ZAGREB, April 25 (Hina) - A memorial service was held at the Jasenovac Memorial Park on Sunday marking the break-out of prisoners from the Ustasha-run concentration camp at the end of the Second World War 59 years ago when 1,100
inmates were killed in a single day and only about a hundred managed to escape.
ZAGREB, April 25 (Hina) - A memorial service was held at the Jasenovac
Memorial Park on Sunday marking the break-out of prisoners from the
Ustasha-run concentration camp at the end of the Second World War 59
years ago when 1,100 inmates were killed in a single day and only
about a hundred managed to escape.#L#
This year's commemoration ceremony was held under the auspices of
Croatian Parliament president Vladimir Seks, who said that Jesenovac
was still synonymous with "immeasurable suffering and human pain".
"People were executed here because they belonged to another ethnic
group or religion," Seks said, adding that the crimes that had been
committed there "remain a permanent symbol of human intolerance and
hatred and an eternal monument to the tragic consequences of Fascism,
Nazism and the Ustasha regime".
"Antifascism, which stood up against those ideologies, is today a
universal principle of the modern world and an unavoidable element of
any democracy," he said.
The parliament speaker expressed his support to historians and
scholars researching the history of the Jasenovac camp. "Jasenovac and
what happened here confirms that peace and cooperation among people is
the only way to the future," he said. "Croatia and all political
factors in it are determined in the condemnation of all forms of
extremism, radicalism and ethnic and religious intolerance regardless
of their origins or proponents."
The chairman of the Jasenovac Memorial Park Council, Slavko Goldstein,
said that according to the results of comprehensive research, "not
fewer than 70,000 and not more than 100,000 people" were killed in the
camp, "but the exact number will never be known".
Goldstein said that more than half of the camp victims were Serbs, of
whom about 50,000 were killed. They were followed by Jews (of whom
17,000 were killed), Croats (about 12,000 killed) and Romany (about
10,000). Among the victims also were about 2,000 members of other
ethnic groups, mainly Bosniaks.
"These approximate figures refute exaggerations according to which
Jasenovac claimed about 700,000 lives or underestimates saying that
the number of victims did not exceed 2,000," Goldstein said.
Goldstein said that since the foundation of his Council about two
years ago "the true nature of the Jasenovac camp has been determined
with certainty. It was first and foremost a death camp, but it also
served as a labour, transition and penal camp."
Goldstein said that the aim of the Jasenovac Memorial Park as a public
institution was to present the truth to the public, which in turn
should be appropriately presented to school children and the public at
large. He added that the institution enjoyed "the full support of the
Croatian authorities" for this.
The ceremony was attended by survived prisoners, delegations of the
Croatian president and government, the Jewish community and other
ethnic minorities, ambassadors accredited to Croatia, and about a
thousand visitors. After the memorial service, the delegations laid
wreaths at the Stone Flower monument and paid their respects.
(Hina) vm