Jasenovac camp – Croatia, the War, and the Future

Croatia – Ten Years In EU, No Confrontation With Communist Past And Jerusalem Post Is Not Helping

July 2, 2023 by inavukic 3 Comments

Croatian Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac statue in Zagreb (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

July 2013 Croatia became a member state of the European Union.

When the Jerusalem Post publishes an article about Croatia it often appears as a regurgitation of Jewish-Serb collaboration lobby that relentlessly stands on its hind feet, desperately guarding from view the mass extermination of Jews in World War Two Serbia, shouting about Croatia’s World War Two history as the Holocaust culprit in that region. To my knowledge, one has never read or heard from Jerusalem Post anything about World War Two and post-WWII massive victims of communist crimes.

Such an appalling treatment of victims and victimhood is widespread in Croatia of today, also. Still, 32 years after seceding from communist Yugoslavia! Since year 2000 when former and then current communists took power in Croatia they work and act in the same ways as, say, evidently politically bent journalists of Jerusalem Post. Croatia today is still a bed of lies and a bed of denial of justice for all victims, regardless of which regime they were victims of. There are hundreds of thousands more innocent victims in Croatia of the communist Yugoslavia regime than of that of the WWII Croatian Ustashe regime. To talk of numbers and comparing numbers of victims is certainly not a just or fair way to approach victimhood by any measure. Even one victim is one too many. Croatia’s communist apologetics government and powers around it go even further – they permit celebrations of murderous communist former Yugoslavia regime, even participate in some while attempting to erase and denigrate the significance of victims of the Serb aggression in Croatia during 1990’s and the absolute importance of the Homeland War, which ushered Croatia into independence from communist Yugoslavia!

Official Croatia has not confronted itself with its communist past and at the same time employs all the “tricks in the book” to downplay and push away any scientific and historical research, based on historical records that used to be sealed and banned for access during the times of communist Yugoslavia, that expose the false Word War Two and post-War history of Croatia, written, of course, by the communists. So, official Croatia engages in what one might call confrontation with its past, selectively and while at it keeps breathing more lies into the already falsified history about the reported Holocaust in WWII Independent Croatia. Examples of this appalling protection of communist crimes can easily be seen in its ignoring of credible historical research by Esther Gitman (on Blessed Alojzije Stepinac’s rescue of Jews in WWII Croatia), Blanka M. Matkovic and Stipo Pilic (on camp Jasenovac, for instance, that remained open and functional after WWII and one can safely conclude that it was used as a killing field of Croats by Yugoslav communists), Igor Vukic (on historical documentation regarding numbers victims in Jasenovac camp during WWII), Roman Leljak (on horrific unearthing of mass graves of communist crimes victims), and many more.

On 7 April, 2023, the Jerusalem Post published an opinion article by Michael Freund “Croatia must confront its fascist past”. While there is no fascist past Croatia must account for because fascism was never a regime in Croatia per sé – not even during World War Two – there is a communist regime it must confront with and correct the purposefully wrong labelling of WWII Ustasha regime as fascist or Nazi. Michael Freund in his Jerusalem Post article claims that Croatia’s WWII Archbishop Blessed Alojzie Stepinac is” anything but blessed”! When one couples that with the fact that he, and Jerusalem Post, continue ignoring the fact that modern research (Dr Esther Gitman, who is of Jewish descent, in particular) has clearly shown Stepinac’s extraordinary engagement in rescuing thousands of Jews from sure death it is abundantly clear that Michael Freund’s opinion is saturated with anti-Croatian, anti-truth politics. One could easily dismiss his opinion as depraved and an attempt to promote sheer hatred.

In the above Jerusalem Post Michael Freund writes: “He (Alojzije Stepinac) served as the archbishop of Zagreb beginning in 1938 and was an ardent supporter of the pro-Nazi puppet regime established by Ante Pavelic, leader of the Ustashe fascist and ultranationalist organization in Croatia. Not once did Stepinac ever formally denounce in public the genocide perpetrated by the Ustashe against Jews, Serbs, Roma and others, and he keenly backed the forcible conversion of more than 200,000 Serbs to Catholicism.” Evidently, Michael Freund is parroting what his anti-Croatian Serbian and other mean-spirited friends have been saying, not even bothering to read historical facts that demonstrate that Alojzije Stepinac did on several occasions during WWII, to the threat of his own safety and life, speak publicly against the racial laws imposed in Croatia by the occupying forces of Nazi Germany. Michael Freund will tell you repeatedly that hundreds of thousands of Serbs were converted to Catholicism forcibly during World War Two Croatia but will not tell you the truth that such conversions were voluntary after Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac invited Serbs to convert from Orthodoxy to Catholicism (the same for Jews) in order to save their lives from persecution and peril. In the same “breath” Stepinac wrote that if the converted wished to revert to their religion after the danger of threat to their lives in the circumstance of Nazi Germany occupation, they would be free to do so!

These historical facts and truths have been well published in the past twenty years at least, including in original documents provided by Dr Esther Gitman’s books on historical research on this topic; but as sheer hatred would have it, such as the one Michael Freund seems to be enjoying dishing out, it is fair to say that Croatia cannot confront a past it did not have in the form Freund is trying to shove down our throats.

Germany based Dr. Josip Stjepandic has also written a reply to Michael Frenud’s Jerusalem Post article of 7 April 2023 and it was as follows:

“Michael Freund is the president of the Israel-Serbia Friendship Association. In this capacity, he sharply denigrates Croatia and Blessed Cardinal Stepinac in the article ‘Croatia must confront its fascist past’.

What appears to bother the author most is that Zeljana Zovko, a Member of the European Parliament, hosted a conference on Blessed Cardinal Stepinac, ‘Blessed Aloysius/Alojzije Stepinac – Testimony of Faith, Perseverance and Hope’, in the European Parliament.

‘Fascism, anti-Semitism, revisionism, evil regime, cruel distortion, obfuscate their country’s wartime role, neo-fascist songs penned by a far-right Croatian nationalist, Nazi salutes’ are mentioned here as examples of misbehaviour among the Croats. It can hardly be worse.

It is easy to see the extreme Serbs’ point of view in this article, for which Croatia and the Croats are to blame for everything. Such an article will probably make the author even more popular among Serbs, but it cannot in any way serve the interests of the State of Israel.

The facts paint a very different picture.

Croatia is an EU and NATO member and is fully integrated into Western alliances.

Almost 20 million tourists, including more than 60,000 from Israel, visit Croatia every year. No significant xenophobic or anti-Semitic incident is known to have occurred because Croatia is the country with the lowest crime rate in Europe. Other statistics also draw Croatia and Croats as very peaceful country and people to visit. It seems that the author had not done this. Otherwise, he would have seen that there is no trace of anti-Semitism in modern Croatia and probably wrote about Croatia quite differently.

The states of Croatia and Israel are now working together in many areas. Recently there is even a joint study of the University of Split and the Sapir Academic College, Hof Ashkelon, on ‘Democracy and Resilience in Modern Society’.

Unfortunately, the Holocaust also took place in Croatia, but in a completely different way from what the author portrayed. After Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, the country was divided. In Croatia and Serbia, Hitler installed puppet regimes and dictated the rule of power. This also included the persecution of the Jews.

While Serbia was declared free of Jews (“judenfrei”) in 1942, and Croatian government at the time did not pursue that goal and about 9,500 of Croatia’s 39,500 Jews survived. How this came about, describes the book ‘When Courage Prevailed: The Rescue and Survival of Jews in the Independent State of Croatia 1941-1945’ by the Jewish-American historian Dr. Esther Gitman, who, like about 6,000 other Jews, owes her survival to the tireless efforts of Archbishop Stepinac.

Gitman draws a differentiated picture of the Independent State of Croatia: on the one hand, the terror imposed by the Nazis based on racial laws – on the other hand, 6 paths of humanity that led to the rescue of the Jews. As a result, every fourth Jew survived in Croatia, more than in almost any other country under the control of Nazi Germany. This is thanks to noble, brave Croats like Archbishop Stepinac. That would have deserved greater recognition in Israel, which unfortunately has not materialised so far.

Therefore, the State of Israel should thank Zeljana Zovko because she recalled this special merit of a Catholic bishop, who spoke out against the racial laws very early on and always repeated his opinion (e.g., New York Times: “CROAT ATTACKS GERMANS: Archbishop of Zagreb Denounces Their Theory of Race,” July 8 1943).”

Ina Vukic and Josip Stjepandic

(HAZUDD/ Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in the Diaspora and Homeland)

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac, BlankaM. Matkovic, communist crimes, Communist Yugoslavia, Croatia, Esther Gitman, Falsified history, Holocaust, Igor Vukic, Jasenovac camp, Jerusalem Post, Jewish-Serbian Friendship Association, Michael Freund, Nazi Germany occupation, NDH, racial laws, Roman Leljak, Stipo Pilic, Ustashe, World War Two Croatia

Servicing Serbia’s Propaganda Israel’s Gideon Greif Abuses Holocaust And Fabricates Parts Of Croatia’s History

May 21, 2022 by inavukic 3 Comments

For years now I have been writing articles regarding the monstrous pursuits of Israel’s historians such as Efraim Zuroff and Gideon Greif that blacken Croatia and Croatians during World War Two. Suffice to say both are and have been on Serbia’s propaganda train against Croatia, maybe even its payroll, while attempting to cover up the fact that WWII Serbia was one of the first European countries to declare itself “Free of Jews” or “Judenfrei” having exterminated some 94% of its Jews to May 1942! Efraim Zuroff of Simon Wiesenthal Centre had appeared staunchly pro-communist, defending the atrocious communist crimes, or ignoring them for years and, yet, in victim numbers they counted many many more victims than the Holocaust itself! The numbers of people they claimed, together with Serbia, that perished in Croatian camps during World War Two, without a shred of evidence but with lots of hatred of Croats and Independent Croatia, are monstrous and abominable. And so I was truly happy at reading a recent article (11 May 2022) in Israels’ Haaretz.com portal by its highly-acclaimed journalist Sam Sokol on these matters of Holocaust abuse and fabrications of history by Gideon Greif, which I too pass onto you readers and followers of my blog articles. It is great article in support of the truth we all seek to cast out eyes upon sooner or later.

“Six months ago, Prof. Gideon Greif was on top of the world.

A respected Holocaust scholar, he was set to receive Germany’s highest civilian honor for his research on the Sonderkommandos, Jewish prisoners who were forced to dispose of bodies at the Nazi death camps. Years earlier his research was adapted into an award-winning feature film, ‘Son of Saul.’

But the civilian honor in Germany was soon rescinded amid allegations that Greif was a genocide denier who tried to whitewash the murder of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces at Srebrenica in July 1995.

Now the 71-year-old scholar, who this year announced plans to revise a controversial war crimes report he co-wrote on behalf of Serb nationalists, again faces allegations of sacrificing historical accuracy to bolster a nationalist narrative.

He allegedly has inflated the death toll at Jasenovac, a Croatian death camp where, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the German-allied Ustasha regime murdered between 77,000 and 99,000 people during the Holocaust.

The controversy relates to Greif’s cooperation with the Serbian government to produce an exhibit, and later a book, about Jasenovac. According to Greif, at least 700,000 people died at the camp, a figure repudiated by contemporary scholars and promoted by Serbian nationalists.

Both the exhibit and the book followed a number of cooperation agreements brokered by the Serbian Foreign Ministry and signed by Greif in 2016 and 2017 on behalf of two groups he was affiliated with, the International Group of Experts GH7-Stop Revisionism and Shem Olam, an Israeli Holocaust education and research institute. The Serbian signatories included civil society groups and the country’s Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development.

The result was a 2018 UN exhibit about Jasenovac curated by Greif and sponsored by the Serbian Foreign Ministry. It was soon followed by the 700-plus page book ‘Jasenovac: Auschwitz of the Balkans,’ where Greif said his efforts were part of a ‘Serbian-Jewish bastion against revisionism.’

In the book, Greif credited an Israeli Foreign Ministry official for his first meeting with the Serbs and stated that the Israeli ambassador to Belgrade was present when he signed a memorandum of understanding with Belgrade on behalf of Shem Olam.

Greif wrote that the Croat Ustashas even surpassed the German Nazis in their wickedness and in their bloodlust, juxtaposing statistics about Auschwitz and Jasenovac on facing pages and highlighting various death toll estimates in a way appearing to equate the two camps.

He also quoted estimates that the death toll at Jasenovac, where the majority of victims were ethnic Serbs, could be as high as 1.4 million, exceeding even Auschwitz, though the number he has promoted in a raft of media appearances is significantly lower.

‘I would say that the minimum number is 700,000 and maybe more,’ he said on Serbian television in 2019. ‘So this is the beginning number. Maybe about 800,000 Serbs, 40,000 Jews.’

But this estimate has been discredited by modern scholarship, said Yad Vashem historian Rob Rozett, who added that Greif’s estimate was based on inflated figures produced by the communist Yugoslav government following World War II.

The scholarly community, including Yad Vashem, ‘has rejected those numbers,’ and Greif’s conclusions ‘are way outside of what scholars consider to be legitimate discussion these days,’ Rozett said.

‘Serbian nationalist narrative’

Ernest Herzog, the World Jewish Congress’ Belgrade-born director of operations, recalled a visit by Greif in 2019 where the historian tried to win the Congress’ support for a Jasenovac event in Jerusalem. Herzog said he declined the offer because he believed that Greif only presented ‘the Serbian nationalist narrative.’

‘I wasn’t sure he was aware what he was getting into,’ Herzog said. ‘It’s not that I think he’s some kind of a crook, but I just think that he ended up on the wrong side of history when it comes to this because on Jasenovac he didn’t explore all the avenues and research, and completely dismissed all the work done in the ’80s and the ’90s.’

The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Efraim Zuroff, referred to as an expert in Greif’s book, had a different take.

Referring to honors Greif has received from Serbia – including the country’s Gold Medal of Merit in 2019 – Zuroff said that while he couldn’t identify Greif’s motives, ‘it seems clear he has been given rewards of different sorts and perhaps it’s those rewards that motivated him to produce the kind of goods that the people who gave him the rewards want to see.

The question is what are you willing to do to receive those awards,’ Zuroff said, adding that ‘it’s sad to see what happened to this person.’

For his part, Greif seemed aggrieved by the criticism against him, complaining in a statement to Haaretz about ‘vicious incitement’ and ‘terrorist-like pressure’ that he said included 23 death threats in recent years.

‘I do not know another historian in the whole world who lives in the shadow of death threats just because he expresses his own opinions,’ Greif wrote, adding that his research on Jasenovac was not part of the cooperation agreements he signed, which were ‘standard agreements for academic, educational, pedagogical and research cooperation.’

His books ‘were not funded by any Serbian government office, and no one but me had any influence on their content,’ he added. ‘I received no payment, not even one shekel, not even one euro, not even one dollar.’

Dismissing the 1.4-million-victim number as unrealistic, Greif said that ‘statistical issues like the number of victims concern me less, and are secondary to me, firstly because my attention is given to the world of the victim.’ He said he based his work on a number of works published decades ago by Yad Vashem, which he considered the ‘most reliable and well-established sources.’

He added: ‘I have no interest in reducing or increasing the number of murders at Jasenovac. I try to choose the most realistic and authentic data available to me.’

One source he mentioned was the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which he said put the death toll at Jasenovac at 500,000.

Emil Kerenji, a scholar at the museum, said that between 77,000 and 99,000 people were murdered at the Croatian camp, a number in line with an estimate by Ivo Pejakovic, the head of the Jasenovac memorial site in Croatia. He said his database currently contains the names of over 83,000 victims.

‘Dr. Greif didn’t make any research regarding the number of victims of Jasenovac camp. As far as I understand, he simply quoted estimation of 700,000 victims or more, which were the official numbers of victims during the period of Yugoslavia,’ Pejakovic wrote in an email.

‘So he disregarded all new research that was done in the last years and decades. There is no methodology or research to comment on.’

Ono Academic College, where Greif lectures on history, distanced itself from the controversial scholar’s book on Jasenovac. It said in a statement that even though its logo appeared on the cover of Greif’s book, it had nothing to do with it.

An Israeli official, meanwhile, disputed Greif’s claim that the Foreign Ministry facilitated his cooperation agreements with Belgrade.

‘We have no recollection of ever putting him in touch with the Serbs,’ the official said.”

Ina Vukic

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Abuse of Holocaust, Croatia, Efraim Zuroff, Fabrcation of History, genocide denial, Godeon Greif, Holocaust, Independent State of Croatia, Jasenovac camp, Jew Free, Judenfrei, Sam Sokol, Serbia

Croatia: Seems The Jerusalem Post Prefers Ivo Goldstein’s Lies To Truth!

August 29, 2021 by inavukic 2 Comments

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 12^th 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.