Dejan Ristić, Director of the Museum of Genocide Victims in Belgrade, requested today a public apology from the Italian Ambassador in Zagreb, as well as the removal of the inappropriate statement expressing solidarity with the Croatian people in the context of commemorating the victims of Jasenovac.

In his announcement, Ristić pointed out that the Independent State of Croatia’s Jasenovac Concentration and Death Camp System, which the Italian diplomat visited as part of the memorial to the innocent Serb, Jewish, Romani and other victims, is well known to have been the most monstrous execution site in Europe during World War II.

“Therefore, the content of the statement, in addition to being insulting to the few survivors of the Jasenovac execution site and hundreds of thousands of their descendants across the former Yugoslavia, is also a gross and public misrepresentation of the genocide of Serbs, the Holocaust and the Samudaripen. The Museum strongly condemns and rejects it,” Ristić said in his public statement.