Despite historical controversy, a monument commemorating the victims of the Jasenovac concentration camp was placed recently at the Holocaust Memorial Park in Brooklyn. The monument, a project by Jasenovac Research Institute, was part of the 60th Anniversary of the Jasenovac liberation. It took three years for the Institute, founded in 1988, to get a permission from New York authorities to place the monument in the City.

The monument, however, gained mixed reactions from the Jewish, Croatian and Serbian communities in the New York area.

When the Institute first requested that the monument should have an inscription, saying “Between 350 and 750 thousand people were killed in Jasenovac,” the New York Board for Holocaust asked for its removal, and instead changed the inscription on the monument to “Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in Jasenovac.”

Serbians, along with some Jews, in New York City advocated for what they feel an important inscription: “Jasenovac – from July 1941 to May 1945 – hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Romas, as well as anti-fascists of different ethnicities, were killed in Jasenovac under Ustase regime.” [Ustase was Croatian far-right organization put in charge of the Independent State of Croatia 194. It was notorious for its oppressive policies towards the Serbs, Jewish and Roma, and was subsequently expelled by the communist Yugoslav partisan and the Red army in 1945 – Editor’s note].

Also, in the beginning of April, the National Federation of Croatian Americans (NFCA) filed protests with New York authorities, claiming the number of victims was exaggerated. In a protest letter, John Kraljic, of NFCA, said that no respected historian has found the number of victims in Jasenovac concentration camp to be over 100,000.

Kraljic said that by falsifying the number of victims, the Institute was taking sides with the Greater Serbia and portraying Croats as a genocidal nation.

The goal of the Institute, Kraljic added, was to hide the collaboration of Serbian Chetniks with the Nazi Regime, as well as the fact that many Croats actively fought the Nazis, thereby harming Croatia’s application for admittance into the European Union.

Chetniks were an organization of Yugoslavs (mostly Serbs) formed to support the Kingdon of Yugoslavia during World War II. The name is derived from the Serbian word četa, which means “company” (of about 100 men).

The Institute, states on its Web site that the recent turmoil in the Balkans was due to the genocide of Serbs during World War II. Ignoring the tragedy of Jasenovac, the Institute added, caused the escalation of fascism and dehumanization of the Serbs.

But experts disagree on the exact number of victims. For example, the website for the Museum of Holocaust in Washington, D.C., states that between 56,000 and 97,000 people were killed in Jasenovac concentration camp.

During the opening of the monument on April 17, at the Holocaust Memorial Park in Brooklyn, a Serbian Orthodox priest and some members of the Institute and Jasenovac survivors were present, but there were no members of the Croatian consulate or Croatian community.

Branislav Lucic, president of the Jasenovac Research Institute, said that they were not sure if the monument would arrive on time, so they did not have time to invite members of Croatian community. But he said that the Institute will invite members of the Croatian community next year.

Asked why does the monument state that hundreds of thousands of people were killed in Jasenovac concentration camp when some historians say that is inaccurate, Lucic said that the number of victims in Jasenovac could be debated for long time.

Near the central monument honoring all Jewish victims of the Holocaust at the Holocaust Memorial Park, there are 20 smaller monuments with lists of names and concentration camps where members of Jewish communities in Europe were tortured and executed. Pictures of people massacred in Jasenovac are also displayed, and the Institute was giving out materials about the friendship between Ante Pavelic – leader of the Ustase regime – and Adolf Hitler, a call for compensation for victims of the Croatian state, and about stopping Croatia from entering the European Union until the events in Jasenovac are not resolved.