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DEFENDING
THE TRUTH ABOUT JASENOVAC CONCENTRATION CAMP IN THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF
CROATIA (Letter No.
8) This
letter is written and addressed to you by three Jewish survivors of the death
Cadik
Danon, an
architect, who escaped from the Jasenovac concentration camp in
1942 Bozo
Svarc a
retired colonel of the Yugoslav Army, who escaped from the Jasenovac
concentration camp in the same year and Josif
Erlih a
retired major of the Yugoslav Army, who was held in Jasenovac to the very bitter
end and participated in the break out on 22 of April 1945 when the Croat fascist
guards started slaughtering all remaining
prisoners
The three of us offered Barry Lituchy on April 4
, under condition, to let him print our testimonies given at the First
International Conference on the Jasenovac death camp in the book he announced
for this April, eight years after the event. Our condition was that
Lituchy's partners in the lawsuit he initiated, A. Miletic and A. Mosic,
permit the use of their short presentations at the same Conference in the
Proceedings Book already published by Dr Wanda Schindley and her Dallas
Publishing. Such an exchange of releases would result in two
books on the shelves of bookstores, one promised by Lituchy and one
produced by Schindley, whose distribution was temporarily stopped by court
order following suits by Miletic and Mosic claiming their presentations were
included without their permission. We made our offer for such a peaceful solution
through the office of our In fact we were not, and still are not
interested in going to court. If we are obliged to though, we will do
it! But the purpose of our communication of March 14 was to make these
people aware that they cannot infringe on our copyright unchallenged - and that
they would only gain if they accepted the exchange of releases we wll
offer. Regarding our offer, our “We are emphasizing once more that it is not our
clients' will to launch judicial proceedings against anyone, especially
since we stand firmly at the point that the audience shall not be deprived
of a single book, especially not one regarding such an important
matter as Jasenovac; we will, however be forced to do so if our rights and
clearly expressed will are disregarded” Our offer remained without any answer for two
weeks until April 19 when one of the plaintiffs, Joseph Friendly of Memory Films
Production greeted our “effort to resolve matters peacefully” and
declared that he shared with us “the vision of 2 books on the shelves together
and all litigation stopped.” Friendly’s action has merit, but also serious
drawbacks. His letter to our lawyers approving our offer was sent in
his name only. The eventual consent of Barry Lituchy and plaintiffs
Miletic and Mosic was wrapped in hazy wording and was therefore uncertain. For
that reason we instructed our lawyers on April 21 to inform Mr Friendly
that although they appreciated his willingness to act reasonably, they could not
act on this issue yet, since the other addressees of the settlement offer gave
no response to our proposal. Our lawyers stated: ”We find it crucial that
all the addressees are willing to settle, and to that extent we expect
their answers in writing not later than May 4th , with
notarized statements not later than May We had to determine firm dates in order to avoid
the repetition of what happened with the settlement procedure of the other
Defendant and creator of the Proceedings Book, Petar Makara at the meeting of
the Jewish Federation in We are ready for a peaceful solution in clear
and well-defined terms. We gave Mr Lituchy and his associates one whole month to
deliberate and make up their minds on our offer. If they accept, it will benefit
the truth about Jasenovac and their own honour. If they miss this chance it will
be impossible for them to convince us that they are putting the interests of
research about Jasenovac above their own private interests - which cannot
be easily understood and even less
condoned. |
