PREFACE

Tracing for the real and not conspicuous title for this book I faced a few problems, because I’ve been told that the title of my published book “Croatian genocide over the Serbs“, that happened in 1941 and lasted to 1945, was provocative and some bookstores didn’t want to put it in their store windows being afraid of the unwanted consequences. That is another proof how much the idea of “brotherhood and unity“ among the Serbs and Croatians is rooted in the consciousness of the people. Then, the associating of Croatian name to the genocide is neither desirable nor dangerous, too. Since the suffering of the children was in question, my wife Eva suggested that the title of this book should be “Angels in Hell“.

I don’t know how was it like to be in the Dante “Hell“, but it is easy to conclude that the real hell Serbian children, first of all, were faced with was horrible and ghastly. This has been proved by the stories of the survived children, who were concentration camp prisoners. This book contains of a few narrations of these children.

Similarly, I don’t know who were the participants of the Dante “Hell“, but I know that 33.209 children were killed off in the cruelest way by the organized Croatian authority. It was written about the killing off of Serbian children in the Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945) in the books of Đuro Zatezalo, who was the several years’ director of “Historical Archive in Karlovac, and Dragoje Lukić. The titles of these books are “I was working both farmer’s and blacksmith’s job“ and “We were just children“. The first and last names of 33.209 killed children are recorded in these two books. The names of the children included the ones whose identity these two authors managed to confirm. However, the members of Yugoslav Federal Bureau of Statistics stated that the number of the children killed in the Independent State of Croatia is 74.360.

Considering the huge number of killed Serbs in the concentration camps and throughout the territory of the Independent State of Croatia, it can be concluded that that number is incomparably higher. The estimates of the numbers of the slayed are included in this book. Undoubtedly, that cipher is evaluated to more than a hundred thousand killed ones, since the number of children was very great.

First of all, the mission of this book is to try to reveal, as much as possible, at leas,t the approximate truth about Croatian State genocide over the Serbs that happened on the whole territory of the war Inependent State of Croatia. The second mission of this book is to induce other research workers and state officials, first of all, those in Serbian states, to realize this as the obligation to the history and as a respect to the innocent victims.

It should be the duty of Republic of Srpska, Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republic of Croatia to get down to work seriously on the organization and clear marking of all mass graves, first of al,l the whole complex of the concentration camp in Jasenovac and Donja Gradina especially, which are still in a neglected state. These actions should include the construction of embarkment for the protection of Donja Gradina graves from the floods that the river of Sava inundates during the rise of the water level.

If this doesn’t happen, a great historical shame will stay on the postwar and even present generations, first of all, the generations of the Orthodox Serbian people. The usual comprehension in Europe is that the value of a nation is appreciated through the relation towards its dead people.

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