Serbian President Plans WWII Jasenovac Memorial with Bosnian Serbs
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Meeting in Belgrade. Photo: Instagram/buducnostsrbijeav.
Aleksandar Vucic announced on Wednesday that Serbia will fund the building of a memorial complex in Kozarska Dubica in Bosnia and Herzegovina in memory of those who died during WWII at the Jasenovac concentration camp, which was run by the Croatian fascist Ustasa movement.
Vucic said that it would be a joint project with Bosnia’s Serb-dominated Republika Srpska.
“We want all Serbs, wherever they live, to always be able to find a memorial in Republika Srpska that will clearly mark how much and how hard Serbs suffered and what the scale of the Jasenovac crime was, without falsifying history and hiding facts,” he told a press conference after meeting the Serb member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, Milorad Dodik, and representatives of Republika Srpska.
During WWII in the Independent State of Croatia, a Nazi satellite state, the over 83,000 Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascists died at the Ustasa-run Jasenovac camp between August 1941 and April 1945, according to a list of victims’ names compiled by the Jasenovac Memorial Centre.
Vucic did not mention whether the memorial would commemorate any of the other victims of the Jasenovac camp apart from Serbs.
He also announced that in October, “the first Serbian movie about Jasenovac” will be premiered, and said that he planned to ask internationally renowned Serbian director Emir Kusturica to make another film “of fantastic interest to the entire Serbian people”.
He said this new film would be mostly funded by the state, but he did not say what it would be about.
Vucic also announced that the governments of Serbia and Republika Srpska will establish a new, joint national holiday – the Day of Serbian Unity, Freedom and the National Flag.
He said the holiday would be marked on September 15, the day of a key military breakthrough during World War I.
