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Denial of the genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), a Nazi German puppet state which existed during World War II, is a historical negationist claim that no systematic mass crimes or genocide against Serbs took place in the NDH, as well as an attempt to minimize the scale and severity of genocide.
One of the strategies includes the claims that the Jasenovac concentration camp was just a labor camp, not an extermination camp. The Croatian Wikipedia has also attracted attention from international media because of bias and negationism about the crimes of the NDH.
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The genocide of Serbs was not properly examined in the aftermath of the war, because the post-war Yugoslav government led by the Communist Party didn't encourage independent scholars out of concern that ethnic tensions stemming from the war could have the capacity to destabilize the new regime. [1] [2] [3] [4] They tried to conceal wartime atrocities and to mask specific ethnic losses. [2] [5] The genocide scholar Henry R. Huttenbach wrote that “an ideologized and camouflaged Titoist Yugoslav history” suppressed the genocide against Serbs, as well as that “suppression bordering of total denial”. [5] All World War II casualties were presented as “Yugoslavs”, while all collaborationists were named as “fascists”. [5]
Historian Mirjana Kasapović explained that in the most important scientific works on genocide, crimes against Serbs, Jews and Roma in the NDH are unequivocally classified as genocide. [6] She examined three main strategies of historical revisionism in the part of modern-day Croatian historiography: the NDH was a normal counter-insurgency state at the time; no mass crimes were committed in the NDH, especially genocide; the Jasenovac camp was just a labor camp, not an extermination camp. [6] Kasapović concludes that these efforts have in practice had the opposite effect. [6]
In a systematic analysis of over forty years of history revisionism in Serbia and Croatia (1974 to 2017), Croatian sociologist Tamara Pavasović Trošt examined how Croatian textbooks justified the existence of the NDH with an emotional narrative: the “millennial thread” of Croatian statehood had been annulled under by “the greater-Serbian regime’s attempt to destroy all signs of Croatian nationness”. [7] Furthermore, textbooks relativize terror against Serbs by claiming that was a result of “their previous hegemony”. [7]
Historian Hrvoje Klasić noted that since the independence of Croatia during the Breakup of Yugoslavia, a new approach to the study and teaching of Croatian history was established, which includes downplaying and denying Ustaše crimes. [8] He stated that the trend of revisionism and negationism varied in intensity over the next twenty-five years, but was never completely stopped. [8] Historian Rory Yeomans said in 2018 that historical revisionism in the 1990s had “its strongholds in the academy and mainstream politics” and that today's revisionists aim to rehabilitate the Ustaše regime in its entirety, comparing it to a Tuđman-era when the trend was to minimize the crimes or rehabilitate only certain aspects of it. [9] He also noted that revisionists claim that commemorating the Ustaše crimes constitutes an attempt to “blacken the name of Croatia, declare the Croats a genocidal people and criminalize the Homeland War”. [9]
In his review of Josip Jurčević's work, The Origin of the Jasenovac Myth, the German historian Holm Sundhaussen notes that while Jurčević is justified in his criticism of communist Yugoslavia's Jasenovac casualty numbers, he "willingly and thoughtlessly" adopts the term "Jasenovac myth" and tries to demonstrate, through the omitting of information, that Jasenovac was a "labor camp" and that genocide in the WW2 Independent State of Croatia did not occur. [10] Jurčević also wrote that concentration camp victims dying from poor hygiene and infectious diseases. [7]
Croatia's far-right often advocates the false theory that Jasenovac was a "labour camp" where mass murder did not take place. [11] Some rights activists say that distortion of World War II crimes exist in Croatia and it was especially prevalent during the 1990s war when anti-Serb sentiment was high. [12] One prominent promoter of this is the far-right NGO "The Society for Research of the Threefold Jasenovac Camp". Its members include journalist Igor Vukić and academic Josip Pečarić who have written books promoting this theory. [13] The Ideas promoted by its members have been amplified by mainstream media interviews and book tours in 2019. [13] The last book, "The Jasenovac Lie Revealed" written by Vukić, prompted the Simon Wiesenthal Center to urge Croatian authorities to ban such works, noting that they "would immediately be banned in Germany and Austria and rightfully so". [14] [15] When asked if the society engaged in genocide denial, Vukić responded by saying "When it’s about genocide, it is often linked to Serbs. If it’s about that, we do deny it". [12] Menachem Z. Rosensaft, the general counsel of the World Jewish Congress, condemned the affirmative column about Vukić's book written by Milan Ivkošić in the Večernji list , emphasizing that “there are horrific realities of history that must not be questioned, distorted or denied by anyone”. [16]
In 2013, the Croatian Wikipedia also received attention from national and international media for promoting a fascist worldview as well as a bias against Serbs by means of historical revisionism and negating or diluting the severity of the crimes that were committed by the Ustaše regime. [17] [18] In one pertinent example, the Croatian page on the Jasenovac concentration camp referred to the camp as both a “collection camp” and a labor camp, and it downplayed the crimes that were committed at Jasenovac, as well as the number of victims who died there, and it also relied on right-wing media and private blogs as references. [19] In 2021, a number of changes were made to remove administrative access from a group of editors considered responsible for this, some of whom also had their names published in Croatian media and were connected to known far-right groups. [20] [21]
In 2016, Croatian filmmaker Jakov Sedlar released a documentary Jasenovac – The Truth which advocated the same theories, labeling the camp as a "collection and labour camp". [22] The film contained alleged falsifications and forgeries, in addition to denial of crimes and hate speech towards politicians and journalists. [23] The film was criticized for the lack of depth to provide the truth related to the causes to help others understand the events leading up to the structured horror of Jasenovac. A report covered that the camp was the single largest concentration camp in the Yugoslav region at the time of the Second World War that was not established by the Nazis themselves. [24]
Some Croats, including politicians, have attempted to minimise the magnitude of the genocide perpetrated against Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia. [25]
By 1989, the future President of Croatia, Franjo Tuđman had embraced Croatian nationalism, and published Horrors of War: Historical Reality and Philosophy , in which he questioned the official number of victims killed by the Ustaše during the Second World War. In this book, Tuđman claimed that between 30,000 and 40,000 died at Jasenovac. [26] Although the victim numbers vary, the Jasenovac Memorial lists 83,145, over half of which reported as Serbs. [24] Some scholars and observers accused Tuđman of "flirting with ideas associated with the Ustaše movement" and downplaying the number of victims in the Independent State of Croatia. [27] [28] [29] [30] [31]
Nonetheless, in his 1996 book, Tuđman did confirm that genocide happened:
It is a historical fact that the Ustaše regime of NDH, in its implementation of the plan to reduce the 'hostile Serb Orthodox people in Croatian lands', committed a large genocidal crime over the Serbs, and proportionately even higher over the Roma and Jews, in the implementation of Nazi racial politics. [32]
Croatian politician Stipe Mesić, who had previously served as the Prime Minister of Croatia, made public statements in 1992 about how there should be "no apologies" for Jasenovac, how it wasn't a "death camp", denying the nature of the concentration camp, and other statements considered supportive of the Ustaše; the videos of which were published in 2006 and 2017. [33] [11] Mesić, who had in the meantime become the President of Croatia, and was a well-known supporter of the Partisans, apologized and renounced these statements. [34] Mesić further apologized for "the imprudent statement" and relativization of the crimes in Jasenovac in 2017. [35]
On 17 April 2011, in a commemoration ceremony, Croatian President Ivo Josipović warned that there were "attempts to drastically reduce or decrease the number of Jasenovac victims", adding, "faced with the devastating truth here that certain members of the Croatian people were capable of committing the cruelest of crimes." [36]
Croatian historian and politician Zlatko Hasanbegović, who previously served as the country's Minister of Culture in 2016, has been accused of downplaying the crimes of the Ustaše and trying to rehabilitate their ideas in his work. [37] In 1996, Hasanbegović wrote at least two articles in the magazine "The Independent State of Croatia", edited by the small far-right Croatian Liberation Movement party (HOP), in which he glorified the Ustaše as heroes and martyrs and denied crimes committed by the regime. [38] In response, Hasanbegović denied being an apologist for the regime, stating that Ustaša crimes during the Second World War were "the biggest moral lapse" of the Croatian people in their history and that his words were taken out of context for political manipulation. [39]
Since 2016, anti-fascist groups, leaders of Croatia's Serb, Roma and Jewish communities and former top Croat officials have boycotted the official state commemoration for the victims of the Jasenovac concentration camp because of their view that Croatian authorities tolerate the promotion of Ustaše legacy and refuse to act against revisionist denials, downplaying and relativizing crimes committed by Ustaše. [40] [41] [42]
Historical negationism, also called historical denialism, is falsification or distortion of the historical record. It should not be conflated with historical revisionism, a broader term that extends to newly evidenced, fairly reasoned academic reinterpretations of history. In attempting to revise the past, historical negationism acts as illegitimate historical revisionism by using techniques inadmissible in proper historical discourse, such as presenting known forged documents as genuine, inventing ingenious but implausible reasons for distrusting genuine documents, attributing conclusions to books and sources that report the opposite, manipulating statistical series to support the given point of view, and deliberately mistranslating texts.
Jasenovac was a concentration and extermination camp established in the village of the same name by the authorities of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) in occupied Yugoslavia during World War II. The concentration camp, one of the ten largest in Europe, was established and operated by the governing Ustaše regime, Europe's only Nazi collaborationist regime that operated its own extermination camps, for Serbs, Romani, Jews, and political dissidents. It quickly grew into the third largest concentration camp in Europe.
Franjo Tuđman was a Croatian politician and historian who became the first president of Croatia, from 1990 until his death. He served following the country's independence from Yugoslavia. Tuđman also was the ninth and last president of the Presidency of SR Croatia from May to July 1990.
The Ustaše, also known by anglicised versions Ustasha or Ustashe, was a Croatian, fascist and ultranationalist organization active, as one organization, between 1929 and 1945, formally known as the Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Movement. Its members assisted in assassinating King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in 1934, and went on to perpetrate The Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia, killing hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma as well as Bosniak Muslims and Croatian political dissidents during World War II in Yugoslavia.
Ljubomir "Ljubo" Miloš was a Croatian public official who was a member of the Ustaše of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during World War II. He served as commandant of the Jasenovac concentration camp on several occasions and was responsible for various atrocities committed there during the war. He fled Yugoslavia in May 1945 and sought refuge in Austria. In 1947, he returned to Yugoslavia with the intention of starting an anti-communist uprising. He was soon arrested by Yugoslav authorities and charged with war crimes. Miloš was found guilty on all counts and hanged in August 1948.
Vjekoslav Luburić was a Croatian Ustaše official who headed the system of concentration camps in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during much of World War II. Luburić also personally oversaw and spearheaded the contemporaneous genocides of Serbs, Jews and Roma in the NDH.
Dinko Šakić was a Croatian Ustaše official who commanded the Jasenovac concentration camp in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) from April to November 1944, during World War II.
Far-right politics in Croatia refers to any manifestation of far-right politics in the Republic of Croatia. Individuals and groups in Croatia that employ far-right politics are most often associated with the historical Ustaše movement, hence they have connections to Neo-Nazism and neo-fascism. That World War II political movement was an extremist organization at the time supported by the German Nazis and the Italian Fascists. The association with the Ustaše has been called "Neo-Ustashism" by Slavko Goldstein.
The Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia was the systematic persecution of Serbs committed during World War II by the fascist Ustaše regime in the Nazi German puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia between 1941 and 1945. It was carried out through executions in death camps, as well as through mass murder, ethnic cleansing, deportations, forced conversions, and war rape. This genocide was simultaneously carried out with the Holocaust in the NDH as well as the genocide of Roma, by combining Nazi racial policies with the ultimate goal of creating an ethnically pure Greater Croatia.
Gideon Greif is an Israeli historian who specializes in the history of the Holocaust, especially the history of the Auschwitz concentration camp and particularly the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz. He served as a visiting lecturer for Jewish and Israeli History at the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Texas at Austin during the academic year 2011–2012. He headed a commission that issued a controversial report in July 2021 that denied that the killing of Bosnian Muslims at and around Srebrenica in July 1995 constituted genocide.
Full diplomatic relations between Croatia and Israel were established on April 9, 1997 following Croatia's independence from SFR Yugoslavia. Croatia has an embassy in Tel Aviv and honorary consulates in Ashdod, Caesarea, Jerusalem and Kfar Shmaryahu. Israel has an embassy in Zagreb. Relations between the two countries are described as friendly and highly cooperative. In recent years, Croatia and Israel intensified bilateral relations and cooperation in the field of defence and security. Croatia is one of the countries Israel occasionally turns to inside the EU to advocate on its behalf and it generally abstains or votes with Israel on key EU votes at the UN. Israeli president Reuven Rivlin described Croatia in 2019 as "Israel's strong ally in the EU, the UN and other multilateral organizations."
The Jadovno concentration camp was a concentration and extermination camp in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during World War II. Commanded by a member of the Ustaše Militia Juraj Rukavina, it was the first of twenty-six concentration camps in the NDH during the war. Established in a secluded area about 20 kilometres (12 mi) from the town of Gospić, it held thousands of Serbs and Jews over a period of 122 days from May to August 1941. Inmates were usually killed by being pushed into deep ravines located near the camp. Estimates of the number of deaths at Jadovno range from 10,000 to 68,000, mostly Serbs. The camp was closed on 21 August 1941, and the area where it was located was later handed over to the Kingdom of Italy and became part of Italian Zones II and III. Jadovno was replaced by the larger Jasenovac concentration camp and its extermination facilities.
The Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia involved the genocide of Jews, Serbs and Romani within the Independent State of Croatia, a fascist puppet state that existed during World War II, led by the Ustaše regime, which ruled an occupied area of Yugoslavia including most of the territory of modern-day Croatia, the whole of modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and the eastern part of Syrmia (Serbia). Of the 39,000 Jews who lived in the NDH in 1941, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum states that more than 30,000 were murdered. Of these, 6,200 were shipped to Nazi Germany and the rest of them were murdered in the NDH, the vast majority in Ustaše-run concentration camps, such as Jasenovac. The Ustaše were the only quisling forces in Yugoslavia who operated their own extermination camps for the purpose of murdering Jews and members of other ethnic groups.
Josip Jurčević is a Croatian historian and politician.
Jakov Sedlar is a Croatian film director and producer. A former cultural attaché during the 1990s in the Franjo Tuđman government, his documentaries promote Croatian nationalist views through propaganda. His 2016 documentary Jasenovac – The Truth sparked controversy and condemnation for downplaying and denying the crimes committed at the Jasenovac concentration camp by the Ustaše during World War II, instead focusing on crimes supposedly committed against Croats by communist Partisans at the camp following the war, while using alleged misinformation and forgeries to present its case, in addition to naming former and current Croatian officials, intellectuals, historians and journalists it dubs as "Yugoslav nationalists concealing the truth".
Jasenovac – istina is a 2016 Holocaust denial documentary film by the Croatian filmmaker Jakov Sedlar. The film contends that the extent of The Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia, an Axis puppet state, and the World War II-era genocide of the country's Serb population was exaggerated through post-war communist propaganda. It focuses primarily on Jasenovac, a concentration camp run by state’s wartime fascist Ustaše government where an estimated 100,000 are believed to have perished, and suggests that the actual death toll never exceeded 18,000. The film also argues that Jasenovac continued being used as a concentration camp by Yugoslavia's communist authorities well after World War II, and that more inmates perished when it was run by the communists than when it was run by the Ustaše.
Marijan Mijo Babić, nicknamed Giovanni, was a deputy of the Croatian fascist dictator Ante Pavelić, and the first commander of all concentration camps in the Independent State of Croatia. He was head of the Third Bureau of the Ustasha Surveillance Service, and was also a member of the main Ustaše headquarters, one of the two main deputies of Pavelić.
Igor Vukić is a Croatian journalist and historical negationist. He is an author of books on the Jasenovac concentration camp, including Radni logor Jasenovac, which advances his thesis that Jasenovac was simply a labour camp, rather than an extermination camp as accepted by all serious scholars. He does not have a degree in history.
Ljubica Štefan (1921–2002) was a Croatian historian. She was awarded honorific title Righteous Among the Nations.
Stjepan Razum is a Croatian church historian and Roman Catholic priest. He is the director of the Archdiocesan Archives in Zagreb and a member of the Commission for the Croat martyrology of the Episcopal Conference of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Episcopal Conference of Croatia; mainly researching on the Catholic priests and nuns killed and persecuted by Yugoslav communists.
Povijesna je činjenica da je ustaški režim NDH, u provedbi svojih planova o smanjenju 'neprijateljskog srpsko-pravoslavnog pučanstva u hrvatskim zemljama' izvršio velik genocidni zločin nad Srbima, a razmjerno još veći nad Romima i Židovima, u provedbi nacističke rasne politike.
