PRKOS PRKOS, Dec 21 (Hina) - Some 100 members of the Association of Anti-Fascist Fighters on Friday held a commemoration at the site of an ossuary at Prkos Lasinjski near Karlovac to pay tribute to 870 Serbs from the villages of Prkos
and Dugo Selo, killed by Ustasha soldiers 60 years ago. Historian Slavko Goldstein said at the commemoration his recently published book "The Holocaust in Zagreb" also dealt with the massacre in Prkos. The Ustasha had two lines of command, one was official and public and the other, whose purpose was the extermination of Serbs, Jews and the Romany, was headed by Ante Pavelic. Maks Luburic and his Ustasha supervision service were in charge of that task. Several Luburic companies used any situation, including univestigated incidents, for the ethnic cleansing of Serbs, Jews and the Romany, Goldstein said. "Following an attack of the partisans on the gendarmerie station in Pisarovina in D
PRKOS, Dec 21 (Hina) - Some 100 members of the Association of Anti-
Fascist Fighters on Friday held a commemoration at the site of an
ossuary at Prkos Lasinjski near Karlovac to pay tribute to 870 Serbs
from the villages of Prkos and Dugo Selo, killed by Ustasha soldiers
60 years ago.
Historian Slavko Goldstein said at the commemoration his recently
published book "The Holocaust in Zagreb" also dealt with the
massacre in Prkos. The Ustasha had two lines of command, one was
official and public and the other, whose purpose was the
extermination of Serbs, Jews and the Romany, was headed by Ante
Pavelic. Maks Luburic and his Ustasha supervision service were in
charge of that task. Several Luburic companies used any situation,
including univestigated incidents, for the ethnic cleansing of
Serbs, Jews and the Romany, Goldstein said.
"Following an attack of the partisans on the gendarmerie station in
Pisarovina in December 1941, on December 21 870 civilians,
including 359 children under the age of 15, were taken from their
homes in Prkos and Dugo Selo and executed in two nearby woods over
the next three days," Goldstein said.
Speaking on behalf of the Association, Miso Deveric said the
massacres had been committed in the name of an ethnically pure
Croatia. "Unfortunately, 60 years later, this idea is still present
in the minds of extremists," he said.
Speaking on behalf of the committee which organised the
commemoration, Danica Micic from Prkos said religious differences
between Croats and Serbs were still being stoked up. She said that
the leadership of nearby Banski Kovacevac, which is populated
mostly by Croats, and the leadership of the Lasinje municipality,
which includes Prkos, did not attend the commemoration although
they had been invited.
"We wanted them to pay tribute to the victims of the Ustasha crimes
as we would have done for the 10 Croats from Banski Kovacevac who
were killed in the Homeland War. That would have been be the first
step towards coexistence and tolerance," Micic said.
Goldstein expressed hope that light would be shed on the Banski
Kovacevac killings and that today's commemoration at Prkos was the
last one at which the leadership of Banski Kovacevac was not
present.
Participants in the commemoration agreed improving coexistence
would be possible only if both Croat and Serb villages realised they
had to respect the victims on both sides.
(hina) rml