Jasenovac – istina (2016)

Directed by

Jakov Sedlar

Genre

documentary film

Country

Croatia

Runtime

1h

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A documentary challenges the widely accepted death toll at the Jasenovac concentration camp during World War II. It argues that the number of victims was inflated by communist propaganda and that the camp was also used after the war by Yugoslav communists.

revisionistpolemicalconfrontationalsomberhistoricaldidacticprovocativesomber

What happens

Jasenovac – istina (English: Jasenovac – The Truth) is a 2016 Holocaust denial documentary film by the Croatian filmmaker Jakov Sedlar. The film contends that the extent of The Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia, an Axis puppet state, and the World War II-era genocide of the country's Serb population was exaggerated through post-war communist propaganda. It focuses primarily on Jasenovac, a concentration camp run by state’s wartime fascist Ustaše government where an estimated 100,000 are believed to have perished, and suggests that the actual death toll never exceeded 18,000. The film also argues that Jasenovac continued being used as a concentration camp by Yugoslavia's communist authorities well after World War II, and that more inmates perished when it was run by the communists than when it was run by the Ustaše. It premiered in Tel Aviv in February 2016 and in Zagreb two months later. Its Croatian premiere was attended by Minister of Culture Zlatko Hasanbegović, who is alleged to have made a number of pro-fascist statements in the past, as well as by the Israeli ambassador to Croatia. The film was panned by scholars, journalists and politicians from the Croatian left, who accused the filmmakers of minimizing and relativizing Ustaše atrocities. It was also alleged that the filmmakers had fabricated or misrepresented a number of photographs, correspondences and newspaper reports seen in the film, as well as that they had manipulated videotaped survivor testimony through selective editing. The Israeli ambassador strongly criticized the film and accused the filmmakers of historical negationism, as did representatives of the Croatian Serb and Croatian Jewish communities. The film has been shown as an educational feature in a number of Croatian schools, causing further controversy. Sedlar has said that he intends to screen the film at Holocaust museums and Jewish community centres, and indicated that copies will be donated to university libraries in Europe and North America. In July 2016, a non-governmental organization called the Anti-Fascist League of Croatia filed a lawsuit against Sedlar alleging the film incited ethnic intolerance and promoted Holocaust denial. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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