Yugoslav War Victims of WWII

The Jasenovac Research Institute's Victims List was launched in January 2005 and redesigned in March 2006. Its purpose is to further the work of establishing the total number of victims of genocide and fascism in World War II Yugoslavia. This database, created by JRI, consists of data originally collected by the Yugoslav government's Federal Bureau of Statistics for the 1964 Yugoslav State Census of War Victims. Although the Yugoslav government published the census in 1966 under the title War Victims 1941-1946, it decided not to release it. This list, which is fully accessible here to the public for the first time, lists over 647,000 war fatalities over the territory of wartime Yugoslavia. The list was not available at all until 1992, and was shelved for a number of reasons. It was believed to contain inaccuracies, but also to understate the number of wartime dead including the number of those who perished in the death camp system of NDH Croatia/Bosnia. Some calculations place total WWII Yugoslav demographic losses on a range from 2 million to 3.25 million, while the Yugoslav government released a figure in May of 1945 of 1,685,000 fatalities. The 'Republic Commission of Croatia for establishing the crimes committed by the occupiers and their collaborators' made public a figure 600,000 fatalities in the NDH death camp system, of which Jasenovac served as the hub.

While the 1964 census attempted to include all victims of the fascist occupation in wartime Yugoslavia, including the victims of the system of death camps at Jasenovac, it needs to be emphasized that the data collected in this census is incomplete. Many of the victims of Jasenovac and other camps are either not yet collected in any census, or were not included in this one. Nevertheless, we consider this database an invaluable tool for researchers and for victims' families who wish to pursue research on this subject. It is a database that should be seen as a tool toward reaching a better knowledge of the real magnitude of the crimes of genocide committed by the Croatian Ustashe, the Nazis and their fascist collaborators, and a means for building a comprehensive list of known victims of the Holocaust in Yugoslavia. It is not a definitive list of Holocaust or Jasenovac victims. This means that this is a work in progress. All of the data presented here can be edited, expanded or removed with the help of the public and other researchers. It will depend on the assistance of many people of good will with direct knowledge of the victims willing to provide information for updates and corrections to the list. With such help, all known Holocaust victims in World War II Yugoslavia may one day be included in this list. But many of the victims will never be known, and therefore knowledge of total victims will require other methodologies.

Nobody has complete data on Jasenovac, on the Holocaust in Yugoslavia, or for that matter on the Holocaust in general. There were too many victims and too many unknown stories. We hope that victims' families will benefit by having this data made available to them. This is one way of working toward as complete a record of the truth as possible, and we hope, a living and respectful tribute to all of the victims of one of the most horrible crimes in history, particularly the crimes of genocide against Serbs, Jews and Romas, which need to be better understood by all of humanity.

The JRI wishes to extend special thanks to Adam Morgan, Jean Neftin and Janko Velimirovic for their assistance in creating this database.

Barry Lituchy/JRI, March 2006

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