The death camp at Jasenovac is now nothing but a leveled park area, with closed museum, locked bathrooms, vacant and dry fountain memorials. Just some maps on pedestals, explanations at ground level as to the mass graves beneath your feet, an old train on a track with bullet holes, used for transport. An occasional biker, a man on a mowing machine, a willow. All its memorabilia sent to Washington DC, the Holocaust Memorial.
That is a disservice to the people of Croatia. The memory is being erased.
A reminder this week of Jasenovac: the death of Dinko Savic at age 86, reportedin the New York Times 7/23/08. The article says that the camp was known as the "Auschwitz of the Balkans," yet is is abandoned. No tourists. Nobody. He used to ride in on a white horse, with black boots, black uniform, whip and machine gun. Say survivors. He fled to Argentina and lived there for 50 years, and not in hiding. He said in his last years he was "proud of what he had done and would gladly do it again." NYT.
He died in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, in Croatia serving a 20-year prison sentence. Crimes against humanity. He was found guilty, himself, of killing 2000 Serbs (Orthodox Christian, not Roman Catholic, and the Roman Church stood by, see post here on Cardinal Stepinac), Jews and Gypsies. Can we dare forget how they died? Withholding medical treatment, working ot death, hanging and leaving dangling in some cases until dead, if not immediately killed; personal shootings, including for smiling say some survivors; torture with blowtorch; starvation. When convicted, he laughed and clapped his hands.
The issue - proFascists - the numbers are exaggerated. Against - they are underestimated. But noone will exhume, in case the other side is proven right. Highest estimates of totals are in the hundreds of thousands. Lowest? Tens of thousands. So everybody go home and forget. There is not even a sign on the highway identifying it as a concentration camp.
Read more at ://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/466369, the same as appeared in the NYT; and ://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/08/08/03/0803reich_edit.html
