An overview of the most systematic calculations and estimates of the demographic and actual human losses of Croatian Germans and Hungarians caused by World War II and their comparison, and the ...comparison of these calculations with indicators in historiographical, popular, and victimological works—and, above all, the much more reliable lists of human losses by name—clearly points towards the need of questioning the reliability of the number of both demographic and actual humans losses of Croatian Germans and Hungarians—and especially the structures of these losses—in the calculations and estimates that are most commonly referred to in Croatian historiography and in the Croatian public scene.The lists of human losses by name that cover Croatia—and Yugoslavia—in World War II, which can never be complete and without error, nonetheless contribute greatly to correcting calculations and estimates of actual human losses. Lists of victims by name cannot be considered final. The fundamental issue with lists of names that were created primarily based on testimonies rather than original documents is that many data providers did not know the circumstances, time, and place that a certain person lost their life. Along with the necessary and unavoidable supplements and corrections in lists of names, there are also noticeable changes in the structure of human losses, including transfers from one national/ethnic group to another, which can also be seen in the case of Croatian Germans and Hungarians.There are clearly serious dilemmas regarding the demographic and actual human losses of Croatian Germans and Hungarians. The number of persons who emigrated, fled, or were expelled from the country, as well as the number of those who were ‘assimilated’, is questionable, and therefore the numbers of actual and demographic human losses of Croatian Germans and Hungarians are also questionable. Namely, the number of those who emigrated, and above all the number of ‘assimilated’ persons, are assumptions or even guesses in even the most systematic calculations. The indicators of the lists by name are indispensable not only in analyses of human losses, most of all actual losses, but also in the corrections of calculations and estimates of demographic human losses of Croatian Germans and Hungarians.There is no doubt that there remains a series of open questions and counter-questions in historiography and victimology regarding the number of demographic and actual human losses of Croatian Germans and Hungarians and the structure of these losses.
U članku se daje pregled najsustavnijih izračuna i procjena o demografskim i stvarnim ljudskim gubicima hrvatskih Nijemaca i Mađara prouzročenim Drugim svjetskim ratom. Uz usporedbu tih izračuna i ...procjena ukazuje se i na drugačije pokazatelje u historiografskim, publicističkim i viktimološkim radovima, i ponajprije na znatno pouzdanije poimenične popise ljudskih gubitaka – žrtvoslove. Naglašava se potreba propitivanja utemeljenosti broja i demografskih i stvarnih ljudskih gubitaka hrvatskih Nijemaca i Mađara i ponajprije strukture tih gubitaka u izračunima odnosno procjenama na koje se u hrvatskoj historiografiji i javnosti uglavnom poziva.
O izložbi Ako tebe zaboravim… Holokaust u Hrvatskoj 1941. – 1945. Zadnje odredište Auschwitz, Francuski paviljon u Zagrebu, 5. veljače 2020. – 21. travnja 2020., koju su priredile Nataša Mataušić ...(Hrvatski povijesni muzej, Zagreb) i Rajka Bućin (Hrvatski državni arhiv, Zagreb) pisao sam u dva navrata, na portalu Historiografija.hr i u Časopisu za suvremenu povijest.
The most controversial and unresolved issue of human losses of Croatia and Yugoslavia in World War II is the number of victims of the Jasenovac camp. Lists of victims and estimates and calculations ...by historians and demographers often diverge widely on this point, ranging from minimisation to impossible megalomaniac claims, and are strongly linked to (daily) politics. Especially after the disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the issue of the number of victims of the Jasenovac camp began to be interpreted differently from the until then only permitted one-sided and ‘megalomaniac’ approach. Democratic changes, but also rising nationalist sentiment during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, led to studies on the human losses of Yugoslavia in World War II, and the unavoidable issue of the number and structure of Jasenovac camp victims, having a distinct ideological-propaganda background in Croatian and Serbian historiography, opinion journalism, and public discourse. Serb nationalists vastly inflate the number of Jasenovac camp victims, most of all Serbs, while Croat nationalists strive to minimise this number. The issue of the number and structure of Jasenovac victims is heavily nationally, ideologically, and emotionally charged, which greatly hinders evaluation. Proponents of both left and right worldviews in Croatia and Serbia continue to ignore and belittle any research and facts that do not support their favoured image of the past. Furthermore, they devaluate proven facts and present typical justifications. Inflation or reduction, omission, often coupled with ignorance, stem from personal, national, or political motives. It is noticeable that both Croatian and Serbian media, for the most part, transmit such efforts. The Jasenovac camp and the number and structure of its victims continue to be popular discussion topics in Croatian and Serbian historiography and opinion journalism, which have stratified into the left and right within national frameworks since the early 1990s, and in Croatian and Serbian public discourse; very different, sometimes diametrically opposed statements and claims are made, often without basis in fact. Facts about the Jasenovac camp have been contaminated from the start, and we are still witnessing contamination from various sources, with no end in sight. Despite all the efforts of a part of Croatian and Serbian historiography, and some opinion journalism, no major progress has been made from the early 1990s until today regarding the research and aggregation of knowledge and new data on the number and structure of Jasenovac camp victims; our level of knowledge in this regard has remained more-or-less the same as in the pre-1990 period. There is no doubt that historiography, Croatian and Serbian, has yet to present substantiated answers about the number and structure of Jasenovac victims. This article presents and questions the most significant Croatian and Serbian historiographical and opinion journalism works – as well as the unavoidable echoes of the topic of Jasenovac victims in public discourse – that question the number and structure of the victims, including those that offer substantiated facts, but also some illustrative examples of indisputable ignorance and manipulation.
The extent of human suffering and loss of life during World War II gave a new dimension to the matter of guilt for war crimes and the need to punish their perpetrators. Therefore, near the end of the ...war and in its immediate aftermath, a process that’s known under several names in professional literature – reprisal or retribution, purges or, more recently, transitional justice
– took place in all the countries involved in the war. Summarising the research published to date, we can conclude that the post-war policy of reprisal was marked by three new processes: first, a new definition of war crimes and extraordinary courts as the executors of the new legal principle; second, the massive scale of punishment; and third, this was the first time that heads of state were put on trial.Research on the history of wartime collaboration and the post-war process of reprisal has shown the decisive influence of politics on punishment for war crimes and various categories of guilt. In all European countries, Western or Eastern, it was politics that, based on their strategy for building a future, made the decisions regarding the intensity, scale, and duration of retribution. They determined how to combine politics and law, i.e. they determined the balance between punishing perpetrators and creating a future, rebuilt and integrated society. The countries of Western Europe quickly saw that harsh punishment and other forms of excluding former collaborators prevents the rebuilding of society and the stability of the state. Therefore, punishment of collaboration was massive, but it was implemented quickly and the punishments were relatively mild. On the other hand, in the countries that would comprise the future Eastern Bloc, the process was exactly the opposite, since dealing with nazism and fascism was also used as a pretext for conducting a social (socialist) revolution. The “enemies” included not only collaborators, but also opponents of the revolution, and the “purging” process was conducted on a much greater scale. Even though the information in literature is incomplete, Croatia/Yugoslavia can without a doubt be compared to the states where reprisal against collaboration, but also against broadly-defined “enemies of the people”, was at its harshest according to the number of people killed in purges, the number of people put on trial, and the punishment the leaders of the defeated collaborator regime were subjected to.
U članku su analizirane osnovne karakteristike poratne politike retribucije/odmazde u Europi, pri čemu su izdvojena tri obilježja: a) nova defi nicija ratnoga zločina i izvanredni sudovi kao ...provoditelji novoga pravnog načela; b) masovnost kažnjavanja; c) suđenje državnim poglavarima. Na temelju literature donesen je usporedni prikaz retribucije, a u tom je kontekstu prikazano i kažnjavanje kolaboracije u Hrvatskoj/ Jugoslaviji.
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