scholar Dr. Ivo Goldstein. Dr. Goldstein was given the right of reply which appeared in yesterday’s Post opinion pages under the title ‘A collage of lies.’
As a Jerusalem Post reader and a member of the public who has been served lies by Ivo Goldstein’s above article, I write this with the understanding that in my capacity as a reader for whom the article was meant, I have the right of reply. I do reside in Australia and have not met David Goldman. I wish to ask you to please publish this letter of feedback from me as like myself, I am certain that you, your newspaper the Jerusalem Post and your readers above all cherish the truth. When it comes to the Holocaust, the truth is particularly pertinent to a respectful memory of all who so tragically perished. Hence, I hereby draw your attention to the part of Ivo Goldstein’s reply to David Goldman’s article that is a blatant and evidently purposeful lie and most probably an attempt to fabricate or falsify history of Jasenovac, as if it already hasn’t had enough lies or half-truths said or written about it.
In the 12th paragraph of the said article Ivo Goldstein writes: ‘In the TV show Sunday at 2, which is quoted by Goldman, I did not mention Hitler – this is another lie. I put forward a thesis that the corpses were also destroyed with a ‘bone crushing machine,’ which was used by the Nazis during the well-known ‘Aktion 1005’ cover-up. The Ustasha cooperated closely with the Nazis in various ways, and there are clear indications that they did so in this case as well.’
Ivo Goldstein did not put forth any thesis in that TV Show TV Show Sunday at 2 (June 20, 2018) as he tries to convince your readers and the public of his infallibility. Instead of a thesis in the article you published he categorically claimed the following as if it was proven fact instead of a product of his evidently twisted imagination: ( from 28min01 sec to 29 min 23 sec) ‘…On the other hand, already at the beginning of April 1945, just before the end of the war, the Ustashas, a large number of butchers from 1942., those who ordered mass crimes, were somewhere in late March early April 1945 after two years, two and a half years of absence from Jasenovac, because in 1942 there were the most crimes, 43. much less and 44., returned to Jasenovac Filipovic and Majstorovic, so the former Franciscan who was expelled from the Franciscan Order membership 41 and 42., knew best those graves, he went to Hebno so that the Nazis could instruct him how to destroy corpses, they even brought machines that destroy bones, and there were, therefore, in early April some 500 to 600 camp internees who worked on that destruction by systematic destruction of corpses. In one part they were burned on bars, and then the ashes would be returned to the graves, in the other part the bones they found or excavated were destroyed in these machines.’
These Ivo Goldstein’s gruesome fantasies about bone-crushing machines in Jasenovac camp area and systematic destruction of corpses by some 600 camp detainees working in unison on such depraved tasks, dressed up in categorical claims without a shred of evidence, and not theses, can be checked and validated by watching the relevant Youtube video of the said TV Show and the link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhNp1iGKFsk
Hence, as far as this is concerned Goldstein did not write the truth in the article you published. That is, he did not offer a thesis about Jasenovac on television, he offered a categorical claim about bone-crushing-machines without offering any verifiable evidence.
Suffice to say that Ivo Goldstein had had an another attempt of placing this gruesome fantasy about the World War Two Jasenovac camp and that was in May 2018 when Magazine Globus published an interview with him, three months before the above TV Show, and both events were about his coming book, which, I’m quite certain, does not mention any bone-crushing machines nor do any of his subsequent publications pursue the matter further.
Many believe, though, Ivo Goldstein has fabricated or embellished the story of bone-crushing machines to rely on it in his rather frequent claims that digging-up Jasenovac for forensic evidence would achieve nothing towards clarifying historical facts. It seems that inside Ivo Goldstein’s mind forensic science and DNA tracing are at the same level as they were in 1964 Yugoslavia (Goldstein is notorious for claiming that nothing could be found in 1964 because of wear and tear through time and, hence, nothing will be found today!). The fact that Ivo Goldstein comes out with these impossible, if not ridiculous, claims about the Holocaust does in fact suggest that there is, in fact, regretfully, mocking of the Holocaust in his ways.
Furthermore, since Ivo Goldstein in his article mentions the Australian Croatian community, of which I am a member, in a derogatory manner, mocking some of its members for ‘openly celebrating their Ustasha links’, I can assure you and your readers that no member of the Australian Croatian community, or any other community for that matter, has or would celebrate any links that are considered by the authorities a danger in any way for the Australian people or state or the world! I can assure you and your readers that the majority of Australian Croatians are a shiny example for humanity and what it means to endure decades of humiliation and vilification to survive and stay strong for the battle of achieving the independence of Croatia started during World War II. This is not a revisionist statement, as Ivo Goldstein or others who begrudge Croatia the freedom and independence from communist Yugoslavia it had achieved, might be tempted to claim, this is and was the truth. If people like Ivo Goldstein were as vocal about massive communist crimes perpetrated by Yugoslav communists, particularly post-WWII, as they are about Jasenovac, then perhaps there would be no mocking of the Holocaust, no need to fabricate numbers of victims at Jasenovac or bone-crushing machines because both the Holocaust and the Communist purges were abominable outcomes of hunger for political power and superiority.” Ina Vukic
Connected post article HERE.
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One day the real truth will out and some publications are going to be busy writing retractions of all ther guff they publish. At that point certain Authors may have to go into hiding their shame or their embarrassment will be so great.
Huge Hugs
I think so too, David. And as Ellis Peter said in The Potters Field: “It may well be,” said Cadfael, “that our justice sees as in a mirror image, left where right should be, evil reflected back as good, good as evil, your angel as her devil’ But God’s justice, if it makes no haste, makes no mistakes.”