DODIK: NO GREATER TRAGEDY THAN A CHILD BECOMING TARGET OF MONSTERS

BANJA LUKA, JULY 18 /SRNA/ – President Milorad Dodik has stressed there is no greater tragedy than when a child becomes the target of monsters and criminals.

Ahead of the Day of Remembrance for Children Killed During the Genocide Against Serbs, Jews and Roma in the Independent State of Croatia /NDH/ from 1941 to 1945, which will be marked tomorrow in Gornji Jelovac, Dodik told SRNA that the years that have passed since those monstrous crimes against innocent souls mean nothing, because the Serb people do not count years, but rather interrupted childhoods, unspoken words, unfulfilled dreams, empty school desks and empty chairs in the homes of thousands of families.

"The killing of innocent children was a deliberate and systematic killing of the future. Their deaths are the deepest wounds that can never heal, wounds that nothing can cure - neither time nor new lives. The only 'crime' of those innocent children was that they bore Serb names and surnames, that they had a Serbian identity," Dodik pointed out.

He said that the silence left behind by these innocent children speaks louder and more powerfully than any words and serves as a warning that evil must never be forgotten, because if we forget, we become similar to the killers and perpetrators for whom innocent eyes and children's naive smiles meant nothing, and whose hands did not even tremble as they took their lives.

Dodik stressed that in Gornji Jelovac near Prijedor alone, in the summer of 1942, 75 children under the age of 14 were brutally killed without a single shot being fired, 75 young lives deprived of the chance to grow up, find joy, start families and leave their mark on the world.

"Their toys were replaced by silence, and their laughter and smiles by eternal sorrow and the silence of their loved ones. The only thing we can do is not forget them, ensure that their names do not fade away, and that every new generation knows about their ancestors, how and where they met their end. That is the least we owe them - remembrance, truth and respect," Dodik emphasized.

As long as they are remembered, he said, their cries will echo through time and demand only one thing, that it never happen again to anyone, and especially that children never become victims of such a dark idea of exterminating an entire people.

The Day of Remembrance for Children Killed During the Genocide Against Serbs, Jews and Roma in the NDH /1941–1945/ will be marked tomorrow at the Memorial Ossuary in the Macure hamlet, in the Prijedor settlement of Gornji Jelovac.

The event, designated as being of importance for Republika Srpska, is organized by the Republika Srpska Government Committee for the Preservation of the Tradition of Liberation Wars, at the initiative of President Dodik.

According to incomplete historical records, 74,642 children aged from newborns to 14 years old were brutally killed or died as victims of crimes in the NDH.