ZAGREB, July 6 (Hina) - The trial of Dinko Sakic, a commander of the Ustashi concentration camp of Jasenovac, continued on Tuesday before the Zagreb County Court with the testimony of a defence witness Josip Jurcevic, a professor of
the 20th century history at Zagreb's Croatian Studies. Jurcevic's testimony commenced yesterday but was discontinued due to an electricity failure. The witness said today that while working on the archive material, which he had used for his book "The Creation of the Jasenovac Myth", he had not come across Sakic's name. Answering questions by Deputy County State Attorney Janjko Grlic, Jurcevic explained how he had studied the problem of WWII victims and how he had arrived at the conclusion that the manipulation of the number of Jasenovac victims was aimed at creating a myth, which was used in the former Yugoslavia for eliminating political opponents. Jurcevic claims tha
ZAGREB, July 6 (Hina) - The trial of Dinko Sakic, a commander of the
Ustashi concentration camp of Jasenovac, continued on Tuesday
before the Zagreb County Court with the testimony of a defence
witness Josip Jurcevic, a professor of the 20th century history at
Zagreb's Croatian Studies.
Jurcevic's testimony commenced yesterday but was discontinued due
to an electricity failure.
The witness said today that while working on the archive material,
which he had used for his book "The Creation of the Jasenovac Myth",
he had not come across Sakic's name.
Answering questions by Deputy County State Attorney Janjko Grlic,
Jurcevic explained how he had studied the problem of WWII victims
and how he had arrived at the conclusion that the manipulation of
the number of Jasenovac victims was aimed at creating a myth, which
was used in the former Yugoslavia for eliminating political
opponents.
Jurcevic claims that all earlier studies on the Jasenovac camp and
war victims in the area of the former Yugoslavia were politically
motivated and that the number of victims was manipulated with.
The witness believes that the insistence on scientifically
unfounded figures was the basis of the Jasenovac myth.
He believes that historians, "who have been avoiding it for ten
years", could establish an approximate number of Jasenovac victims
on the basis of preserved materials.
"There are individual lists of victims which were compiled in an
extremely unprofessional manner and which are not scientifically
founded", he said.
Jurcevic said the 1964 list of war victims on the territory of the
former Yugoslavia was not founded. The former state compiled the
list with the aim of obtaining as high war reparations as possible
from Germany and Italy, he added.
According to Jurcevic, the 1950 list of the Federation of
Associations of the People's Liberation War Fighters is not
credible either because it does not include those victims whom the
former authorities had declared supporters or collaborators of the
occupying forces.
During the testimony, Jurcevic presented his stand on fascism and
anti-fascism. The witness believes there is a misconception in
Croatia that anti-fascism is a prevailing idea in Europe.
"That is not the scientific truth because Europe's foundations are
Christianity, humanism and the Renaissance", he said.
Adding that the 20th century was marked by two totalitarian systems
- Communism and Fascism - Jurcevic said the main danger for Europe
had been "the red danger".
"There are many works which say that Fascism was a reaction to the
fear of the "red danger", he said, adding it was only "the threat of
Germany" and the beginning of the war that made anti-fascism a means
of defence from Fascism and Nazism.
Following the breakdown of Fascism, Europe turned again to the
problem of the communist threat, Jurcevic said. Here, he was
prevented from explicating his thesis by the president of the panel
of judges, Drazen Tripalo.
Today's hearing was not attended by a former inmate, Tibor
Lovrencic, who had been summonsed again and who was to testify about
the authenticity of a draft of the camp, submitted for the files by
Sakic himself.
(hina) jn rml