Picturing Jasenovac: Atrocity Photography Between Evidence and Propagandaглава из книги
Аннотация: Between 1941 and 1945, approximately 80-100,000 victims perished in Jasenovac, the brutal concentration camp established and run by the pro-Nazi Ustasha regime in the Independent State of Croatia.Most of the victims were Serbs, although among the total number are also up to 13,000 Croatian and Bosnian Jews, around 15,000 Roma and 5,000 Croatian political prisoners. 1 In the context of the broader history of Nazi-occupied Europe, Jasenovac is probably best known for being operated entirely by the Ustashe, without the involvement of, or much encouragement from, their Nazi masters, and for the barbaric methods of execution.Most of the victims were killed by a blow to the head with a mallet or axe, by stabbing, or by having their throats slit with a knife.The 'intimate' nature of the executions has led to the common, albeit somewhat misguided inference that this somehow made Jasenovac 'worse' than even its much larger, Nazi counterparts. 2Jasenovac represents one of the most contentious aspect of the memory of the Second World War in the former Yugoslavia.Since the 1980s it has been a key symbolic battleground in the 'memory wars' between Serbian and Croatian nationalist elites.Disputes over the number of victims and the nature and purpose of the camp, which have dominated the Jasenovac controversies, have been explored and written about in considerable detail. 3 At the same time, much less scholarly attention has been devoted to the deep divisions regarding the photographic record of Jasenovac and the role of atrocity images in representing the horrors of this camp.This is a surprising omission, given that atrocity images, and their uses and abuses, are central to the Jasenovac debates: just like the issue of the number of victims, the question about how Jasenovac should be represented visually polarizes post-Yugoslav societies, and remains a significant barrier to regional reconciliation.For example, in Serbia and in the Bosnian Serb entity of Republika Srpska, atrocity photographs are routinely presented in the mainstream press, in television documentaries and news reports, in books 1 The figures are based on the records of the Jasenovac Memorial Site, whose database currently contains the names of 83,145 victims including 47,627 Serbs, 16,173 Roma, 13,116 Jews, 4,255 Croats and 1,974 victims of other nationalities (see http://www.jusp-jasenovac.hr/Default.aspx?sid=6711).There is however widespread recognition among scholars in the region that these figures are incomplete, and that the total number of victims is likely to be closer to 100,000. 2
Год издания: 2018
Авторы: Jovan Byford
Издательство: Böhlau Verlag
Источник: Böhlau Verlag eBooks
Ключевые слова: Religion, Theology, History, Judaism, Christianity, European history and politics
Другие ссылки: Böhlau Verlag eBooks (HTML)
Open Research Online (The Open University) (HTML)
Open Research Online (The Open University) (HTML)
Открытый доступ: green
Страницы: 227–248