Serbia ‘Finds List of 5,800 Children Saved from Croatian WWII Camps’

The Serbian Museum of Genocide Victims said on Friday that it has obtained a list with the names and details of 5,800 Serbian children rescued from Ustasa death camps in the Nazi-allied Independent State of Croatia, which was thought to have been lost or destroyed.

Museum director Dejan Ristic told media in Belgrade that the list was compiled in the second half of 1942 by Croatia-based Austrian humanitarian activist Diana Budisavljevic, who worked on behalf of children in the camps where Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascists were held during World War II.

Ristic said that the list was created at the Institute for Deaf Children in Zagreb during the course of Budisavljevic's humanitarian activities and was presented to the public for the first time on Friday, Bosnian Serb entity news agency SRNA reported.

He explained that list contains the names and surnames of the children, their parents, the date and name of the camp from which they were rescued, as well as the age and identity of their Croatian adoptive parents. The list was thought to have disappeared during World War II, he added.

"Now, for the first time, we can offer living children, who are now old people and who are still searching for their identity, as well as their descendants, information about their real identity," Ristic said.

Budisavljevic, an Austrian married to a Croatian doctor, used her connections with the remains of the Jewish and Serb communities in Zagreb, but also with Nazi and Ustasa functionaries and Catholic Church dignitaries, to organise the distribution of food and clothes to malnourished women and children in Ustasa camps.

However, the aid was usually stolen by the authorities before any of the prisoners received it.

After many of the...