Vladimir Žerjavić

Vladimir Žerjavić (2 August 1912 – 5 September 2001) was a Croatian economist and demographer who published a series of historical articles and books during the 1980s and 1990s on demographic losses in Yugoslavia during World War II and of Axis forces and civilians in the Bleiburg repatriations shortly after the capitulation of Germany. From 1964 to 1982, he worked as an adviser for industrial development in the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.

Early life Žerjavić was born in Križ, Zagreb County and graduated at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Zagreb. Žerjavić's calculations of total victims in Yugoslavia are based on looking at pre- and post-war censuses. Zerjavić asserted that Yugoslavia lost a total 1,027,000 people in World War II.

Of those, the vast majority, 623,000 people, died in the Independent State of Croatia - 295,000 in Croatia itself, and 328,000 in Bosnia and Herzegovina (both part of the Independent State of Croatia and under the Ustaše regime at the time), and another 36,000 from those countries died abroad. According to ethnicity and/or religion as needed, Žerjavić provided the following estimates of victims in the Independent State of Croatia, for both the war and immediate post-war period:

322,000 Serbs 192,000 Croats 77,000 Muslims 26,000 Jews 16,000 Roma

His claims include 153,000 civilian victims in Croatia and 174,000 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and of that, 85,000 people from Bosnia and Herzegovina and 48,000 from Croatia died in concentration camps. As for the total casualties in Jasenovac concentration camp, he estimated that 85,000 were killed, of which 45–52,000 were Serbs, 13,000 were Jews, 10,000 were Roma, 10,000 were Croats and 2,000 were Muslims.

With regard to Serbs, Žerjavić's calculation ended with a total of 197,000 Serbian civilian victims within the borders of the Independent State of Croatia: 50,000 at Jasenovac concentration camp, 25,000 of typhoid, 45,000 killed by the Germans, 15,000 killed by Italians, 34,000 civilians killed in battles between Ustaše, Chetniks and Partisans, 28,000 killed in prisons, pits and other camps, etc. Another 125,000 Serbs inside the Independent State of Croatia were killed as combatants, raising the total to 322,000.

Regarding the Yugoslav Partisan pursuit of Nazi collaborators, when soldiers and civilians associated with the NDH and other Axis forces were killed by the Yugoslav Partisans, Žerjavić estimated that around 45–55,000 Croats and Bosniaks, 8-10,000 Slovenes, and around 2,000 Serbs and Montenegrins were killed.

Žerjavić's opinions and statements Žerjavić's investigations and statistical analyses, like others including those of Kočović, aim to show that the original number of lives lost on all sides during World War II in Yugoslavia was considerably exaggerated, partly due to the war reparations claims by the Yugoslav government shortly after the war.

An excerpt from Žerjavić's book, Manipulations with WW2 victims in Yugoslavia, reads:

Independent verification Positive Some international agencies and experts have accepted Žerjavić's (and almost equal data achieved by Serbian statistician Bogoljub Kočović) calculations as the most reliable data on war losses in Yugoslavia during World War II. A U.S. Census report from 1954 states: "Details of the (Yugoslav) 1948 census were kept secret but, in negotiations with Germany, it became apparent that the real figure of the dead was about one million. An American study in 1954 calculated 1,067,000."

Following Tito's death in 1980, the 1948 census results became available for comparison with those of 1931. Allowances had to be made for the birth rates of the different communities and for emigration. Research was pioneered by Professor Kočović, a Serb living in the West, whose findings were published in January 1985. He assessed the number of dead as 1,014,000. Later that year a Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts Conference heard that the figure was 1,100,000.

Žerjavić's and Kočović's calculations of war losses in Yugoslavia during World War II were accepted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, together with other estimates:

Due to differing views and lack of documentation, estimates for the number of Serbian victims in Croatia range widely, from 25,000 to more than one million. The estimated number of Serbs killed in Jasenovac ranges from 25,000 to 700,000. The most reliable figures place the number of Serbs killed by the Ustaša between 330,000 and 390,000, with 45,000 to 52,000 Serbs murdered in Jasenovac.

Concerning Žerjavić's calculations on the number of casualties linked to the Bleiburg repatriations, historian Ivo Goldstein writes that it is "difficult to speak of the overall number" and that "the only option is to rely on the research by Vladimir Žerjavić, which has up to now shown itself to be the most reliable in overall estimates".

The Simon Wiesenthal Center and Yad Vashem still use the old estimates given by the Yugoslav authorities. The Simon Wiesenthal Center cites the Yad Vashem document, the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. In a separate entry on the Ustasha movement in general, however, Yad Vashem cites the extermination of "over 500,000" Serbs in the entire NDH.

Croatian historian Vladimir Geiger posited that individual researchers have raised serious objections to Žerjavić's calculations/estimates of human losses by using standard statistical methods and consolidation of data from various sources, pointing out that such an approach is insufficient and unreliable in determining the number and character of casualties and fatalities, as well as the affiliation of the perpetrators of the crimes.

Žerjavić's calculations regarding the Bosnian war According to Žerjavić's calculations, there were 215,000 victims in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the Bosnian war of 1992–95, of which 160,000 were Bosniaks, 30,000 Croats and 25,000 Serbs. However, according to newer research done by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the number of people killed in the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was around 102,000: 69.24% (70,625) Bosniaks, 25.35% (25,857) Serbs, and 5.33% (5,437) Croats.