“In the late afternoon, local time or around midnight, CET, the United Nations will see, for the first time in its history, the opening of an exhibition devoted to the Holocaust and genocide against Serbs, Jews and Roma, committed at the Jasenovac concentration camp, and other death camps, in the territory of the former Independent State of Croatia (NDH).
We consider it very important – in the context of the overall drive to cast a pall of relativity over crimes and to rehabilitate criminals – to draw attention, once again, to crimes that must not be forgotten, as they resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of people. This exhibition is not directed against anyone, except against criminals and those wishing the crimes to fall into oblivion and be removed from memory.
For this reason, the exhibition is entitled “The Right to Remembrance”, the remembrance of the Holocaust, and the genocide committed at the Jasenovac concentration camp.
The resistance to staging this exhibition here at UN Headquarters was very strong, particularly on the part of one state.
Today’s exhibition will also be attended by camp inmate survivors, and I thank them for coming.
This is an opportunity for the entire world to learn, at the headquarters of an international organization, about the particulars of the Jasenovac concentration camp – the only camp in Europe that was not operated by the Nazis, but by the Ustashe. In other concentration camps, death was industrialized in a way, avoiding identification of crime perpetrators with the victims. In Jasenovac, however, the method of killing reflected hatred of people, and the biggest victims were Serbs, Jews and the Roma.
The intention is not to forget and not to allow casting a pall of relativity over crimes and their rehabilitation”, said Serbian Foreign Minister Dacic in New York.