Do not forget those exterminated in Croatia

Dear editor:

In response to the article “New attacks on Israel and Zionism may fuel campus anti-Semitism,” (by Sean Savage, JNS, in the Jan. 29, 2021 issue), it is important that Tammi Benjamin [co-founder and director of the California-based Amcha Initiative] teaches the way she does. She should also educate herself about the “Logor Jasenovac,” which occurred during the World War II occupation by the Ustase regime in today’s Croatia. There were about *700,000 to 750,000 Serbs, Jews and Gypsies exterminated in this camp during this heinous crime committed by the Roman Catholic Mafia in Rome. Therefore, it is self evident that the crazy pope in Rome was the highest commander in this mess.

Goran Klepic

Soquel, Calif.

Editor’s Note: This figure has been debated over the years. After the war, a figure of 700,000 reflected the “conventional wisdom.” Since 2002, the Museum of Victims of Genocide in Belgrade has no longer defended the figure of 700,000 to 1 million victims of the camp. In 2005, Dragan Cvetković, a researcher from the Museum, and a Croatian co-author published a book on wartime losses in the NDH which gave a figure of approximately 100,000 victims of Jasenovac. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., presently estimates that the Ustaša regime murdered between 77,000 and 99,000 people in Jasenovac between 1941 and 1945.

In his defense, Klepic responded to Heritage: I know that the number of those murdered in Logor Jasenovac was debated but I personally disagree with minimizing the number of the deaths in Jasenovac. My data analysis originates from a source of the Serbian government when I was researching this theme for a university expose, which I tried to uncover.