The director of the Museum of the Victims of Genocide, Veljko Djuric Misina, says that genocide was committed against Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia /NDH/, that the most horrific crimes were committed in concentration camps, particularly in Jasenovac, and that the methods used were unheard of in the history of human civilisation.
According to him, particularly cruel were the concentration camps the Croats established in imitation of their Nazi mentors, whom they excelled in their methods and means of liquidations.
Historical sources say that individual, group and mass crimes such as rape, ripping the belly to pregnant women and removing unborn babies from their mothers’ wombs were committed against adults.
History recorded the throwing of victims into the karst pits, caves, abysses, wells, lakes, rivers, sea…
Methods of killing and torture included the pulling up or burning of beard or moustaches, particularly to Orthodox priests, the skinning, massacring by knives, beheading, the cutting off tongues, extremities and genitals, nailing a knife into a victim’s mouth….
The Ustashe used to rip the lips to victims, break their hands, rip off their breasts, drink their blood….
Victims were thrown into the fire alive, they were burnt with red-hot iron, they were killed with hammers, picks, butts, knives, axes, bombs, they were hanged and shot….
Djuric says that it is particularly hard to grasp and explain horrific crimes committed against children, and it is known that they impaled them on knives, butchered them, smashed their heads, beheaded them, hit them to the walls or trees….
Concentration camps exclusively for children were established in the Independent State of Croatia, which the history of human civilisation did not record before, Djuric told SRNA.
He says that only a few criminals answered for their crimes and that a significant number was pardoned since they joined the Partisans, and that the Communist politics of “brotherhood and unity” and the cementing of pits played a special role in this oblivion.
He said that since its founding on April 10, 1941, Ante Pavelic’s NDH by numerous laws and orders instigated crimes which were committed by the Ustashe, home guardians, local militia, with the blessing of a number of priests of the Roman Catholic Church.
“Having all this in mind, it is clear that the state crime was committed against the Serbian people regardless of gender or age. And these are characteristics of genocide,” Djuric says.
As far as the number of those killed in Jasenovac is concerned, he says that the Croatian authorities did not keep the record of inmates, arrested or killed persons, so that there is no way to determine the exact number of persons killed in the Jasenovac complex of concentration camps.
“As the time passes by, there is less and less chance of doing this. Also, we should stress that the Serbian political elite is not wise enough to prepare this job and to enable a team of experts to even partially do this job,” Djuric says.
He said that one can speak of a number of those killed only if personal data are known.
Djuric says that the state bodies, military and other armed formations conducted a planned genocide against the Serbs in the NDH.
“In an effort to erase the trace of the Serbian people, the criminals disregarded their age or gender; they committed crimes on victims’ doorsteps and in churches, they threw them in pits, they killed them en mass in concentration camps,” he says.
Jasenovac was a complex of the Ustashe concentration camps, and according to written testimonies of its founders, it could hold an unlimited number of inmates. Up to date, there is no a precise answer to a question about how many Serbs, Jews, Roma and others were killed there.
A total number of Serbs killed in the Independent State of Croatia /NDH/ has not yet been /even approximately/ established.