Name Vladimir Zerjavic Role Economist | Died September 5, 2001 | |
Books Population Losses in Yugoslavia 1941-1945 | ||
Vladimir Žerjavić (2 August 1912 – 5 September 2001) was a Croatian economist and demographer who published a series of historical articles and books during the 1980s and 1990s on demographic losses in Yugoslavia during World War II and of Axis forces and civilians in the Bleiburg repatriations shortly after the capitulation of Germany.
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Early life
Žerjavić was born in Križ and graduated at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Zagreb. He was one of four siblings, having two sisters, Viktorija (1908-1993) and Darinka (1921-2009) and a brother, Slavko. After 1934 he worked in the private sector, and after 1945 in various institutions of SFR Yugoslavia. Between 1958 and 1982 he worked abroad as an industrial consultant. In 1964 he joined the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and later consulted the governments of various nations.
Žerjavić's calculations regarding World War II in Yugoslavia
In the 1980s Žerjavić conducted a research on demographic losses in Yugoslavia during World War II, at about the same time as Bogoljub Kočović, a Serb statistician. Žerjavić's calculations of total victims in Yugoslavia are based on looking at pre- and post-war censuses. Zerjavić asserted that Yugoslavia lost a total 1,027,000 people in World War II.
Of those, the vast majority, 623,000 people, died in the Independent State of Croatia - 295,000 in Croatia itself, and 328,000 in Bosnia and Herzegovina (both part of the Independent State of Croatia and under the Ustaše regime at the time), and another 36,000 from those countries died abroad. According to ethnicity and/or religion as needed, Žerjavić provided the following estimates of victims in the Independent State of Croatia, for both the war and immediate post-war period:
His claims include 153,000 civilian victims in Croatia and 174,000 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and of that, 85,000 people from Bosnia and Herzegovina and 48,000 from Croatia died in concentration camps. As for the total casualties in Jasenovac camp, he estimated that 85,000 were killed, of which 45-52,000 were Serbs, 13,000 were Jews, 10,000 were Roma, 10,000 were Croats and 2,000 were Muslims.
With regard to Serbs, Žerjavić's calculation ended with a total of 197,000 Serbian civilian victims within the borders of the Independent State of Croatia: 50,000 at Jasenovac concentration camp, 25,000 of typhoid, 45,000 killed by the Germans, 15,000 killed by Italians, 34,000 civilians killed in battles between Ustaše, Chetniks and Partisans, 28,000 killed in prisons, pits and other camps, etc. Another 125,000 Serbs inside the Independent State of Croatia were killed as combatants, raising the total to 322,000.
Regarding the Bleiburg repatriations, when soldiers and civilians associated with the NDH were killed by the Yugoslav partisans, Žerjavić estimated that around 50,000 people were killed.
Žerjavić's opinions and statements
Žerjavić's investigations and statistical analyses aim to show that the original number of lives lost on all sides during World War II in Yugoslavia was considerably exaggerated for the sake of war reparations claims by the Yugoslav government shortly after the war.
Excerpt from Žerjavić's book "Manipulations with WW2 victims in Yugoslavia":
“One should also believe that the Serbs in Croatia, who have lived in these territories for more than four centuries, will realize that they are not endangered in a community with Croats. They especially should not be afraid that any form of genocide could occur, because they themselves know best that during the Second World War a large number of Croats stood at their defense, and that they, along with Serbians, contributed to the National Liberation War, and even prevented a larger number of victims. It should be mentioned that the regular Croatian Army (Domobrani) also helped with their passive role and even by logistic support to the partisan units. [v]engeance for the crimes committed by the Ustaše was executed immediately after the war, with the terrible massacres at Bleiburg in Austria and during the so-called Way of the Cross (Death Marches), when many innocent opponents of the Communist regime were also killed. Therefore, enacting vengeance against the Croats, with whom the Serbs in Croatia have peacefully lived for the past 45 years, could not be excused, neither morally nor politically. After the artificially created euphoria is over, and once peace is established, all reasonable and objective Serbs will -- I strongly believe -- realize that their common life with Croats, in a state with a prosperous economic future, is the most acceptable solution for them.“ - Vladimir Žerjavić, Zagreb, 27 April 1992Positive
Some international agencies and experts have accepted Žerjavić's (and almost equal data achieved by Serbian statistician Bogoljub Kočović) calculations as the most reliable data on war losses in Yugoslavia during World War II:
"Details of the (Yugoslav) 1948 census were kept secret but, in negotiations with Germany, it became apparent that the real figure of the dead was about one million. An American study in 1954 calculated 1,067,000.Following Tito's death in 1980, the 1948 census results became available for comparison with those of 1931. Allowances had to be made for the birth rates of the different communities and for emigration. Research was pioneered by Professor Kočović, a Serb living in the West, whose findings were published in January 1985. He assessed the number of dead as 1,014,000. Later that year a Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts Conference heard that the figure was 1,100,000.
Žerjavić's and Kočović's calculations of war losses in Yugoslavia during World War II were accepted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, together with other typically higher estimates:
"Due to differing views and lack of documentation, estimates for the number of Serbian victims in Croatia range widely, from 25,000 to more than one million. The estimated number of Serbs killed in Jasenovac ranges from 25,000 to 700,000. The most reliable figures place the number of Serbs killed by the Ustaša between 330,000 and 390,000, with 45,000 to 52,000 Serbs murdered in Jasenovac."Professor Vladeta Vučković, Serbian author of the official 1946 Yugoslav document, agrees with Žerjavić's and Kočović's estimates. She stated that he had calculated a demographic loss of 1,700,000, and that later that number was interpreted as actual number of victims and presented by Yugoslav delegation on peace conference later that year in Paris.
Negative
Some Serb critics of Žerjavić consider his work to have been politically motivated, with the aim of downplaying Croatian nationalist atrocities during the war, such as at Jasenovac. Some claim he was a Holocaust denier.
Critics point out that Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia lived in rural areas and therefore had a much higher growth rate than others. Žerjavić used growth rates for Serbs in Bosnia as 1.1% (as for all nations together), while actual growth rate was 2.4% (1921–31) and 3.5% (1949–53). They posit he intentionally underestimated growth rate of Serbs to decrease the Serb death count, according to critics. These criticisms were rejected by Bogoljub Kočović's book, published in 1997, which refutes Đorđević's efforts to "reinstate" the "great numbers" victims figures dominant in Communist Yugoslavia.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center and Yad Vashem still use the old estimates given by the Yugoslav authorities. The Simon Wiesenthal Center cites Yad Vashem document, the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Yad Vashem claims that in Jasenovac concentration camp alone, 600,000 people, mainly Serbs, were murdered. In a separate entry on the Ustasha movement in general, however, Yad Vashem cites "more than 500,000 Serbs killed" in the entire NDH, including Jasenovac and all other camps and massacres.
Žerjavić was accused by Croatian historian Kazimir Katalinić of plagiarism and of being a "court statistician" because Žerjavić gave a lower number of casualties related to the Bleiburg repatriations than those cited by many other Croatian nationalists.
Žerjavić's calculations regarding the Bosnian war
According to Žerjavić's calculations, there were 220,000 victims in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the Bosnian war of 1992–95, of which 160,000 were Bosniaks, 30,000 Croats and 25,000 Serbs. However, according to newer research done by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the number of people killed in the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was around 102,000: 69.24% (70,625) Bosniaks, 25.35% (25,857) Serbs, and 5.33% (5,437) Croats.