DODIK: BY KILLING CHILDREN, USTASHAS SOUGHT TO DESTROY OUR FUTURE; THIS WILL NEVER BE FORGOTTEN

PRIJEDOR, JULY 19 /SRNA/ - President Milorad Dodik said today in Gornji Jelovac that the Ustashas in the Independent State of Croatia /NDH/ sought to destroy the future of the Serbian people by killing Serbian children, and that this will never be forgotten or forgiven.

"The Second World War in Kozara, Podkozarje and in the NDH was marked by the fact that the Ustashas had children’s camps and that they killed children equally in Drakulić, Prebilovci and many other places," Dodik said. At the commemoration of the Day of Remembrance for the Children Killed During the Genocide against Serbs, Jews and Roma in the NDH from 1941 to 1945, Dodik stressed that the killing of those children was the killing of the future. "They were killed simply because they were Serbs, of the Orthodox faith, and because they represented our future. The crimes of the Ustashas can never be forgotten, nor can the killing of children be forgiven," Dodik said. He stressed that the brutality of the Ustashas had surpassed anything seen before. "The special camps for children were intended so that one third would be eliminated through disease or killings, and one third converted. When you entered that camp, there was no possibility of staying alive unless you converted. Of course, the Catholic Church of that time was not innocent either," Dodik said. He pointed out that, unfortunately, these monsters were not punished. "They lived under the communist regime, because even then there was no discussion about how Serbian children had suffered, and there was always an attempt to conceal crimes against Serbs because of the supposed narrative of communism, brotherhood and unity," Dodik said. He added that the Ustasha perpetrators and their "flowers," Muslims in BiH, were allowed to be rehabilitated, and 40–50 years later, they went on to break up Yugoslavia and commit new crimes against Serbs. The NDH was the only country in the world to establish concentration camps for children, in which, according to official data, more than 75,000 children were killed, with Serbs making up the largest number of victims. In the Macure hamlet, during the German-Ustashe offensive on Kozara in the summer of 1942, 312 Serbs from several villages in the Kozara region were killed, including 75 children under the age of 14. As part of the process of "purifying the Croatian nation," Serbian, Roma, and Jewish children were killed in the most horrific ways.