The Ustasha camp in Jasenovac is a sensitive historical theme, which still provokes strong political conflicts more than 70 years after the closure of the camp. During the time of the second Yugoslavia, the camp was made into a myth and one of the main levers for disciplining the society of the time. The Communist Party imposed the number of 700,000 victims and an exaggerated view of the alleged crimes and methods of killing inmates. The aim was to present itself as sole guarantor of security, because in the case of its "reigning-in", the fratricidal war would happen again, with Jasenovac as its main symbol. Before 1990, an attempt to point out the absurdity of the 700,000 alleged victims of Jasenovac entailed going to prison or compulsory psychiatric treatment. The documents referenced in this book indicate the need to continue with research of the Jasenovac camp and that in a democratic atmosphere, as far as possible, its realistic historical picture may be reached.

This book presents state-of-the-art discussions around the concentration camp Jasenovac. Initially one of the largest camps of the Second World War, Jasenovac became a symbol of supra-national unity during the Yugoslav period and in the 1990s re-emerged as a contested symbol of narrational victimhood. By analyzing some of the most controversial topics related to the Second World War in south-eastern Europe – the Holocaust, the genocide of Serbs and Roma, the issues of political prisoners and state-sponsored crimes, censorship during Communist Yugoslavia, the use of memory in war propaganda, and representation of tragedies in museums and art – the book allows for a greater understanding of the development of intergroup violence in the former Yugoslavia. It will be of interest to scholars and students of history, genocide studies, memory studies, and sociology as well as professionals working in the field of conflict resolution and reconciliation.

Pt. I (pp. 9-233) is a response to Milan Bulajić's "'Jasenovacki mit' Franje Tudmana" (1994). Pt. II (pp. 237-478) is a reply to Bulajić's response to part I. Contests the widely accepted estimate of the number of victims at Jasenovac - ca. 600-700,000. Affirms that Jasenovac was a labor camp, and that the bulk of its victims were Serbian Chetnik prisoners and postwar Croatian prisoners held by Tito. Asserts that the main sites of the perpetration of the genocide of Yugoslavia's Jews were Sajmište (near Belgrade) and other Serbian camps. States that Bulajić wrote his book in order to slander the Croats and brand them as a genocidal nation, while it is the Serbs themselves who were always antisemitic and genocidal.

In The Death Camps of Croatia, Raphael Israeli shows that throughout Yugoslavia during World War II, anti-semitism was both deeply rooted and widespread. This book traces the circumstances and the historical context in which the pro-Nazi Ustasha state, encompassing Croatia and Bosnia, erected the Jadovno and Jasenovac death camps. Israeli distills fact and historical record from accusation and grievance, noting that seventy years later, the gap in research and the collection of data, memoirs, and oral histories has become almost irreparable. This volume meets the challenge, basing its conclusions on evidence from participants from the period. The battle between the Serbs and the Croats is not likely to be settled any time soon. Both sides have accused the other of the wrongdoings that everyone knows occurred. While the German Nazis, Croat Ustasha, Serbian collaborators, Cetnicks, and Bosnian Hanjar recruits are often seen as the wrongdoers, there were individuals who helped the Jews, hid them at great risk, and enabled them to survive. These people absorbed the Jews in their own ranks, and gave them the means to fight; they were the only people who helped the Jews. This volume is not about judging one side or the other; it is about acknowledging the evil all sides inflicted upon the Jewish minority in their midst. Serbs, Muslims, and Croats continue to dominate the ex-Yugoslavian scene. It has been their arena of battle for centuries, while the flourishing Jewish minority culture in that area has all but come to a historical standstill and has almost completely vanished. Yet the struggle over the historical record continues.

Balkan Holocausts? compares and contrasts Serbian and Croatian propaganda from 1986 to 1999, analyzing each group's contemporary interpretations of history and current events. It offers a detailed discussion of holocaust imagery and the history of victim-centered writing in nationalism theory, including the links between the comparative genocide debate, the so-called holocaust industry, and Serbian and Croatian nationalism. No studies on Yugoslavia have thus far devoted significant space to such analysis.

The true story of a boys experiences in the Jasenovac concentration camp in World War IIs Nazi puppet state of Croatia. Hidden history, unknown to Western audiences, the Jasenovac concentration camp, the so-called Balkan Auschwitz, was a place of torture and death for hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies.

After Hitler brought Ante Pavelic to power in 1941, Pavelic created 34 "summary" courts throughout Croatia. He empowered every Croatian to arrest and kill Serbians without being charged with a crime. Any Croat could sit on these "courts," including former convicts who issued arrest warrants and passed out death sentences. Mobile courts roamed the countryside in which Serbs were arrested, tried, convicted and hanged-within hours of their capture. Numerous photographs of this period show thousands of victims hanging from trees and lamp posts throughout Croatia and Bosnia. Not a single person was brought to justice for these crimes against humanity. While the crimes of Jasenovac have finally, after 55 years, become the subject of discussion at an American college, it is paramount that we do not over-emphasize Jasenovac, as the vast majority of Serbian victims in the Holocaust were eliminated without being prisoners of any death camp, and were spared the grotesque deaths at camps like Jasenovac where victims were bludgeoned to death to save bullets, or worse, slowly dismembered to the pleasure of their tormentors.This book is the presentation of William Dorich at the First International Conference and Exhibition on the Jasenovac Concentration Camp sponsored by the Holocaust Resource Center at Kingsborough Community College, C.U.N.Y., New York. Its 60 pages reveal first person testimonies of some of the worse crimes of the 20th century including a partial list of 430 Roman Catholic priests who participated in the slaughters of tens of thousands of Serbs, then fled to Argentina with false passports created inside the "Vatican Ratline."