How the N.Y. Times Doctored its Own Reports on the Croatian Holocaust

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How the New York Times Doctored its Count of Croatia's W.W.II Victims

Part 2 of "Oppose Fascist Rock Star's US Tour with the Truth"

by Jared Israel

Member, International Commission on Jasenovac
Editor, Emperor's Clothes

[Nov. 6, 2007]

(For Part 1 go to http://emperors-clothes.com/tour.htm )

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In 1991, the New York Times drastically minimized its account of the Holocaust in Croatia. In doing so, it helped blaze a trail for the rest of the Western media. The purpose: manifestly, to whitewash the rebirth of Croatian clerical-fascism.

Before 1991, the Times reported that the Croatian Ustashe (clerical-fascists) murdered some 800,000 people -- Serbs, Jews, and Roma, as well as antifascists of all backgrounds -- in the Jasenovac death camp complex. (The Times was not including those the Ustashe murdered in other Croatian death camps, or in their villages.)

After 1991, the Times and other media reported that some "tens of thousands" (or sometimes 80,000, or 85,000) were killed. A 90% cut. Enough to make a Holocaust denier green with envy.

At the same time, the Times radically altered its perspective.

Before 1991, the murders were described as being caused by fascism. After 1991, they were described as being caused by fascism and 'ethnic enmity,' as if genocidal hatred of Serbs, Jews, and Roma was the fault of both sides -- the Serbs, Jews and Roma, as well as those that hated them. This supposed 'ethnic enmity,' along with a supposed desire of Yugoslav Communist leaders to (as the Times put it) "demonize" fascism, was now presented as explaining a supposedly long-term dispute over the victim count.

Thus the Times not only drastically minimized the extent of Ustasha crimes, but it also lied about the numbers dispute. Lied because prior to 1991 it was the Times itself that had publicized the figure of 800,000 victims, which the Times itself was now denying.

This is a most serious accusation. Here's the evidence.

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Before 1991: The Times reports 800,000 victims

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First, here are the relevant parts of New York Times articles that mentioned Jasenovac before 1991.

July 12, 1948: The Times referred to Jasenovac for the first time while describing Yugoslavia's arrest of some agents of the defeated Croatian Ustashe:

"A third [arrested Ustasha -- J.I.] was Ljubo Milosh, described as commander of the Ustashi concentration camp at Jasenica [Jasenovac -- J.I.], where more than 800,000 persons perished during the war."

(My emphasis -- J.I.) [10]

May 20, 1961: Covering the trial of Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann, the Times reported the testimony of Alexander Arnon, described as "wartime secretary of the Jewish Community in Zagreb":

"Mr. Arnon said Croatian Fascists ran most of the concentration camps in Croatia and killed 'hundreds of thousands' of Serbian gentiles. In Jasenovac alone, 600,000 persons, including 2,000 Jews, were killed, he said."

(My emphasis -- J.I.) [11]

Mr. Arnon's reported use of the phrase "Jasenovac alone" makes sense because Jasenovac was the name of a complex of Croatian death camps and also of the biggest site in the complex. So, Arnon was indicating that significantly more than 600,000 people were murdered in Croatian death camps as a whole.

October 1, 1972: In the New York Times article "Yugoslavs Assail Croat Dissidents," which reported on the Yugoslav government's response to terrorist attacks by Croatian Ustasha exiles, the Times again stated that 800,000 people were murdered in Jasenovac. This article is most helpful in understanding the Holocaust in Croatia, how it was dealt with in Communist Yugoslavia, and how the Times has, since 1991, misinformed readers.

Emperor's Clothes has transcribed part of the article; the first six paragraphs are posted below. (The full text is scanned here.)

[First six paragraphs of 1972 New York Times article starts here]

"Amid the dismal swamplands at Jasenovac, a small town southeast of the Croatian city of Zagreb a graceful concrete monument suggestive of hands raised in an appeal for mercy looks out over grass-covered mounds that neatly conceal the remains of one of the death camps of World War II.

The Jasenovac camp was operated by the Ustashi, the Fascist movement that gained power in Croatia in 1941 through collaboration with German and Italian invaders of Yugoslavia.

As many as 800,000 people -- mainly Serbs, Jews and gypsies but also Croatian and other opponents of the Ustashi -- are believed to have been shot, hanged clubbed to death or drowned in the nearby Sava River during the war years before the Ustashi fled from advancing Yugoslav and Soviet troops.

The transformation of the Jasenovac death camp into a memorial park, with only a small museum to give visitors some insight into the camp's grim history, seems to symbolize an effort by the postwar Yugoslav authorities to let the wounds of wartime fratricide and atrocities heal for the sake of a united country.

Over the years, the Ustasha terrorism began to fade from memory. To avoid stirring up old resentments, the Yugoslav authorities discouraged publication of explicit writings and photographs about the atrocities. Only a few weeks ago, a court ban was imposed on a book that dealt with the Jasenovac camp.

Although the Ustashi are in exile and their young recruits have carried out occasional acts of terrorism against Yugoslav diplomats and officials abroad, the Belgrade authorities have refrained from all-out counter-attack, for they are apprehensive of offending the four and a half million people of Croatia and reluctant to risk opening old wounds between the Serbs and Croats."

(My emphasis -- J.I.)

-- "Yugoslavs Assail Croat Dissidents," October 1, 1972 [12]
The full text, scanned from the original, is posted here.

[[First six paragraphs of 1972 New York Times article ends here]

To summarize the key points:

a -- The Ustashe murdered 800,000 at Jasenovac;

b -- Yugoslav Communist leaders tried to suppress discussion of Jasenovac, "discourag[ing] publication of... photographs about the atrocities" and banning books;

c -- Why the repression? The leaders feared discussion might "reopen old wounds"; also they feared a violent reaction from Croats, who were pro-Ustashe;

d -- Even when the Ustashe, working from outside Yugoslavia, escalated their terrorist attacks, the Yugoslav government continued its policy of preventing a political counter-attack. For example, they continued banning books on Jasenovac.

The straw that broke the camel's back was when:

"three Croatian émigrés hijacked a Scandinavian Airlines System plane Sept 15 [1972 -- J.I.] and forced Sweden to release six Croatians imprisoned for terrorist attacks on Yugoslav diplomats." [13]

In response, the Communists finally began publicly attacking the Ustashe.

What line did they take? The Times quotes the following from an editorial piece, written by a New York-based Yugoslav reporter and published in Politika, the leading Yugoslav daily, criticizing U.S. coverage of the Ustasha terror:

"For American readers and listeners, there was not a word that the Ustashi were on the side of Hitler and Mussolini, that they formally declared war against the United States, that they murdered Jews -- an acute issue here [i.e., in New York City -- J.I.] -- and that they are sworn enemies of the concept of Western democracy." [14]

Notice that in describing what the America media was leaving out, Politika left out the Serbian victims of genocide (and the Roma/Sinti victims as well).

This was quite an omission. To give you a sense of the scale of the genocide in fascist Croatia, here is an excerpt from a piece the New York Times published on Oct. 11, 1941, just six months after the invading Nazis installed the Ustashe clerical-fascists in power:

[Excerpt from "Massacres Laid to Croat[ian] Ustashi" starts here]

"The Croatian revolutionary Ustashi have killed between 300,000 and 340,000 Serbs and pro-Yugoslav Croats since last May [i.e., sixty thousand or more a month! -- J.I.], according to figures compiled by intelligence experts from agents operating in Croatia and Bosnia and released to this correspondent here today.

While some of the executions have been carried out by German Elite Guard units, the Gestapo and regular German Army officers and by Italians in Western Croatia, the bulk of the killings have been done by the Ustashi, according to this report." [15]

[Excerpt from "Massacres Laid to Croat[ian] Ustashi" ends here]

300,000 to 340,000 Serbs (and pro-Yugoslav Croats) killed between May and October of 1941. 60,000 to 68,000 Serbs a month.

Here is a final excerpt from the 1972 Times article. It is most revealing:

"One result of the anti-Ustashi campaign here [in Yugoslavia -- J.I.] since the hijacking is that even schoolchildren in Belgrade, who had not heard of the Ustashi, are beginning to raise questions and are learning of the torments inflicted by Yugoslavs on Yugoslavs during the war."

(My emphasis -- J.I.) [16]

So, while Belgrade school children were learning for the first time that the Ustashe had existed, it was only if and when they "began] to raise questions" that they also learned what the Ustashe had done during the war.

The Communists were (finally) publicly attacking the Ustashe for supporting Nazi Germany, for opposing democracy, for killing Jews, and for current acts of terror -- but not for their genocide against Serbs and Roma, hence the children's need to "raise questions."

Consider the effect of this policy of suppressing discussion, both on Croats and on the main surviving victim population, the Serbs.

Communist Yugoslavia declared that most Croats had opposed the Ustashe. But this was manifestly untrue. How could the Ustashe, a tiny group of exiles, have returned to Croatia in April, 1941, and immediately launched a campaign of mass murder against 'foreign elements,' meaning Serbs, Jews and Roma -- how could they have done this in the face of opposition from both 'foreign elements' and most ethnic Croats? They needed massive support from Croats from the start, which in turn required that ordinary Croats were already indoctrinated in the basics of Ustasha ideology: hatred of 'foreign elements' and Catholic fanaticism.

Looked at in one way, the Communist-perpetrated myth of Croatian antifascism was of great practical use to Croatia, since it allowed Croats to hold onto the vast properties stolen from murdered Serbs, Jews and Roma, rather than losing it and paying restitution to boot. [17] It allowed the perhaps tens of thousand of Croats who had committed overt fascist-criminal acts, and the much larger number who had in various ways supported those acts, to escape unscathed. It allowed the Catholic church, "many" of whose priests had, as the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust states, directly participated in the killing, to mainly escape punishment.

Looked at in another way, this was a terrible abuse of Croatian children, who were therefore raised in a double-talk fascist society, whose pro-Ustasha sub-culture thrived beneath a veneer of Communist rhetoric. There were things you did not -- could not -- for now -- say in public, but you were of course to believe them and act on them as soon and as much as possible, things about the need to purify Croatia from 'foreign elements,' whose presence polluted the Croatian national being and mocked God's religion.

This policy rewarded the behavior of chameleons, as exemplified by current Croatian president Stjepan Mesic, who boasted in a videotaped speech, delivered around 1992, apparently to the Croatian community in Australia, that the great strength of Croatia was its ability to deceive:

"'You see, in the Second World War, the Croats won twice and we have no reason to apologise to anyone. What they ask of the Croats the whole time,' Go kneel in Jasenovac, kneel here...' We don't have to kneel in front of anyone for anything! We won twice and all the others only once. We won on 10 April [1941 -- J.I.] when the Axis Powers recognized Croatia as a state and we won because we sat after the war, again with the winners, at the winning table.'" [18]

This same glib doubletalk is manifested today in the claim, made in tones of outraged dignity, by Croatian organizations in the US and Canada, and by leading Croatian rock star Marko Perkovic Thompson himself, that the Thompson band is not fascist. How dare anyone say such a thing!

And consider the effect on the surviving victims -- mainly Serbs, since all but a few Roma and Jews had been killed. If they wanted a Yugoslavia (a state uniting all southern Slavs), they had to pay with a terrible silence, a silence that was enforced by the state. Even their children must not be told what had happened to perhaps a million of their relatives.

It is a grim irony that, during most of the existence of Communist Yugoslavia -- with the exception of a few years immediately after World War II, when there were trials of some Ustashe -- the officially approved slogan of 'brotherhood and unity' meant in practice toleration of clerical-fascist beliefs and freedom for many clerical-fascists criminals in the republics of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

October 7, 1984: There was no mention of Jasenovac from 1972 until 1984, when, in a piece discussing a proposed but much-postponed trip to Croatia by the pope, the Times wrote:

"Another question is whether the Pope will visit the site of the Jasenovac concentration camp, 60 miles southeast of Zagreb. Among the displays at a museum on the site is a photograph of Cardinal Stepinac being received by leaders of the Ustachi, the Croatian collaborators of the Nazis and Italian Fascists." [19]

Now we come to the watershed year: 1991.

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1991: The Times invents a kinder Jasenovac

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March 4, 1991: With Croatia on the verge of secession, the Times wrote about Jasenovac for the first time in seven years:

"The enmity between Serbs and Croats, who make up the largest of Yugoslavia's six republics, has deep roots. About 30 miles from Pakrac, at the Jasenovac concentration camp, tens of thousands of Serbs, gypsies and Jews were killed when it was run by the fascist puppet government of Croatia during World War II."

(My emphasis -- J.I.) [20]

From a Ustasha death machine that killed "as many as 800,000 people" (see N.Y. Times, 1972), Jasenovac was now, somehow, a consequence of ethnic "enmity" (suggesting fault on both sides) where "tens of thousands...were killed." An ugly place, but not part of the organized and systematic machinery of genocide, known as the Holocaust.

With few exceptions, throughout the 1990s and until now, Times articles have either bluntly stated that "tens of thousands" (or 80-85,000) died; or, alternatively, they have stated that the casualty figures are disputed, with the correct figures being somewhere in the "tens of thousands" (or 80-85,000).

May 19, 1996: Chris Hedges of the Times reported that:

"[Croatia's then-reigning] President Tudjman, seeking to defuse criticism of the wartime [Ustasha] government, says 28,000 people were killed at Jasenovac. [Late Yugoslav Communist president] Tito, eager to demonize his fascist rivals, said 700,000 people died. Both figures are dismissed as unrealistic by independent scholars in the United States, who estimate that about 80,000 people were killed here."

(Bracketed text is mine -- J.I.) [21]

A few points.

First, the above is an early example of the 'disputed-figures' approach. As you can see, it renders the Times' desired figure -- 80,000 -- both more believable and also easier for readers to remember by associating it in our minds with a supposed dispute. (We pay more attention when there is a dispute.) So the 'disputed figures' approach is a learning aid.

It also enhances the Times' already-existing aura of impartiality, since Chris Hedges is championing supposedly honest research in contrast to supposed eternally feuding Balkans factions.

For Hedges, the honest mediators are some "independent scholars in the United States."

It is a great story line, but here's the rub: In order to mediate a real struggle, the mediators must exist. Searching in both the Lexis-Nexis and the New York Times archives, I found that no New York Times article ever identified Hedges' "independent scholars." Are they so independent they have no names? Are they living incognito, perhaps wanted for a felony? Did the Times interview them in the realm of Pure Spirit?

Since I can see no reason for not identifying American scholars -- we are not talking about Salman Rushdie here -- and since, given the importance of the question of whether some hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Roma were or were not murdered, I can see every reason for identifying the supposed scholars -- I can only conclude that said scholars were imaginary.

Second, this made me wonder, apropos the claim that imaginary scholars had rejected both sides in the supposed dispute over numbers, 'Do imaginary scholars have the right to reject things?' But then I answered myself: 'Why not, just as long as the things they are rejecting are also nonexistent.'

Which was definitely the case in this instance. Because there never was a dispute over numbers between Franjo Tudjman, on the one side, and former Yugoslav communist leader Tito, on the other.

Because just as before 1991 it was the New York Times that informed the world that "as many as 800,000 people" were murdered in Jasenovac, so the Times had also reported that Yugoslav Communist leaders banned books and discouraged pictures dealing with Jasenovac.

In other words, the two sides in this dispute were not Tudjman and Tito, they were the New York Times before and after 1991.

And finally, notice that Hedges made the remarkable claim that Tito tried to "demonize his fascist rivals." Aside from the fact that Tito had no serious fascist rivals -- the Partisans, with Soviet help, had thoroughly defeated the Ustashe -- aside from that, the claim is remarkable because, while 'demonize' has the meaning of 'portray as evil,' it also has the connotation of deception -- 'falsely portray as evil.' Is Hedges trying to plant the thought that fascism was unfairly maligned?

Nov 2, 1998: For reasons whose explanation lies beyond the scope of this essay, for a number of months before the start of Croatia's 1999 trial of Jasenovac camp official Dinko Sakic, the Western media published some almost-accurate articles about Jasenovac.

Case in point: the Reuters dispatch below. To be sure, the Times buried it on page 13, but at least they published it.

[Excerpt from Reuters dispatch, as published in the New York Times, starts here]

"Thousands of Serbs, Gypsies, Jews and anti-fascist Croats died in the camps. It is estimated in Croatia that 85,000 people died in Jasenovac, though Jewish groups put the toll much higher."

(My emphasis -- J.I.) [22]

[Excerpt from Reuters dispatch, as published in the New York Times, ends here]

Two points about this.

First, notice that the Times has admitted that Jewish groups (not former Yugoslav leaders, and not only Serbs) were defending a "much higher" count than Croatia's. The Times did not inform readers of the number being put forward by Jewish groups, which, according to the London-based Financial Times, was 600,000. [23] By withholding this information, the Times prevented people from seeing the stark contrast -- 600,000 vs. 85,000 -- which might have caused them to wonder if Croatia was engaged in Holocaust denial. Nevertheless, the Times had made a major admission. The "much higher" count was not a propaganda weapon created by Tito in an effort to 'demonize' clerical fascism.

Second, notice that the Times admitted that the Croatian establishment, not some nameless "independent scholars in the United States," was behind the 85,000 figure. Meaning, the Times' own previous coverage (the Chris Hedges piece, quoted above) was a lie.

The Western media used the trial of Sakic, a Jasenovac commander, to create the spectacle of a Croatia that was supposedly struggling with the painful truth about its past and therefore now deserved to be welcomed into the family of nations. To reinforce that impression, after Sakic's conviction, in October 1999, the media quoted a few people, perceived as representing Serbs and Jews, who said they approved the conduct of the trial and praised Croatia.

With Croatia now presented to the world as having transformed itself -- a falsification, in my opinion -- the Times and other media ended their brief flirtation with semi-accurate reporting.

Thus, the day the trial ended, the Times published another Reuters dispatch, the relevant part of which is posted below.

While the almost-accurate pre-trial dispatch was buried on page 13, the post-trial dispatch got top billing: column 1, page 3. The Times uses that space for leading foreign news.

"Mr. Sakic, 78, did not flinch as the seven-member panel of judges pronounced him guilty of war crimes against civilians for his role as commander of the Jasenovac camp, where up to 85,000 inmates died at the hands of the Nazi-allied Ustashi regime in 1941-45." [24]

Before the start of the trial, the 85,000 figure was Croatia's view, sharply disputed by Jewish groups. Now, along with Croatia, the 85,000 figure had been miraculously transformed: it was now the upper limit of the number of victims of clerical-fascist terror at Jasenovac.

The year was 1999, but it wasn't really 1999. It was 1984 plus fifteen.

Jared Israel
Editor, Emperor's Clothes

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Footnotes and Further Reading

[10] "Yugoslav Officers Studying In Russia Back Tito Fully," The New York Times, July 12, 1948, by M.S. Handler

[11] "Eichmann Trial Witness Shows How He Escaped Nazis' Wrath," The New York Times, May 20, 1961, by Homer Bigart

[12] "Yugoslavs Assail Croat Dissidents," The New York Times, October 1, 1972, by Raymond H. Anderson.

Scanned image of entire article is at
http://tenc.net/a/times72.htm

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.

[15] "Massacres Laid to Croat[ian] Ustashi," The New York Times, October 11, 1941, Special Broadcast to THE NEW YORK TIMES, Page 3, 415 words

[16] "Yugoslavs Assail Croat Dissidents," The New York Times, October 1, 1972, by Raymond H. Anderson

[17] As regards 'only' the "expropriation drive" against the Jewish citizens of NDH (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, or Independent State of Croatia), the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust writes:

"Overnight, a pseudolegal expropriation drive was launched, which before long turned into an unbridled countrywide campaign of plunder and pillage in which everyone who stood to profit took part -- trade unions, youth organizations, sports clubs, the armed forces, and government officials of all ranks. Ordinary citizens also took part in this campaign wherever they could; indeed, the share of "private" elements in the plunder was enormous -- at least half of the property of which the Jews were robbed apparently never reached the state treasury but remained in the hands of individual Croatians. According to an estimate by the Ministry of Finance published in 1944, the value of the Jewish property it acquired was 25 billion dinars ($50 million, according to the prewar rate of exchange). Presenting the state budget for the 1942-1943 fiscal year, the minister of finance, Vladimir Kosak, said that the deficit would be covered by proceeds from the sale of Jewish property."

-- From Menachem Shelah, "Croatia," in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, published in Hebrew and English, by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, Jerusalem, 1990; English edition, New York/London, Macmillan, 1990, p. 324.

See http://emperors-clothes.com/encr.htm#base

To read the complete transcription of the article "Croatia" of the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, go to
http://emperors-clothes.com/encr.htm

To access the PDF file of the "Croatia" article scanned from the Encyclopedia, go to
http://emperor.vwh.net/croatia/encr.pdf

[18] "Croatian leader's alleged speech glorifying WW2 pro-Nazi state widely condemned," Text of report in English by Croatian news agency HINA, BBC Monitoring Europe -- Political Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring, December 10, 2006 Sunday, 498 words

A Windows Media Video of Mesic's speech in the original Serbo-Croatian can be viewed at http://emperor.vwh.net/croatia/MesicVideo.wmv

[19] "Four Years Later, Croatia Still Awaits Papal Visit," The New York Times, October 7, 1984, by Michael T. Kaufman, Marija Bistrica, Yugoslavia

[20] "Serb-Croat Showdown in One Village Square," The New York Times, March 4, 1991, by Stephen Engelberg

[21] "Croatian War-Shrine Plan Revives Pain," The New York Times, May 19, 1996, by Chris Hedges

[22] "Argentina Extradites War Crimes Suspect," The New York Times, Nov 2, 1998, Byline: Reuters

[23] "Dinko Sakic History's Shadow," Financial Times (London, England), July 7, 1998, Tuesday, SURVEY EDITION 1, SURVEY - CROATIA 98, by Guy Dinmore

[24] "Croat Convicted of Crimes at World War II Camp," The New York Times, October 5, 1999, Page 3; Column 1; Foreign Desk, BYLINE: Reuters

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To receive articles from Emperor's Clothes, and to be notified of the publication of Jared Israel's book on Srebrenica, which, examining questions that have not previously been addressed, challenges the presumed underpinnings of the massacre narrative, send an email with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line to emperorsclothes@tenc.net

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