When will world confront the undead of Croatia?

Baltimore Sun ^ | January 16, 2007 | Julia Gorin

[Bokababe]

LAS VEGAS // President Bush recently echoed Vice President Dick Cheney's support for Croatia to join the European Union, a bid that has been stalled because of the former Yugoslav republic's slowness to own up to and prosecute its 1990s war crimes and its failure to ensure protections and rights for minorities, including returning Serb refugees.

Croatia also faces the possibility of being excluded from the 2008 European soccer championship because when an Italian team's fans taunted the Croatian team's fans at a match in August by waving Yugoslavia's old communist flag, the other side took great offense and showed the competition what it was really made of: They formed a giant human swastika and gave Nazi salutes....

[Xenalyte]

When will world confront the undead of Croatia?

First, we need to get a handle on America's zombies and C.H.U.D.s.

[Xenalyte]

"Do not be too hasty in entering that room . . . I had TACO BELL for lunch!"

[joan]

Then you tell us how many ethnic Croats were imprisoned by the Germans during WWII.

You ever hear of any? Can you name any?

Do you have any photos of Germans hanging Croats like there are photos of Germans hanging and shooting Serb civilians, including women?

[Bokababe]

"Croatia was conquered by Nazi forces."

By your account, Croatia would have had to have the wimpiest fighting men in the entire world to have only lasted fighting against the Germans for 4 days, while the Serbs offered resiistance for 4 years! That makes no sense.

The Croat love affair with Nazism long preceeded the WWII German invasion and never died in the Ustashi diaspora post-war, coming back for another round to support Croat independence in the 1990's.

It is true that there was some resistance against Nazism by individual Croats -- I grew up knowing one of them -- but there was no real resistance to the Nazis by Croatia as a whole, with the exception of those who joined Tito's communists.

That Croat I was talking about was a Dubrovcanin, who told me that when he was growing up, he thought that Dubrovnik was the most wonderful place in the world. People went for a stroll every night and greeted each other politely and kindly, Serb or Croat didn't matter, they were all neighbors and treated each other with respect. But when the war came, those same neighbors turned into unrecognizable, racist murderers. He left Dubrovnik when he saw those same previously polite neighbors (including a Catholic priest) kick to death a pregnant Serb woman who had tripped and fallen crossing a Dubrovnik street. He went to Serbia, joined the Yugoslav Royal Army's Chetniks and never looked back. He eventually came to the US, married a Serb-American wife and raised his children Serbian Orthodox.

I also met a Slovenian-American woman when I was taking a course at college, who told a similar story minus the conversion, about her father. He witnessed a terrible act of cruelty against a Serb family and that was it, he joined the Chetniks for the same reasons, eventually coming to the US.

Seeing Croat fascists as some sort of "freedom fighters aganist communism" is a complete distortion of history. Nazi Germans were even appallled at the Croat vicious cruelty toward Serbs, Jews & Gypsies. Germany never sought to exterminate all the Serbs, Croatia did, which is why Jasenovac was the only death camp in Europe not run by Nazi Germany! And the genocide of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies was what happened AFTER Croatia got their "independence", not before!

[F-117A]

But the Croats never voted any fascists into power.

They voted Tuđman in, didn't they?

[wideawake]

Seeing Croat fascists as some sort of "freedom fighters aganist communism" is a complete distortion of history.

There are a lot of tendentious, self-serving things in your posts - but we can agree on this point.

The government of Pavelic was a Nazi-bootlicking collaborationist cabal even worse than Vichy France.

They were fighting for fascism, not freedom.

No moral person can defend the Pavelic regime.

[Bokababe]

"No moral person can defend the Pavelic regime."

On that we can agree.

[Democratshavenobrains]

Yay! Christians hating Christians. Stuff like this is why the world is facing the worsening Islamist problem.

[Bokababe]

"Yay! Christians hating Christians. Stuff like this is why the world is facing the worsening Islamist problem."

I agree. Unfortunately with the WWII Pavelic crew we were discussing, they already had thrown their lot in with the Nazi Muslims 60 years ago!

The Nazi Muslims here were Pavelic's WWII "Honorary Croats" from Bosnia.

The whole situtation then was & is heart-breaking.

[steve8714]

Churchill always knew the Russians would be next. There is not much difference between Nazism and Marxism- one has powerful industrialists favored by the state, and the other has powerful apparatchiks who control the factors of production and stash what they can steal in Switzerland.

[kronos77]

http://www.jasenovac.org/whatwasjasenovac.php

From August 1941 to April 1945, hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, and Romas, as well as anti-fascists of many nationalities, were murdered at the death camp known as Jasenovac. Estimates of the total numbers of men, women and children killed there range from 300,000 to 700,000. And yet, despite the scale of the crimes committed there, most of the world has never heard of Jasenovac.

Following the Nazi invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the "Independent State of Croatia" was established as a pro-Nazi government. It was dedicated to a clerical-fascist ideology influenced both by Nazism and extreme Roman Catholic fanaticism. On coming to power, the Ustashe Party dictatorship in Croatia quickly commenced on a systematic policy of racial extermination of all Serbs, Jews and Romas living within its borders.

Jasenovac was actually a complex of five major and three smaller "special" camps spread out over 240 square kilometers (150 square miles) in south-central Croatia. Along with hundreds of thousands of Serbs, some 25,000 Jews and at least 30,000 Romas were murdered in these camps. The names of some 20,000 murdered children of all three nationalities collected thus far by historians provides only a hint of the scale of the crimes committed there against children. Jasenovac is also known for having been one of the most barbaric death camps of the Holocaust for the extreme cruelty in which its victims were tortured and murdered. Jasenovac was not the only death camp in fascist occupied Yugoslavia, but it was by far the largest and the one in which a majority of the some one million victims of racial genocide in World War II fascist Croatia were exterminated.

[kronos77]

I. THE CREATION OF THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF CROATIA - 1941 After the short-lived war in April of 1941, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was divided among the aggressor countries: Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, Horti's Hungary and Boris III's Bulgaria. In the meantime, while the war was still being fought, the founding of the Ustasha's Independent State of Croatia (abbreviated as NDH from the Serbo-Croatian "Nezavisna Država Hrvatska") was proclaimed on April 10, 1941; territories besides those which were traditionally settled by the Croats were grafted into this state, including all of Bosnia- Herzegovina and parts of Serbia. There were more than two million Serbs living in the newly created puppet state, who made up one third of the entire population of the NDH. There were also significant numbers of Jews, Romanies and members of other national groups. As soon as the NDH was proclaimed, the leader of this Italo-German fabrication, the head of the Ustasha named Ante Pavelić, began to carry out the Ustasha's program of the creation of a "purely Croatian area for living" and a "pure Croat nation". Namely, since the Ustasha were extreme nationalists, chauvinists and racists, they began to build their own state and institutions which reflected those of Nazi Germany. According to their ideologists, the condition for the creation of a purely Croatian state would be the expulsion of the Serbs ("Greek-Easterners"), the Jews ("Židovi") and the Romanies ("Gypsies"). Claiming that the Serbs were both racially and religiously different from the Croats, they killed them, deported them or forcibly converted them. The Jews and Romanies were to be completely annihilated as they were considered to be lower races. The Ustasha government and its jurisdiction passed a series of laws, orders and regulations by which Nazi-fascist methods of terror and ethnic genocide were made legal (the Regulation on the Outlawing of the Cyrillic Alphabet, the Regulation on Racial Affiliation, the Regulation on Citizenship, the Regulation on Conversion from One Religion to Another, and so on). Yet, the most massive crime against the Serbs, Jews and Romanies was carried out outside the framework of those laws and legal documents. The Ustasha acted on their racial, religious and national intolerance without regard for any kind of laws or norms. The Ustasha government was supported by the greater part of the Catholic clergy and the Muslim religious community, and the Croatian Peasant also pledged their allegiance to the Ustasha government.

[kronos77]

http://www.jasenovac.info/cd/galerija/arhivrs/index_en.html

(Photos of graphic nature, please be advised)

http://www.jasenovac.info/cd/galerija/arhivrs/unutar/img0061.jpg

(Photo of "Srbosjek" (Serb-slicer) consisted of a metal knife-blade strapped with ledder belt otno wrist for more efficient slaughter of Serbs)

http://www.jasenovac.info/cd/galerija/djecakozare/1/index_en.html
http://www.jasenovac.info/cd/galerija/djecakozare/2/index_en.html
http://www.jasenovac.info/cd/galerija/djecakozare/3/index_en.html

(Photos of Serb children starved to death in Jasenovac, captured during Kosara region-offensive of Croates.)

[wideawake]

The Ustasha government was supported by the greater part of the Catholic clergy and the Muslim religious community, and the Croatian Peasant also pledged their allegiance to the Ustasha government.

Incorrect.

Who is the "Croatian Peasant" exactly? And can I see some copies of these pledges of allegiance?

[joan]

The Germans though did supervise, organize and help set up the camps. The Croats were doing what the Germans wanted. As for the German soldiers being astounded by the Croats killing methods - it strikes me as those observing a sort of freak show - they didn't care enough to even try to stop it, but were remarking on the different style and enthusiasm of the killing methods.

As for the children and people of Kozara, I heard it was mainly the German soldiers, with aid of Croats, who encircled the Serbs around that mountainous area and then gradually tightened the circle until the Serbs were all trapped up a mountain.

[kronos77]

Just to explain sheer size of slaughter of Serbs in Croatia (Bosnia was part of Croatia than) is that most of the people that were rescued from hands of Croates, were not saved by Partisans of Chetniks, but by Germans ant Itallians.

On several occasions, German troops dissarmed Croates after slaughters of Serbs and executed them. It went so far that Hitler himself ordered German troops not to interfear.

Several now-older people I know were saved from ustasha by German troops...

Sad but, true.

[kronos77]

Letter of general Alesandro Luzan to Benito Mussolini

Duce! My imesurable devotion towards You gives me, I hope, the right to, sometimes, bypass strict military protocol. That is why I feel free and obliged to promptly describe you one event which, three weeks ago, I have personally witnessed. Patrolling in towns Stolac, Capljina and Lubinye (about 60 to 130km north of Ragusa) I heard from our intelligence officers that Pavelich Ustashas have in the previous day done some crime in village Prebilovci, and that, when they hear about it, nearby Serbs are certainly going to be upset yet again.

I miss words to describe what I found there. In big classroom, I found slaughtered teacher and 120 young pupils! No child was older than 12 years! Crime is not an appropriate, it is too innocent a word - that was above any madness! Many have their severed heads put orderly on school desks. From their severed bellies bowels were, like New Year's tinsels, spread across the classroom and nailed to the roof! The flies and unbearable smell did not allow us to spend more time there. I have noticed an opened bag of salt in the corner and I was stunned to realise that they have slauthered them slowly, salting their necks first! As we were just about to depart, from the back of the classroom we have heard a child rattling. I have sent two soldiers to see what it was. They found one pupil, still alive, breathing with throat half cut! I have took the poor child in my own car to our military hospital, and there we were able to awake him and from him we found out the full truth about the tragedy.

The criminals have first, taking turns, raped the Serbian teacher (her name was Stana Arnautovich) and then, in front of the children, they have killed her. They raped even the eight year old girls. During all that time, a Gypsy band brought there was forced to play music and hit tamborines! To the utter disgrace of our, Roman church, one priest participated in all this! The boy that we saved recovered quickly. And as soon as the wound healed, he was able to run away from the hospital because of our inattention, and he run back to his village looking for his relatives. We send a patrole for him, but to no avail: they find him in front of his house, slaughtered!

From more than a thousand souls in the village there is no-one left! The same day (that we discovered later) when the crime in school was perpetrated, Ustashe rounded 700 inhabitants of village Prebilovci and drop them into foiba, or killed them in the most bestial way on the road to the pit. Only 300 men saved themself: they were able to break Ustashi lines and to run to the mountains! These 300 survivors are stronger than the most elite Pavelich Ustashe division. All that they have to lose, they lost! Children, wifes, mothers, sisters, houses, possessions. They are free even from the fear of death. The only meaning of their lives is in revenge, in the horrible revenge - they are, in a way, even ashamed that they have survived!

And villages, such as Prebilovci, are all around Herzegovina, Bosina, Lika and Dalmazia. Slaughter of Serbs has reached such proportions, that, in these areas, even water resources are polluted. From one spring in Popovo Polye, near the pit in which 4000 Serbs were thrown, a reddish water ran, I have seen it myself! On conscience of Italy and our culture a dark stain will fall forever if we do not distance ourselves from Ustashe and their demented crimes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_general_Alesandro_Luzan_to_Benito_Mussolini

[kronos77]

The criminals have first, taking turns, raped the Serbian teacher (her name was Stana Arnautovich) and then, in front of the children, they have killed her. They raped even the eight year old girls. During all that time, a Gypsy band brought there was forced to play music and hit tamborines! To the utter disgrace of our, Roman church, one priest participated in all this! The boy that we saved recovered quickly. And as soon as the wound healed, he was able to run away from the hospital because of our inattention, and he run back to his village looking for his relatives. We send a patrole for him, but to no avail: they find him in front of his house, slaughtered!

From Letter of general Alesandro Luzan to Benito Mussolini
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_general_Alesandro_Luzan_to_Benito_Mussolini

[Bokababe]

"The Germans though did supervise, organize and help set up the camps."

The Germans had no opposition to killing Serbs (who they blamed for their WWI humiliation), and to killing as many Jews and Gypsies as they could. But Germany realized that Serbs were too numerous to completely wipe off the face of the earth in spite of the Ustashi goals to slaughter a third, expell a third and convert a third. The stories that were being passed on to Serbs elsewhere in Yugoslavia by those Serbs that the Croat Ustashi had expelled (ethnically cleansed) were inciting the rest of the Serbs even further against Germany. Plus witnessing the Ustashi's sadistic bloodthirsty slaughter was also demoralizing many of Germany & Italy's ordinary troops. (It wasn't just that people were being killed, efficiently as they might be in a gas chamber, but rather the way they were being killed -- in an orgy of blood, even aginst children). Germany's eventual objections were not based on moral grounds, but rather on tactical reasons -- the Ustashi's methods were making it harder for them to subdue the already resistant Serbs.

[joan]

If Serbs and Croat weren't put in the same country again after WWII you probably wouldn't have seen all the '90s wars.

The Serbs were the only ones with substantial loyalty to Yugoslavia when the going gets tough and foreign meddlers start whispering promises of backing and other things in the ears of potential separatists.