Zuroff said that Jews and Serbs were victims of genocide in the NDH. Of course it was genocide. Not just against the Jews but also against the Serbs, and much more against the Serbs than against the Jews, he said.
Commenting on the planned canonisation of Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac and dialogue between the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church in Croatia, Zuroff described Pavelic as a mass murderer and Stepinac as his spiritual adviser.
Ante Pavelic was one of the biggest mass murderers of the Second World War and Stepinac was his priest, a spiritual adviser, Zuroff said, adding that the plan to declare Stepinac a saint was absurd.
That is absurd. What should we think of the Catholic Church where one of its priests, Vjekoslav Lasic, held a mass for Pavelic? Zuroff asked.
In another interview, with the Nase Novine newspaper, Zuroff criticised the rehabilitation of WWII Serbian Chetnik leader Dragoslav Draza Mihailovic.
It was a very bad move. As I understood, he was not rehabilitated, but the court noted that he had not had a fair trial. It's essentially the same. All Balkan countries had similar cases, but the difference between Serbia and Croatia is that individual Serbs only collaborated with the Nazis, while Croats killed, Zuroff said.
Zuroff said that he had been fighting for years against Ustasha symbols and the spreading of fascism. It is not normal that I, as a foreigner, should tell Croats that that's wrong. I managed to have Vjekoslav Lasic expelled, but he returned later on and chaos ensued, he said.
Zuroff said that the Croats were quite divided on these issues.
Some are on the side of the Partisans who fought against the Ustashas, while others glorify Pavelic and Stepinac. I hope that one day they will realise that the symbols they wave are symbols of mass murders, Zuroff said, recalling that he had recently written to Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic about pensions which Croatia pays to the Ustashas.
When I first heard about it, I couldn't believe it. They told me that my protest, as a foreign factor, would carry much more weight than if any locals protested. That's why I wrote to Milanovic and told him that those pensions were unacceptable, Zuroff said.
Zuroff said that he had not yet received a reply from Milanovic, but that the upside was that the number of such pensions was being investigated and that this injustice should be redressed as soon as possible.
Zuroff was visiting Belgrade to present his plan for the construction of a memorial centre at Staro Sajmiste, the former site of a Nazi concentration camp on the left bank of the Sava river in Belgrade, where about 8,000 Jews and 32,000 Serbs, including Communists, Partisans and their sympathisers, were killed during the Second World War.