Ivan Ivanji: Trimming crimes is counterproductive

Ivan Ivanji, a renowned writer and translator, warned the Serbian public about the attitude towards the Staro Sajmište camp, where his Jewish people also suffered mass casualties, reports the Patria agency.

Today, the Sajmište concentration camp is being erased even from historical maps of crimes, while other execution sites of Jews, Roma, and communists, such as Topovske Šupe, Banjica, Veliki Bečkerek, and Crveni Krst in Niš, are rarely mentioned.

Ivanji also reminded the Serbian public of recent events in Bosnia.

- I have often had the opportunity to speak about concentration camps in Germany and Austria, less often in Serbia. Based on that, I believe that the generation of grandchildren and great-grandchildren of perpetrators and victims should calmly and concretely learn about mass murders, regardless of whether we call them Holocaust, genocide, Shoah, or something else. Trimming them is counterproductive.

Ivanji also emphasized that society has learned nothing from the crimes of World War II, as the same crimes occurred during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s.

- The attempt at anti-fascist education in Yugoslavia did not prevent the rebuilding of concentration camps in Bosnia, nor the mass murders with fascistoid overtones in the Yugoslav wars. These are fresher memories than the leading of hostages from Topovske Šupe to execution, among them my father, or the transport of Jews in gas vans from the Staro Sajmište camp through the center of Belgrade, among them my mother - warns Ivan Ivanji.