CONCENTRATION AND DEATH CAMPS IN NDH CONFERENCE BEGINS IN BELGRADE

BELGRADE, DECEMBER 4 /SRNA/ – The two-day International Scientific Conference "80 Years Since the Liberation of Jasenovac – A Case Study: Concentration and Death Camps in the Independent State of Croatia /NDH/", where historians and researchers from Republika Srpska, Serbia, the region, and the world will present papers in search of historical truth on a topic of exceptional national importance, has begun today in Belgrade.

Acting Director of the Genocide Victims Museum Bojan Arbutina says Jasenovac is a topic woven into the collective identity of the Serb people, emphasizing that the camp became a symbol of suffering and genocide committed by the NDH against the Serb people between 1941 and 1945.

"This is a subject it is important to discuss about in order to overcome all uncertainties, all historical speculations surrounding it, and to reach historical reality and bring it into our contemporary understanding, and to learn more," Arbutina said in his introductory address at the gathering in the Palace of Serbia.

The Chairman of the Executive Board of the Genocide Victims Museum , His Grace Bishop Jovan of Pakrac and Slavonia, says that in recent days Yad Vashem announced it had reached five million names out of the estimated six million Holocaust victims, therefore the priority task of the Museum of Genocide Victims in Belgrade is to collect scientific documentation from the territory of the former Yugoslavia regarding the horrors of the Second World War.

"In that regard, this conference, which is the part of an entire series of conferences, is aimed at discovering the truth," Bishop Jovan said, wishing the participants success in their work.

In the working sessions of the Conference, organised by the Museum of Genocide Victims and held today and tomorrow, experts who study Jasenovac and the genocide against Serbs in the NDH will present their research.

The conference is organised to mark the 80th anniversary of the breakout of the last Jasenovac inmates and the end of one of the deadliest camps in occupied Europe.