Croatian Radio Television apparently isn’t sure how many people were killed in Auschwitz.
The main evening news of Croatian Radio Television (HRT) recently used a rather unusual formulation to introduce a story about an event honouring the victims of the Holocaust at Auschwitz. “It is claimed that during World War II over a million and 100,000 people were killed just in this camp”, said Branimir Farkaš, managing editor and host of the programme, giving impression that the number was not an undeniable fact, but just a claim by some anonymous source. Interestingly, a different formulation was used in earlier news programme, reports tportal.hr on January 29, 2017.
“In Auschwitz, the largest concentration camp in Nazi Germany, wreaths were laid by numerous delegations, including 60 former prisoners who had survived. During World War II, more than a million and 100,000 people were killed in this camp”, said Farkaš at noon on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. But, just a few hours later, the formulation was changed.
“The term ‘it is claimed’ lets us know that the number is considered unreliable and inflated, even though all researcher talk about 1.1 million victims, or somewhat more. This little formulation actually provides a cynical detachment from the condemnation of the crime, at the time when the victims are being formally commemorated”, said political analyst Žarko Puhovski. He noted that the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was established on the anniversary of the entry of the Red Army in Auschwitz, was officially marked in Croatia by the commemoration there was not a red star, which was a symbol of that army, and where representatives of Jewish organizations were not present.
“'So, the commemoration did not feature the two main elements, while everyone at the same time made a great effort not to mention the Jasenovac concentration camp. Auschwitz is an occasion to talk about all the camps, but in Croatia everybody tried to forget Jasenovac – with the exception of Z1 local television which broadcast a revisionist film, but at least it connected the Holocaust Memorial Day with Jasenovac”, said Puhovski ironically. “This is a kind of revisionism which is spreading all over”, concluded Puhovski.
Pero Maldini, a political scientist and communications specialist with the University of Dubrovnik, also explained that the number of victims of Auschwitz was an easily verifiable fact. “I think it is generally inappropriate to speak in this way about the number of victims of the Holocaust, even if it is a slip of the tongue. Auschwitz is a symbol of the death of innocent people and one crazy idea which sought to exterminate whole nations, mainly Jews and Roma, but also members of all peoples and political options which resisted German Nazism as an ideology and the German Reich as a political arrangement. Bidding with the number of victims is completely irrelevant and inappropriate. It is painful and offensive to all victims of the Nazi death camps, rare surviving detainees and their descendants who have never met executed members of their families”, said Maldini.
The officially ceremony marking the International Holocaust Remembrance Day in Croatia took place without the representatives of the Jewish Community due to what they describe as an inappropriate reaction of the authorities with regards to the glorification of the Ustasha movement. “When the government does not respond or responds weakly, then fear slowly starts spreading among us”, said Sanja Zoričić Tabaković, a representative of the Jewish community in Zagreb.
