Milanović responded to Dodik: The Croatian people emerged from World War II on the right side of history

(Patria) - Croatian President Zoran Milanović today rejected as untrue and unacceptable the claims of RS President Milorad Dodik that only a small number of Croats did not show solidarity with the crimes of the Ustaše regime.

"Milorad Dodik, in addition to the repeated untruth about the number of victims in Jasenovac, said that 'very few members of the Croatian people did not show solidarity with the crimes of the Ustaše regime', which is absolutely untrue and an insult to all Croatian anti-fascists and the Croatian people," stated Milanović's Office.

Serbian politicians from BiH, Serbia, and Montenegro held a commemoration yesterday in Donja Gradina for the victims of the Jasenovac concentration camp, where they multiplied the number of people killed there and claimed there were 700,000, despite documented data of just over 83,000 victims.

Dodik added that in Croatia, "axes were sharpened for a hundred years" to begin killing Serbs from 1941 onwards, suggesting that the Croatian people were collectively guilty of the Ustaše crimes.

"The Croatian people emerged from World War II on the right side of history, on the winning side. Any other interpretation of history, including Dodik's mentioned one, is a gross falsification of the truth.

Such claims, besides being completely untrue, are also an inadmissible attempt to impose collective guilt on the Croatian people," the statement reads.

Milanović's statement also says that Croats were among the first in Europe to establish an anti-fascist partisan detachment and fought "not only for liberation from German and Italian occupation, but also against the terror carried out by the Ustaše regime".

- The fact that the first partisan anti-fascist detachment was established so soon after the establishment of the so-called Independent State of Croatia and that it was largely composed of Croats clearly shows that Croats did not accept the Ustaše regime - said Milanović, adding that "Croatia has nothing to be ashamed of because, with the participation of the majority of its people in the anti-fascist struggle, it chose a just and victorious path".