Pokolj
Until now, neither the institutions of the Serbian people nor the scientific and professional community, far less the wider Serbian community, haven't come to an agreed term regarding the crime of genocide committed against the Orthodox Serb population by Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska - NDH).
While the genocide against the Jewish people is known internationally as the Holocaust (or Shoah) and the genocide against the Roma is known to many people by the term Porajmos or Pharrajimos (“the devouring” or “destruction”), the genocide over the Serbian people has not been given a recognisable and terminologically-exclusive term.
Motivated by the above facts and the desire to signify the importance of this historical fact, the assembly of the Association of Jadovno 1941 in Banja Luka has decided that the crime of genocide committed against Orthodox Serbs during the Second World War by the Independent State of Croatia should be known as
In accordance with the above, a decision has been taken that this term should be used in all further written, verbal and all other forms of communication.
It has been decided that the definition of this term be as follows:
Pokolj (Po-ko-/lj/) is the term for the systematic state crime of genocide committed against the Orthodox Serbs during the Second World War by the Independent State of Croatia on the whole of its territory.
The Pokolj (Po-ko-/lj/) affected more than a million Serbs who, prior to 1941, lived in regions which were incorporated into the territory of the Independent State of Croatia.
Through law decrees issued directly by the Poglavnik (the supreme head of the NDH), state ministries and the Main Ustasha Headquarters (GUS), all organs of executive and judicial power in the Independent State of Croatia were involved in the Pokolj (Pokolhy). The crimes against the Serbs included economic terror and the confiscation of their property; curfews and ghettoization; the organization and implementation of individual, group or mass killings; deportation to concentration camps; forced conversion to Catholicism; and expulsion to the territory of occupied Serbia.
Banja Luka, 24th June 2018
info@pokolj.org