Witness to Jasenovac's Hell

Rating:
Summary: Devastatingly truthful read.
Review: From the moment I purchased this book I could not put it down until I was finished it (a few hours later).

Ivanovic's personal account of his "1000 days" in hell is so devastatingly truthful, so shocking and is a perfect example of why his story "had to be told". So brutal are his accounts of events from 1942-1945, that I was nearly brought to tears on several occasions.

The sheer brutality of the Croatian Nazi masters (Ustashi) was unparralled in Europe during WWII. In fact, even Germans found the Ustashi methods of torture and liquidation beyond explanation. The methods of torture and murder at Jasenovac even exceeded the horrors of Auschwitz. While the main target of the murderous ISC were Serbs, they also liquidated tens of thousands of Jews, Gypsies and Partisan Croatians.

It is amazing that the realities of Jasenovac have remained largely a "hidden shame" for the Croat government of the ISC and even the current Neo-Fascist regime in Croatia presently.

The single most impressive part about this book pertains to points of factual or statistical reference (by way of footnotes). Most of the sources the editors used were either from Croat WWII sources or Catholic Church sources. Often the debate about Jasenovac has revolved around the false belief that Serbian historians falsified numbers, facts and statistics. By using sources from Croatia and the Vatican this book has legitimized the horrors that the sons and daughters of Serbia faced in WWII.

Additionally this book puts into context the current climate in fascist Croatia and Fundamentalist Bosnia. Only through survivor accounts (such as this) and greater investigation into Croatian attrocities at Jasenovac can the Balkan's move forward into the 21st century.

I highly recommend this book to all who seek the truth about a place called hell, a place called Jasenovac.

Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: I would like to say one thing. This book is excelent. it is a first hand account from the eyes of child who lived through WW2. If one looks at other reviews we see people talking about how horrible this book is and how it is all lies. Now lets look at thsoe peoples names, all Croats. Jasenovac did happen and people who deny it are lying. Even the Croatian government said that 700,000 did die there. Come on now 700,000 Serbs in 4 years. That means 500 people per day. ohh i am so sorry 500 people per day is not a massacre. please stop, read the book, read history books, read academic records and you will see Jasenovac is true and this is a innocent first view on the camp.

Rating:
Summary: A Witness to typical Serbian Propaganda and Lies
Review: If I could I would of rated this book a negative 5 but Amazon does not give that option. I waited over a month to get the book to find out that its nothing more than the same propaganda that has been written for the past 50 years. This book just copies the age old stories that was written during the Tito regime to deplict Croats as savage beasts. I was hoping after all these years that there would be a book that told the truth about Jasenovac and what happened there. This book is nonsence and does not have any historical benifit except a few old aged photos that have been published over and over again. Even the photos have been proven as being altered. Not worth a dime not worth a day of reading not worth typing this complaint. Only worth while thing is if you are interested in Serbian Communist Partizan Propaganda.

Rating:
Summary: Was about time we found out about these attrocities
Review: In Romania we have been thought in school about Dachau, Auswitz, Sobibor etc but I don't think I ever heard about Jasenovac.My parents and grandparents told me about the Croatian atrocities against the Serbians in WWII but I had yet to find something on this theme in the west.It seems that the media demonization of the Serbs would've been somehow less complete if the story of Jasenovac was told.Great book,allows one to comprehend the fear the Serbs felt when they were forced to live again in an independent Croatia.A Croatia led by a holocaust denier who promised to rid the country of the Serbian "cancer".The Serbian ethic minority was cleansed indeed...with western support of course.
If everyone in the West would've read the book perhaps the media's lies about the Yugoslav conflict would've been much easier to detect.
At the Holocaust Museum in Washington there was no mention of Jasenovac and although there are numerous pictures depicting the carnage that befell the Serbs they are surprisingly missing from the museum.Wouldn't go well with the media and the government's script.
It is surprising to find a book that describe a first hand account of that savagery committed by the Ustasha(Croatians) against the Serbs.I wonder if there will be a book about their atrocities committed nowadays against the Serbs?Maybe we'll have to wait another 50-60 years to read about them.Btw Croatia was declared the most ethnically clean country in the world.Reading this book one can understand why.

Rating:
Summary: Blame the editor
Review: This is the first time I'm feeling compelled to write a review for Amazon's readers and here's why: this book is based on a short first hand account written by a Bosnian Serb inmate in Jasenovac and it's quite interesting. I mean: the guy's no Primo Levi but the account looks honest and heartfelt enough to haunt a feeble-gutted reader. It doesn't add much to what was already known about Jasenovac; indeed I expected a much more gruesome tale, but the author asserts he reported only what he saw directly and that's fine with me. What's not fine with me at all is the editor's job, that trasformed a honest book in sheer propaganda of the worst kind. I don't know if she was duped into this, but she should really shoulder the blame of having manipulated for shameless purposes (i.e. finding a pretext and a justification for the massacres perpetrated by Serbs in the 92-95 war) a honest effort by somebody who saw hell with his own eyes. The notes intermingled with the text are at best misleading when they're not completely spurious (e.g. the horrific account of the king of cut-throats, quoted by some other reviewer below is taken from Avro Manhattan and NOT from the author of the book. Manhattan is a source no serious researcher would quote with a ten foot pole). If anybody still has any doubt on what the purposes of the editor (Wanda Schindley, for the record) are, just check out the home page of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic and you will find the book in object quoted under the caption "Why did Serbian people *not* want to be ruled by Croatia in 1991?". I can sympathise with some of the editor's points, particularly about the role of the Vatican in the 92-95 war and the process of beatification of Stepinac, but from that to manipulation there's a long winding road. Finally I'd like to say a word curiously absent from the editor's epilogue: Srebrenica.

Rating:
Summary: Real holocaust story
Review: This work presents a true account of Vatican's "forbidden holocaust" and Croatian genocide of Serbs, in Second World War...The most evil concentration camp of all nazi camps, Jasenovac in Croatia, was the place of torture and extermination of close to 1 milion Serbs, Jews and other non-catholics in Balkans. This is a powerful book that will make you want to know more and after reading it, your understanding of present situation and wars in Yugoslavia will be quite clear...Do not miss it.

Rating:
Summary: Witness to Jasenovac's Hell
Review: Witness to Jasenovac's Hell
by Ilija Ivanovic
Edited by Wanda Schindley, Ph.D.

Reviewed by:
Timothy E. McMahon, M.S.
Electronic Publishing Specialist
American Mathematical Society

"In the concentration camp at Jasenovac, on the night of August 29, 1942, orders were issued for executions. Bets were made as to who could liquidate the largest number of inmates. Peter Brzica cut the throats of 1,360 prisoners with a specially sharp butcher's knife. Having been proclaimed the prize-winner of the competition, he was elected King of the Cut-throats. A gold watch, a silver service and a roasted suckling pig, and wine were his other rewards." (104)

After Germany and its Axis allies invaded Yugoslavia in April of 1941, the Nazis permitted the fascist and terrorist Ustasha organization to found the Independent State of Croatia. The Ustasha regime established numerous concentration camps in Croatia between 1941 and 1945: The largest was the Jasenovac complex. Set up in 1941, the camp complex functioned with ruthless efficiency until 1945. During these few short years, some 600,000 people were slaughtered there. In 1945, nearly all of the remaining prisoners were killed and the camp was blown up to conceal evidence of the Ustasha's mass murder campaign.

Witness to Jasenovac's Hell is a grim first person account of a thirteen-year-old boy, Ilija Ivanoviæ, who was taken from his home in the former Yugoslavia and interred in the Jasenovac concentration camp for three years. During this time, Ivanoviæ was witness to innumerable, unspeakable horrors many of which are graphically portrayed in this work. In April 1945, as the partisan army approached the camp, the Ustasha blew up all the installations and killed most of the internees in an attempt to erase traces of their atrocities. Sensing that their total annihilation was at hand, the remaining few prisoners banded together in one last desperate effort to break free of their captivity. En masse, the prisoners broke down the doors of their prison, and despite their frail conditions, fought their captors for their lives. Of the 1,060 men and boys left alive in the camp on April 22, 1945, less than one hundred survived this mass escape attempt. Machine gun fire decimated the escaping prisoners leaving only eighty to survive the slaughter. Ivanoviæ was one of the few to escape the confines of the camp and to eventually reach freedom.

In addition to this compelling first-person account, readers will be gripped by the riveting imagery presented through multiple photographs illustrating the monstrous actions perpetrated by the Ustasha against camp internees.

Initially published in its original Serbian language edition in 1988, this release was edited by Wanda Schindley, Ph.D. with translations by Aleksandra Laziæ. Schindley has done a thorough job in editing this translation with copious footnoting and sound commentary in her forward and the editor's epilog. In doing so, Schindley has started down the road to making an important, and apparently overlooked page in twentieth century history available to a broad English speaking population. Placed in the broader context of World War II histories, Yugoslavia and Croatian history, this work will be a valuable addition to college and university libraries as well others interested in this dark era of world history.

Resources consulted:
1. The Simon Wiesenthal Center
2. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust.

Rating:
Summary: Witness to Jasenovac's Hell
Review: Witness to Jasenovac's Hell
by Ilija Ivanovic
Edited by Wanda Schindley, Ph.D.

Reviewed by:
Timothy E. McMahon, M.S.
Principal Web Developer
The McMahon Group
...

"In the concentration camp at Jasenovac, on the night of August 29, 1942, orders were issued for executions. Bets were made as to who could liquidate the largest number of inmates. Peter Brzica cut the throats of 1,360 prisoners with a specially sharp butcher's knife. Having been proclaimed the prize-winner of the competition, he was elected King of the Cut-throats. A gold watch, a silver service and a roasted suckling pig, and wine were his other rewards." (104)

After Germany and its Axis allies invaded Yugoslavia in April of 1941, the Nazis permitted the fascist and terrorist Ustasha organization to found the Independent State of Croatia. The Ustasha regime established numerous concentration camps in Croatia between 1941 and 1945: The largest was the Jasenovac complex. Set up in 1941, the camp complex functioned with ruthless efficiency until 1945. During these few short years, some 600,000 people were slaughtered there. In 1945, nearly all of the remaining prisoners were killed and the camp was blown up to conceal evidence of the Ustasha's mass murder campaign.

Witness to Jasenovac's Hell is a grim first person account of a thirteen-year-old boy, Ilija Ivanoviæ, who was taken from his home in the former Yugoslavia and interred in the Jasenovac concentration camp for three years. During this time, Ivanoviæ was witness to innumerable, unspeakable horrors many of which are graphically portrayed in this work. In April 1945, as the partisan army approached the camp, the Ustasha blew up all the installations and killed most of the internees in an attempt to erase traces of their atrocities. Sensing that their total annihilation was at hand, the remaining few prisoners banded together in one last desperate effort to break free of their captivity. En masse, the prisoners broke down the doors of their prison, and despite their frail conditions, fought their captors for their lives. Of the 1,060 men and boys left alive in the camp on April 22, 1945, less than one hundred survived this mass escape attempt. Machine gun fire decimated the escaping prisoners leaving only eighty to survive the slaughter. Ivanoviæ was one of the few to escape the confines of the camp and to eventually reach freedom.

In addition to this compelling first-person account, readers will be gripped by the riveting imagery presented through multiple photographs illustrating the monstrous actions perpetrated by the Ustasha against camp internees.

Initially published in its original Serbian language edition in 1988, this release was edited by Wanda Schindley, Ph.D. with translations by Aleksandra Laziæ. Schindley has done a thorough job in editing this translation with copious footnoting and sound commentary in her forward and the editor's epilog. In doing so, Schindley has started down the road to making an important, and apparently overlooked page in twentieth century history available to a broad English speaking population. Placed in the broader context of World War II histories, Yugoslavia and Croatian history, this work will be a valuable addition to college and university libraries as well others interested in this dark era of world history.

Resources consulted:
1. The Simon Wiesenthal Center
2. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust.