CRO STATE ARCHIVE MANAGER TESTIFIES IN SAKIC WAR CRIMES TRIAL

ZAGREB, June 2 (Hina) - The trial of war crimes suspect and commander of a Croatian World War Two concentration camp, Dinko Sakic, resumed at the Zagreb County Court on Wednesday with the testimony of Croatian State Archive (HDA) manager Josip Kolanovic. The witness spoke about archive material relating to victims of WW2 and of Jasenovac, the camp at one time commanded by the defendant. Kolanovic said the archives contain only fragments and not original material about the Jasenovac camp. The original material does not exist in any of the archives of the states which made up the former Yugoslav federation. A joint publication of all republic archives was issued in 1987, but does not contain documents about Jasenovac either, he explained. Kolanovic divided the HDA documentation on WW2 victims into five categories. The first is material compiled between 1944 and 1947 by a national commission the task of which was to establish the extent of the war crimes committed by the occupying force and their collaborators. According to Kolanovic, it was mainly based of witnesses' statements. Besides numerous legal provisions in force in the 1941-1945 Independent State of Croatia (NDH), the documentation also contains files of persons accused by witnesses of war crimes, as well as data on the place, time and method of the crimes. Kolanovic said there is a Sakic file which, alongside witnesses' accusations, also contains three original documents: a diploma on a decoration he received, a pay list with his name, and his signature on a document on the release of three inmates. The national commission documentation also contains a list of inmates who received packages, and two agendas detailing inmates' tasks for the period between mid-July 1944 and the end of January 1945. The agendas contain the names of Ustashi officials who led inmates' labour groups, but not the names of the inmates, only their numbers. Kolanovic said the national commission concluded that most documents relating to the Jasenovac camp had been destroyed just prior to the camp's closing in April 1945. The HDA however believes that "someone after the war took out the pages on the Jasenovac camp," he added. Also in HDA possession is the so called Anti-Fascist Women's Front Fund, which contains a book with personal data of Jasenovac camp female inmates, and a book with the names of 4,013 children brought to the Stara Gradiska concentration camp from Kozara Mountain and data on who the children had been given to. The HDA also possesses some documentation on Danica, a camp near Koprivnica, and nine boxes of archive material compiled in 1960 under the name "The Pavelic-Artukovic Indictment", with a list of part of the Jews killed in the NDH. The material in HDA possession also includes three surviving inmates' diaries from 1945. Kolanovic said the number of WW2 and Jasenovac victims had been compiled on three occasions; the first list, compiled by the national commission, had, according to Kolanovic, been made conscientiously. In its first report, the national commission listed 95,164 persons killed on Croatian territory. A revision was requested because the list included Ustashi and regular Croatian soldiers victims; the final figure was 59,512 victims. Kolanovic said "someone" in the world commission had compiled a notebook which brings annual data on 15,792 persons killed in the Jasenovac camp. According to the notebook, which lists only the victims from the territory of then Croatia and not those from Bosnia and Srijem, most people were killed in 1942. A total of 2,167 inmates were killed in 1944, the majority in the last four months. The defendant commanded the camp between April and November. The second list of victims, begun at an initiative of SUBNOR, a federation of liberation soldiers' associations, was never completed. Kolanovic believes it irrelevant as its aim was to list as many victims as possible. Like Vladimir Zerjavic, who testified on Monday, Kolanovic believes a list made in 1964 at Germany's request was the most realistic one. It was compiled by 30,000 people, including 7,000 in Croatia. The list is presently in Belgrade and is still considered top secret, Kolanovic said. "The HDA on several occasions requested the list, but they always refused," he pointed out, but added he had managed to obtain the list several months ago via unofficial routes. The list includes 25 books. The last category of HDA documents refers to the Dotrscina Project, in the making for almost a decade, the aim of which was to establish the number of people killed who had in some way been related to Zagreb. The project produced 115 books with brief biographies of some 14,000 victims, including 6,500 Jews. Kolanovic also presented statistical data which indicate that Jewish men and women were killed under equal criteria, whereas with Croats and Serbs, male victims were more numerous. "I suppose this was so because men were politically more active, while with Jews, the racial laws were implemented thoroughly," Kolanovic said, adding a list of people killed in the Zagreb area showed there were three times more Croat than Serb victims. Kolanovic reminded that in 1991 Croatia had been accused of beginning to destroy archive material related to WW2. Croatia refuted the accusations by delivering some 300,000 documents to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, he concluded. (hina) ha