ŠKOBO: ANOTHER ATTEMPT TO RELATIVIZE UNDISPUTED HISTORICAL FACTS

EAST SARAJEVO, NOVEMBER 2 /SRNA/ - The latest developments in the Croatian Parliament, aimed at downplaying the magnitude of crimes committed in Jasenovac, represent yet another in a series of attempts to relativize undisputed historical facts through cheap and transparent manipulation, historian Lazar Škobo said.

"The concentration camp in Jasenovac, and the puppet Ustasha state - the NDH - represent the darkest stain in modern European history," Škobo told SRNA. He stressed that the Jasenovac camp can by no means be described as a labor camp. "The only 'labor' carried out there was the systematic work of genocide and the total annihilation of the Serb people. Therefore, such attempts must be immediately discredited, while we must steadfastly defend the truth and the legacy of the Serb nation's suffering and resistance," Škobo said. He recalled that, according to the findings of the most credible post-war commissions investigating war crimes, around 700,000 people perished in Jasenovac - the vast majority of them of Serb nationality. Škobo noted that these same figures were also cited in the verdicts of the Nuremberg Tribunal. He emphasized that the victims were killed in the most monstrous ways, and that there are even primary sources describing "competitions in killing Serbs." "In such gruesome contests, perpetrators took the lives of several thousand Serbs in a single night," Škobo reminded. At the round table held on October 28 in the Croatian Parliament, participants claimed that Stara Gradiška, Jasenovac, and Lepoglava were camps but that no mass killings occurred there - especially not the killing of tens of thousands of people - and that both the number and names of victims were falsified.