In her address at the memorial service on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Ustasha Crimes — Genocide in the Jasenovac Concentration Camp and its largest execution site Donja Gradina, President of the Republic of Srpska Željka Cvijanović emphasized that Donja Gradina is the most difficult place to give a speech, and that there is nothing in the recent or ancient history of Serbian people or the human race that can compare to what happened in this area during the dark years of the Independent State of Croatia.

“This is a place of pain and silence, where instead of words were heard cries of blameless victims, hopeless screams of women, crying and sobbing of innocent children. Nobody could expect mercy or compassion. The killing was not industrial, the way that it was in Nazi death camps, but sadistic and savage. Each victim was faced with the personal, pathological hatred of their executioner,” said Cvijanović.

She emphasized that victims were not treated as human beings, but as objects upon which to live out darkest desires.