Remember why NATO spent 78-days bombing Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999?
There was the ethnic cleansing. The atrocities. The refugees chased out of Kosovo by the Serb army. The mass graves. The heaps of bodies tossed into vats of sulphuric acid at the Trepca mines.
NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said there were 100,000 Kosovo Albanian Muslims unaccounted for.
Problem is, none of it happened.
NATO’s original estimate of 100,000 ethnic Albanians slaughtered, later revised downward to 10,000, turns out to be considerably exaggerated.
Dr. Peter Markesteyn, a Winnipeg forensic pathologist, was among the first war crimes investigators to arrive in Kosovo after NATO ended its bombing campaign.
“We were told there were 100,000 bodies everywhere,” said Dr. Markesteyn. “We performed 1,800 autopsies — that’s it.”
Fewer than 2,000 corpses. None found in the Trepca mines. No remains in the vats of sulphuric acid. Most found in isolated graves — not in the mass graves NATO warned about. And no clue as to whether the bodies were those of KLA terrorists, civilians, even whether they were Serbs or ethnic Albanians.
No wonder then that of all the incidents on which Slobodan Milosevic has been indicted for war crimes, the total body count is not 100,000, not 10,000, not even 1,800 — but 391!
It was Walker, at the time head of the Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) who, on the morning of January 16, 1999, led the press to the Kosovo village of Racak, a KLA stronghold. There some 20 bodies were found in a shallow trench, and 20 more were found scattered throughout the village. The KLA terrorists, and Walker, alleged that masked Serb policemen had entered the village the previous day, and killed men, women and children at close range, after torturing and mutilating them. Chillingly, the Serb police were said to have whistled merrily as they went about their work of slaughtering the villagers.
Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, as eager to scratch her ever itchy trigger finger as her boss was to scratch his illimitable sexual itches, demanded that Yugoslavia be bombed immediately. Albright, like a kid agonizingly counting down the hours to Christmas, would have to wait until after Milosevic’s rejection of NATO’s ultimata at Rambouillet to get her wish.
But not everyone was so sure that Walker’s story was to be believed. The French newspaper La Monde had some trouble swallowing the story. It reported on Jan. 21, 1999, a few days after the incident, that an Associated Press TV crew had filmed a gun battle at Racak between Serb police and KLA terrorists. Indeed, the crew was present because the Serbs had tipped them off that they were going to enter the village to arrest a man accused of shooting a police officer. Also present were two teams of KVM monitors.
It seems unlikely that if you’re about to carry out a massacre that you would invite the press — and international observers — to watch.
The film showed that as soon as the Serbs entered Racak they came under heavy fire from KLA terrorists positioned in the surrounding hills. The idea that the police could dig a trench and then kill villagers at close range while under attack troubled La Monde. So too did the fact that, entering the village after the fire fight to assess the damage and interview the villagers, the KVM observers saw no sign of a massacre. What’s more, the villagers said nothing about a massacre either.
Yet, when Walker returned the next day with the press — at the KLA’s invitation — there was the trench with the bodies.
Could the police have returned later on and carried out the massacre under cover of darkness?
That seems unlikely. Racak is a KLA stronghold. Serb police had already discovered that if they were going to enter the village they would have to deal with the guerillas. How could they torture, mutilate and cold-bloodedly kill villagers at close range while harassed by KLA gunfire?
And why, wondered La Monde, were there few signs of spent cartridges and blood at the trench?
And now there’s a report that the Finnish forensic pathologists who investigated the incident on behalf of the European Union, say there was no evidence of a massacre. In an article to be published in Forensic Science International at the end of February, the Finnish team writes that none of the bodies were mutilated, there was no evidence of torture, and only one was shot at close range.
The pathologists say Walker was quick to come to the conclusion that there was a massacre, even though the evidence was weak.
And they point out that there is no evidence that the deceased were from Racak.
The KLA terrorists, the Serbs charge, faked the massacre by laying out their fallen comrades in the trench they, themselves, prepared, and the United States used the staged massacre as a pretext for the bombing.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Srebrenica: The urban legend
The alleged Srebrenica massacre of Bosnian Muslims in July 1995 is referred to regularly by the mainstream media as a moral touchstone, an example of “genocide” that can take place when the U.S. is not the moral arbiter or when the U.S. hesitates to intervene on behalf of an endangered part of humanity somewhere in the world. And many Americans, conditioned by sixteen years of media saturation, responded reflexively and have come to agree that a genocide occurred in Srebrenica even though there is still no proof sixteen years later.
(Photo: Bosnian Nazi soldiers reading Nazi propaganda. “Before WWI, Serbs accounted for 75% of the population of the municipality of Srebrenica. Before WWII, they accounted for 50% of the population. Before the outbreak of the Bosnian War, they accounted for only 30% of the population. This tremendous population decline was not caused by a drop in the birth rate or migration. It was a direct result of genocide carried out by Muslim and Croat neighbors. “Srebrenica Before It Happened,”)
The credulity of ordinary Americans did not last long. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11, triggered the invasion of Afghanistan. Later, Americans found out that the casus belli, “that we’re fighting them over there so that we don’t have to fight them here” was fraught with lies, as well. UNOCAL, a U.S. oil company, was interested in bringing Central Asian oil to market via a proposed Afghan oil pipeline. Then the American public learned that Condoleeza Rice, Secretary of State, and Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, were former members of UNOCAL’s board of directors. It turned out to be simply another war for profit. After the invasion of Iraq, Americans began to further doubt the veracity of U.S. government public statements. It appeared, after all, that Sadam Hussein did not possess weapons of destruction. “No matter,” replied the Bush II Administration, “invading Iraq was still the right thing to do because we took control of Iraq’s oil fields.” Few Americans know that U.S. intervention in the Wars of Succession on the territory of the Former Yugoslavia were also based on lies, even though the U.S. Government still refers to these interventions with pride as necessary and successful international efforts. Yet reality is sobering. It turns out, in hindsight, that the Saudis wanted a Muslim state in Bosnia in exchange for staying out of Gulf War I, so U.S. President Clinton was delighted to show his good faith and granted, like a genie from the Arabian Nights, the Saudis their wish. One cannot help but wonder why “a Muslim state” (i.e., a theocratic state based on sharia law) was created in Europe, when all the other European states are secular. Later, it was revealed that there were untapped oil reserves in Tuzla in Bosnia, coincidentally the location of U.S. Eagle military base. Then the war in Kosovo, also considered a model of interventionist probity, turned out to have an oil pipeline hidden beneath the humanitarian rhetoric. AMBO, the Albanian-Macedonian-Bulgarian Oil Company, began construction in 2010 of an oil pipeline from Burgas on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria to Durres in Albania. Coincidentally, U.S. Camp Bondsteel is conveniently located in Kosovo to protect this pipeline and its putative future profits.
Thus, the Bosnian War generally, and the alleged Srebrenica massacre of July 1995 specifically, were testing grounds for not only new weapons, but also new media techniques to win broad support from the U.S. population for future wars of imperialist aggression, such as the current war being waged against Libya, which employs many of the same media techniques and military approaches that were developed during the Bosnian War: the leader is declared to be “insane”; NATO introduces “no-fly zones” during the opening phase of the conflict; then an invasion is planned to “protect” citizens from an “insane” dictator. These propaganda techniques were then, as now, enormously successful, and are based on selective reporting and selective omission of critical facts in order to create a perception of U.S. virtue and enemy villainy.
The Srebrenica massacre stands as a nearly perfect propaganda campaign, which is nurtured to this very day. For example, given Don McLean’s lyrics “Drove my Chevy to the levee…” almost any American can reflexively complete the verse with “but the levee was dry”; likewise, any American, upon hearing “Srebrenica”, can add a phrase standing in apposition, “where the Serbs killed 8,000 men and boys” without any prompting. But the Srebrenica levee is, as we shall see, also dry.
(Photo: Bosnian Nazi soldiers reading Nazi propaganda. “Before WWI, Serbs accounted for 75% of the population of the municipality of Srebrenica. Before WWII, they accounted for 50% of the population. Before the outbreak of the Bosnian War, they accounted for only 30% of the population. This tremendous population decline was not caused by a drop in the birth rate or migration. It was a direct result of genocide carried out by Muslim and Croat neighbors. “Srebrenica Before It Happened,”)
The credulity of ordinary Americans did not last long. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11, triggered the invasion of Afghanistan. Later, Americans found out that the casus belli, “that we’re fighting them over there so that we don’t have to fight them here” was fraught with lies, as well. UNOCAL, a U.S. oil company, was interested in bringing Central Asian oil to market via a proposed Afghan oil pipeline. Then the American public learned that Condoleeza Rice, Secretary of State, and Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, were former members of UNOCAL’s board of directors. It turned out to be simply another war for profit. After the invasion of Iraq, Americans began to further doubt the veracity of U.S. government public statements. It appeared, after all, that Sadam Hussein did not possess weapons of destruction. “No matter,” replied the Bush II Administration, “invading Iraq was still the right thing to do because we took control of Iraq’s oil fields.” Few Americans know that U.S. intervention in the Wars of Succession on the territory of the Former Yugoslavia were also based on lies, even though the U.S. Government still refers to these interventions with pride as necessary and successful international efforts. Yet reality is sobering. It turns out, in hindsight, that the Saudis wanted a Muslim state in Bosnia in exchange for staying out of Gulf War I, so U.S. President Clinton was delighted to show his good faith and granted, like a genie from the Arabian Nights, the Saudis their wish. One cannot help but wonder why “a Muslim state” (i.e., a theocratic state based on sharia law) was created in Europe, when all the other European states are secular. Later, it was revealed that there were untapped oil reserves in Tuzla in Bosnia, coincidentally the location of U.S. Eagle military base. Then the war in Kosovo, also considered a model of interventionist probity, turned out to have an oil pipeline hidden beneath the humanitarian rhetoric. AMBO, the Albanian-Macedonian-Bulgarian Oil Company, began construction in 2010 of an oil pipeline from Burgas on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria to Durres in Albania. Coincidentally, U.S. Camp Bondsteel is conveniently located in Kosovo to protect this pipeline and its putative future profits.
Thus, the Bosnian War generally, and the alleged Srebrenica massacre of July 1995 specifically, were testing grounds for not only new weapons, but also new media techniques to win broad support from the U.S. population for future wars of imperialist aggression, such as the current war being waged against Libya, which employs many of the same media techniques and military approaches that were developed during the Bosnian War: the leader is declared to be “insane”; NATO introduces “no-fly zones” during the opening phase of the conflict; then an invasion is planned to “protect” citizens from an “insane” dictator. These propaganda techniques were then, as now, enormously successful, and are based on selective reporting and selective omission of critical facts in order to create a perception of U.S. virtue and enemy villainy.
The Srebrenica massacre stands as a nearly perfect propaganda campaign, which is nurtured to this very day. For example, given Don McLean’s lyrics “Drove my Chevy to the levee…” almost any American can reflexively complete the verse with “but the levee was dry”; likewise, any American, upon hearing “Srebrenica”, can add a phrase standing in apposition, “where the Serbs killed 8,000 men and boys” without any prompting. But the Srebrenica levee is, as we shall see, also dry.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Man accused of killing 3 daughters told police his kids were liars, jury hears
Is this the sort of immigrant we want Canada? They are not as funny as the gang on "Little Mosque on the Prairie"! They bring a backwards religious belief into Canada. I believe that most religious beliefs are backwards, but what makes muslims different is that they somehow embraces this shitred in a political way. Let's face it, they have money to pay for quick immigration/citezenship. I hope Harper puts a serious curb on these fucking animals getting in to Canada. I hope he does more. I hope he forces them on boats to Alabama. They are criminals that have bought their way into our great country and have no desire to conform to our laws and principles.
..KINGSTON, Ont. - A man accused of killing his three daughters and one of his two wives told a police interrogator that he dearly loved his dead children, but they were liars, court heard Wednesday.
Mohammad Shafia, 58, is on trial — along with his wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 41, and son Hamed, 20 — charged with four counts each of first-degree murder. They have each pleaded not guilty to killing three teenage Shafia sisters and Shafia's other wife in a polygamous marriage.
The jury in Kingston, Ont., watched video Wednesday of the police interrogation of Shafia — conducted in Farsi and translated into English — the day after he, his wife and his son were arrested in July 2009.
He tells the interrogator his life has been ruined by the deaths of his children and Rona Amir Mohammad, whom he calls his cousin, and that his kids were "pure and sinless."
"Swear to God I loved them with my heart," Shafia says. "I wish God would have taken my life and spared their lives."
But, he says, they were liars.
"They told a lot of lies...They had said something like that, 'My dad is beating me,'" Shafia says. "If, for example they were going somewhere, they didn't say the truth. They are lying."
The only child who doesn't lie is Hamed, Shafia says.
Hamed and his parents are accused of killing his three sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Shafia's other wife, Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, who were found dead inside a submerged car on June 30, 2009, in the Rideau Canal. The family was heading home to Montreal from a trip to Niagara Falls, Ont., when they stopped in Kingston for the night and staged the deaths to look like an accident, court has heard.
The Crown alleges they were killed over family honour, a point that the interrogator hammers home at the end of the heated interview with Shafia.
"You don't have even a little honour...The honour of your family is in the hands of your women," RCMP Insp. Shahin Mehdizadeh says before walking out of the room.
"No, this is not a right word to say," Shafia pleads.
Court heard Tuesday that weeks before the deaths, Shafia called his brother-in-law to ask for help in killing Zainab. Shafia called his eldest daughter a prostitute for visiting a library, going on the Internet, spending time with friends and dating, Fazil Jawid testified. He could only be identified under a publication ban Tuesday as a relative, but can be named now that he is done testifying.
Zainab's Pakistani boyfriend was a source of tension in the family, and though they eventually let her marry him, they had it annulled the same day, court has heard.
During the two-hour interrogation the day after the family was arrested, Shafia maintains his innocence and says he would have had no problem with his children marrying whoever they wanted, as long as they were happy. However, at one point Shafia suggests to Mehdizadeh that Zainab's boyfriend wanted to kill her.
No matter what the girls might have done, Shafia says, they did not deserve to die like that.
"(Whoever is responsible) is the worst dishonour, the worst disrespectful, the worst ill-mannered person in the world," Shafia says.
The interrogation is of a very different tone than Yahya's, which was also conducted by Mehdizadeh. Yahya weeps over photos of her children, is quiet and reluctant to answer questions, though she eventually tells Mehdizadeh that the three were present when the car went in the water. She pins the blame on her husband, though court heard Wednesday that the morning after her interrogation she recanted all of what she had said.
Shafia is talkative and even defiant during his interrogation, interrupting Mehdizadeh, raising his voice and almost lecturing him, saying, "I have something to say to you. Pay attention to my words."
Shafia is shown the same photos his wife was, of his daughters after their bodies had been pulled from the water, and Mehdizadeh asks Shafia why the photos don't appear to bother him.
"I am upset," he says. "Crying is not in my control."
...
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
The Jasenovac Extermination Camp
The Jasenovac Extermination Camp
"Terror in Croatia"
Ante Pavelic Head of the Independent State of Croatia
The Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941. Vladko Maček, the leader of the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) which was the most influential party in Croatia at the time, rejected offers by the Nazi Germany to lead the new government. On 10 April the most senior home-based Ustaša, Slavko Kvaternik, took control of the police in Zagreb and in a radio broadcast that day proclaimed the formation of the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH).
The new Independent State of Croatia" was established as a pro-Nazi government. It was dedicated to a clerical-fascist ideology influenced both by Nazism and extreme Roman Catholic fanaticism. On coming to power, the Ustaša Party dictatorship in Croatia quickly commenced on a systematic policy of racial extermination of all Serbs, Jews and Gypsies living within its borders.
The NDH was ruled by Ante Pavelic under the title Poglavnik, or "Headman". Pavelic served as leader of the Independent State of Croatia, a puppet state of the Axis Powers, throughout the four years of its existence, but since the Ustaše did not have a capable army or administration necessary to control the territory, the Germans and the Italians split the NDH into two zones of influence, one in the southwest controlled by the Italians (with Pavelić as Headman), and the other in the northeast controlled by the Germans.
Hitler greets Pavelic at their first meeting
Pavelić first met with Adolf Hitler on June 6, 1941. Mile Budak, then a minister in Pavelić's government, publicly proclaimed the violent racial policy of the state on 22 July 1941. The Ustaša's organization was a typically fascist organization and its military strength was an instrument for the implementation of the Ustaša's Nazi ideology.
The first "Legal order for the defense of the people and the state" dated April 17, 1941 ordered the death penalty for "infringement of the honor and vital interests of the Croatian people and the survival of the Independent State of Croatia". It was soon followed by the "Legal order of races" and the "Legal order of the protection of Aryan blood and the honor of the Croatian people" dated April 30, 1941, as well as the "Order of the creation and definition of the racial-political committee" dated June 4, 1941.
The enforcement of these legal acts was done not only through normal courts but also new out-of-order courts as well as mobile court-martials with extended jurisdictions.
The NDH Ustaša terror was also aimed at the Serbian Orthodox Church. Three Orthodox bishops and most of the Orthodox priests were murdered by the end of 1941 in the cruelest of manners. During the war, 450 Orthodox churches were demolished. Mass conversions were forced upon Serb villagers but the exact number of Serbs forcibly converted to Catholicism has never been established.
Ustaša decree issued by Ante Pavelic
One Orthodox Serb from Okučani reported:
"The new government told me that I’d have to convert to Roman Catholicism if I wanted to keep my job. I refused and was fired in July 1941. I moved my family to the nearby town of Okučani where I managed to find work. But in Okučani I was arrested, once by the Germans and once by the Croatian fascists. Both of those times I was released. Now I’ve been arrested yet again by the Croatian fascists. My crime—being a Serb."
The Ustaša army (Ustaška vojnica) was organized by Slavko Kvaternik, and it was made up of Ustaša units (filled out with volunteers) under the direction of the Central Ustaša Headquarters, of special police units (redarstvo) and the Home Guard (domobrani), and in August of 1941 the Ustaša Secret Service was formed by Ustaša Security Service Kommando Eugen Dido Kvaternik who also oversaw the concentration camp system throughout the sphere of Ustaša control.
In the early stages of the Ustaša rule there were no legal regulations about sending people to concentration camps or the length of sentences. Such things were decided by Pavelić's emissaries, district prefects, deputy prefects, camp supervisors and other Ustaša commanders. Such practices remained even later, and when the regulations were finally passed, no one actually obeyed them.
The first camps in the NDH were founded on the island of Pag at the place called Slano, on Mount Velebit near Gospić at a place called Jadovno, and in Bosnia at Kruščica near Travnik. Besides Jasenovac, the larger camps were:
Danica
Drawing of the Jasenovac camp
Pag
Jadovno near Gospić
Kruščica near Vitez and Travnik in Bosnia
Đakovo
Loborgrad in Zagorje
Tenja near Osijek
The establishment of the Jasenovac Camp System
Jasenovac was established in August, 1941 and was dismantled in April, 1945. The creation and management of the camp complex were given to Department III of the Croatian Security Police (Ustashka Nadzorna Sluzba; UNS) which was headed by Vjekoslav Maks Luburic, who commanded the Jasenovac camp.
The camp spread out over 210 square kilometers, along the Sava River from Stara Gradiska in the east to the village Krap1je in the west, and from Strug in the north to the line between Draksenic to Bistrica in the south.
Prisoners forced to labor at the brick factory
The choice of the wider region of Jasenovac for such a monstrous camp was made for several reasons. One of them was certainly the suitable geographic position. The Zagreb-Belgrade railway was in the vicinity and was important for the transport of the prisoners. The terrain was surrounded by the rivers Sava, Una and Velika Struga, in the middle of the swampy Lonjsko poije area, so that escape from the camp was almost impossible.
On the other side of the Sava, the Gradina region was hardly accessible and often flooded by the river, uninhabited and far from all witnesses. It was the ideal place for hiding mass murders.
Jasenovac became the largest and most important concentration camp (sabirni logor) and extermination camp complex in the Nezavisna Hrvatska Drzava (NDH), Independent State of Croatia, during World War II. The Jasenovac concentration camp complex would be crucial in the systematic and planned genocide of the Orthodox Serbs of the Srpska Vojna Krajina and of Bosnia-Hercegovina by the Croats and Bosnian Muslims.
Other concentration camps were established in Sisak, Stara Gradiska, Djakovo, Lepoglava, Loborgrad. In all, there would be 22 concentration camps in the NDH, almost half of which were commanded by Roman Catholic Croatian priests.
Ustasha order for a Jew Samuel Hirschenhauser to report to Jasenovac
The first transports brought Serbs and Jews to the nearby village of Krapje, which was 7 miles west of Jasenovac. At this site, the prisoners were forced to build the camp that was called Jasenovac Camp No. 1. A second camp was built after the increase in the number of prisoners called Camp No.2.
Camp No.3 was built near the Ciglara brick factory, Ozren Bacic & Company, at the mouth of the Lonja and downstream from Jasenovac. Camp No.4 was built in Jasenovac itself near the former leather factory. The camp at the nearby town of Stara Gradiska is referred to as Camp No.5.
The maximum capacity of all the camps was 7,000 prisoners but usually only 4,000 prisoners were there at any one time.
Jasenovac was in fact a system or complex of concentration and extermination camps occupying a surface of 130 square miles, set up under decree-law, No. 1528-2101-Z-1941, on September 25,1941, legally authorizing the creation of 'assembly or work camps for undesirable and dangerous persons.
Gypsies marched to Jasenovac escorted by Ustaša guards
The Ustaše interned mostly Serbs in Jasenovac. Other victims included Jews, Bosniaks,Gypsies, and opponents of the Ustaša regime. Most of the Jews were murdered there until August 1942, when they started being deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Jews were sent to Jasenovac from all parts of Croatia after being gathered in Zagreb, and from Bosnia and Herzegovina after being gathered in Sarajevo.
Some came directly from other cities and smaller towns. On their arrival most were killed at execution sites near the camp: Granik, Gradina, and other places. Those kept alive were mostly skilled at needed professions and trades (doctors, pharmacists, electricians, shoemakers, goldsmiths, and so on) and were employed in services and workshops at Jasenovac.
The living conditions in the camp were extremely severe: a meager diet, deplorable accommodations, a particularly cruel regime, and cruel behavior by the Ustaše guards. The conditions improved only for short periods during visits by delegations, such as the press delegation that visited in February 1942 and a Red Cross delegation in June 1944.
Guard tower at Jasenovac
Following the Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942, where the 'Final Solution to the Jewish Problem' was formulated, the Germans proposed through SS Sturmbannfuehrer Hans Helm that the Croats transfer Jewish prisoners to German camps in the east.
Kvaternik, agreed that the NDH would arrest the Jews, take them to railheads, and pay the Germans 30 Reich marks per person for the cost of transport to the extermination camps in the east. The Germans agreed that the property of the Jews would go to the Croat government.
SS Hauptsturmfuehrer Franz Abromeit was sent to supervise the deportations to Auschwitz. From August 13-20,1942, 5,500 Jews from the NDH were transpoted to Aushwitz on five trains from the Croat concentration camps at Tenje and Loborgrad and from Zagreb and Sarajevo.
Reichsfuehrer-SS Heinrich Himmler was on a state visit to Zagreb in May,1943 when two trains on May 5 and 10 trasported 1,150 Jews to Auschwitz.
Jasenovac prisoner being beheaded with a saw
Wholesale murder of the prisoners was also carried out in the forest near the Krapje Camp, near the „Versaj“ Camp and „Uštica“ Camp on the whole left bank of the Sava, downriver from Jasenovac to Jablanac and Mlaka. Furthermore, within the complex of Camp III there was also a crematorium which was actually an oven for baking bricks, that the Ustaša converted for the use burning the bodies of their victims.
The crematorium became known as "Picili's Funaceo" after the designer of the oven conversion plan, Hinko Picili.
In addition to the horrendous conditions in the Jasenovac camps, the guards also cruelly tortured, terrorized, and murdered prisoners at will. Here the most varied forms of torture were used: finger and toe nails were pulled out with metal instruments, eyes were dug out with specially constructed hooks, people were blinded by having needles stuck in their eyes, flesh was cut and then salted.
People were also flayed, had their noses, ears and tongues cut off with wire cutters, and had awls stuck in their hearts. Daughters were raped in front of their mothers, sons were tortured in front of their fathers.
The prisoners and all those who ended up in Jasenovac had their throats cut by the Ustaša with specially designed knives, or they were killed with axes, mallets and hammers; they were also shot, or they were hung from trees or light poles. Some were burned alive in hot furnaces, boiled in cauldrons, or drowned in the River Sava.
Witness drawing of the sboskek wrist knife used to quickly dispatch prisoners at Jasenovac
The acts of violence and depravity commited in Jasenovac were so brutal that General von Horstenau, Hitler's representative in Zagreb, wrote:
"The Ustaša camps in the NDH are the "Epitome of horror"!
Stara Gradiska
Stara Gradiska was the most notorious camp in the Jasenovac complex besides the main camp (Ciglana), mainly due to the crimes which were committed against women and children.
Camp staff, Antun Vrban, Nada Luburic, Maja Buzdon, Jozo Stojcic, and especially the commandant and former-friar Miroslav Filipovic-Majstorovic, were notorious both in Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska, for killing scores of inmates with his bare hands, women and children included.
Mutilated body of a man tortured and killed at Jasenovac
In in cellar 3 at Stara Gradiska, (known as the "Gagro Hotel"), starved inmates were first tortured and then slowly strangled to death by wire.
In the Dinko Sakic trial, witness Ivo Senjanovic recalled how people were locked there without food or water:
"The people were gradually dying. It was horrible to hear them cry for help."
The treatment of inmates was so horrific that on the night of August 29, 1942, bets were made among the prison guards as to who could liquidate the largest number of inmates. One of the guards, Petar Brzica reportedly cut the throats of 1,360 prisoners with a butcher knife. A gold watch, a silver service, a roasted suckling pig, and wine were among his rewards.
The type of knife used for cutting prisoners' throats became known as srbosjek translated as the "Serb-cutter". Because of his expertise with the sbosjek, Petar Brzica was dubbed "King of the Cut-throats".
The gate at Stara Gradiska
It is estimated that close to 600,000 (depending on who's statistics you agree with), mostly Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, were murdered at Jasenovac.
The number of Jewish victims was between twenty and twenty-five thousand, most of whom were murdered there up to August 1942, when deportation of the Croatian Jews to Auschwitz for extermination began.
Statistics for Romani victims are difficult to assess, as there are no firm estimates of their number in prewar Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The best estimates calculate the number of Romani victims at about 26,000, of whom between 8,000 and 15,000 perished in Jasenovac.
There are only loose estimates for the number of Croats murdered by the Ustaša. This group included political and religious opponents of the regime, both Catholic and Muslim. Between 5,000 and 12,000 Croats are believed to have died in Jasenovac.
An emaciated child at Stara Gradiska
In early April 1945, the partisans were fighting nearby Jasenovac and its subcamps, so the Ustase began eliminating traces of the camp, killing some of the inmates and transporting others to Lepoglava and from there to Jasenovac I.
The ultimate liquidation of the Camp was begun on April 20, when the last large group of women and children was executed. On April 22, 1945, under the leadership of Ante Vukotic, about 600 people armed with bricks, poles, hammers and other things, broke down the doors, shattered windows and ran out of the building. About 470 people were sick and unable to fight barehanded with the armed Ustaša, so they did not take part in the rebellion.
The 150 meter long path to the east gate of the camp was covered by the crossfire of the Ustaša machine guns, and many prisoners were killed there. A large number of them was killed on the wires of the camp. A hundred prisoners managed to break through the broken gate of the camp. Only 80 prisoners survived while 520 of them died in the first assault. The remaining 470 within the camp were later killed by the Ustaša.
Bodies of victims murdered at Jasenovac floating in the Sava river
Yugoslav Army forces entered the Stara Gradiska camp on April 23, and Jasenovac on May 2, 1945. Before leaving the camp, the Ustaša killed the remaining prisoners, blasted and destroyed the buildings, guard-houses, torture rooms, the "Picili Furnace" and the other structures. Upon entering the camp, the liberators found only ruins, soot, smoke, and dead bodies.
During the following months of 1945, the grounds of Jasenovac were thoroughly destroyed by forced laborers, composed of 200 to 600 Domobran soldiers captured by the Partisans, thereby making the area a labor camp. They leveled the camp to the ground and among other things dismantled a two-kilometer long, four-meter high wall that surrounded it.
The National Committee of Croatia for the investigation of the crimes of the occupation forces and their collaborators stated in its report of November 15, 1945 that 500,000-600,000 people were killed at Jasenovac.
"Terror in Croatia"
Ante Pavelic Head of the Independent State of Croatia
The Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941. Vladko Maček, the leader of the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) which was the most influential party in Croatia at the time, rejected offers by the Nazi Germany to lead the new government. On 10 April the most senior home-based Ustaša, Slavko Kvaternik, took control of the police in Zagreb and in a radio broadcast that day proclaimed the formation of the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH).
The new Independent State of Croatia" was established as a pro-Nazi government. It was dedicated to a clerical-fascist ideology influenced both by Nazism and extreme Roman Catholic fanaticism. On coming to power, the Ustaša Party dictatorship in Croatia quickly commenced on a systematic policy of racial extermination of all Serbs, Jews and Gypsies living within its borders.
The NDH was ruled by Ante Pavelic under the title Poglavnik, or "Headman". Pavelic served as leader of the Independent State of Croatia, a puppet state of the Axis Powers, throughout the four years of its existence, but since the Ustaše did not have a capable army or administration necessary to control the territory, the Germans and the Italians split the NDH into two zones of influence, one in the southwest controlled by the Italians (with Pavelić as Headman), and the other in the northeast controlled by the Germans.
Hitler greets Pavelic at their first meeting
Pavelić first met with Adolf Hitler on June 6, 1941. Mile Budak, then a minister in Pavelić's government, publicly proclaimed the violent racial policy of the state on 22 July 1941. The Ustaša's organization was a typically fascist organization and its military strength was an instrument for the implementation of the Ustaša's Nazi ideology.
The first "Legal order for the defense of the people and the state" dated April 17, 1941 ordered the death penalty for "infringement of the honor and vital interests of the Croatian people and the survival of the Independent State of Croatia". It was soon followed by the "Legal order of races" and the "Legal order of the protection of Aryan blood and the honor of the Croatian people" dated April 30, 1941, as well as the "Order of the creation and definition of the racial-political committee" dated June 4, 1941.
The enforcement of these legal acts was done not only through normal courts but also new out-of-order courts as well as mobile court-martials with extended jurisdictions.
The NDH Ustaša terror was also aimed at the Serbian Orthodox Church. Three Orthodox bishops and most of the Orthodox priests were murdered by the end of 1941 in the cruelest of manners. During the war, 450 Orthodox churches were demolished. Mass conversions were forced upon Serb villagers but the exact number of Serbs forcibly converted to Catholicism has never been established.
Ustaša decree issued by Ante Pavelic
One Orthodox Serb from Okučani reported:
"The new government told me that I’d have to convert to Roman Catholicism if I wanted to keep my job. I refused and was fired in July 1941. I moved my family to the nearby town of Okučani where I managed to find work. But in Okučani I was arrested, once by the Germans and once by the Croatian fascists. Both of those times I was released. Now I’ve been arrested yet again by the Croatian fascists. My crime—being a Serb."
The Ustaša army (Ustaška vojnica) was organized by Slavko Kvaternik, and it was made up of Ustaša units (filled out with volunteers) under the direction of the Central Ustaša Headquarters, of special police units (redarstvo) and the Home Guard (domobrani), and in August of 1941 the Ustaša Secret Service was formed by Ustaša Security Service Kommando Eugen Dido Kvaternik who also oversaw the concentration camp system throughout the sphere of Ustaša control.
In the early stages of the Ustaša rule there were no legal regulations about sending people to concentration camps or the length of sentences. Such things were decided by Pavelić's emissaries, district prefects, deputy prefects, camp supervisors and other Ustaša commanders. Such practices remained even later, and when the regulations were finally passed, no one actually obeyed them.
The first camps in the NDH were founded on the island of Pag at the place called Slano, on Mount Velebit near Gospić at a place called Jadovno, and in Bosnia at Kruščica near Travnik. Besides Jasenovac, the larger camps were:
Danica
Drawing of the Jasenovac camp
Pag
Jadovno near Gospić
Kruščica near Vitez and Travnik in Bosnia
Đakovo
Loborgrad in Zagorje
Tenja near Osijek
The establishment of the Jasenovac Camp System
Jasenovac was established in August, 1941 and was dismantled in April, 1945. The creation and management of the camp complex were given to Department III of the Croatian Security Police (Ustashka Nadzorna Sluzba; UNS) which was headed by Vjekoslav Maks Luburic, who commanded the Jasenovac camp.
The camp spread out over 210 square kilometers, along the Sava River from Stara Gradiska in the east to the village Krap1je in the west, and from Strug in the north to the line between Draksenic to Bistrica in the south.
Prisoners forced to labor at the brick factory
The choice of the wider region of Jasenovac for such a monstrous camp was made for several reasons. One of them was certainly the suitable geographic position. The Zagreb-Belgrade railway was in the vicinity and was important for the transport of the prisoners. The terrain was surrounded by the rivers Sava, Una and Velika Struga, in the middle of the swampy Lonjsko poije area, so that escape from the camp was almost impossible.
On the other side of the Sava, the Gradina region was hardly accessible and often flooded by the river, uninhabited and far from all witnesses. It was the ideal place for hiding mass murders.
Jasenovac became the largest and most important concentration camp (sabirni logor) and extermination camp complex in the Nezavisna Hrvatska Drzava (NDH), Independent State of Croatia, during World War II. The Jasenovac concentration camp complex would be crucial in the systematic and planned genocide of the Orthodox Serbs of the Srpska Vojna Krajina and of Bosnia-Hercegovina by the Croats and Bosnian Muslims.
Other concentration camps were established in Sisak, Stara Gradiska, Djakovo, Lepoglava, Loborgrad. In all, there would be 22 concentration camps in the NDH, almost half of which were commanded by Roman Catholic Croatian priests.
Ustasha order for a Jew Samuel Hirschenhauser to report to Jasenovac
The first transports brought Serbs and Jews to the nearby village of Krapje, which was 7 miles west of Jasenovac. At this site, the prisoners were forced to build the camp that was called Jasenovac Camp No. 1. A second camp was built after the increase in the number of prisoners called Camp No.2.
Camp No.3 was built near the Ciglara brick factory, Ozren Bacic & Company, at the mouth of the Lonja and downstream from Jasenovac. Camp No.4 was built in Jasenovac itself near the former leather factory. The camp at the nearby town of Stara Gradiska is referred to as Camp No.5.
The maximum capacity of all the camps was 7,000 prisoners but usually only 4,000 prisoners were there at any one time.
Jasenovac was in fact a system or complex of concentration and extermination camps occupying a surface of 130 square miles, set up under decree-law, No. 1528-2101-Z-1941, on September 25,1941, legally authorizing the creation of 'assembly or work camps for undesirable and dangerous persons.
Gypsies marched to Jasenovac escorted by Ustaša guards
The Ustaše interned mostly Serbs in Jasenovac. Other victims included Jews, Bosniaks,Gypsies, and opponents of the Ustaša regime. Most of the Jews were murdered there until August 1942, when they started being deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Jews were sent to Jasenovac from all parts of Croatia after being gathered in Zagreb, and from Bosnia and Herzegovina after being gathered in Sarajevo.
Some came directly from other cities and smaller towns. On their arrival most were killed at execution sites near the camp: Granik, Gradina, and other places. Those kept alive were mostly skilled at needed professions and trades (doctors, pharmacists, electricians, shoemakers, goldsmiths, and so on) and were employed in services and workshops at Jasenovac.
The living conditions in the camp were extremely severe: a meager diet, deplorable accommodations, a particularly cruel regime, and cruel behavior by the Ustaše guards. The conditions improved only for short periods during visits by delegations, such as the press delegation that visited in February 1942 and a Red Cross delegation in June 1944.
Guard tower at Jasenovac
Following the Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942, where the 'Final Solution to the Jewish Problem' was formulated, the Germans proposed through SS Sturmbannfuehrer Hans Helm that the Croats transfer Jewish prisoners to German camps in the east.
Kvaternik, agreed that the NDH would arrest the Jews, take them to railheads, and pay the Germans 30 Reich marks per person for the cost of transport to the extermination camps in the east. The Germans agreed that the property of the Jews would go to the Croat government.
SS Hauptsturmfuehrer Franz Abromeit was sent to supervise the deportations to Auschwitz. From August 13-20,1942, 5,500 Jews from the NDH were transpoted to Aushwitz on five trains from the Croat concentration camps at Tenje and Loborgrad and from Zagreb and Sarajevo.
Reichsfuehrer-SS Heinrich Himmler was on a state visit to Zagreb in May,1943 when two trains on May 5 and 10 trasported 1,150 Jews to Auschwitz.
Jasenovac prisoner being beheaded with a saw
Wholesale murder of the prisoners was also carried out in the forest near the Krapje Camp, near the „Versaj“ Camp and „Uštica“ Camp on the whole left bank of the Sava, downriver from Jasenovac to Jablanac and Mlaka. Furthermore, within the complex of Camp III there was also a crematorium which was actually an oven for baking bricks, that the Ustaša converted for the use burning the bodies of their victims.
The crematorium became known as "Picili's Funaceo" after the designer of the oven conversion plan, Hinko Picili.
In addition to the horrendous conditions in the Jasenovac camps, the guards also cruelly tortured, terrorized, and murdered prisoners at will. Here the most varied forms of torture were used: finger and toe nails were pulled out with metal instruments, eyes were dug out with specially constructed hooks, people were blinded by having needles stuck in their eyes, flesh was cut and then salted.
People were also flayed, had their noses, ears and tongues cut off with wire cutters, and had awls stuck in their hearts. Daughters were raped in front of their mothers, sons were tortured in front of their fathers.
The prisoners and all those who ended up in Jasenovac had their throats cut by the Ustaša with specially designed knives, or they were killed with axes, mallets and hammers; they were also shot, or they were hung from trees or light poles. Some were burned alive in hot furnaces, boiled in cauldrons, or drowned in the River Sava.
Witness drawing of the sboskek wrist knife used to quickly dispatch prisoners at Jasenovac
The acts of violence and depravity commited in Jasenovac were so brutal that General von Horstenau, Hitler's representative in Zagreb, wrote:
"The Ustaša camps in the NDH are the "Epitome of horror"!
Stara Gradiska
Stara Gradiska was the most notorious camp in the Jasenovac complex besides the main camp (Ciglana), mainly due to the crimes which were committed against women and children.
Camp staff, Antun Vrban, Nada Luburic, Maja Buzdon, Jozo Stojcic, and especially the commandant and former-friar Miroslav Filipovic-Majstorovic, were notorious both in Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska, for killing scores of inmates with his bare hands, women and children included.
Mutilated body of a man tortured and killed at Jasenovac
In in cellar 3 at Stara Gradiska, (known as the "Gagro Hotel"), starved inmates were first tortured and then slowly strangled to death by wire.
In the Dinko Sakic trial, witness Ivo Senjanovic recalled how people were locked there without food or water:
"The people were gradually dying. It was horrible to hear them cry for help."
The treatment of inmates was so horrific that on the night of August 29, 1942, bets were made among the prison guards as to who could liquidate the largest number of inmates. One of the guards, Petar Brzica reportedly cut the throats of 1,360 prisoners with a butcher knife. A gold watch, a silver service, a roasted suckling pig, and wine were among his rewards.
The type of knife used for cutting prisoners' throats became known as srbosjek translated as the "Serb-cutter". Because of his expertise with the sbosjek, Petar Brzica was dubbed "King of the Cut-throats".
The gate at Stara Gradiska
It is estimated that close to 600,000 (depending on who's statistics you agree with), mostly Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, were murdered at Jasenovac.
The number of Jewish victims was between twenty and twenty-five thousand, most of whom were murdered there up to August 1942, when deportation of the Croatian Jews to Auschwitz for extermination began.
Statistics for Romani victims are difficult to assess, as there are no firm estimates of their number in prewar Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The best estimates calculate the number of Romani victims at about 26,000, of whom between 8,000 and 15,000 perished in Jasenovac.
There are only loose estimates for the number of Croats murdered by the Ustaša. This group included political and religious opponents of the regime, both Catholic and Muslim. Between 5,000 and 12,000 Croats are believed to have died in Jasenovac.
An emaciated child at Stara Gradiska
In early April 1945, the partisans were fighting nearby Jasenovac and its subcamps, so the Ustase began eliminating traces of the camp, killing some of the inmates and transporting others to Lepoglava and from there to Jasenovac I.
The ultimate liquidation of the Camp was begun on April 20, when the last large group of women and children was executed. On April 22, 1945, under the leadership of Ante Vukotic, about 600 people armed with bricks, poles, hammers and other things, broke down the doors, shattered windows and ran out of the building. About 470 people were sick and unable to fight barehanded with the armed Ustaša, so they did not take part in the rebellion.
The 150 meter long path to the east gate of the camp was covered by the crossfire of the Ustaša machine guns, and many prisoners were killed there. A large number of them was killed on the wires of the camp. A hundred prisoners managed to break through the broken gate of the camp. Only 80 prisoners survived while 520 of them died in the first assault. The remaining 470 within the camp were later killed by the Ustaša.
Bodies of victims murdered at Jasenovac floating in the Sava river
Yugoslav Army forces entered the Stara Gradiska camp on April 23, and Jasenovac on May 2, 1945. Before leaving the camp, the Ustaša killed the remaining prisoners, blasted and destroyed the buildings, guard-houses, torture rooms, the "Picili Furnace" and the other structures. Upon entering the camp, the liberators found only ruins, soot, smoke, and dead bodies.
During the following months of 1945, the grounds of Jasenovac were thoroughly destroyed by forced laborers, composed of 200 to 600 Domobran soldiers captured by the Partisans, thereby making the area a labor camp. They leveled the camp to the ground and among other things dismantled a two-kilometer long, four-meter high wall that surrounded it.
The National Committee of Croatia for the investigation of the crimes of the occupation forces and their collaborators stated in its report of November 15, 1945 that 500,000-600,000 people were killed at Jasenovac.
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