The Goldman Report’s direct response to Yad Vashem’s Press Release, dated 25/8/21
Following a wave of media attention and what could only be described as a feeding frenzy, there are a number of false interpretations of what my original op-ed titled: This disgraceful mocking of the Holocaust needs to stop now, in the Jerusalem Post was all about.
While some of the responses to my now-deleted article that were printed by the J-Post contained outright lies and not worthy of a response – the statement by Dr. Robert Rozett, Senior Historian from Yad Vashem, dated 25 August – see here - deserves a clear and robust rebuttal.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Following is my 12-point response to that statement
1. Despite insinuations by Yad Vashem that I wrote only 4500 people died at Jasenovac, any reasonable person reading my article would come to the conclusion that I said no such thing. In fact, I wrote: “…Yugoslavia’s forensic examination found that all up, between 2500 and 4500 were killed at the camp.” In other words, what I said was all that Yugoslavia – the former Balkan country - could find as physical evidence was this range, and not what I think the actual death toll could or should be.
2. This was confirmed by the acting director of the Museum of Genocide Victims in Belgrade, Dejan Ristic who while claiming my piece was ‘extremely revisionist’, went on to write that there was a ‘1946 excavation’, that found ‘967 remains’ and then the ‘1964 excavation with a total of 284 victims’. All up, 1251 bodies were found in Jasenovac, according to Ristic. In other words, the person who labelled my article ‘extremely revisionist’, proposes as his own number of physically unearthed (by Yugoslavia) Jasenovac victims, a figure that is about three times lower than the 4500 or so found from scanning decades of Yugoslavian data.
3. The subject of my op-ed was that Jasenovac has been grossly manipulated for political purposes so much so that the figures quoted by all sides no longer make any logical sense whatsoever. Accordingly, Mr Ristic confirms this point, writing that no more human remains were found, but then goes on to admit, that despite all this, his museum increased the death toll by an extra 88,000-plus people. From where these extra nearly 90,000 people came from, he does not or will not say. That was one of the main points of my piece.
4. This manipulation of Jasenovac has become so endemic and egregious that not only does it denigrate the horror that was the WW2 Jewish Holocaust, but it also has more recent ramifications. For example, in the 1990s, Serb paramilitaries would regularly invoke this ‘memory’ of Jasenovac to justify their own war crimes at places like Srebrenica, Omarska and Vukovar.
5. The likes of Mr Ristic et al actively push a myth that seems to have also been swallowed hook, line and sinker by Yad Vashem, whereby they claim that no further excavations could have taken place in 1964 – a mere 19 years after the end of WW2 because, “the remains would have disintegrated by then.” This in a country that regularly unearths complete skeletons of 2000-year old Roman soldiers, as happened not far from Jasenovac in 2017. Does Yad Vashem claim that Roman bones are far more durable than Slavic, or for that matter, Jewish ones?
6. The Yad Vashem press release also says: “…it is clear to reputable scholars that it is many times greater than the absurdly low figure of 4,500 thousand cited by Goldman.” There are only 2 ways to determine what the actual figure was. The first is to insist on a full forensic excavation. The second – and less preferable way is to use existing documentation that Yad Vashem already possesses such as the documentation from Nazi Germany, which had accurate and detailed information on Jasenovac. Why does it not release this once and for all, if for no other reason, than to nullify this kind of speculation? Why has Yad Vashem never insisted on a full forensic excavation by the Republic of Croatia?
7. The Yad Vashem press release ends by saying: “… it is incumbent on us to ensure that facts and content published in the media be as accurate as possible and based on reliable sources. Ignoring this basic responsibility plays into the hands of those who seek to intentionally mispresent the historical record.” What this says is that Yad Vashem has no idea whatsoever as to the real death toll of Jasenovac and has completely outsourced the history of this place to those who are either unqualified or have nefarious motives in manipulating the numbers. It has then put researchers in the unenviable position of being attacked as ‘Holocaust deniers’ by these same groups who are trying to hide the fact that much of the research, databases and publicly-available data behind this camp cannot be verified.
8. Why has it looked the other way as the Jasenovac Memorial Park (JUSP) between 2001 and 2019, made no less than 35 alterations to the official victim database? How was this this possible if there was no further forensic excavation after 1964 and knowing that former Yad Vashem Vice Chairman Reuven Dafni confirmed that the Republic of Serbia never provided any documentation pertaining to Jasenovac? So how, why and on the basis of exactly what evidence were these nearly 3 dozen changes made”
9. Why has Yad Vashem never condemned the practice by JUSP (discontinued by 2001, mainly because of the Internet’s ability for comparison) of using pictures from other camps and theatres of war and passing them off as being from WW2 Jasenovac, knowing full well the potential harm this type of cross-contamination could cause the history of the Holocaust?
10. Can Yad Vashem explain why all the data on and/or from Yugoslavia, starting from the 1950s and ending in the 1990s, quotes 5 different official state figures on Jasenovac. All of these figures steadily increase from 1954 onwards. This occurrence has no equal anywhere during the past century and is truly unique in modern history.
11. It is interesting to note that nowhere on its website does Yad Vashem actually state what the Jasenovac death toll was. It says in the press release that: “…it is clear to reputable scholars that it is many times greater than the absurdly low figure of 4,500 thousand cited by Goldman, and many times less than the grossly inflated count of more than 800,000.” Fair enough, but why won’t it say what the figure is. Could it be, like me, it cannot be sure due to manipulation? Or, as I have said many times, no-one will ever know because Jasenovac’s databases have been corrupted so heavily?
12. Is Yad Vashem aware that earlier this year, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) published a peer-reviewed scientific paper that compared the demographic spread of a number of wartime concentration camps to that of their host country’s populations. It found that all the camps results matched their host country’s demographics. All except for Jasenovac that is. The research found that via the use of the ‘Total Variation Outlier Recognizer’ method, that some 89 percent of Jasenovac’s figures were wholly unreliable. This too has no comparison to anywhere in modern history. Will Yad Vashem go on the record to say that the IEEE is also party to an attempt to ‘whitewash’ the history of Jasenovac?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Despite all that has been written across the Balkans and in the Jerusalem Post about my op-ed, let me be clear: while Jasenovac deserves to be condemned, at the same time, I stand by my notion that it does not deserve to be equated with Auschwitz.
I stand by the idea that it also deserves, for the sake of the victims, stability in the region, future generations and to protect the integrity of Holocaust history, to have the full truth be made public once and for all.
It is utterly inconceivable that in 2021, there is in the centre of Europe a place where no-one – including Yad Vashem - knows the reality of what actually happened there during WW2.
Either way, this is not a good situation for Yad Vashem, Holocaust history, or for those who are historians.
David Goldman
