Serbian president unveils Jasenovac victims memorial

TANJUG/JADRANKA ILIĆ

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic unveiled a memorial plaque to the victims of the Croatian World War 2 Jasenovac death camp at the site of the Staro Sajmiste (Lager Semlin) camp on Thursday.

The plaque was unveiled on the banks of the Sava river in Belgrade which has been named the Shore of the Jasenovac Victims by the Belgrade city authorities. The Staro Sajmiste camp was on the side of the river governed by the Nazi puppet Independent State of Croatia whose troops guarded the camp. The death camp was intended for Jews and was one of the first places in which the Nazis used gas trucks to kill people. Jasenovac was a camp mainly for Serbs from Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina who were executed brutally by Ustashi (Croatian fascist paramilitary formation).

Vucic told the unveiling ceremony that Belgrade had a death camp in the Banjica suburb and Staro Sajmiste “unlike other execution sites which were kept hidden”. He said that the Jasenovac death camp was “one of the most horrifying execution sites” in the former Yugoslavia during WW 2 and recalled that the bodies of the people killed there were thrown in the Sava and washed up where the memorial plaque was placed.

The Serbian President said that “mankind does not have the right to a third world war”. “Serbia wants peace and Serbia wants life for itself and all others at this difficult time which has affected Europe and the world,” he said and added that “in future we have to preserve the peace to avoid ever paying for anything with lives”.

Serbia observes its National Holocaust, WWII Genocide and other Fascist Crimes Victims’ Remembrance Day on April 22.