CROATIAN CRIMES OF WWII
The U.S. Holocaust Museum has found and preserved long-forgotten documents about the Jasenovac camps, which were operated by the Croatians during World War II. This is important, and the camp's records - or lack thereof - were among the roots of the Yugoslav wars that started in 1991.

I first traveled to Croatia in April 1992 to meet my relatives - both of my grandfather's parents were born there. I took the train from Prague (where I was living at the time) to Zagreb with Joel Brand, who was then only a few months into what turned out to be a stellar career covering the war. On the train on Easter Sunday, Joel gave me quick primer of Croatian politics. I learned about the Ustashe, which was the Croatian Nazi puppet government during WWII. It disappeared under Tito's rule, but lately Croatian President Franjo Tudjman was bringing back some of its symbols - the red and white checkerboard flag, its currency and renaming some streets with ill-chosen references. Plus, Tudjman, an academic by training, was among those who refused to believe the Croats/Ustashe really killed very many Serbs during WWII. Mind you, at the same time Tudjman is whipping up a feel-good nationalistic tone from Zagreb, Milosevic down in Serbia is using every one of Tudjman's deeds to convince his Serbs that the Croats are poised to victimize the Serbs again, just like they did for the Nazis.

From Joel's apartment, we watched on the TV as the very first shelling started in Sarajevo.

When I got out to the very small town where my relatives live, I spent a lot of time visiting with a very kind and wise gentleman, Dr. Ivan Furlan, who spoke perfect English and was a retired professor from Zagreb University. He had been a partisan in the war, fighting against the Nazis. (My great grandfather was apparently also a partisan as he fled up into the hills to avoid the Croatian draft. He was actually already an American citizen by then and had returned to Croatia with his new wife and children when the war broke out. He fled to the hills and my great grandmother, uncles and aunt were stuck there for the remainder of the war.) Dr. Furlan, who died a year ago, was very patient with my questions about the new and old wars. He said that while the Nazis kept very good records of the numbers of people they killed in Germany and Poland and elsewhere, the Croats did not, so there was no precise way to determine exactly how many were killed. He said there were even some people who believed the Croats, so anxious to please the Nazis, may have actually killed more people in Croatia than the Nazis did elsewhere. He singled out Jasenovac as one of the worst.

So now that these records have resurfaced, the Holocaust Museum puts the number of Serbs killed by the Ustashe at 300,000. That number, the New York Times reports in its story today, was immediately challenged by a Croat diplomat.

The Holocaust Museum has a prepared a pretty awesome online presentation of its Jasenovac collection.
- posted by Amy @ 11/14/2001 12:39:00 PM