myth of Jasenovac camp – Croatia, the War, and the Future

The Vomit Principle in Serbia’s Political Spin

The “Vomit Principle” in modern marketing trends hasn’t eluded Serbia’s politicians. The vomit principle is a political tactic that wilfully disgusts people in order to grab their attention. When it comes to Serbia’s denial of its horrendous crimes in its pursuits of a Greater Serbia, stretching into Croatian territory and the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1990’s, then it has almost perfected the “art” of the “Vomit Principle”. Serbia’s politicians, whether in Serbia (for example Aleksandar Vucic, Ana Brnabic, Ivica Dacic) or in Croatia (for example Milorad Pupovac, Boris Milosevic) or in Bosnia and Herzegovina (for example Milorad Dodik) are sticking to their marketing message, sprouting their their passively-aggressive slogans and genocide denials ad nauseam. You’d think they’d get sick of saying the same thing at every turn. And if by any chance, you are asking why I’m putting Serbs from Serbia, Serbs from Croatia and Serbs from Bosnia and Herzegovina in the same cauldron here it’s because both Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina had ethnic Serbs living there who emerged as rebel Serbs (rebelling against the states’ secession from communist Yugoslavia), mounted terror against non-Serbs in those two countries, and were joined in that fight by Serbia with its deadly viciousness. If Croatia’s minority government had the courage and prudence to side with the Croatian Serbs that fought with Croatians against Serb aggression (and there was a significant number of them) we would surely now be looking at a different political scenario, perhaps even at a good progress in reconciliation. But it didn’t and it doesn’t! It sides with Croatian rebel Serb camp that promotes Serbia’s politics in Croatia.

No matter how many times they repeat their spin based on fabrications, there will always be someone who has missed it. So, repetition is essential to the point of making people feel sick. This is the “Vomit Principle” and it shows particularly at that time when you realise that the spin, the message, the slogan, has been said so many times that you feel that if you hear it or say it once more you are just going to throw up and that is the point at which people hear it. In other words, all marketing that achieves intended results relies on a message which resonates, repeated often enough until it penetrates the minds of your intended audience and gets them to take whatever action you want.

And Serbia wants the world to forget that its aggression against Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina ever occurred! That the genocide, the ethnic cleansing, the mass rapes, the torture, the sheer wanton destruction it committed during 1990’s did not occur and if it did occur then it was justified to pursue such course of action because Serbs say in deceit that Croatia, for example, engaged in genocide during World War II. I will not go deeply here into the fact that WWII history regarding Croatia when it comes to, say, Jasenovac camp and the numbers of people who perished there, was largely fraudulently written by Serbs and other communists and, judging by relatively recent research into WWII, it does not represent the true picture, or actual facts. I will not go deeply here into the fact that, for example, Serbia (its leaders of the 1990’s aggression) were convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague of genocide in Croatia, and Croatia was not.

Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic took part in a commemoration ceremony Tuesday, 4 August 2020 in Sremska Raca near the borders with Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The ceremony marked the day when, in 1995, the Croatian military’s Operation Storm, which marked the end of the war for Croatia’s independence from communist Yugoslavia and was organised by official Serbia in remembrance of the Serbian victims and refugees.

“We will not celebrate the tragedy of the Serbian people, the killing of Serb civilians, the killing of the Serb children. We will not be humiliated,” Vucic said at the commemoration in Sremska Raca. “Reconciliation, yes. Humiliation — no,” said Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic!

Knowing the fact that there are no known civilian victims during Croatia’s Operation Storm on 4^th and 5^th August 1995 and that the exodus of some 200,000 of Serbs from Croatia at the time was actually an ordered evacuation that was directed by Serbia itself puts a bitter taste and outrage to these words uttered by Vucic, yet another of many times!

Then, at around the same time, Serbia’s Prime Minister Ana Brnabic, regurgitated Vucic’s vomit against Croatia. “We want reconciliation, peace, we do not ask you to apologise, admit the genocide in Jasenovac, but we want you to let us mourn that day or those days. We want reconciliation, but not humiliation, which we will not agree to.”

Serbia continues pressuring Croatia to admit to genocide it did not perpetrate in WWII against Serbs in order to continue denying the genocide it, itself, perpetrated in 1990’s in both Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina! The gut-wrenching thing in all this is that pro-communist Yugoslavia political/government leadership of Croatia does nothing to alert the world not to succumb to the nausea infecting the world from Serbia. Even, if that leadership or government of Croatia is in coalition with the Serb activists in Croatia in order to sustain its minority government, it has no right to keep silent in the face of continued barrage of lies and denials of the 1990’s murderous aggression coming from Serbia!

Whether Serbia’s usage of the “Vomit Principle” strategy in its politics to wash away its 1990’s mortal sins against the Croatian people, as if they were never willfully committed, will force Croatian current leadership to further compromise the absolute need of Croatia to defend itself from the murderous Serb aggression is yet to be seen. According to some media sources Serbia’s Prime Minister Ana Barnabic has even during the past week “told” Croatia to stop using the term “Serbo-Chetnik aggression” when it comes to Croatia’s Homeland War! Will Serbia’s use of the “Vomit Principle” force a reconciliation founded on the cruel equalisation of the victim with the aggressor? It’s certainly heading that way it seems and it spells no blissful future that depends on truth; it spells a long painful future of unrest among the Croatian people, for certain.

Let’s take a look at what is evidently standing behind Serbia’s leadership’s words – behind what Vucic and Brnabic are saying. In terms of psychology Vucic’s and Brnabic’s, indeed of all Serbia’s leading politicians of decades past, telling lies and pointing fingers at others especially for unrelated acts (for example WWII) has evidently become a way not to admit that which makes them feel ashamed and they do not want to be judged for crimes Serbia has perpetrated. Serbia should be ashamed of its aggression against Croatian people who wanted out of communist Yugoslavia, which, by the way, Serbs controlled to a large extent. Then, of course, the relatively recent trends in historical research into facts of WWII Croatia have revealed several crucial facts regarding WWII Jasenovac and regarding Blessed Alojzije Stepinac that cause anxiety and panic among Serbs who had participated in writing the history of WWII Croatia, based on lies and cruel fabrications. There is the extensive research by American dr Esther Gitman on the rescue and survival of Jews in WWII Croatia which point to the fact that there were Croats, including Blessed Alojzije Stepinac, who made it their task to rescue Jews and others, but still, after WWII Serbs led the persecution against Blessed Alojzije Stepinac with trumped-up charges of Nazi collaboration. Then, British dr Robin Harris published also a biography of Blessed Alojzije Stepinac, based on similar facts. But, wouldn’t you know it (!), Serbia has recently placed Israeli historian Gideon Greif on its payroll and Serbia’s lies get new reinforcement.

Historical archives being open after Croatia seceded from communist Yugoslavia in the 1990’s has enabled historians to delve into researching the history of Jasenovac camp. The results that are emerging from this research give a significantly different picture of WWII Jasenovac. This picture based on discovered documentation is definitely set to throw the false picture Serbs and their allies painted into garbage; onto the heap of human misery and deceit. Serbs and their allies have already maliciously dubbed this research as “Holocaust denial” and “Historical Revisionism”! Some notable researchers into WWII Jasenovac camp have been Blanka M. Matkovic, Igor Vukic, Vladimir Horvat and Stipo Pilic, to name just a few. They all point one to the fact that the myth about WWII Jasenovac camp was a cruel myth devised to prop-up the oppressive communist Yugoslavia regime and the Serb determination to cover up their own terrible participation in the WWII extermination of Jews and their hatred for any kind of independent Croatia.

And so, it has surfaced relatively recently that the myth of Croatian genocide against Serbs in WWII is based on lies and fabrication – and this feeds Serbia’s “Vomit Principle” with ammunition made up of lies. Associated with this principle are Croatian Serbs’, who were directly or sideways associated with the rebel Serb faction in 1990’s Croatia (Such as Milorad Pupovac and Boris Milosevic), constant attempts to characterise the “For Homeland Ready” (Za Dom Spremni) Croatian salute, used for centuries as a mark of patriotic love, as a salute that promotes a genocidal character of Croatian fight for independence! Serb aggression and the need for Croats to preserve their lives amidst the brutal aggression means nothing in their warped minds. They lived in Croatia as the 19990’s war of aggression arose, they live in Croatia today and yet they are activists for Serbia’s anti-Croatian politics! And with this, they all call for a future that is threaded together by peace and reconciliation between Croatia and Serbia!

Surely, Serbia’s use of the “Vomit Principle” cannot possibly succeed in achieving reconciliation because that would mean that Croatia has finally cowered to the pressure of liars and aggressors and that, in no small ways, spells out yet another myth Serbia has managed to forge and place on the world’s stage! To the detriment of humanity and truth! Ina Vukic

Croatia: New Fact-finding Research Into WWII Jasenovac Camp Absolutely Essential

(R) Ivo Goldstein (L) Aleksandar Stankovic
Photo: Screenshot

Lies loom large over some historian’s craft. Whether some accounts of history are outright lies or details which have not been proven with evidence presented as fact – they are all lies. And yet, to our dismay, deception hasn’t really figured as a category of historical analysis.

Attempts at new fact-finding research into historical events particularly those dealing with the Holocaust or WWII have been labelled “historical revisionism” with negative or undesirable connotations. This of course has been done on purpose, in Croatia by former Yugoslav communists, to thwart any possible revelation of truth, which does not agree with the myth about the WWII Independent State of Croatia they’ve been peddling since 1945. While doing that, they managed to keep horrendous communist crimes relatively hidden but definitely un-prosecuted and un-condemned.

The term historical revisionism refers to and identifies the re-interpretation of the historical record and, therefore, any investigation that leads to the finding of new facts that are not on record is simply not historical revisionism in that sense. It is correction of mistakes or misrepresentations found in historical records.

When you have a former Yugoslav communist and today’s Yugoslav communist sympathiser (who hangs on his office wall the portrait of Josip Broz Tito, former Yugoslavia’s leader and one classed among top ten mass murderers in history of the world) as a historian, as Ivo Goldstein is in Croatia, you get a deadly formula fighting against the surfacing historical truth.

On Sunday 17 June Ivo Goldstein appeared on a Croatian TV show “Sunday at 2” (Nedjeljom u 2) and the topic was WWII Jasenovac camp. While much of the show referred to a new book on Jasenovac Goldstein is reportedly preparing to publish later this year, one does not need to dig deep to find the real motive behind this TV show’s agenda. Generally it’s the increased efforts into scientific research into the WWII Jasenovac camp, both about its factual nature and numbers of victims (about which the communist Yugoslavia together with Serbian propagandist armada have perpetuated the myth of more than 700,000 victims even though 1960’s research had come up with some 83,000) that get the communist blood pumping. Specifically, the recently published book in Croatia “Jasenovac – Work Camp” by Igor Vukic, which brings forth new facts uncovered through research that seriously shake the very ground the communist myth built its historical deception about Croatia and Croats during WWII, has got the communist sympathisers, including Aleksandar Stankovic, “Sunday at 2” anchor, running for agendas that would keep the communist myth about Jasenovac camp afloat.

And so, Ivo Goldstein tells the TV audience that “the whole story of Ustashas, Bleiburg (mass communist crimes against Croats May 1945), and historical revisionism that flourishes around us has been imposed upon Croatia and Croatian society in order to deal with it, so that somewhere around the corner a backward, closed, conservative and anti-immigration ideology and its implementation politics could be promoted.”

“It is a conflict between two Croatias – one is open, the other is closed, one is the ones that hates and the other is the one that wants communication,” Goldstein said, adding, “the public is bombarded with a series of lies”. Of course, he wasn’t referring to communist lies, which he himself has been peddling for quite some time. He kept pontificating about today’s historical revisionism associated with the WWII Ustasha regime in Croatia.

Since Goldstein considers himself to be a scientist, a historian, it is utterly telling of his unprofessional biases when he gave neither credence nor credibility to any new fact-finding research into WWII events or Jasenovac. In fact, he was adamant that new research and digging of grave sites around Jasenovac would not result into any new findings regarding the victims, because, he claims that the 1960’s research had found yellowish soil there that reminded of ash from burned bones! In fact, he called those who today dispute the historically recorded volume of suffering at WWII Jasenovac camp – stinkers!

While he said the 700,000 victims of WWII Jasenovac was a myth orchestrated and promoted by Serbs his efforts in no way go towards breaking that myth, a true and credible historian in that field of science should. When asked whether his new book will bring anything new he said no, nothing except psychological profiling of “Ustasha criminals” at WWII Jasenovac camp!

As I said at the beginning of this article: lies loom large over some historian’s craft.

In desperate attempts to maintain the communist myth about WWII Jasenovac camp, in a desperate attempt to mar and damage in people’s minds, at least, any new research findings that go towards breaking that myth, Goldstein is now steering into psychological profiling of people (Ustashas) who were at Jasenovac camp more than 70 years ago and are long dead and so are those who might have known them!

It is a scientific and practical fact that psychological profiling is still an inexact method of portraying perpetrators of crimes, even now. But the term has been used to amplify and give added credibility to criminal investigations. Goldstein is most likely quite aware that by using those catchwords – “psychological profiling” – the public will take notice even more than what they would if presented with bare numbers or facts. One could go even further and say that by introducing the concept of psychological profiling into historical accounts of events, that may lack necessary evidential material for profiling, it makes any lies contained in those psychological profiles even more palpable to those who choose to believe the lies in the first instance. This is simply because the idea of “psychological profiling” has caught on among the general (voting in elections) public especially since “The Silence of the Lambs” movie and TV shows like “The Profiler”. But in reality there’s more to a criminal than just his/her actions that go into his/her psychological profile.

Ivo Goldstein is not satisfied with just keeping the communist myth about Jasenovac camp unchallenged when it comes to the number of victims, he is now entering into a new domain, psychological profiling, with only one obvious intent: to keep the myth alive by building into it his concoctions of individual profiles of people who are long dead and for whom there is little if any living corroboration about the character and possible mind of that individual!

Lying, fraud and deception were a particular qualification of those who wrote the “official” history of WWII Croatia, concentrating their efforts into making the Jasenovac camp as the worst Holocaust ground in Europe. Their followers such as Aleksandar Stankovic and Ivo Goldstein deserve every bit of contempt one can muster.

Shadows from the past do hover over contemporary Croatia but not for the agenda Goldstein claims – to Ustashise Croatia. They hover because historical truth does not exist; it has been concealed, manipulated and filled with half-truths and misinformation to suit the communist agenda. For that reason, research into the facts of Jasenovac camp is absolutely essential and Goldstein’s psychological profiling can be dumped into the same trash-bin as his books and publications so far have been by all who seek and demand the truth. Ina Vukic