An association of descendants of people killed in the World War II Gospic-Jadovno-Pag death camp on Saturday held a commemoration at the Saran Pit on Mt Velebit for 40,000 people killed in that camp operated by the regime of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH).

A Serb Orthodox memorial service and a prayer were held at the Saran Pit as well as at several other execution sites of the former camp.

“Seventy-seven years have passed since the killing of 38,000 Serbs and 2,000 Jews and Roma by the criminal NDH regime,” Dusan Bastasic, head of the “Jadovno 1941” association which organised the commemoration, said at the event which drew about 400 people from Serbia, Vojvodina, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Slovenia.

Bastasic said that the association had requested from the relevant authorities a permit to build an Orthodox chapel and a monument in the vicinity of the Saran Pit and that it hoped the request would be granted.

He said that he was glad none of the crosses put up by the association at previous commemorations on Mt Velebit in tribute to the victims had been desecrated, “which restores hope that the spirals of evil will not happen again”.

Miladin Dragicevic, an envoy of Bosnian Serb entity president Milorad Dodik, said that Bosnian state institutions would help the association and take over from it the organising of the commemoration.

The Serb member of the Bosnia and Herzegovina's tripartite Presidency, Mladen Ivanic, said that the main message of the commemoration was that crimes such as those at Jadovno must never happen again to anyone.

Jadovno, Jastrebarsko, Stara Gradiska and other places of suffering should be taught about because there are many places of the suffering of the Serb people both in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, he said.

In a statement for Hina, Ivanic said that his message to those who denied the crimes at Jadovno was that the denial of evil would not do anyone any good and that one should face the truth instead.