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Chris Deliso of Balkanalysis points out the latest travesty of the Western media: 59,000 stories on Auschwitz, three on Jasenovac. As if the third-largest death camp in Nazi-occupied Europe simply never existed. Franjo Tudjman certainly thought so, and it appears the current Croatian leadership shares his “historical” perspective.
Contemporary German estimates of Serbs murdered by the Ustasha (in Jasenovac and elsewhere) ranged as high as 750,000. Wiesenthal center uses the number of 600,000. Serbian researchers have spoken of up to 700,000 victims. Modern revisionists, Croat and otherwise, talk of 30-100,000, at most. Among them is the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which has given far more press to “genocides” supposedly committed by Serbs the 1990s.
For genocide to happen, there must be a clear genocidal intent. There is no doubt whatsoever that the Ustasha “Independent State of Croatia” (NDH) had precisely such an intent. The policy of “Kill a third, expel a third, convert a third” targeted almost 2 million Serbs who in 1941 lived in the territory claimed by the NDH (most of today’s Croatia and Bosnia). Jews and Romany (“gypsies”) were exterminated alongside the Serbs, but the “Eastern schismatics” were clearly the Ustasha priority target. Parks and public transportation in Zagreb forbid entry, in very deliberate order, to “Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and dogs.”
The exact number of victims needs to be established not to argue whether the genocide happened – because it demonstrably has – but as a historical fact. Not knowing the exact number of victims only invites manipulation, whether from those who seek to minimize the crime or blow it out of proportion.
Manipulation is the key to understanding why Auschwitz was given so much coverage, and Jasenovac almost none. The mass murder of Jews at the hands of Hitler’s Reich has been hijacked by the American Empire as an argument for “humanitarian intervention” worldwide (e.g. Bosnia, Kosovo). The mass murder of Serbs at the hands of the Ustasha, with the active involvement of the Catholic Church, does not fit into the carefully crafted and nurtured image of Serbs as evil murderers, and Croats, “Bosnians” and Albanians as their innocent victims.
This is why the commemoration of Auschwitz – while appropriate and necessary – has also been turned into a political spectacle, while the commemoration of Jasenovac has been shoved down the Memory Hole. This is why one should expect a media circus this July, on the 10th anniversary of the “genocide” in Srebrenica. In our Brave New World, it’s only some genocides – and some victims – that matter.
Originally published on 2005-04-20
Source: Gray Falcon
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