Goldstein was speaking in Sarajevo, where he took part in a seminar on the Second World War and the Balkan wars at the end of the century organised by the Bosniak Institute of politician and businessman Adil Zulfikarpasic.
Goldstein said the figure of 700,000 victims that communist Yugoslavia manipulated with had been the result of the need to show that 1.7 million people were killed on the territory of the former federation during the World War Two, Bosnian news agency Fena said.
Goldstein said the Serbs later used that figure in attempts to depict Croats as a genocidal people, while Croats responded to such manipulations by minimising the number of victims.
He said between 80,000 and 100,000 people had most likely been killed at Jasenovac, of whom 52,000 had been Serbs, up to 17,000 Jews, a dozen thousand Roma, and 12,000 Croats and Bosnian Muslims.