HISTORIAN IVO GOLDSTEIN TESTIFIES IN SAKIC WAR CRIMES TRIAL

ZAGREB, June 1 (Hina) - The trial of Dinko Sakic, commander of the World War Two Ustashi concentration camp of Jasenovac, continued before the Zagreb County Court on Tuesday with the testimony of Ivo Goldstein, 41, a history professor at the Zagreb Faculty of Philosophy. Goldstein said that while studying the history of Croatian Jews, mainly those from Zagreb, he also studied the documentation about the Jasenovac camp where, according to his estimates, about 18,000 Jews were killed. The witness said he had come across the name of the defendant, accused of war crimes against humanity, in prosecution documents, but added that he had no new information which could be of interest for the trial. He said he was however familiar with the character of the authorities in the Independent Sate of Croatia (NDH, 1941-1945) and the general conditions in Ustashi concentration camps. "The authorities of the NDH carefully planned and organised the system of terror", Goldstein said, adding this was visible from numerous provisions adopted by those authorities. The system of terror began immediately after the Ustashi arrived in Zagreb, on April 17, 1941. "The fundamental act for the terror campaign" Goldstein said, was a law on the defence of the people and the state, which stated that all who sullied the honour of the Croatian people and of the NDH would face the death penalty. Two months after the law was adopted, numerous racial provisions against Jews and Serbs were also adopted. "The provision on sending undesirable ones into camps was adopted in late November 1941 and it officially legalised the camps system", Goldstein said. He said Croatia's 26 camps were one of the basic links in the Ustashi terror chain. The main purpose of the camps was to eliminate as many people as possible, to which one of statements by then Interior Minister Andrija Artukovic bears witness. In late April 1941, Artukovic told the German press the NDH would solve the "Jewish issue" in the same way Germany was doing it, adding the NDH would strictly abide by the racial laws which had been adopted on the German model. "Although a Jewish background is determined by one's mother, the NDH faithfully interpreted a German law according to which every person whose grandfather or grandmother were Jews was a Jew himself", Goldstein said, adding in the NDH, the Jewish issue was treated as a racial issue. "So when Jews would convert to Catholicism, it meant nothing, unlike with the Serbs, who saved themselves by undergoing baptism," he explained. Goldstein said the location for the Jasenovac camp had not been chosen randomly; it had good traffic connections, was protected by two rivers, and was at approximately the same distance from the areas populated by Jews. Goldstein said he did not know who appointed the camp's commanders, but assumes it was done by Ante Pavelic, the head of state himself. Goldstein accepted the figure of a maximum 85,000 people killed at the Jasenovac camp, put forward on Monday by witness Vladimir Zerjavic, as well as his claim that most inmates were killed in 1941 and 1942. Goldstein however stressed that in the next three years as well everything was subordinated to the executions of inmates. Zerjavic's figure of 13,000 Jews killed in the camp is not final considering that many Jews, in fear, converted to Catholicism and formally declared themselves as Croats and still ended up killed in the camps, Goldstein said. He also stressed no data at all was available on many Jewish families, who were killed entirely. Many did not even get inside the camp, but would be executed at Gradina, a nearby killing site, Goldstein said, concluding the figure of Jews killed at Jasenovac revolved around 18,000. "The majority of Croatia's Jewish communities had been executed by the end of 1941, while the rest was taken to Auschwitz," he stressed, adding the Jews who had remained in Zagreb were some 100 from mixed marriages and 50 from a retirement home which was protected by cardinal Alojzije Stepinac. Goldstein claims some 8,000 Croatian Jews survived the war, about 1,000 in hiding, the rest by moving out of the country. Asked about the criteria under which Croats were sent to camps, Goldstein mentioned crime, political reasons, listening to inappropriate radio stations, suspicions of belonging to the masons' movement, even homosexuality. He said he had, besides the documentation available to the court, also studied the archive of the Jewish Municipality in Zagreb. "Unfortunately, in those documents you cannot find the names of responsible individuals," Goldstein said. Most probably, there are no documents either recording "who killed whom in the camps," he asserted. "Other facts about the character of the NDH are common knowledge, no longer discussed in historiographic circles given the fact that they are not disputable," Goldstein said. To assess somebody's guilt for the crimes committed in the camps, one must be familiar with the general conditions then ruling the camps, he said, adding the Jasenovac camp was among those in Croatia, in his opinion, the one most similar to those in Germany. (hina) ha/rml jn