Several days ago (Tuesday 22 April 2025) a „handful” of Croatian Yugoslav communist diehards marked at Jasenovac Memorial site the 80^th Anniversary of inmate breakout from the so-called concentration camp at Jasenovac in Croatia.  Reportedly 92 people survived the breakthrough attempt out of some 600 men on that day in 1945, according to the Jasenovac memorial centre data.

The sad and disturbing point in this is that this lot of communist diehards continue promoting the communist Yugoslavia version of history of Croatia, Jasenovac camp included, without even batting an eyelid to the truth uncovered after communist Yugoslavia fell in 1991 through sheer determination of the people. At the secession from communist Yugoslavia referendum in May 1991, 93.24% of Croatians voted for independence, secession and freedom from that communist hell that Yugoslavia for most was.   

The “Myth of Jasenovac” as a death camp during World War Two where hundreds of thousands of innocent people were killed has largely been carved and shaped after the War by communist Yugoslavia (and their allies) using inflated numbers of victims. While even one single victim of a tragedy, a crime, is one too many, being faced with multitudes of victims creates a greater psychological shock. In general, the greater the number of individuals affected by a traumatic event, the more significant the psychological impact on both the victims and the wider community. In turn, the human mind strives towards reducing the feeling of shock and will, in the hope of avoiding the same or similar destiny, turn to follow those pointing to or revealing the crimes, without entering into any doubt as to whether the crime stories they are told are true or not.

 While I have since 2011 on this blogsite written about the historical research of World War Two Jasenovac Camp since the breakup of communist Yugoslavia, since the opening of government archives previously banned for researchers and public, it is a good idea to offer here a summary of some of those if for nothing else then to demonstrate how politically and humanly depraved those that currently hold  or enjoy governing power and authority in Croatia are when it come to historical truth and its linked political agenda .

Jasenovac Camp inmates Djordje Milisa and Milko Riffer published the first two books about the Jasenovac camp. Milisa being the author of the book titled “In the Torture-Hell Jasenovac” (1945) and Ritter of “The City od the Dead” (1946). In their books they adhered to the official communist Yugoslavia narrative or version of Jasenovac as a “death camp”, which is evident from the titles of their books. The content of these books cannot be taken seriously as representing the true picture of what occurred there. The usage of “I heard…”, “I am told…” “I think it was…” “he said, she said …” are no foundations for a trusted historical truth source. It all points to the Communist Party having ‘ordered’ the writing and publishing of these two books from the authors so that there would be written traces of the crimes in Jasenovac during the Ustasha regime. Ritter’s book was printed in 1946, in numbers of copies that every author can only dream about . And not only that, nine years after Ritter’s death, his book was republished in 1981 by the Jasenovac Memorial Site. Undoubtedly, these books are anti-fascist (communist) literature without any literary or substantial historical fact value. But the books have communist propaganda value.

It needs to be said though, that the communist regime in Yugoslavia banned in 1946, for a good spell, Milisa’s book because the communist court ruled that its content could lead readers to believe that there were “good Ustasha’s” and “bad Ustasha’s” heading camp Jasenovac and communists of course, wanted no bar of good Ustasha notions bandied about while they set on the path of lies and fabrications in order to make all the Ustashas who fought for an independent Croatia look horrific.  The communists particularly took an issue with the author’s claim in the book that “some of them (Ustashas), even the worst executioners, were sharp-witted, above all intelligent and fearless people,”  which communists saw as a deep insult to all the victims of Jasenovac, “to all the suffering of our people inflicted on them by such beasts in human form, who have no right to be called people.”

After the Communist party leadership decided to promote their fabricated version Jasenovac as a “death camp”, where the triple genocide was allegedly committed, the systematic exaggeration of the figures began. The 1956 book by Jovan Marjanovic, “The National Liberation War – People’s Revolution in Yugoslavia 1941-1945,” slid into almost a biblical status. Jovan Marjanovic wrote: “Yugoslav graves can be found today in Mathhausen, Dachau, Buchenwald, Auschwitz and other Hitler’s torture camps and death factories. But the climax of fascist atrocities in Yugoslavia was certainly represented by the camp in Jasenovac and Old Gradiška. As faithful servants of their German and Italian masters, the Ustashi executioners killed around 800,000 Yugoslavs in that camp during the war, including a large number of women, children and the elderly.” These words, or versions of them, were the centre of communist Yugoslavia hate campaign against patriotic Croats that lasted for decades.

Communist servant Radimir Bulatovic in the book “Jasenovac Concentration Camp with special reference to Donja Gradina,” 1990, writes: “It would be difficult to rebut that more than 1,110,929 men, women and children, had perished in Jasenovac.” The appearance of this book emerged after the fall of Berlin Wall, which in itself announced the fall of communism in many countries so Bulatovic, in 1990 , when Croatia was well on its way to fight for its independence, must have thought that his book was a last-ditch communist attempt to Bumb up the numbers of victims at WWII Jasenovac. But, nevertheless, he did write wrote in the same book that no scientific paper has ever been written on Jasenovac! Saying that all evidence they had was merely based on memory of inmates, which is not always reliable, and much on authors imagination. He failed short of saying that much was at the order by the communists.  In other words, all about Jasenovac during the communist Yugoslav regime was written on the basis of ideological constructions and myths. Of course, the main goal of promoting the Jasenovac myth with unrealistically high numbers, designed to shock, after the end of World War Two was to preserve communist Yugoslavia, and thus to prevent Croatian independence. To devalue and viciously trample upon Croatian patriotic values.

After the democratic changes in Croatia, early 1990’s, the way was opened for a more objective investigation of Jasenovac camp and debunk the communists’ myths via research of historical documents that became available as the communist come socialist Yugoslav regime crumbled. While Croatian government authorities had settled on the official figure of 83,145 victims at the Jasenovac Camp and its immediate area, this number has been proven not to represent facts. That is their researc demonstrated that the number of victims was much lower than officially claimed. Prominent historians and historical researchers of World War Two Jasenovac Camp including Nikola Banic, Vladimir Geiger, Vladimir Horvat, Josip Jurcevic, Mladen Koic, Blanka Matkovic, Vladimir Mrkocij, Stipo Pilic and Igor Vukic have produced indisputable results to that effect. While their works represent credible and seriously scientific presentation of Croatian historiography of World War Two Jasenovac camp and show that the number of victims was far, far lower than the official number “written on the banner hanging above Jasenovac Memorial Site doorway,” some of them (Horvat, Matkovic, Pilic, Vukic) show the events occurring there after the end of WWII in 1945 which show that the camp became a camp operated by communist Yugoslavia for several years thereafter whose inmates were anti-communists but supported the Stalin’s path, from which Tito ‘s Yugoslavia broke away in 1948. It is said that Jasenovac remained opened as political prison and death camp for anti-communists and anti-Yugoslavs and while historical research is making progress in providing full data on this research is still being carried out.

It is human, it is justice, to continue searching for the truth. Because if no one had searched and researched, we would still be at those fabricated numbers of 800,000 or 1 million or 83,145 victims as the real and official truth.

The tragedy for Croatian people of today is that none of the dignitaries attending or speaking at the event in Jasenovac on 22 April 2025, e.g. Andrej, the Plenkovic Prime Minister,  Zoran Milanovic, the President, almost all the Government Ministers, Stjepan Mesic, former President of Croatia, Boris Milosevic from the Serbian National Council, Ognjen Kraus from the Jewish community, and Veljko Kajtazi, an MP from the Roma minority, Franjo Habulin from the Alliance of Anti-Fascist Fighters and Anti-Fascists, even mentioned the trends regarding the Jasenovac Camp that are coming out through the latest historical research. They just shamelessly keep on perpetuating the lies their communist fathers or grandfathers, or they themselves, unleashed to the world in 1945 and years after that. Now it is sadly clearer why the latest research into this falsified history receives no Croatian taxpayer support funds, their tax euro is paying for the perpetuation of communist lies regarding the number of victims, at least. Simply unthinkable in a democracy that lost rivers of its own blood for freedom from communism!

One would expect that the event in Jasenovac for the 80^th Anniversary of inmate breakout would be a commemoration even if just a handful of victims died there as murder victims and not as punishment for crimes they were convicted of, and there were many of those according to new research findings, but the last President of communist Yugoslavia and an ex-President of Croatia, Stjepan Mesic, called it a celebration in his public statement Tuesday last! To him and to his Yugoslav nostalgic mates it must have been a celebration of 80-year survival of communist lies!   

May 2025 will mark the 80^th Anniversary of Bleiburg and Way of the Cross mass murders of Croatian patriots by the communist Yugoslavia regime after the Second World War had ended. So far since the early 1990’s about 1000 mass graves in Croatia and about 900 mass graves in Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina of communist mass murder victims have been uncovered. Digging for remains continues. Will the same power and political elite echelons that attended Jasenovac on 22 April 2025 also attend the May 2025 events that will mark the 80^th Anniversary of these victims’ brutal death, I wonder? I shall not be holding my breath till then, but I can hope for a positive answer to my question! And if they attend but do not condemn the communist crimes then it will be a pretend motion, depraved of justice and human empathy for victims. Ina Vukic