DODIK: NO TRAGEDY IS GREATER THAN A CHILD BECOMING TARGET OF A MONSTER

BANJA LUKA, JULY 19 /SRNA/ - President Milorad Dodik emphasized that there is no greater tragedy than when a child becomes the target of monsters and criminals.

On the occasion of the Day of Remembrance for Children Killed During the Genocide of Serbs, Jews and Roma in the Independent State of Croatia /NDH/ from 1941 to 1945, being observed today in Gornji Jelovac, Dodik told SRNA that the years that have passed since those monstrous crimes against innocent children mean nothing, because the Serbian people do not count the years, they count interrupted childhoods, words left unspoken, dreams never fulfilled, empty school desks, and empty chairs in the homes of thousands of families… "The killing of innocent children is the deliberate and systematic murder of the future. Their deaths are the deepest wound that can never heal and that nothing can erase, not time, nor the birth of new lives. The only 'crime' those innocent children committed was bearing Serbian names and surnames and having a Serbian identity," Dodik said. He added that the silence left behind by those innocent children speaks far louder and more powerfully than any words, serving as a reminder that evil must never be forgotten. "If we forget, we become like the murderers and criminals to whom the innocent gaze and naïve smile of a child meant nothing, and whose hands did not even tremble as they took their lives," he said. Dodik emphasized that in Gornji Jelovac, near Prijedor, in the summer of 1942, 75 children under the age of 14 were killed in the most brutal ways without a single shot being fired; 75 young lives deprived of the right to grow up, to experience joy, to start families of their own, and to leave their mark on the world. "Their toys were replaced by silence, while their laughter and smiles gave way to the eternal grief and silence of their loved ones. The least we can do is ensure they are never forgotten, that their names never fade, and that every new generation knows about their ancestors, how they lived and where they met their end. We owe them at least that: remembrance, truth, and respect," Dodik said. As long as they are remembered, he said, their cries will echo through time, calling for only one thing - that such atrocities never happen to anyone again, and that no one, especially children, should ever become victims of such a dark ideology aimed at the extermination of an entire people. The Day of Remembrance for Children Killed During the Genocide of Serbs, Jews and Roma in the NDH /1941–1945/ will be commemorated today at the Memorial Ossuary in the Macure hamlet of Gornji Jelovac, near Prijedor. The commemoration of this event, which is of significance to Republika Srpska, is being organized by the Republika Srpska Government's Committee for Fostering the Tradition of Liberation Wars, at the initiative of President Dodik. According to incomplete historical records, 74,642 children, from newborns to the age of 14, were brutally killed in the Independent State of Croatia /NDH/.