Auschwitz Of The Balkans Was In Serbia, Not Croatia!

Jews rounded up in Belgrade, Serbia 1941 Photo: National Archives Germany

Serbia continues playing a victim of WWII killings, it now shows a depraved desire to add Serbs killed in WWII to the Holocaust victim numbers even though it itself implemented the worst possible degree of the Holocaust – a state free of Jews!  It mass murdered others during WWII, it perpetrated genocide and ethnic cleansing in 1990’s in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina! It still has “friends” around the world that will help it promote lies and half-truths in order to conceal its own crimes against humanity both historical and 20th century ones.

Serbian Nazi fascists worked closely with German Nazi officials in making Belgrade the first ‘Judenfrei’ city of Europe by mid-1942. Serbian leader Milan Nedic made an official visit to Adolf Hitler on 19 September 1943, advancing the idea that Serbia is no place for Jews and thanking ‘Führer’ for his decision to exterminate Jewish people in Europe. And they did – between 90 and 94% of Serbia’s Jews were exterminated in various concentration camps across Serbia.

Adolf Hitler demanded of Ante Pavelic of Independent State of Croatia to make Croatia Jew-Free (Judenfrei) – Pavelic rejected and Croatia was never on the Jew-Free path even if it did have racial laws, as did almost every country in Europe then and beyond.

Gideon Greif, the author of the book “Jasenovac – the Auschwitz of the Balkans” evidently commissioned by Serbia’s government is just another link to the anti-Croatian propaganda chain coming out of Serbia, spreading around the world like a foul stench of hatred padded with Serbian nationalistic platform of Greater Serbia (examples from recent past of such propaganda include the Serbian exhibition January 2018 in New York ‘The Right Not to Forget’, then January 2021 the movies ‘Dara of Jasenovac’…)

It is yet another notch in the Serbian chain of attempts to include Serbs killed in WWII into the Holocaust numbers, into the very heart of the Holocaust, the extermination of Jews in which, by the way, Serbs participated to the point of achieving a Jew-Free Serbia by mid-1942! Like no other state of former Yugoslavia or indeed Eastern Europe!

Gideon Greif has no problems whatsoever publishing numbers of victims in WWII Jasenovac Camp in Croatia that not only have no foundation in truth, in factual research (he also may belong to those who will call any such research “revisionism” because such research would prove them as liars!), that are exaggerated to ludicrous and physically impossible numbers, that obviously serve only the Serb and communist Yugoslavia agenda, which was to place the blame of the Holocaust in former Yugoslavia upon Croatia so that the Yugoslav communists largely led by Serbs could say they “liberated” Croatia in 1945, even though he holds some positions of a University Professor around the world! Gideon Greif in his decision to call Jasenovac the “Auschwitz of the Balkans” does not concern himself with a thorough comparison of the numbers or percentages of Jews and others who actually perished in Jasenovac with the numbers or percentages of Jews and others who actually perished in the concentration camps of WWII Serbia or, if you like, concentration camps across Yugoslavia. Perhaps because he would have to conclude that Serbia, not Croatia, would take the lead in Jew-Free pursuits and the percentage of native Jews exterminated. Had Greif studied the entire Yugoslavia, without giving the fabricated numbers of victims any importance, he would realise that the “Auschwitz of the Balkans” was actually in Serbia and not Croatia. After all, Serbia with its numerous concentration camps was “proudly” Jew-Free and Croatia was not, nor did it want to be.

In this, Greif constantly refers to the WWII “so-called Independent State of Croatia” to presumably give himself some sort of justification (not that he appears as a person who seeks justification in these matters) for not addressing WWII Yugoslavia as a whole in his writings. However, the fact is that Croatia did declare itself independent in April 1941, but it was not fully internationally recognised as an independent or sovereign state. The reality was that a section of Croatian people fought for Croatian independence during WWII (and did not succeed) and a section of Croatian people, joined by the Serbs, fought to keep Croatia within the Yugoslav federation (and succeeded). Hence, when addressing the Holocaust in Croatia one must also address the Holocaust in Yugoslavia and all its States in order to give the history a deserved place in truth and facts.

Gideon Greif in this book panders to the Serbian pursuit of depravity whereby the Serbs constantly lie to the world that 500,000, or more, Serbs were murdered in WWII Jasenovac and pursue forcefully pinning Serbs to the Holocaust victims! There is no need to ask for verification or validation of those figures because there are none. None that are based on facts, just political imagination and political pursuits. The numbers of victims published via the Jasenovac Memorial Centre records is that 47627 Serbs perished there and 11,116 Jews perished etc. Nowhere near the numbers Greif is trying to push. Current research at hand and recent research into historical documents is beginning to show much lower numbers of victims at Jasenovac than above and much of that current work should see the light of day in publications within the coming couple of years, I believe.

Gideon Greif tells the world that from the information he received regarding numbers of victims in Jasenovac/Croatia during WWII the numbers climb around 1 million; he says about 800,000 Serbs, about 40,000 Jews…He does not say that the information he received is information from persons who used guesswork, estimates and exaggeration for political reasons, no facts that are verifiable in any objective shape or form for such numbers. He continues to recycle the numbers of Serbs reportedly killed in WWII Croatia, which have absolutely no foundation in facts and truth but have been put out there for decades by Serbs and Yugoslav communists who would put WWII Nazi Joseph Goebbels’ and his PR approach to shame: ““tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it…”.

So, the world and the truth about the Holocaust simply cannot afford to rely on Gideon Greif writings because his writings are selective when it comes to WWII Yugoslavia, use fabricated or estimated numbers of victims and are, therefore, politically charged.

Here is an excerpt of Holocaust survivor truth regarding Serbia and its attempts over past few years to rehabilitate the butcher of Serbian Jews during WWII – Prime Minister of WWII Serbia Milan Nedic.

Yahalom Kashny, 4 September 2010 “As a survivor of the Holocaust, I am increasingly agitated by Serbian revisionist propaganda on the internet.

The crimes of the Croatian Ustashas were terrible, but the Serbian Chetniks also collaborated with German Nazis in World War II. Serbia was a Nazi puppet state in World War II led by Milan Nedic, Serbian fascist collaborator.

The oppression of Jews in Serbia started before the arrival of Hitler’s occupying forces. Six months before the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia, Serbia voluntarily passed the legislation restricting Jewish participation in the economy, education and employment. One year later, on 22 October 1941, anti-Semitic ‘Grand Anti-Masonic Exhibit’ was funded by Serbia’s capital city, Belgrade.

Serbian Nazi collaborators WWII with German soldiers in 1944 Photo:

Serbian Nazi fascists worked closely with German Nazi officials in making Belgrade the first “Judenfrei” city of Europe. Serbian leader Milan Nedic made an official visit to Adolf Hitler on 19 September 1943, advancing the idea that Serbia is no place for Jews and thanking ‘Führer’ for his decision to exterminate our people in Europe.

Throughout the War, the Serbian Chetnik movement remained almost completely inactive against the occupation forces, and increasingly collaborated with the Axis, losing its international recognition as the Yugoslav resistance force.

On 20 December 1941, the Serbian Chetnik army supreme commander, Draza Mihailovic, issued the ‘instructions’ to his units, outlining his mission to create ethnically pure Serbia and commit genocide against the non-Serbs, particularly Bosnian Muslims who in large numbers joined anti-fascist Partisans. According to Mihailovic’s instructions, Chetnik army’s objective is:

‘The creation of Greater Yugoslavia, and within it Greater Serbia, ethnically clean within the borders of Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Syrmia, Banat, and Bačka; The cleansing of all national minorities [including Jews] and anti-state elements from state territory; The creation of direct common borders between Serbia and Montenegro, as well as Serbia and Slovenia by cleansing the Bosniak population from Sandžak, and the Bosniak [Bosnian Muslim] and Croat populations from Bosnia and Herzegovina; The settlement of the areas cleansed of national minorities and anti-state elements by Serbs and Montenegrins (to be considered are poor, nationally patriotic, and honest families).’

With Adolf Hitler’s blessing, Serbian Nazi collaborators established the Serbian State Guard which comprised of around 20,000 Serb fascists, compared to the the 3,400 German police in Serbia. Their mission was to hunt down and kill Jews, Gypsies and other non-Serbs.

Milan Nedic’s second in command was Dimitrije Ljotic. Ljotic founded the Serbian Fascist Party and organized the Serbian SS Volunteers Corps which hunted down and killed Jews, Gypsies and Muslims. Serbian citizens received cash bounties for capturing or killing Jews.

Banjica concentration camp was primarily operated by Serb Nazis who took sadistic pleasure in killing Jews. The camp was created by converting barracks of the Serbian SS 18th infantry division. The funding for this conversion came not from Germans, but from the municipal budget of Belgrade.

Operation Halyard has often been cited as ‘evidence’ of the Chetniks’ continuing strong pro-Allied sympathies for rescuing as many as 500 downed Allied airmen. However, they did so because they were paid in gold for each rescue. Partisans and Ustashas also rescued Allied airmen, and they were also paid in gold. Having lost all Allied support to the Partisans (along with the recognition of the King Peter II), and with the Axis defeat in Europe a certainty, Serbian Nazi collaborator Draza Mihailović went to great lengths to regain Allied support and to portray himself in a favourable light. However, the Allies were aware that Mihailović’s troops were rescuing German and Ustaše aviators from the Partisans (as indicated in a Nedić government report of February 1944) and, on other occasions, even hunted down Allied aviators on behalf of the Axis occupation.

Serbian collaborationist forces during this period, sanctioned by the Serbian fascist government, also included the ZBOR party and Serbian Volunteer Corps led by Dimitrije Ljotić and the rogue Chetnik faction of Kosta Pećanac. Serbian Gestapo, officially known as the 1st Belgrade Special Combat detachment, was a special Serbian SS police unit which was established in World War II Serbia.

It was only after the withdrawal of the Germans and the overthrow of the Nedic regime in October 1944 that the Serbs in Serbia began to join the anti-fascist Partisans in large numbers. These new Partisans included tens of thousands of former Serbian Nazi collaborators responding to Tito’s promises of amnesty…

Instead of poisoning the internet with half-truths and outright lies, it is time for Serbia and the Serbs to face reality and acknowledge they collaborated with Nazis and committed a genocide over Jewish and Bosnian Muslim population in World War II. May your God forgive you, but Jewish people won’t.”

Haris Deutsch, a member of the Jewish Community of Belgrade said in October 2016 that the organisation would call witnesses to testify about Nedic’s active participation in the Holocaust at the ongoing rehabilitation hearings.

“About 90 percent of the Jewish population in Serbia was murdered while Nedic was in power and Belgrade was the first city in Europe to be declared free of Jews.

Rehabilitation would represent a devaluation of indisputable historical facts, and an insult to all the victims and survivors of the Holocaust,” Deutsch said.

Serbia and Yugoslav communists have been lying to the world since 1945 regarding the true facts of victims in WWII in Croatia and Serbia, ensuring that Croatia gets the bulk of the blame as a matter of their official “state” position. And they fabricated numbers of victims in Croatia to the level that would surely shock the world! Today, Croatia is experiencing an appalling lack of political and government will that would correct these wrongs perpetrated against WWII Croatia, against Croatian people. That sad reality is because former Yugoslav communists, former 1990’s Serb aggressor against Croatia sympathisers, are in positions of power and government. And then Croatia has some loud Jews such as Ognjen Kraus, president of Jewish community Zagreb, a former communist and today’s mental communist, who appears to be a special breed of Jew (perhaps even a pretend Jew), something like Greif may be – don’t touch Yugoslavia/Serbia just bash against Croatia! One thing is crystal clear: Ognjen Kraus to my knowledge, and it is quite large, has never ever publicly commented on or disputed the wild exaggerations of victims in Jasenovac, nor has he requested that the truth be established for all concentration camps in former WWII Yugoslavia. This would, I hold, be an absolute necessity were one truly concerned about all victims of the Holocaust. Ognjen Kraus, like many other Jewish public personalities, appear to use the Holocaust as a political tool for their personal advancement and not for asserting historical truth. It suits the communist political agenda to defend the murderous communist Yugoslavia and Serbia not to address WWII Yugoslavia as a whole but just focus on Croatia and keep churning scandalous lies and wild estimates rather than factual numbers of victims. Ognjen Kraus has been and is in that company. To see that Gideon Greif is evidently tugging this line of deceit with them, just as Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center does, is quite an eye-opener and, I trust, a motivational boost for those who seek and demand the truth via research of historical facts. Ina Vukic  


  1. Bravo madam, because only with such documentation can we all meet our past, and divide the atrocities of the Holocaust among all the perpetrators of that evil, and not as some gentlemen do exclusively for all the evils on the soil of the former creation of Yugoslavia to blame the Republic of Croatia. I’ve been working on this issue intensively for over thirty-five years and I’ve come a long way about it. The saddest thing about all this is that even today the truth is falsified and that this cover-up is supported by some prominent representatives of the Jewish people in the Republic of Croatia, not to mention various politicians such as the Pusic brother and sister and the like. Even the institute in Vienna, which knows everything about Dr. Kurt Waldheim, unfortunately does not know who Dr. Eugen Pusic was, as well as most Croats. Maybe this will be announced once, because the NDH prosecutor, who has been promoted many times, is suddenly exclusively an excellent legal scholar, and his children teach us about democracy and tolerance and quarrel with the victims of Vukovar. I hope that such evil will never happen again, but the truth about all the actors on the soil of the former creation of Yugoslavia would be more than desirable.

  2. Love your post Ina Vukic. Always insightful and thought provoking. Only a month ago I was at a party where a Greek man asked me my Nationality. Upon telling him I was Croatian, immediately I got the “weren’t you with the Nazi’s”…. I love the “you” bit, as though I was there personally. Anyway there is a lot more to WWII and the British/Serbian version of events. Thank you again for sharing another perspective to it.

  3. Sort of related, but I used to know an old Jewish lady who had actually fled Berlin for Serbia in 1937, because her family thought it was safer, and they were all arrested by Serbian police, helped by British soldiers, and handed over to the Nazis. They were transported to the actual Auschwitz, where she was the only person in her family to survive due to her age of 16- being ‘useful’. She said not many people like to be reminded the British actively helped round up Jews for the Germans as the British are viewed as being tolerant to Jews. When she was released, she moved to Dubrovnik and devoted her time to helping Croatian refugees with the Red Cross.

    • Yes, WWII history that has been served upon us doe no justice to truth and peace, and it was written by those who boast of their desires and efforts for peace, Salu. A terrible thing the Holocaust, a terrible thing Communist mass murders also.

  4. Ina’s historical account of Serbia’s involvement in anti Semitic atrocities during WW 2 is well researched and supported by recognised historians
    50 years later Serbia had the audacity to think it would get away with yet another concentration camp In Srebrenica

    • They have not changed ever, every few decades or less Serbia is on the rampage of genocide, trying to grad other’s land, kill its people etc…factual history is the proof and their lies don’t change that at all, Nada

  5. Where is factograph now and why is Serbia not sued to withdraw this material and apologise for lies and defamation.

  6. Dear and most respected Ina Vukic, congratulations on
    publishing the truth that the “Auschwitz Of The Balkans Was In Serbia, Not Croatia!”.

    You have made me so proud of your superb contribution in telling the world that the “Auschwitz Of The Balkan Was in Serbia, Not in Croatia”.

    I am very grateful to you for publishing the truth that Croatians did not prosecute Jews. Thank you very much and God bless you!

    Joseph Cuk,

    Melbourne, Australia


    • Totally agree, Jonathan, and those who try correcting those lies or fabrication need support as they are insistently labelled :revisionists” especially by those in whose interests it is not for the truth to surface. Cheers!

  8. bobomostarac says:

    Thank you dear Mrs. Vukic for bringing to light the truth, that was successfully hidden for over 80 years. Finally, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

    After the movie “Dnevnik Diane Budisavljević”, which is full of lies, half truths, all with the political intent to destroy Croatian State and Croatian people, two very important documents emerged.

    1. Mrs. Diane Budisavljević corresponded with the Croatian State Department (and the Croatian Red Cross – Croatian Church) in order to look after the children. This letter written on the state letter head, served as a pass and authorization, authorizing her to look after the welfare of the children and to take them from the camp under the protection of the state.

    2. The second letter was her new information request with very respectfull thank you note, which she signed with the greeting: “Za Dom Spremna”!

    Therefore, contrary to their claim that she did everything on her own in secret, is not true and this correspondence proves it.

    All these Serbian myths, mudslinging and lies against the state of Croatia and Croatians is to create an excuse for the criminal aggression on Croatian State and Croatians with intent to destroy Croatia and take her beautiful, rich territory and Adriatic sea.

    The author of the film is Dana Budisavljevic, distant relative of Diana Budisavljevic.

    Spin doctor Gideon Greif should be made accountable for this hateful and falsified so called historical account. He is President of “International commission for victims of Srebrenica”, formed by Goverment of Republic Srpska!

    So much for his historical look on Srebrenica, where he is changing the facts to please the Serbian myth.


    letter of gratitude

    • Thank you bobomostarac for the reference to the appalling “Diary of Diana Budisavljevic” – lies appear to be a specialty in Serb anti-Croat propaganda and must be shown for what they are

    • Since she, like Stepinac, actively collaborated with state and church authorities in order to influence people from the inside of the state rather than from the outside in some resistance group, it would make sense that serbs would hate her if they didn’t already knew her. Instead, they actively praise her, even though she praised Stepinac and used the ZDS greeting. Not that it was wrong for her to do so, but i just think it’s hypocritical that they hate Stepinac, while praising Budisavljevic. Of course, they could’ve joined the partisans, and collaborate with then, only to create another totalitarian regime. It seems hard to imagine for someone who feels alone against an opressive government, but a violent revolution has almost never brought anything good, only terror and opression of those who dare to disagree with it. Being a convert to catholicism, I believe that the only way to finally find peace in society is to follow God’s will and change society by setting an example for others to follow. We shouldn’t only preach empty words – we should preach by our deeds and even become one living prayer. Communism is the complete opposite of that – in fact, it is a satanic inversion of everything good. Communist use words like freedom for the people and equality while creating fruits of the exact opposite. It’s almost like every bad thing in non communist states and governments are just shades of communism in some form – it’s no surprise that Hitler called his party “national SOCIALIST”


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