High Representative Christian Schmidt paid respect to Jasenovac victims of fascist terror at Donja Gradina memorial site.
“Remembering and honoring victims and survivors is our eternal task. We must never forget where inhuman ideologies and racism lead.”
The Jasenovac camp complex consisted of five detention facilities established between August 1941 and February 1942 by the authorities of the so-called Independent State of Croatia. As Germany and its Axis allies invaded and dismembered Yugoslavia in April 1941, the Germans and the Italians endorsed the proclamation of the so-called Independent State of Croatia by the fanatically nationalist, fascist, separatist, and terrorist Ustaša organization on April 10, 1941.
Between its establishment in 1941 and its evacuation in April 1945, Croat authorities murdered thousands of people at Jasenovac. Among the victims were: between 45,000 and 52,000 Serb residents of the so-called Independent State of Croatia, between 12,000 and 20,000 Jews, between 15,000 and 20,000 Roma (Gypsies) and between 5,000 and 12,000 ethnic Croats and Muslims, who were political opponents of the regime.
The Croat authorities murdered between 320,000 and 340,000 ethnic Serb residents of Croatia and Bosnia during the period of Ustaša rule; more than 30,000 Croatian Jews were killed either in Croatia or at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
