jpost.com

A collage of lies: the Croatian right's Holocaust revisionism

By IVO GOLDSTEIN   AUGUST 21, 2021 18:06

7-9 minutes

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A few days ago a certain David Goldman published an “opinion article” in The Jerusalem Post in which he mentioned me. I was shocked with this collage of lies, distortions and fabrications. I had never heard of this Goldman until I read his article. Apparently he runs some organization in Australia, ironically called the Centre for Historical Truth and has a blog where he uncovers the rehabilitation of Nazi collaborators. He has a particular focus on the Serbian Chetniks, but studiously avoids mention of the Ustasha regime. It seems that he is friendly with some people in right-wing circles of the Croatian diaspora in Australia. It is generally known that some people in the Croatian community in Australia openly celebrate their Ustasha links.

My late father Slavko and I have had fierce debates with these pro-Ustasha circles in Croatia and abroad for at least 20 years. I published The Holocaust in Zagreb (2001, US edition published in 2015 by USHMM) and Jews in Zagreb 1918-1941 (2004). The prominent Croatian-Bosnian writer Miljenko Jergovic recently wrote that “Ivo Goldstein’s books were met with flaming hatred or scornful silence by the better part of the public, the right-wing media, Croatian National Television and in academic and ecclesiastical circles, while the author found himself on various informal blacklists.”

Among his many other books my father wrote 1941 – The Year That Keeps Returning, which was a mixture of memoirs and historical analysis (NYRB, 2009) and which has become internationally renowned. We were both dealing with the Ustasha Independent State of Croatia (ISC) and its largest camp, Jasenovac. We consistently described the criminal character of that state and the camp in which genocide against the Serbs, Roma and Jews was committed, as well as mass crimes against Croats and others.

The pressure from the Croatian pro-Ustasha Right was enormous. For example, Stjepan Razum, the head of the Archbishop’s Archives in the Zagreb Archdiocese and the holder of many other important functions, claimed in 2014 that Jasenovac was a “myth” that was “planted among Croats,” and claimed that it was “a labor and transit camp.” He also stated that in his public appearances Slavko Goldstein tried to “describe it as one of the blackest features of the ISC,” calling it “the Goldsteinization of the ISC.”

When Slavko Goldstein died in 2017, Mili Plenkovic, a priest on the island of Hvar, announced on Facebook that he was “delighted by the news that Dr. Slavko Goldstein has died. I am glad that one hater of Croatia has disappeared from the stage of this world. Nevertheless, I wish him eternal peace and that Yahweh will be a merciful judge.” Others launched a hate campaign on the Internet claiming that “[Goldstein] was a liar and a hypocrite who spent his entire life trying to blacken Croats and all Croatian people as if we were all Ustasha,” and “One stink less,” or “Everything is clear, Croatia has lost one great enemy,” and “Thank goodness, wonderful news,” and “Come on !? Thank God! He was a (Jewish) chauvinist and a racist, not a man worth mentioning.”

Croatian soldier of the Ustasha, 1942 (credit: WILLY PRAGHER/BADEN-WÜRTTEMBERG STATE ARCHIVES/WIKIPEDIA)

The Croatian pro-Ustasha Right has been trying to deny the historical truth regarding the Holocaust in Croatia in various ways for decades, and, among other things, claims that the list of victims of the Jasenovac camp is in fact a forgery. Over the past decades, several curators in the Jasenovac Memorial site have worked studiously on it. Some 83,145 names of victims were collected, of which 48,217 were Serbs, 16,164 Roma, 13,143 Jews and 4,281 Croats. These figures should be increased by approximately 10 to 20% to arrive at an approximate final total death toll.

In the manner of Croatian radicals, Goldman lies when he claims that there were “less than 4,500 proven victims” in Jasenovac. He also lies by saying that “the victim list has repeatedly been proven to have been doctored.”

The radical revisionist and pro-Ustasha Right claims that the actual number of victims at Jasenovac should be determined by exhuming the bodies. This is nonsense. I have proven it on many occasions, especially in the book Jasenovac (2018, Serbian edition 2019, an English edition is expected to be published by USHMM).

There are many reasons why nothing can be done by digging up corpses. Among other things, as early as 1964, when excavating some tombs, researchers found that many corpses had already “rotted and disintegrated,” and that “human tissue had turned into a soapy mass of a yellowish-orange color,” probably the result of successive floods of the nearby Sava and Una rivers. Today, almost 80 years after those murders, there would be significantly less physical evidence to be examined.

In addition, just a few days before the breakout of the detainees (April 22, 1945) from the camp, the Ustasha began to systematically burn the corpses. Numerous witnesses claim that on April 6 and 7 “the Jasenovac cemeteries were dug up and the corpses and skeletons of the victims were exhumed and burned.” The detainees dug pits “over which iron traverses with thick trays were placed. Corpses would be placed on the tray and living detainees would also be brought in and slaughtered and thrown on the tray. They would all be soaked with oil and burned. After the pit was filled with the ashes of burnt corpses, they would move to another pit.”

A narrow-gauge railway was even built to transport the ashes and mortal remains to the banks of the Sava and then thrown into the river. “For days, the black smoke from the burning of human remains rose into the sky, evidence of the destruction of all traces of the crime.” After the war, the Ustasha also described the burning of corpses and the British Royal Forces recorded evidence that clearly showed traces of these activities.

In the TV show Sunday at 2, which is quoted by Goldman, I did not mention Hitler – this is another lie. I put forward a thesis that the corpses were also destroyed with a “bone crushing machine,” which was used by the Nazis during the well-known “Aktion 1005” cover-up. The Ustasha cooperated closely with the Nazis in various ways, and there are clear indications that they did so in this case as well.

I will not comment on Mr. Goldman’s nonsense about how I “mock” the Holocaust. It is clear that he and the people behind him are scandalously relativizing the Holocaust in the ISC.

The Croatian radical Right has experienced successive electoral defeats in the last year-and-a-half. Recently, the leader of the most important party aligned with this orientation had to resign on charges of embezzling party money, including the purchase of expensive gifts for his 25-year-old assistant. After such a political and moral debacle, Goldman’s article in the Post was supposed to be a balm to the far-right. In recent days, they have been talking about it in the media, triumphantly claiming that “Jasenovac will never again be the Jasenovac as they imagined it and what the luminaries of Greater Serbia and Tito’s Yugoslav historiography wanted to turn it into.” They called Goldman “a serious Jewish historian” from Australia who unmasked “our Ivo” (meaning myself). One of the weeklies published a front page with the main headline: “The Jerusalem Post has unmasked the liar and poisoner of Jasenovac” (again meaning myself).

My article here will not defeat this circle of people. But it shows, I hope, that they are intellectually incapacitated and immoral.