A REQUEST FOR ESTABLISHING THE NUMBER OF VICTIMS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR, SUBMITTED TO THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF STATISTICS

The pressure on Croatia and constant repetition of the issue of war victims continued in the media and a large number of books (especially by Dr. Milan Bulajic), even after I published my book, which documentarily verified that the total demographic losses (for the pre- war territory of Yugoslavia) could be calculated at two million, and the actual war death toll at about one million.

This conclusion was made by some other authors*, and by the present director of the Federal Bureau of Statistics himself**. Therefore the Yugoslav Academy of Arts and Sciences from Zagreb requested (in the official letter on May 25, 1990, no.28/4. 1990) from the Federal Bureau of Statistics that they engage in establishing the population losses of Yugoslavia during the Second World War. A special study was prepared for this purpose, describing in detail the aforementioned calculations by several authors, and even the Bureau's participation in the earlier calculations of losses and listings of slain resistance fighters and other victims of war. In spite of all urgencies, the Federal Bureau of Statistics has not done anything at all, although the request was handed in two years ago.

* At the conference of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, held on June 6, 1985, Dr Dusan Breznik stated that about 1,100.000 people were killed in the war. Paul Mayers and Arthur Campbell, the American authors of the study: "The population of Yugoslavia", published by the Bureau of Census, Washington D.C. , 1954, calculated the Yugoslav life losses at 1,067.000.