Ms. Sara Bloomfield
Museum Director
Washington Holocaust Museum
Washington, D.C. via fax 12. 28. 2001
Dear Ms. Bloomfield:
The reports by the press of the find of Jasenovac items in Banja Luka,
Bosnia Herzegovina, (that were stolen from Jasenovac by the Serbs), and
their return to Croatia, have repeatedly been distressing to Croatians,
as Jasenovac has been mentioned again and again as the only WWII
concentration camp of former Yugoslavia, while some even suggest that it
was hidden all these years from public knowledge. Nothing could be
further from the truth, as I am certain you are aware of it.
What most of the media and public are not aware of is the fact that most
of the persons responsible for the atrocities committed in Jasenovac
during the Croatian Nazi puppet regime of WWII were tried and punished by
the communist Yugoslav government after the war and that Jasenovac also
continued to serve as a brutal concentration camp under the communist
regime for anti-communist Croatians who had nothing to do with fascism.
After Croatia became independent in 1991, it kept up Jasenovac as a
commemorative site for all the victims that were held there. The Croatian
government and people never denied Jasenovac’s existence and the crimes
committed there by the Ustasha regime horrified them. The only denial was
the grossly exaggerated number of victims that the Serbs consistently
portrayed in spite of available accurate statistics by Serb and Croatian
scholars. During 1999 the Jasenovac commander Sakic was extradited from
Argentina as requested by the Croatian government and was tried and
sentenced to twenty years in prison – meaning lifetime at his age. So as
Croatians we truly have to ask the Jewish community why Jasenovac has to
be continuously resurrected while Germany that killed millions of Jews
and even France and Italy, that delivered Jews to the Nazis, are not
being endlessly hounded to this day by a bad press and worse assumptions?
There is also a very important question to be asked: Why is the Holocaust
Museum and the Jewish community at large totally ignoring Serbia’s WWII
Nazi puppet regime under general Nedic that rounded up all Serbian Jews
in large concentration camps of Serbia’s Sajmiste, Banjica and others,
where they either killed them or delivered them to the Germans? Serbs
proudly declared to Hitler that Belgrade is “Judenfrei” – “Jew free”.
Serbia has a long history of antisemitism, long before WWII, especially
fostered by its Serb Orthodox Church, while Croatia does not.
Sincerely,
Hilda Foley
Media Relations
National Federation of Croatian Americans
13272 Orange Knoll
Santa Ana, Ca. 92705
distributed by CROWN – www.croatianworld.net – CroWorldNet@aol.com
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