On January 25, the ministers of culture of the countries of the former Yugoslavia will sign an agreement on the re-establishment of a joint exhibition in the museum of the former Nazi camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in the French capital.
These are the former republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia - Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia.
The agreement does not include Kosovo, which was an autonomous province of Serbia in the former Yugoslavia. It declared independence in 2008. Of the mentioned six, it was not recognized by Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Yugoslav installation in Auschwitz was installed way back in 1963. After 45 years, it was abolished in 2008.
It also included the sculptures of former inmate Vida Jocić.
Since 2011, the countries of the former Yugoslavia have been working on re-establishing the setting.
The process of restoring the setting is being conducted under the auspices of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization - UNESCO, whose headquarters are in Paris.
The signing of the agreement will take place on the eve of January 27, when Holocaust Remembrance Day is celebrated around the world.
"Auschwitz is the central place of global remembrance of the Holocaust and the Yugoslav victims of this death camp deserve to be known about them and their lives and fates not to be forgotten," Jelena Subotić, professor of political science at the American State University of Georgia, told Radio Free Europe.
The renewal of the exhibition is also significant for historical reasons, she points out, because it is important to connect the history of the Holocaust in the territory of the former Yugoslavia with that in other parts of Europe.
How many citizens perished in Auschwitz?
More than 1941 people from the territory of occupied Yugoslavia were deported to this largest Nazi camp during the Second World War, from September 1944 to August 20.000.
Most of the Yugoslav victims were Jews from Vojvodina, now a province in Serbia.
Apart from them, Roma, thousands of anti-fascists, partisan communist fighters and their sympathizers were also deported to this camp in Poland.
"Of the 20.000 people deported from Yugoslavia, less than a hundred survived until the liberation of the camp in January 1945," points out Subotić, author of the book "Remembrance of the Holocaust after Communism."
First installation in 1963
After the end of the war, the former camp inmates founded the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, where they later gave exhibition space to the countries whose citizens perished in the camp.
Thus, Yugoslavia, on the initiative of the Union of Associations of Fighters of the National Liberation War, set up an exhibition in 1963.
It mainly concerned the fate of Yugoslav partisans and communists who were imprisoned in Auschwitz, together with Jewish, Roma and other victims.
Mostly there were pictures, graphic depictions of the torture and suffering of camp inmates, photocopies of German documents that talk about the huge Yugoslav casualties in the war, including orders for mass reprisals against partisan resistance.
"The memory of Yugoslav Jews and Roma killed in the camp was completely absent from the exhibition. The focus was on the anti-fascist struggle," explained Subotić.
The first change in that setting took place in 1988 in the organization of the Museum of the Revolution of the Peoples and Nationalities of Yugoslavia, today the Museum of Yugoslavia.
The professor points out that the Yugoslav setup was significant but incomplete:
"It did not show in detail the suffering of all the victims, including the Jewish victims who made up more than half of all Yugoslav prisoners in Auschwitz. Now we have much more detail about the fate of all the victims as well as the context of the Holocaust in the former Yugoslavia."
The Museum of Yugoslavia told RFE/RL that all items from the 1988 exhibition have been placed in the depot of the Auschwitz State Museum and are awaiting a new reconstruction of that area.
Among them are 10 sculptures "Appeal" and the sitting figure "Prisoner" by Vida Jocić and objects that were part of the interior of the first exhibition from 1963.
After the breakup of Yugoslavia, which began in the early 1990s, and at the initiative of Slovenia and Croatia, the exhibition was closed in 2008, according to the Montenegrin government website.
On the occasion of the signing of the upcoming agreement in Paris, the government announced that the Historical Museum of Montenegro is participating in the project.
The head of the Museum, Filip Kuzman, told RSE that in Montenegro, the issue of the victims of the Nazi camps is unknown to the general public.
As he explained, the Second World War is primarily discussed in these areas in the context of "the fight against the occupiers but also the civil war".
The museum he heads has only one object that can be linked to a death camp.
"A few years ago, we received a shirt that belonged to Hasena Terzić as a gift. During the war, Hasena was a prisoner in the Ravenzbrik concentration camp, which became infamous because of the medical experiments that were performed on the inmates," says Kuzman.
A culture of memory and dealing with the past
And to what extent do the countries of the former Yugoslavia nurture the culture of remembering war crimes?
RSE interlocutor Jelena Subotić says that they are very happy to deal with the issue of war crimes, but mostly only those where there are victims:
"In Serbia there is a lot of talk about Serbian victims, in Croatia about Croatian victims and so on. There is a great resistance to facing the past where your nation is the executioner, not the victim".
He believes that reworking the history of the Holocaust in Yugoslavia through a new installation in the Auschwitz museum could be an opportunity for a deeper analysis of our past and the memories of "various groups of people who lived here and are no longer there".
Historian Miloš Vukanović also believes that the restoration of the installation in Auschwitz is a good step towards the maturation of Montenegrin society.
"Montenegro society has an infamous tradition of not confronting the difficult legacy of the past, even when it universally condemns these crimes and does not bear the burden of responsibility."
As he says, proof of society's immaturity was reflected in the attitude of official policy and educational staff that learning about crimes is unnecessary and that it disturbs students.
He points out that in the last two decades, much about the Holocaust has been included in the official educational program.
Montenegro and the Holocaust
The Montenegrin historian points out that the issue of unifying data on victims during the Holocaust is very complex.
Vukanović notes that a significant part of those who died in the Holocaust did not die in the camps, and that the victims in the camps were not exclusively Jews.
"Thus, we have victims from Montenegro who died in mass shootings, as well as those who died as prisoners of war or because of forced labor in concentration camps throughout Europe."
It also points to the additional problem of categorizing the victims, i.e. whether they are from Montenegro, whether they were caught on its territory or just transported through it.
Since 1991, not much has been done to consolidate and update data.
During that period, the most significant research into this aspect of the war was carried out in Europe - the databases of the camps were digitized and the historians of the region achieved great progress in the "recategorization" of the once unique Yugoslav victims.
"In Montenegro, there was no institutional effort for such research. Apart from the collection of available digital data, their analysis was not undertaken," said Vukanović.
As he points out, the institutions did not collect occupation and collaborationist archives related to Montenegro.
He estimates that the absolute losses of Montenegro in the period 1941-1945. about 90.000.
"They would have had so many more inhabitants in 1945 if the war had not caused suffering, birthlessness and emigration".
About 1,1 million people perished in Auschwitz
In 2005, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution on commemorating the International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27.
On that day in 1945, the largest concentration camp of Nazi Germany – Auschwitz-Birkenau, was liberated, in which about 1,1 million people, mostly Jews, perished.
About six million Jews perished in the Holocaust, which represents the systematic destruction of European Jews during World War II.
The resolution appeals to all UN members to respect the memory of the victims, develop educational programs on the history of the Holocaust and thus help prevent these crimes in the future.
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