HINA PRESENTS BOOK ON JASENOVAC VICTIMS

( Editorial: --> 8044 ) ZAGREB, Sept 4 (Hina) - The Croatian news agency Hina on Friday presented the reprint of a book on the victims of the World War II Jasenovac concentration camp. The book, titled "Jasenovac - War Victims According to the Yugoslav Institute for Statistics", has just been published by the Bosniak Institute from Zurich. The 1,170-page publication brings a register of Jasenovac concentration camp victims, made in 1964, which the Yugoslav authorities in Belgrade kept for years even from the highest state and party officials. Following the break-up of the former Yugoslavia in 1992, only a couple of copies of the book were published and the book was again concealed from the public eye. The book opens a new chapter in discussions about WWII victims and brings them into a much more concrete framework, said Hina Director Branko Salaj presenting the publication. According to the register, the total number of Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska victims is about 59,000, which is even up to 15 times less than the number the Yugoslav authorities had been presenting for decades. Unlike previous research, which focused on the total number of victims, this register brings data on the identity of victims, enabling researchers and the public to check, supplement or correct these data. What we owe these victims is that the truth about their fate be established in a founded and scientific manner with the greatest possible respect so that their names could finally be put to rest, Salaj said. New data on the fate of individual victims can be important in establishing the total number of victims, although this is not what the analysis should be focused on. Namely, it is realistic to expect that the final findings will fit within the existing estimations on the possible number of Jasenovac victims (between 40,000 and a maximum number of 80,000, calculated by Professor Vladimir Zerjavic). These estimations have already been presented in different studies which have already exposed the malevolence of manipulations with the number of victims of the fascist terror. The register presented today contains the names of victims, their place of birth and residence, the name of the father, nationality and the year of death. These data were gathered by special expert teams and secret police throughout the former Yugoslavia. It is estimated that between 20,000 and 25,000 people had worked on the register. The Bosniak Institute has also sent Hina a certain number of copies of the book for distribution. (hina) rml 041241 MET sep 98