Prime Minister of the Republic of Srpska Savo Minić attended today the Commemoration Ceremony on the occasion of the Day of the Remembrance for the victims of the crimes of genocide committed by the Ustasha regime in Jasenovac Concentration Camp and its largest execution site - Donja Gradina in the so called Independent State of Croatia (NDH) from 1941 to 1945.

Prime Minister Minić and highest officials of the Republic of Srpska laid a wreath at Topola Cemetery in Donja Gradina Memorial Complex near Kozarska Dubica in memory of a half a million Serbs, 40,000 Roma and 33,000 Jewish killed in the Jasenovac concentration camp and its largest execution site, Donja Gradina, in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH).

“We remember, remain silent and pay tribute to those who suffered simply because they were who they were. It is the obligation of all of us to remember”, the Prime Minister said.

The memorial service was led by His Holiness Serbian Patriarch Porfirije. The religious ceremony included the prayer and remembrance of the Serbian, Jewish and Roma victims of the genocide committed by the Ustasha regime in the Jasenovac concentration camp.

The Day of Remembrance is marked in honor of the Victims of the Genocide against Serbs, Jews and Roma in the Independent State of Croatia from 1941 to 1945 and the 81st anniversary of the breakout of the last surviving prisoners from Jasenovac Concentration Camp on April 22, 1945 who attempted to escape from the largest factory of death in southeastern Europe in World War II.

The system of death camps in the so called Independent State of Croatia included some 80 concentration camps and Donja Gradina was the largest execution site in the Jasenovac concentration camp system established in August 1941.

According to the data of Donja Gradina Memorial Complex, 700,000 victims of Ustasha crimes died in the infamous Jasenovac camp during World War II, including 500,000 Serbs, 40,000 Roma, 33,000 Jews, and 127,000 anti-fascists. 20,000 children died in Jasenovac Camp.