CROATIA CONTINUES TO DENY CAMPS FOR SERB CHILDREN

BELGRADE, JULY 14 /SRNA/ – Miodrag Linta, president of the Association of Serbs from the Region, said that a process of rehabilitating the Ustasha regime and the fascist-era Independent State of Croatia /NDH/ is continuing in present-day Croatia.

"One of many examples is the disgraceful denial by senior figures of the Catholic Church in Croatia, as well as much of the Croatian public, that camps for children existed in Jastrebarsko and Sisak during the Second World War. Instead, they claim these were merely reception centers," Linta said in a statement marking the feast day of the Holy Child Martyrs of Jastrebarsko and Sisak, commemorated by the Serbian Orthodox Church as victims of the genocide against Serbs in the NDH.

Linta stressed that testimony from those who liberated the Jastrebarsko camp, along with the diary of Diana Budisavljević, clearly demonstrated that it had been a camp rather than a reception center, according to a statement from the Association of Serbs from the Region.

He also cited Croatian historian Nataša Mataušić, who wrote in her doctoral dissertation, Diana Budisavljević and the Civilian Rescue Operation for Children Victims of the Ustasha Regime, that the facilities were Ustasha camps for Serb children rather than "reception centers."

Linta said the suffering of Serb children in the concentration camps for children at Sisak and Jastrebarsko during the NDH must never be forgotten or forgiven.

The children's camp at Jastrebarsko was established in July 1942. According to the State Commission for Investigating Crimes Committed by the Occupiers and Their Collaborators of the People's Republic of Croatia, 3,336 children, most of them from the Kozara region, passed through the camp, while at least 768 officially died there within less than six weeks.

Researcher Dragoje Lukić gave a higher estimate, stating that more than 1,000 children perished.

The Jastrebarsko camp was closed after it was captured on Aug. 26, 1942, by the Fourth Kordun Brigade of the Yugoslav Partisan Army.

The children's camp at Sisak was opened on Aug. 3, 1942, when around 1,300 children were transferred there from the Mlaka and Stara Gradiška camps.

Between August and the end of October 1942, more than 7,000 Serb children, mainly from Kozara but also from Banija, Lika, Kordun and Slavonia, were brought to Sisak.

From Aug. 3, 1942, until the camp ceased operations on Jan. 8, 1943, around 2,000 Serb children, ranging in age from infancy to 15 years, lost their lives there.

By a decision of the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church in 2022, these children were canonized as saints, and the Holy Child Martyrs of Jastrebarsko and Sisak are commemorated each year on July 13.