GREIF: FUTILE ATTEMPTS BY REVIVED USTASHA IDEOLOGY TO REWRITE HISTORY

BELGRADE, FEBRUARY 9 /SRNA/ - Attempts by revived Ustasha ideology in Croatia to rewrite history and reduce the number of Serbs, Jews, and members of other peoples killed in the notorious Jasenovac death camp are futile, said Gideon Greif, chief researcher at the Shem Olam Holocaust Institute in Israel.

Greif stressed that history is based on facts, noting that the number of murdered Serbs is estimated at around 700,000, while the number of Jewish victims ranges between 35,000 and 40,000. According to him, the resurgence of Ustasha ideology and the violence associated with it are not good for either Croatia or the world. "It is a great disappointment because Ustasha ideology, as we can see, is reappearing in the modern era," Greif told Večernje Novosti. He also pointed out that Europe’s tolerance of such phenomena cannot bring anything good, only harm, emphasizing that attempts to reduce the number of victims amount to killing them again, something that must not be allowed. When asked about his view on Srebrenica and the narrative portraying it as genocide, imposed, as he said, by the descendants of the strategists of the Holocaust in Auschwitz and Jasenovac, Greif stressed that genocide is a serious term, and that what happened in Srebrenica was a specific war crime. Greif emphasized that, as a Jew, he knows what genocide means because he belongs to a people against whom genocide was committed, the greatest in the history of mankind. "No one needs to explain to me what genocide is," Greif concluded.