Probably the most important legacy emphasized by the doyen of Holocaust historians, Prof. Yehuda Bauer, before his recent passing, was his urgent warning about the dangers of Holocaust distortion, which he considered was far more harmful even than Holocaust denial.
Probably the most convincing proof of the dangers of Holocaust distortion will be on full display in the Hippodrome in the Croatian capital of Zagreb this coming Saturday, to the largest audience ever assembled for a rock concert (which will therefore be inscribed in the Guinness Book of Records) to attend a live performance by Croatian heartthrob Marko Perković, otherwise known as "Thompson." Half a million fans are expected to attend.
Perković is a fanatic Croatian nationalist who is a great admirer of the Ustasha (ustaša), the notorious terrorist movement, which during World War II, ruled the "Independent State of Croatia” (NDH), and which launched three genocidal campaigns, against Serbs, Jews, and Roma, and murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent victims in the most cruel, manual ways imaginable, which even shocked their Nazi patrons (Edmund Glaise-Horstenau, the German military attaché in Zagreb, harshly criticized the cruel Ustasha atrocities, warning that they would provoke an uprising of the local Serbian population).
Concerts banned in Europe
His concerts have been banned in European countries such as the Netherlands and Switzerland. Some of the fans who come to his concerts share his views and dress appropriately with caps of Ustasha military units, t-shirts worn by the Black Legion, the most notorious Ustasha unit, which committed horrific genocide crimes throughout the NDH, and mainly fought against Yugoslav partisans. Some of his songs are dedicated to the tragic war events of the 1990s, full of nationalistic connotations.
Thompson begins his most famous song, Battle of the Čavoglave, with the Ustasha salute Za dom spremni, which is analogous to the Nazi Sieg Heil. At his concerts, part of the enthusiastic audience loudly sings the song Jasenovac and Gradiška Stara, which glorifies the death camps of the NDH, as well as its protagonists Vjekoslav - Maks Luburić and his "butchers", Jure Francetić, then the leader of the Independent State of Croatia himself, Ante Pavelić, and the Black Legion.
Given the fact that Croatia is currently in good standing with the European Union, as well as the Schengen and Eurozone, and has even recently been the President of IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance), one would imagine that the government would find a way to forbid Thompson from glorifying local mass murderers.
In addition, his version of World War II, hides the role of Croatians who fought side by side with Serbs in Tito's partisans against the Ustasha. The achievements of locating, extraditing, and trying Andrija Artuković, the Minister of the Interior of the NDH, and Dinko Šakić, the commander of the Jasenovac concentration camp, seem distant and faded from this perspective. The victims, among whom, of course, were Croat anti-fascists, were liquidated with cold weapons, with unprecedented sadism.
The genocidal campaign against Serbs was also carried out in rural areas and pits (Jadovno, Golubinka near Prebilovci) even before the formation of concentration and death camps. The only camps for children in all of Europe were also established in the NDH.
The camps in Jastrebarsko and Sisak tortured and kidnapped Serbian children, destined to be turned into modern Janissaries. Jasenovac became a symbol of Ustasha cruelty and depravity; in the Hall of Remembrance at Yad Vashem, one of the plaques with the names of the most severe camps across the European continent is dedicated to it.
Adulation of the cruel Ustasha mass murderers is a disgusting insult to the NDH's hundreds of thousands of innocent victims and their families. This is the way to hide the truth and turn mass killers into bold heroes and models of patriotism.
Such a version of the history of the NDH is a classic case of horrific distortion, which, if not refuted, will prevent the peoples of former Yugoslavia from ever achieving lasting reconciliation.
This unusual and unique event certainly requires sociological, multi-disciplinary analysis. Some regional analysts also link this concert to local elections. Historians and clergy are also expected to take their place in the debate.
Holocaust historian Dr. Efraim Zuroff, who played an important role in finding and bringing Jasenovac commander Dinko Šakić to trial in Zagreb and Aleksandar Nikolić, Honorary Consul of the Republic of Serbia to Israel