The Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican (1992) is a history by Vladimir Dedijer, a Yugoslav university professor and human rights activist, who was a World War II Partisan and communist revolutionary.
This English-language edition combines in a shortened version Dedijer's two books written in Serbian: Vatikan i Jasenovac and Vatikan i Jasenovac Dokumenti, published by Rad Publishing House Belgrade in 1987. It was published in English under the title, The Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican: The Croatian Massacre of the Serbs During World War II by Prometheus Books, in 1992 ( ISBN 978-0879757526).
Described as a polemical work, without the usual support of bibliography and footnotes, this history explores the genocide in Croatia beginning in 1941 under the authority of Ante Pavelić, and conducted by secular Ustasha and Catholic religious figures, including clergy. Among the atrocities described is the massacre of prisoners at Jasenovac concentration camp, in which an estimated 750,000 Orthodox Serbs were killed. Dedijer used eyewitness accounts and testimony from postwar trials of officials responsible. [1]
This text was also published in German as Jasenovac, das jugoslawische Auschwitz und der Vatikan, by Ahriman-Verlag GmbH (January 31, 2001). He documents the repression and genocide in Yugoslavia during the war of Orthodox Christian Serbs by Catholics in Croatia, with the support of high-level Vatican officials.[ citation needed ]
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.
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.
Catholic clergy involvement with the Ustaše covers the role of the Croatian Catholic Church in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), a Nazi puppet state created on the territory of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia in 1941.
Aloysius Viktor Stepinac was a high-ranking Yugoslav Croat prelate of the Catholic Church. Made a cardinal in 1953, Stepinac served as Archbishop of Zagreb from 1937 until his death, a period which included the fascist rule of the genocidal Ustaše regime with the support of the Axis powers from 1941 to 1945 during World War II.
Vladimir Dedijer was a Yugoslav partisan fighter during World War II who became known as a politician, human rights activist, and historian. In the early postwar years, he represented Yugoslavia at the United Nations and was a senior government official.
The Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia was the systematic persecution of Serbs which was 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.
Anti-Serb sentiment or Serbophobia is a generally negative view of Serbs as an ethnic group. Historically it has been a basis for the persecution of ethnic Serbs.
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.
Ante Ciliga was a Croatian politician, writer and publisher. Ciliga was one of the earliest leaders of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ). Imprisoned in Stalin's Gulags in the 1930s as part of the Great Purge, he later became an ardent Croatian nationalist, anti-communist and ideologue of the fascist Ustaše movement.
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 Europe who operated their own extermination camps for the purpose of murdering Jews and members of other ethnic groups.
Antun Miletić is a Yugoslav and Serbian historian.
Edmond Paris was a French author on history and anti-Catholic polemicist.
Garavice was an extermination location established by the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during World War II in Yugoslavia near Bihać, in the Independent State of Croatia. Between 7,000 and 12,000 people, mostly Serbs and Jews were murdered at Garavice by the Ustasha in 1941.
Milorad Ekmečić was a Yugoslav and Serbian historian. During World War II he became a member of the Yugoslav Partisans after the fascist Ustaše perpetrated the Prebilovci massacre, in which 78 members of his family were killed, including his father. He studied at the University of Zagreb and went on to be a professor at the University of Sarajevo, and later at the University of Belgrade. He was a member of several Yugoslav academies of sciences and arts, the author of more than a dozen historical books, and received several significant national awards. Ekmečić authored several important works in socialist Yugoslavia, including his contribution to the acclaimed History of Yugoslavia published in English in 1974, and Stvaranje Jugoslavije 1790–1918 [Creation of Yugoslavia 1790–1918] in 1989. According to his obituary in Vreme news magazine, Ekmečić was considered "a prominent representative of Serbian critical historiography".
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.
The Gospić concentration camp was one of 26 concentration camps in the Independent State of Croatia during World War II, established in Gospić.
Milan Bulajić was a Serbian historian, expert in Holocaust studies, and Yugoslavian diplomat. He was one of the founders of the Museum of Genocide Victims and The Fund for Genocide Research in Belgrade.
The Lepoglava concentration camp was a concentration camp in the Independent State of Croatia during World War II. It was located 25 km southwest of Varaždin and operated by Ustaše, a Croatian fascist, ultranationalist terrorist organization. In July 1943, it was briefly captured by Yugoslav Partisans.
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.