Branding such claims as monstrous lies and as an attempt to negate the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, Beth Israel refuted statements by the said association and Vukojevic that immediately after the end of the Second World War, the Jasenovac camp operated as a camp for victims of Communism.
Beth Israel president Ivo Goldstein said the statements made by Vukojevic at a news conference organised by the Pocasni Bleiburski Vod association last week twisted the truth about what had happened in Jasenovac.
Goldstein told reporters in Zagreb on Tuesday that he would ask state prosecutors to check whether charges could be pressed against Vukojevic and the association's leaders because of the statements made at the press conference.
Goldstein said it was no secret that the so-called internal management of the Jasenovac camp consisted of inmates, but that the internal management had not been included in decision-making processes, particularly not in decisions on the selection of inmates for executions.
According to Goldstein, after the Ustasha-run camp was set up in 1941, a majority of inmates were Jews, however, the number of Jews went down until the start of 1942 due to mass executions, and Ustasha only saved the lives of those Jews who had skills necessary for the work in the camp's plants, but they subsequently died of diseases, undernourishment or were killed later.
Goldstein's father Slavko Goldstein refuted claims that after the end of WWII, the site of the former Jasenovac camp was transformed into a camp for victims of the Communist regime, adding that not one document or testimony by locals, inmates or representatives of the then authorities could corroborate that claim.
Slavko Goldstein said that from the end of the war until the declaration of amnesty in August 1945, there were 27 camps for troops of the defeated armies in Croatia and Jasenovac had never been mentioned in any list of those camps.
Also on Tuesday, Vice Vukojevic issued a press release to deny media reports alleging that he had stated that it was Jews who killed Jews in Jasenovac.
Vukojevic said he had not participated in the official part of the news conference about which the Slobodna Dalmacija daily wrote in its issue of 22 April.
Vukojevic stressed that he had talked with the author of the contentious article only privately during a reception held after the news conference.
"The most important parts of the article are either complete fabrications or manipulative constructions by the said reporter," Vukojevic said.
"My opinion has always been that the bulk of the blame for the events in the camp rests on those who set up and ran the camp, and partly on inmates who agreed to participate in the so-called internal management, that is to collaborate with the Ustasha regime, and who tortured other fellow sufferers in the camp," Vukojevic said.