Varazdin Bishop, Boze Rados, celebrated Mass at Jazovka pit in Sosice on Tuesday, where victims of Yugoslav communists were killed and thrown, saying that truth was an obligation but that revenge, animosity and hatred did not have the last word there.

“The truth is a holy obligation, but we must see to it that we don’t turn it into ideology,” he said.

Mass for all the victims thrown into Jazovka on the Zumberak Mountains was organised by a local parish, whose priest Ivan Vucak said the remains of 814 victims were pulled out of the pit on 13-17 July 2020. The exhumation was organised by the War Veterans Ministry.

The ministry said on that occasion that the victims were thrown into the pit in 1943 and in 1945 after WWII.

Croatia is considering building a dignified memorial and tomb here, Vucak said today.

Jazovka is known as the site of “mass executions of Croats by the Partizans during and after WWII,” state agency Hina explained. The victims were mostly wounded people, medical staff and nuns whom members of the Yugoslav army took away from two Zagreb hospitals after the war ended.

The criminals have never been tried. Proceedings have been launched to have three of the nuns declared blessed within the Catholic Church.

Jazovka was discovered on 22 January 1989 by Mladen Kuka, a mountaineer, expeditionist and speleologist from Karlovac. He and several colleagues descended into the pit seven days later, discovering the remains of the victims that were not discussed during communist Yugoslavia.