Jewish rights group urges Croatia to ban pro-Nazi book

Simon Wiesenthal Center says book by right-wing research group denies crimes committed by country’s Nazi-allied Ustasha regime

By AP 10 January 2019, 11:29 am

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Chief Nazi-hunter of the US-based Jewish rights group Simon Wiesenthal Center, Efraim Zuroff, during a conference in Jerusalem on January 26, 2017. (AFP/Thomas Coex)

ZAGREB, Croatia — A Jewish human rights group urged Croatian authorities on Wednesday to ban a book that denies crimes committed by Croatia’s World War II pro-Nazi regime.

Chief Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said in a statement that a book titled “the Jasenovac Lie Revealed” is being promoted in a Catholic church in Zagreb on January 16. The book, published by the right-wing Society for Research of the Threefold Jasenovac Camp, has multiple authors.

Zuroff said the book “denies that mass murders of Serbs, Jews, Roma and Croatian anti-fascists were carried out frequently in the notorious Jasenovac concentration camp.”

“These crimes are corroborated by historical documents, testimonies of survivors and the scholarly research of numerous reputable historians,” Zuroff said, adding that works like this “would immediately be banned in Germany and Austria, and rightfully so.”

A man looks at the World War II Jasenovac memorial camp model on April 26, 2015, during a ceremony to remember the tens of thousands who were killed by Croatia’s pro-Nazi regime. (AFP/Stringer)

According to history books, the Croatian Ustasha regime killed more than 83,000 Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascists at the camp between 1941 and 1945. Croatia’s right-wing nationalists claim the death toll was much lower.

The book says that Jasenovac was a labor camp for enemies of the regime, and that the real death camp was established by the victorious Yugoslav Communists after the war where Ustashas were killed.

Croatia’s center-right authorities have faced criticism for their alleged lack of resolve in preventing the resurgence of pro-Nazi sentiments in the European Union country.