KARAN: JADOVNO - TESTIMONY TO THE SUFFERING OF SERBS

BANJA LUKA, JUNE 20 /SRNA/ – Republika Srpska President Siniša Karan stated that the horrors of the NDH Gospić–Jadovno–Pag death camp complex are not reflected solely in the number of victims, as disturbing as those figures may be, but also in the fact that these locations hosted an organised machinery of crime and a system whose sole purpose was the complete destruction of an entire people by the most brutal means.

“There was only one goal – the Serbs to be eradicated from the land on which they had lived for centuries, solely because of their Serb background and Orthodox faith,” Karan told SRNA. He emphasized that Jadovno Concentration Camp, along with Jasenovac Concentration Camp, Stara Gradiška and many other execution sites, bears witness to the scale of the suffering the Serbi people endured during the Second World War, which ranks among the darkest chapters of twentieth-century European history. “Only a people who know the truth about their suffering, who respect their victims and keep their memory alive, are capable of preserving their freedom, identity, and future,” Karan said. The president of the Republic stressed that Serb people’s enduring and sacred duty is to remember the victims of Jadovno and all other execution sites, and to defend the truth about their suffering from oblivion, silence, and every attempt at historical revisionism. “We owe it to the innocent victims, to our ancestors, and to those who come after us to preserve the truth and ensure that the suffering of the Serb people is never diminished. That is why we must safeguard our Republika Srpska and its institutions, which are the guarantors of our survival,” Karan said. During the Second World War, at least 40,123 people were killed in the Gospić–Jadovno–Pag death camp complex over a period of 132 days. In Metajna, on the island of Pag, the first camp for women and children in the Second World War was established.