International Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorates the millions of people (Jews, Slavs, Roma/Gypsies, Greeks and others) who died in the Holocaust. It is also the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945. My friend Sanya Popovic’s Dad spent a day in Auschwitz before being transferred to Rawa Ruska. He then was forced on the 88 day long Death March to Bergen Belsen. By some miracle, he survived. On a related note, her Uncle Professor Popovitch was imprisoned in Dachau. This is a US Army video from May 5, 1945, of him describing his experiences in Dachau, education in England, and university professorship in Beograd
(2) Dr. Gideon Greif is one of the world’s best Holocaust historians. He is the author of “We Wept Without Tears: Testimonies of the Jewish Sonderkommando from Auschwitz”. The “sonderkommando“ were the “work units” of forced labor of Jews and others who had to dispose of gas chamber victims, often their family and friends.
(3) In 2018, Dr. Greif wrote “Jasenovac - Auschwitz of the Balkans”. Dr. Greif wrote that Jasenovac was worse than Auschwitz. The book is also available on Amazon. 20,000 to 25,000 Jews from the former Yugoslavia were sent to Auschwitz. One of those Jews may have been a Jewish friend of the family. My Dad told me a story of a Jewish friend of the family who visited in 1941 when he was 9 years old. Unfortunately, he never saw him again. He may have been 1 of the 20,000+ Jews from that part of Yugoslavia (or present day Croatia) and died Auschwitz. 80 to 90 percent of Jews from present day Croatia were killed in Auschwitz, Jasenovac, or elsewhere.
Through his extensive research, he discovered 800,000 Serbs and 40,000 Jews at Jasenovac. Dr. Greif noted that the Ustasha had “57 different ways of killing the victims.” The Ustasha designed weapons like the “Serb cutter” to cut throats and unborn babies out of the wombs of pregnant women.
(4) I want to thank my nephew Elijah Dillenbeck for finding the name of a Stevo Djurdjevich in Barry Lituchy’s “Jasenovac And The Holocaust in Yugoslavia”. It was my father’s name. There was another Djurdjevich family not far from where Dad grew up. The other Stevo Djurdjevich was one of the 840,000 who died at Jasenovac.
7 members of Dad’s family died during WWII. Dad was lucky to escape a Nazi and Croatian Ustasha firing squad in 1943 when he was 11 years old. A Partizan brigade came in the nick of time.
Bill Dorich wrote “Jasenovac Then and Now: A Conspiracy of Silence”. It provides more background on the third largest concentration camp in WWII.
Most people don’t know about Jasenovac as only about 80 people out of 840,000 survived. For instance, Egon Berger was a Croatian Jew who spent and wrote 44 Months in Jasenovac.
“German massacres will enter the annals of history, but the Ustase passed them. While the Germans poisoned their victims, and then burned them, the Ustase tossed live humans into the fire.” (Berger, page 30)
Political considerations played a role in the downplaying or outright blackout of about Jasenovac. President Truman was reluctant to upset Partisan leader Marshall Tito in the battle against Joseph Stalin. Therefore, Ante Pavelic was never brought to account for his crimes against humanity. University of South Carolina Professor Robert McCormick wrote “Croatia Under Ante Pavelic: America, the Ustashe and Croatian Genocide” (2014).
His testimony began after a brief break at the 27-28 minute mark.
Though fewer people were killed at Jasenovac than Auschwitz, the Ustasha were more brutal than their Nazi allies. For instance, Nazi General Edmund Glaise von Horstenau supervised Jasenovac. He was so horrified by the Ustasha brutality and compared it to Hell in Dante’s “Inferno”. General Horstenau compared Jasenovac to the Hell in Dante’s “Interno”. (Lituchy)
Jews had to wear yellow badges with the Star of David often along with the letter Z during the Holocaust.
(5) I also wanted to use the opportunity honor Cyndy Wolfenbarger’s Dad. He was on the Saint Louis, a ship that FDR turned away from the US. He was a little boy at the time but somehow survived.
(6) I want to thank Adam Kamlet for sharing stories of his family in the Shoah. He recently shared a story of Marcel Marceau’s role in saving at least 70 children in the French Resistance. Mr. Marceau’s uncle saved 350 children. May their memories be a blessing.
(7) Serbian Remembrance of the Holocaust : While Jews wore yellow badges with the Star of David, Serbs wore “P” for Pravoslavac or Orthodox Christian. The yellow badge flag was flown in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, to honor Holocaust victims.
(8) Croatian Denial and even Celebration of the Holocaust : Sadly, there are some who diminish or even celebrate the Holocaust. The present day Croatia regime continuing to be in denial about its role in WWII. It permeates throughout all levels of society including the Croatian National Football (Soccer) Team’s celebration of its run to second place in the FIFA World Cup Final in 2018.
Dr. Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said Modric should have received a red card for inviting Perkovic to perform. Perkovic’s stage name is “Thompson” after the machine gun used to kill Serbs in the fight for Croatian independence in the 1990s.
This Foreign Policy article has more information about Thompson, Croatian government, and offspring of past Ustasha
officials from WWII.
In the middle of this photo, a Croatian fan with a Croatian checkboard tattoo on his right forearm is making a Nazi
salute during a substitution in the Croatia - Nigeria match in June 2018. The photo is below.
The video is here.
On a final soccer note, I attended the 2014 World Cup Final between Germany and Argentina at the Maracana in Rio.
I attended the match with some German and Brasilian friends and sat next to a section of Argentina fans. It was an
excellent match that Germany won 1-0 with NO Nazi salutes NOR any politics.
Germany has learned the lesson of the Holocaust while Croatia has yet to do so. #NeverForget
Bibliography
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300211979/we-wept-without-tears
http://www.wiesenthal.com/about/news/wiesenthal-center-slams-9.html
Avro Manhattan was the one of the world’s leading experts on the Catholic Church. In addition to those killed at Jasenovac and elsewhere
in Croatia and Bosnia, 244,000 Orthodox Serbs were converted to Catholicism as of May 8, 1944, according to correspondence between Archbishop Stepinac and Pope Pius XII according to Mr. Manhattan. It was part of the Ustasha policy to convert a third, kill a third, and expel the other third of Serbs.
