engleski

Jasenovac Uses and Misuses of the Past. Manipulation and Historical Revisionism Surrounding the Biggest WWII Camp in the Balkans

In this chapter we analyze the symbolic importance of Jasenovac Camp, as well as strategies used to represent the scale of its tragedy. In the context of the former Yugoslavia, Jasenovac stands as a pars- pro-toto of all horrors committed during World War II in the territories of the Independent State of Croatia. In the period shortly before the dissolution of Yugoslavia, Jasenovac received additional symbolic meanings, primarily under the influence of nationalist discourse and war propaganda. The tragedy of Jasenovac, just as many other horrors of World War II, escapes full comprehension and representation. We detect three main strategies employed to deal with the significance and scale of that tragedy: Naming, Counting, and Describing. Those three strategies are at the heart of historical contestations over Jasenovac in Croatia and Serbia. Controversies over naming are manifested in very divergent concepts attributed to Jasenovac. Counting is related to disputes over the total number of victims that varied from several thousand to over a million. Describing comprises battles over depictions of the camp conditions – from the “most extreme concentration camp in Europe” to a place with decent living conditions and a pronounced cultural life. It is suggested that awareness of these strategies is an important precondition for fact- based historical dialogue.

Jasenovac camp, historical manipulations, historical revisionism, memory politics, historical dialogue

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