Thou shalt not bear false witness...
24 September 2009
Croatia's top prelate, accompanied by some 400 priests, set out on a
historic pilgrimage to visit the sites of three notorious World War II
concentration camps, the first such visit to be made by a leader of the
country's Roman Catholic Church, whose war time role remains highly
controversial. [sic]
Stopping at first at Stara Gradiska, before continuing to Jasenovac and
Petrinja, Cardinal Josip Bozanic made a speech in which he said that he
will "not forget even one victim'' whose hundreds were killed violently and
unlawfully, as quoted by www.javno.com
He called Jasenovac a place of ''violence, injustice and inhumanity''.
Known as "Croatia's Auschwitz," some 100 km southeast of Zagreb, Jasenovac
was set up in mid-1941 by Croatia's Nazi supported Ustasha regime.
The number of its victims, mostly Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croats,
is still disputed.[ by?]
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates that 100,000 people were killed
in Jasenovac while the Simon Wiesenthal Centre puts the figure at some
600,000, writes javno.com. (This is a US-owned affair, not Jewish.)
Every year Jasenovac hosts a memorial ceremony and a multi-denominational
religious service for its victims. Although Catholic priests take part in
the ceremonies, a Catholic Church head has never until now visited the site.
Critics accuse the Catholic Church and the country's World War II Cardinal
Alojzije Stepinac of collaborating with the Ustasha regime, despite being
aware of its genocidal tendencies. Stepinac died under house arrest in 1960,
after being jailed by the communist authorities for collaborating with the
Ustasha regime. The late Pope John Paul II beatified him during his visit to
Croatia in 1998.
http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/22398/
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