LOZO: FOR SERBS, 1941 WAS A YEAR OF BIBLICAL CHARACTER!

BANJA LUKA, APRIL 22 /SRNA/ - Historian Predrag Lozo pointed out that for Serbs, 1941 was a year of a biblical character.

Lozo emphasized that it primarily refers to confronting the attempt of complete destruction of Serbs in the territory of the Independent State of Croatia /NDH/ and then to the cruel occupation reprisals and dismemberment of Serbia.

"The genocide against Serbs in the NDH is one of those historical events that have fundamentally influenced our current identity, historical development, and understanding of the duration and our own existence," said Lozo.

He stated that it is well known in science that the preparation of the genocide against the Serbs was accomplished by the ideology of Croatian rightism and the actions of the Roman Catholic Church, united in the idea of Croatian state and historical law, that is, in the concept of one political nation, which emerged in Croatian circles in the mid-19th century, although the historical roots of intolerance are much deeper.

Lozo stated that this led to the dehumanization of Serbs as members of the target group. The commission of genocide and the creation of an ethnically pure Croatian state, he says, were planned even before the start of World War II.

According to him, the leaders of the Ustasha movement, while still in exile abroad, considered forms of mass violence such as the genocide against the Armenians by Turkey, in order to implement similar methods against the Serbs, and later during the war they continued their consultations with their Nazi partners and role models.

He said that the expulsion and Catholicization of Serbs was only one part of a project for which the conditions were ripe at the beginning of World War II and the formation of the NDH.

"The most drastic, most obvious part of the effort, in addition to individual and mass murders, also involved the establishment of a large number of camps. According to some historians, 24 camps and numerous places for detention and transports operated in the NDH.

"The two largest death camp systems were Gospić-Jadovno-Pag, which operated from April and May 1941 until August 15, 1941, and the Jasenovac camp system, which operated from the end of August 1941 until April 22, 1945, when the last group of Jasenovac inmates broke out," Lozo recalled.

According to Lozo, most Serbs were killed at local execution sites across the country, while large systems of camps became a symbol of the overall suffering in the NDH.

He pointed out that the genocide was approved and managed by the state from the very beginning.

"The NDH used the entire bureaucratic, military, police, transport and other infrastructure. In addition to the numerous perpetrators, the vast majority supported these crimes, and there were also those who watched it all and did nothing to prevent the crime. Some, a small number, who condemned it ended up in Jasenovac," explained Lozo.

He pointed out that one of the characteristics of the genocide in the NDH was the camps for children, but also the particularly cruel nature of the commission of the crime: throwing victims into karst pits in Lika, Dalmatia and Herzegovina, as well as in other areas.

What was also characteristic of the monstrosity of the crime, he says, was "direct contact between the perpetrator and the victim," a difficult-to-explain dose of sadism: slaughter, murders with sledgehammers and other blunt objects, hangings...

To all this, he added, the Serbian people, faced with complete destruction, responded with a mass uprising against the NDH and an anti-occupation movement that had only one goal - to survive.

Only later was that movement divided into communist-revolutionary and royalist, which opened the way for a harsh civil war and new losses among the Serbian people.