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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/06/world/europe/06croatia.html?n=Top%2fNews%2fWorld%2fCountries%20and%20Territories%2fCroatia
Unscrambling the History of a Nazi Camp
By NICHOLAS WOOD
Published: December 6, 2006
JASENOVAC, Croatia As in many of the other former concentration camps
dotted across Europe, there is little left to indicate the horror that took
place here. Green fields and avenues of trees have grown up where barracks and
workshops used to stand; poplars sway gracefully next to the languid Sava
River, which skirts the camp.
Skip to next paragraph The New York Times
A new museum has opened at the World War II camp at Jasenovac.
But Jasenovac has a doubly haunted history. Not only were thousands of people
savagely killed here, but for decades their deaths were exploited for political
purposes.
In the 61 years since the camp was closed, Communist and nationalist rulers,
Serbs and Croats, each pursuing their own ideological goals, have apportioned
blame differently and pushed the number of those killed up or down by tens of
thousands.
What is indisputable is that from 1941 to 1945, the Nazi puppet rulers in
Croatia, most of them ethnic Croats, imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Serbs,
Jews, Gypsies and political opponents here, and that many thousands of the
prisoners were killed.
There were no gas chambers, but there was also no shortage of barbarity. Many
prisoners had their throats slit or their skulls smashed; others were shot or
hanged from the trees that lined the Sava.
Now, historians and researchers are hopeful that the world can finally get
closer to the truth of what took place here. At the end of November, Croatia,
on whose territory most of camp lies, opened a new museum on the site, a
complex of eight camps.
The museum is regarded by many as a test of this young state, which declared
independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, fought the Serbs for that independence
for four years, and is now trying to get into the European Union.
Croatia seems ready to accept its past, regarding the Croatian-led Nazi
puppet state as the precursor of todays independent nation. At the museums
opening on Nov. 27, Prime Minister Ivo Sanader said, Todays Croatia does not
want to stay silent about the dark pages of its past.
The distortion appears to have started when Tito ruled Yugoslavia. Historians
say he was always searching for ways to illustrate the evils of fascism and
Jasenovac made a convenient target. For decades Yugoslav citizens were told
that 700,000 people were killed at the camp, a vast majority some 500,000
Serbs. Gruesome exhibits at the site, some of which were not from Jasenovac,
were set up to lend credence to this version.
In 1991, after Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia, Serbian forces
seized the site and took away most of its contents.
When Croatian forces reclaimed the area in 1995, the official death toll fell
to fewer than 40,000. The president of Croatia at the time, Franjo Tudjman, who
had brought a distinct nationalist hue to politics and history, announced a
plan to bury at the site the bones of those killed on both sides in World War
II.
But Jasenovac survivors and Jewish groups thwarted that idea, which they saw
as mixing the remains of victims and perpetrators.
Mr. Tudjman died in 1999. His party, the Croatian Democratic Union, still
dominates Croatia but now seeks to jettison its nationalist image. As a result,
the new exhibition has been organized in cooperation with the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
Politicians and curators are aware that their task is to confront ideas
propagated by Mr. Tudjman, namely, that the Nazi-backed Ustashe was a
benevolent government forced to fight for the interests of Roman Catholic
Croats against threats being posed by Communists and Orthodox Christian Serbs.
Croatias current president, Stipe Mesic, noted at the opening ceremony the
need for continuing vigilance against nationalism.
Young people are led to sing songs about the butchers of the Ustashe regime,
and even the commander of this camp, Mr. Mesic said, a reference to Thompson,
one of Croatias most popular rock groups, which sings songs supportive of the
former fascist regime and its anti-Serb policy.
The new exhibition is quick to acknowledge the competing views. The wildly
varying estimates of those killed were a result of using Jasenovac for
political purposes, reads a sign near the entrance. Researchers at the museum
say they have so far gathered proof that 69,842 people were killed, almost
19,000 of them children.
Many researchers now say the figures put forward by both Serbian nationalists
and Communists are not valid. Estimates by the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum, based on several reviews of the camps records, suggest that close to
97,000 people may have died. Researchers at Serbias Museum of Genocide in
Belgrade, which has access to a Yugoslav survey from 1964, suggest at least
80,000 died, although they say the full count could be several tens of
thousands higher, according to the Serbian Orthodox Church committee on
Jasenovac.
At the museum, darkened rooms contain video screens that show testimonies of
survivors. The names of the dead are listed on ceilings and walls. There is no
mention of their nationalities, though the museum acknowledges that most were
Serbs.
Efraim Zuroff, Jerusalem director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who
attended the opening, worries that there is not enough background information
given to remind visitors what fascism and separating people by ethnicities and
religions can do: There is no context, he said. A young person walking in
there wont understand how the state came to power and why it targeted those
people.
But the museums director said the refusal to lay blame was intended to serve
a greater good.
You have to remember that Jasenovac was used as an excuse by Serbs in their
war-crime trials, said the director, Natasa Jovicic, referring to the violent
crimes against Croats in the 1990s. In other countries, where there have not
been wars, it is different, but here we have to be doubly careful. There is
nothing here that can be used for political propaganda or hatred.
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