[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 151 (Monday, November 1, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2234]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


 RECOGNITION OF THE CROATIAN GOVERNMENT'S EFFORTS TO HOLD WAR CRIMINAL 
                 DINKO SAKIC ACCOUNTABLE FOR HIS CRIMES

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Monday, November 1, 1999

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to invite my colleagues to join 
me in commending the Croatian Government's vigorous prosecution of 
Dinko Sakic, the commander of the notorious Jasenovac concentration 
camp during World War II and one of the worst war criminals alive 
today. On October 4, Sakic was found guilty in a Zagreb court of crimes 
against humanity and sentenced to twenty years in prison--the maximum 
allowable penalty under Croatian law. I welcome and applaud this 
verdict.
  Tens of thousands of Jews, Gypsies, Serbs, and anti-fascist Croats 
were murdered at Jasenovac, called the ``Auschwitz of the Balkans.'' 
Mass executions, random killings, torture, and starvation took place 
there and at other concentration camps run by the pro-Nazi Ustashe 
regime during World War II. According to evidence presented during his 
trial, Sakic not only supervised these atrocities, but also took part 
in many of them himself.
  At the end of World War II Sakic fled to Argentina, where he lived 
for over half a century under his real name. When he was finally 
deported to stand trial in Croatia last year, Sakic responded to his 
critics by defending the genocidal policies of the Ustashe 
dictatorship. ``I am proud of all I did,'' he said. ``I regret that we 
hadn't done all that is imputed to us, for had we done that then, today 
Croatia wouldn't have had problems, there wouldn't have been people to 
write lies!''
  In addressing his personal responsibility for the atrocities that 
occurred under his watch at Jasenovac, Sakic asserted the defense made 
famous by Goering, von Ribbentrop, and other Nazi leaders at Nuremberg: 
He was simply following orders. ``I wasn't making decisions,'' Sakic 
declared, despite overwhelming information to the contrary, ``but I 
obeyed the orders consciously because they were in accordance with my 
convictions of national interests and the efforts to preserve the 
biological survival of the Croatian people.'' During the trial, Sakic 
laughed at camp survivors who testified against him and claimed that he 
has ``no guilty conscience whatsoever.'' Based on the appalling account 
of his unspeakable crimes, he certainly should have a guilty 
conscience.
  Mr. Speaker, the Croatian Government's timely and public efforts to 
hold Dinko Sakic accountable for his crimes merit the appreciation of 
all who care about international justice and human rights. It is 
imperative that Croatia's leaders continue to confront the country's 
World War II past as they have done so effectively with the prosecution 
of Dinko Sakic and that the Croatian government aggressively oppose 
World War II and Holocaust revisionism. It is my hope that other newly 
democratic nations in Central and Eastern Europe will follow the 
example of the Sakic trial, and that they will work to honor the memory 
of the millions who lost their lives during the Holocaust.

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