Crimes and Suffering of the population in the wider area of Tuzla in the Second World War (1941-1945)

Abstract

The issue of war crimes and suffering of the population during the Second World War is very complex since it still in many cases serves as a subject of manipulation, in addition, a large number of crimes and suffering is very difficult to investigate and reliably determine the exact number of victims. After the end of the war, it was necessary to show as many victims as possible in order to get as many war reparations as possible, but over time the numbers began to serve the purpose of manipulation to strengthen nationalism, especially Serbian, which can be seen in the number of Jasenovac victims, which without any arguments reached as many as 800,000. If we take the official data on war losses during the Second World War, we will see that Yugoslavia had 1,706,000. casualties while the UK had around 450,900 deaths in total and the US had 418,500 casualties. So it is interesting that Yugoslavia's losses are greater than the total losses that Britain and the United States had together, which ultimately carried the brunt of World War II. In addition, it is important to emphasize that Bosnia and Herzegovina emerged from World War II with enormous human and material losses. 541,717 inhabitants were killed and about 417,000 residential buildings were destroyed. Of that number, more than 103,000 related to the suffering of Bosniaks. Taking the losses in Yugoslavia, it is evident that the losses of Bosnia and Herzegovina are greater than the losses of Serbia, Vojvodina, Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro combined. The following reasons can be used as an answer to the question „why?“, and that is primarily bad doctrine and strategy of war, desire for power and conflict of ideologies, as well as violent implementation of national state projects, the Greater Serbian project and the Greater Croatian project, with the aim of creating a homogeneous space. ¸ It is very important not to observe the events from the Second World War, especially the sensitive ones, globally, but separately, because only in this way will research not mislead us. Crimes should be viewed in the context of events and the responsibilities of commanders and perpetrators. As for the suffering of the population, it is evident that the most tragic fate is mostly borne by Bosniaks since they were under attack by all ideologies and their formations, but their greatness stems from the fact that their pain and position did not lead them to evil. Thus, Bosniaks are the only people who did not have their own fascist movement, nor did their formations organize targeted attacks on places where residents of other denominations lived. It is obvious that they never accepted Ustasha crimes and racial politics, they distanced themselves even more from evil at the very beginning, and there were energetic actions to protect their neighbors, while on the other hand there is no indication that Serb or Croat neighbors stopped to protect their Bosniak neighbors. Instead of being rewarded for their anti-fascism and nobility by the new government, Bosniaks are again under open attack, and for some areas it is evident that this repression resulted in more suffering during the „liberation“ than during the entire war. What is especially unfortunate is the fact that even today there are attempts to manipulate the numbers of victims by mostly Greater Serbia protagonists, who seek to relativize history and continue to spread hatred, telling untruths or distorting historical facts.