One of the good things that usually comes out from pursuit of truth is that one gets to expose the lies, the fabrications, and those who think them up or promote them as truths. That brings great personal comfort whether for some reason the wider world acknowledges the revelations or not, where it counts.

When a historian admits to fabricating significant details from history, or promoting them as truths without regard to the factual truth, without batting an eyelid, and then replaces that fabrication with another, giving no apologies nor showing any signs of embarrassment for having done tge wrong thing in the first place, then one has a duty to examine and distrust the motives behind such faceless desecration of history and disrespect for real victims of its dark moments. So that his claims of most likely wild but definitely cruel number of victims and about the manner people were allegedly murdered in Jasenovac Camp during World War Two Croatia’s appear believable Ivo Goldstein, revered by communist Yugoslavia crimes apologetics, the Israeli press such as the Jerusalem post, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and its Efraim Zuroff and a number of Holocaust historians, came up with a contraption called a bone-crushing machine. Why else would he come up with it!? The worst thing is that he as a historian, bound to check and recheck the facts of history before making definitive claims, reportedly found somewhere a reference of a bone-crushing machine took it on as “Gospel” truth and ran with it in public for many years. Goldstein claimed that the Ustashas murdered tens of thousands at the site and fed their bones into crushing machines in order to hide their crimes. And that’s why no evidence of those murders could be found! He insistently maintained that wild, ludicrous and cruel idea, repeating it worldwide so that it became believable to some and, as a result, Croatians suffered terrible emotional pains, defamation and vilification. Of course, the true historians and ordinary Croats knew he was making it all up but were helpless in correcting such historical “records”. So, Goldstein earned the mocking nickname of “Bone-crusher” among many Croats. It seemed Goldstein, and his late father Slavko, did not care less how much pain and devastation their historical narratives against Croats caused. They did not seem to care if their reckless and nonchalant approach to the need to stick to facts hurt people, devastated nations, invented victims.

On 6 November 2025 a historic debate occurred on Croatian Z1 TV, Marin Vlahovic’s “Phenomenon of the Week” show. Vlahovic enabled a historic television debate regarding World War Two Jasenovac Camp and the Holocaust. He managed to organise Igor Vukic, one of the leading historical researches on the Jasenovac Camp that point to overwhelmingly lesser number of victims reportedly killed there and Ivo Goldstein, the historian who has led the communist narrative of large number of victims killed at tat camp during the war (initially it was said 700,000, then communist Yugoslavia settled on the number 83,145 people killed there, without a shred of evidence to support that list,  which number itself has been and it being reduced due to the list of victims having in many parts being falsified),  facing each other.

The horror and despair that overtook me watching the above televised debate on 6 November 2025 came from Ivo Goldstein’s flippant, utterly disrespectful and unprofessional admission that he was wrong about the bone-crushing machines at Jasenovac, that there were no bone-crushing machine there but that someone had more recently mentioned in their memoir that there was a roller that crushed or pressed broken the bones. He failed to say whether he thought it was a steamroller or some other kind of a roller used for road surface flattening. Then, Goldstein spoke of how the killed people’s bodies were burned on wood fire there by the river in the open, their charred bones crushed and eventually melted or disappeared in the swamplands there. This appears to me as a desperate attempt to keep a lie going. Certainly no evidence was provided, or directed to, for these logistically and physically impossible killing sprees to have happened.

Igor Vukic was most clear in challenging Goldstein and demonstrating the need to research the history of Jasenovac Camp and, I believe, the extent of the crimes of the Holocaust  WWII Croatia has been burdened with through evidently planned fabrications of historical data and communist narrative.

To add salt to the wounds caused by such atrociously false claims about the number and the manner in which people were killed and their remains disposed of allegedly in order to avoid detection, no mainstream media in Croatia has as yet picked up on this. To tear Goldstein’s credibility to shreds and ensure he suffers consequences for causing so much pain to Croatian people. Of course they did not pick up on it, if they did they themselves would need to start saying that WWII history and Jasenovac must be researched and history revised in accordance with findings. A week before, in response to the roundtable held on the parliament premises regarding a scientific approach to Jasenovac camp Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic commented that the roundtable on the Ustasha camp Jasenovac was a political provocation by the political parties that organised it but as far as I can see he has said nothing regarding Goldstein-Vukic TV debate. He failed miserably at pointing out that evidence so far shows that research into Jasenovac is a necessity.

“As far as we are concerned, we respect the victims of Jasenovac, all victims of the fascist and Ustasha regime in World War II, and we have no contact with either the organisers or the speakers at that gathering,” Plenkovic said. He said nothing about victims fabricated and placed on lists of those murdered at Jasenovac and certainly said nothing about communist crimes’ victims. 

“Regime historians” are those historians who work for or support a specific political regime, often producing a version of history that aligns with the regime’s agenda. Both Ivo Goldstein and his late father Slavko have been among those „respected“ historians who shaped their profession under the communist regime, evidently singing and even „perfecting“ the anti WWII Independent State of Croatia communist Yugoslavia narrative that would paint patriotic Croats, those who fought for the independence of Croatia, with the darkest colours humanity has ever been able to produce.

At the TV debate of 6 November 2025, on Jasenovac or the “myth of Jasenovac,” the signs for truth to emerge in the future were clear.

Not only did Vukic expose Goldstein’s fabrications about the number of those killed at Jasenovac, exposing them as having been arrived at through no matching evidence or safety of historical data,

not only did Vukic expose Goldstein’s fabrications about the functioning of the Jasenovac camp,

not only did Vukic expose Goldstein’s fabrication and deliberate promotion of a lie about the infamous bone crusher at Jasenovac during WWII,

not only did Vukic expose Goldstein’s fabrication about “bones that turned into liquid”,

but at just over one hour into the debate of the show that lasted just under 90 minutes, at 1.03.32, Goldstein began his public admission that hundreds if not thousands of children who died elsewhere, even those treated for illness at hospitals in the capital city, were and are listed as having been killed at Jasenovac Camp. Goldstein has evidently been lying for decades regarding this and in effect his reasoning for justifying the Jasenovac camp victim list is that the children were, in the “storm” of war taken from their parents and regardless of where (Sisak, Zagreb, Jastrebarsko…) or how they died they had to be on the list of Jasenovac camp victims! He has been promoting the figure of 20,000 children killed at Jasenovac and that such victim lists exist, which now appears absolutely wrong and a terrible concoction whisked up to serve the communist Yugoslavia agenda. Goldstein admits that Jasenovac camp victim list has been proven to have been wrong in parts but insisted with the notion that the list was right to have included those who died elsewhere. His claims regarding this history appear more associated with his personal political agenda than the factual history.     

While the Croatian historian dr Ivo Goldstein imputes that modern research into the historical facts of the World War Two is nothing more than historical revisionism that suggests Holocaust denial it was eye-opening to watch his “professionalism” and his work being torn to shreds on public television.  Deliberate fabrication of history, also known as historical negationism, is the falsification, distortion, or trivialisation of the historical record. It differs from legitimate historical revisionism, which reinterprets history based on new evidence or reasoning. Techniques for historical negationism include inventing documents, deliberately mistranslating texts, manipulating statistics to support a predetermined narrative, and denying the veracity of genuine evidence. This is often done for political or ideological purposes, to create “historical enemies” or promote a specific national or political agenda. Sadly, Croatia’s World War Two history serves as an example of this injustice under which multitudes suffered emotional pain and degradation but if anything things are looking better for the future.  Without the political will in the country’s leadership to correct the terrible wrongs of the past this future may come later than sooner. But it will come, regardless. Ina Vukic