The Myth of Jasenovac Concentration Camp; How Serbian Propaganda Exaggerated The Death Count 10 Tenfold
Serbian media these days are ringing the bells of propaganda noise, about the concentration camps of Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška, of the former Croatian state – NDH (Nezavisna drzava Hrvatske-Shteti i Independur Croat), in which the Croatian “Ustasha” government, in collaboration with the Nazi German government, gathered people, sent them to forced labor, tortured them, killed and burned them in the most macabre way.
The ways in which Serbian propaganda describes the treatment of people, among whom were many children, are horrific. The Jasenovac camp system was founded, as the Serbian media say, on August 21, 1941. On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the founding of that camp, the Government of Serbia and that of the Serbian genocidal creature, called “Republika Srpska”, have organized a large manifestation, with a multitude of ceremonies, in memory of the victims of Jasenovac.
For the commemoration ceremony, since the day before yesterday (August 19), the entire Serbian Government, headed by Aleksandar Vučić, many deputies of the Parliament, many priests of the Serbian Orthodox Church, representatives of various parties, institutions and organizations of Serbia, has been “transferred” from Belgrade to Banja Luka. With this “mass transfer”, Serbia wants to show the world that the so-called “Republika Srpska” is part of Serbia. At the main event, the Prime Minister of Serbia, A. Vučić, will speak first, followed by Milorad Dodik.
Hiding data and inflating the number of victims
Serbian propaganda is a master of lies and lamentation, of presenting the Serbian people as victims, even when the Serbian state itself is the aggressor, as is happening with the wars waged in the last decade of the last century. But, for the victims of the Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška camps, it had always inflated the figures tenfold or more, always saying that 750 or 800 thousand people disappeared in those camps, of whom 700 thousand were Serbs, and the rest were Jews, Roma, etc.
But, those figures have never been able to be confirmed with accurate data and arguments. Even the day before yesterday (August 19), at the commemoration of the victims of Jasenovac, when the Prime Minister of Serbia, A. Vučić, participated, his host Dodik said that 700 thousand victims disappeared in these camps, of whom over 500 thousand were Serbs, and the rest were Jews, Roma, etc. Meanwhile, Vučić was a little more cautious, saying that the exact number of victims is still unknown, and that a census should be conducted and the truth about them should be known.
But they know very well that the Federal Statistical Office, Belgrade, since 1964, has carried out a complete registration of all persons who lost their lives during the Second World War, as participants in the national liberation war, or as victims of the terror of the occupier and their collaborators, which also means the victims of the Jasenovac camps.
However, since that registration, the figures of the victims of the Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška camps had emerged as “desperate” figures, many times smaller than those that Serbian propaganda had trumpeted and presented to the public at home and abroad, the data from that registration have been kept as the greatest secret until recently. This Serbian “super-secrecy” came to light (1992), when the complete register with names and other data on the victims of the Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška camps was compiled.
That register was printed in a certain number of copies, only for a few people by the political and state leader of Serbia, and it has not been made public. However, the Bosnian Institute of Sarajevo has managed to obtain a copy of that register, and has published it in its own book.
From the registration of the State Commission (1964), the Bosnian Institute has concluded that the register has many flaws in the data; that in many names the identification of the national affiliation of the victims does not appear, there are repetitions of the same names of the victims.
However, the researchers of the Institute have noticed that there were manipulations in the register; the example is illustrated when next to the names of Muslim (Bosnian) victims, but also next to Croatian names, the national identity is marked as Serbian, or it is not marked at all. There are also numerous such cases in the names of Jewish and Roma victims.
Providing a detailed summary of the register of victims of the camps: Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška, the Bosnian Institute of Sarajevo, in its publication, provided the following figures:
In the Jasenovac camp there were 26,170 Serbian victims, 8,121 Jews, 5,900 Croats, 789 Muslims, 1,471 Roma, 174 Slovenes, 35 Montenegrins, 7 Macedonians, 59 Hungarians, 6,792 unidentified on a national basis, 84 others (total: 49,602 victims).
In the Stara Gradiška camp: 7,774 Serbs, 923 Jews, 646 Croats, 160 Muslims, 20 Slovenes, 3 Montenegrins, 1 Hungarian, 58 unidentified on national grounds, 1 other (total: 9,586 victims).
The figures from both camps (Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška) collected give the following numbers of victims: 33,944 Serbs, 9,044 Jews, 6,546 Croats, 949 Muslims, 1,471 Roma, 194 Slovenes, 38 Montenegrins, 7 Macedonians, 60 Hungarians, 6,850 unidentified on a national basis, 85 others (total, in both camps: 59,188 victims). The reader of these figures may wonder why there were so many victims of Croatian nationality in those camps.
The explanation is simple and logical: the NDH government was closely linked to German Nazism, and was followed by communists, partisans and opponents of Nazism from among the Croats.
Figures are the work of statistics, and statistics are said to be: “accurate collection of inaccurate data”. Even if there was only one innocent victim, it is painful, let alone all of them, regardless of their nationality. However, multiplying the number of victims for propaganda purposes, and especially hiding from local and international opinion the real data from the census conducted by the State Commission in 1964, is a low, unscientific and anti-civilizational act.
Only heartless and immoral people can manipulate and falsify data on innocent victims, of whatever nationality, and from false data create myths about the victimization of their own people. All this was done with the aim of creating prejudice, hatred and revenge against the state and a certain people, in this specific case – against the Croatian state and people, but also the German one.
Considering the current policy of Serbia and that genocidal creature of the Bosnian Serbs, the commemorative gathering that will be held today (August 21), marking the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška camps, in which the entire “bullumenta” of the state and society of Serbia will participate, will serve and send messages of hatred and revenge, and not messages of reconciliation between the peoples from whom the victims were, regardless of who caused them in certain historical circumstances.
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