Newsgroups: soc.history,soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: <none>
From: stojanov@husc10.harvard.edu (Milan Stojanovic)
Date: 12 Aug 92 20:31:59 EDT
Organization: Harvard University Science Center

Disclaimer: I am not producing this text because I agree with it, or take it
as a truthfull. Just to paint Pres. Tudjman in a correct light. Once again,
this pres. Tudjman's text is in complete disaccord with what was taught
in ex-Yugoslavia, and represent an attempt to revise the tragic situation
in Jasenovac. 


So let us continue.  In the part I, we finished with the 
testimony, " fairly true" one, as Dr. Tudjman would say and
"we might even say ( mogli bi smo reci) " anti-semitic.
After this testimony Pres. Tudjman produces the following
anti-semitic text as a back up:

"Wastelands of Historical Reality", by Dr. Franjo Tudjman,1989
Translation starts.  My additions are marked by []
p. 318


Ante  Ciliga,  onetime member of the Politburo of  the  Central
Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, on the basis of his
personal experience in an Ustashi camp and latter on in the
Jasenovac camp for more than one year, from December 14, 1941 to
December 31, 1942, fills in the above account and other similar
testimonies. He could also follow what was happening during his
soldiering in Zagreb up to the summer of 1944. In his recollections
he compared this most notorious Pavelic camp and the Stalin camps
in Siberia through which he also passed. But from his Marxist
standpoint he was particularly concerned with the problem of the
behavior of  Jews  in camps. *494*

[ref. 494. Ante Ciliga, Sam kroz Europu u ratu, Rim, 1978, 217-346 i d
translation: Alone through Europe in War, Ante Ciliga]


				Although the  Jasenovac  camp was
organized according to German models, the barracks having even been
brought from Germany, its main ``originality'' was precisely in the
position  and  role  of  the  Jews. ``In the  Jasenovac  camp  the
management was in the hands of the Jews, that is, they were the
internal camp management''. The Ustashi camp commander appointed
only the camp supervisor of the inmates and the latter chose his
own associates and these down the line their ``group chiefs for
other groups of tens or hundreds of inmates''. All of them ``from the
highest to the lowest''  were Jews, ``except in rare instances''. This
system was against the official anti-Semitism of the Pavelic regime
as required by Hitler. And this happened because ``in its origins
Pavelic's party was philo-Semitic, precisely the Jewish Party among
the Croats'', because the Jews were ``in Croatia the least important
or dangerous enemy''. Because ``the enemy number one were the Serbs
and the enemy number two were the Communists''. This conclusion was
arrived at by the Germans themselves as is seen in the above
mentioned report to the effect that the Jewish question had finally
been solved according to the German guidelines only in Serbia but
not also in the NDH because there they had the protection of the
Catholic church and the Government.*496*

[ref. 496.: Compare R. Hilberg, N. Levin, B. Krizman. Comment MNS:
I have skipped ref. 495 that is same as 494 }

The participation of Jews in the Jasenovac liquidation of Gypsies
became apparent particularly in the so-called affair of the Gypsy
gold (1942). ``The liquidation command in Gradina -- writes Ciliga --
was also entrusted to a Jewish group'' and as the Jews were in
charge of the storehouses where the goods of those liquidated were
placed they obtained  large quantity of gold coins that had been
sown into the cloths of those killed. In order to conceal the coins
outside the camp (``for better times''), the Jews ``interested'' a
lieutenant among  the Ustashi who was  a brother of  the camp
commander. As one of the members involved  in the management
informed Luburic about this undertaking, the Ustashi lieutenant and
5 Jews were executed in front of all the inmate and the new
internal camp official who had revealed this theft was appointed to
that post. On another occasion four men were killed for selling
camp merchandize including two Ustashi guards who helped the Jewish
warehouse attendant to send the stolen goods outside the camp.
These cases point to the links between the camp and the Ustashi
management which had to undertake drastic measures in order to
preserve the ``purity'' of its ranks. But in the camp and especially
among the Jews the ``general norm was to report such activities to
the Ustashi if this could be useful''. After the liquidation of the
Jewish group (D) because of the gold, ``the Gypsies were then formed
into groups of killers in Gradina''. ``They were given special food
with wine'', until their turn came. 
[Translators skipped a passage about comparison of Gulags and 
Jasenovac and about relationship of the ustashe and chetnicks ]

p. 320
The explanation for the Jewish behavior who ``jealously kept the
monopoly of the management inside the camp and took the initiative
in provoking not only individual but also mass slaughters of the
non-Jews, Communists, partisans and Serbs'', was made by Ciliga in
view of the specific features of the Jewish religion and mentality.
``The Old Testament hardness and unreasonableness, Moses' double
yardstick, two kinds of regulations on the same matter and act,
according to whether it referred to Jews or non-Jews and finally
Moses' Commandments...: God orders you to exterminate others and take
their  place  because  you  are  the  chosen  people'', all  these
principles in one way or another ``govern the whole group'' and lead to
their ruthless dominant self-confidence and relentlessness: ``You
kill others... to save yourself and your group''. More intelligent
and educated on the average than the others ``the Jews carried out
this mutual extermination more intelligently and farsightedly to
their own benefit''. From their point of view this was ``justified
and moral''. Moses'  monotheism and the principle of the chosen
people led to the Jews being at the same time the most ``closed'' and
``most  universal''  nation among  mankind.   Universalism and
internationalism  is only  one  of  Moses' aspects  of  Jewish
nationalism.  In Jasenovac also ``it was not  the non-Jews who
separated themselves from the Jews but exactly the opposite, the
Jews proclaimed themselves to be a chosen people''. They think that
``as  a chosen  people  they  could  do  what  others  could  not
do...imagining that in this way they were more intelligent than all
the others and that they would be able to outwit all the other
peoples in the world''. And due to this the ``Jasenovac -- mutatis
mutandis is the world history of Jewry for over two thousand
years''. The Jews provoke envy and hatred but actually they are ``the
unhappiest nation in the world'', always victims of ``their own and
others'  ambitions'',  and whoever tries  to  show that  they are
themselves their own source of tragedy is ranked among the
anti-Semites and the object of hatred of the Jews.

It transpires from Ciliga's account that the Jews held in their
hands the inmates management of the camp up to 1944  by which time
there were three Jewish camp officials (Diamantstein, Spiller and
Wiener), and they were followed by two Croat Communists (R. Vlah
and V. Bornemisa). These changes allegedly came about because of
changes in the Ustashi policy under new conditions of way. (p. 320)

translated by: Vida Jankovic

**********************************************************************

And this is it.  There are no more descriptions of the Jasenovac camp
and what was done ther ( at least not that I have seen). 

Regards,

Newsgroups: soc.history