PRESS SHOWN DOCUMENTS ON WORLD WAR TWO VICTIMS

( Editorial: --> 6932 ) ZAGREB, July 10 (Hina) - Archive documents on World War Two victims were presented to journalists at the Croatian State Archives on Friday. The most interesting was a recently discovered notebook of the Land Commission for War Victims, which states that in the former People's Republic of Croatia (NRH) the victims of fascist terror totalled 58,291, including 15,792 at the Jasenovac concentration camp. Archivist Mate Rupic showed a comprehensive list drafted between 1950 and 1951 by a commission of anti-fascist fighters of NRH. According to the list, a total of 155,954 persons were killed in Croatia during WW2, including 46,377 soldiers, 34,711 in all concentration camps, 1,210 prisoners of war, 10,397 in exile, 3,710 in bombings, 6,432 in prisons, 2,274 were victims of mass execution and 44,221 were killed in other ways, while it remains unknown how the other 6,641 had died. Broken down by nationality, the victims included 55,802 Croats, 84,709 Serbs, 6,002 Jews, 5,441 Gypsies, etc. The head of new archive material at the Archives Slavica Plesa said the archive had at its disposal 22 books containing a list of victims and a list of all who reported damage in NRH. The Land Commission for establishing the crime of the occupying force and its collaborators drafted this alphabetical list between 1944 and 1947 and it contains about 130,000 names. Archives manager Josip Kolanovic also showed preserved original documents on the Jasenovac camp. These include a so-called package list, which contains the names of 3,502 persons who were allowed to receive packages, an original diary from 1944 about inmates going to work under Ustasha surveillance, and an original list of female inmates. Kolanovic also showed a diary of the Stara Gradiska camp, with a list of 4,013 children from Kozara, a mountain in north-western Bosnia-Herzegovina, who passed through the camp. It also includes the names of those who took them. "The discovered and identified notebook is without any doubt an authentic document, which the Land Commission for Victims of War made in 1947. It is a statistical processing of victims, regardless of where they died," Kolanovic told reporters. He emphasised that the number of war victims had been exaggerated because of war reparations, and the number of Jasenovac victims for political goals aimed at depicting the Croatian people as genocidal. "We must condemn the crimes. Croatia has to persevere and take the responsibility in telling the whole truth about all victims. Finally, we must make a list of all victims by name, both for truth and for the people who were killed," the Archives manager said. He added that despite all documents and demographic researches which had been published, Belgrade and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre continued to exaggerate the number of victims in general, especially those killed in Jasenovac. "If we make a thorough analysis of the figures on Jasenovac contained in the notebook, and suppose that as many people from Bosnia were killed in that camp and correct it by 20 per cent, we are coming closer to the figure of 40,000 victims of fascist terror killed in Jasenovac," said Kolanovic. Several commissions were making the list of victims, including those of Jasenovac, but the results were kept secret because they did not fit the imagined figure, he added. (hina) ha jn /mbr 101824 MET jul 98