Posted on 04/17/2008 5:48:36 AM PDT by SJackson
Melbourne's Katarina Zrinski restaurant held a celebration this past weekend to honor World War II Croatian leader Ante Pavelic, whose genocidal policies led to the deaths of 400,000 Serbs, Jews and Gypsies.
The restaurant is attached to the local Croatian club.
The event honoring the head of the Croatian fascist Ustasha movement and the leader of Nazi-allied Croatia was an "outrageous affront" both to his victims and to any persons of morality and conscience who oppose racism and genocide, the Simon Wiesenthal Center's chief Nazi-hunter and Israel director Dr. Efraim Zuroff said on Wednesday.
According to local press reports, a large photograph of Pavelic was hung in the restaurant, T-shirts with his picture and that of two other commanders in the 1941-1945 Ustasha government were offered for sale at the bar, and the establishment of the "Independent State of Croatia" was celebrated.
Zuroff noted this was not the first time that Croatian émigrés in Australia had openly defended Croatian Nazi war criminals.
"It is high time that the authorities in Australia find a way to take the necessary measures to stop such celebrations, which clearly constitute racist, ethnic, and anti-Semitic incitement against Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies," he said.
About 30,000 Croatian Jews - or 80 percent of the country's Jewish population - died during the Holocaust.
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
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Let them celebrate, simply revile them for the scum that they are.
I agree. Does anyone really think that a Croatian Club in Melbourne's abhorrent "celebration" is going to incite Australians to attack Serbs, Jews, or Gypsies? Let's get in touch with reality, y'all. The only "Australians" who are much into attacking people are the Moslems, and they'd do it anyway.
(Anyway, if we wanted to attack a Serb, just because we were drunk or something, how would we recognize one?)
I’ve been to Melbourne. There isn’t a stray animal anywhere to be seen in the restaurant district. We were told not to eat meat there unless it was specifically stated what kind of meat it was. Otherwise, it could be anything. We had a pizza one night that tasted weird. We left it.
The only consoling fact in answer to these Doofuses is that they probably celebrated this mass murderer by eating rat.
Lamebrains.
LOL!
Neo-Ustashe alive and well!
I wonder if our Dio was able to make the party?
I suppose the same way the Ustasha did during WWII.
But is the food any good?
Nazism isn't dead. It's just packed differently.
Germany never forgot who stood with them during WWII. Croatia simply decided to cash those chips in and Germany was happy to do so by spearheading the entire collapse of Yugoslavia with America being led by the nose. The financial substructure was pulled by the West to cause panic and nationalistic hatred was fanned by the West before any troops were even deployed by Serbs. This is the NEW WORLD ORDER. There are two men in history who have spoken these words in much the same manner. Can you guys who these two men are?
But he’s an okay sort of fascist. He mostly murdered Serbs. /sarcasm
Good point. We could always bomb Serbia.
The hard part with the Croats is that most of the Nazi Ustashi were never caught and punished and Croatia was never really de-Nazified, so consequently the old Ustashi never really felt "defeated". They just lived on in the diaspora, continuing to award each other "medals" -- even for doing heinous things like running the death camp at Jasenovac.
Check this out as a piece of historical memorabilia. It is a 1970's Croat Ustasha medal (for sale on eBay) honoring those who served at the Jasenovac deathcamp. It's the equivalent of giving a medal -- in the 1970's -- to the German Nazi soldiers who served at Dachau! If you look below the listing, at least this seller had the guts to say exactly who the Ustashi were and what they did at Jasenovac, but they are still selling this vile stuff! (Sorry for using eBay as an example, but it is rare that you can see so much of this Ustashe memorabilia in one place.)
There is more -- a 1989 medal honoring Nazi Ustashe Ante Pavelic's birth. And if you keep looking, you find Croat Ustashe military badges from the 1990's Croat war and "Pavelic keychains" from the 1990's. They Ustashi never died, they just went underground in the diapora and returned in the late 1980's
So when Zuroff says, "Hey! Quit commemorating Nazis!", Croats just don't get it. They think, "Wait a minute. Those Ustase won us our country, not once but twice! Pavelic was our Patrick Henry!", even if Pavelic and the Ustashi were bloodthirsty Nazis who had hundreds of thousands of non-Croats murdered WWII deathcamps. And it is very sad, because we in the West let this happen -- we helped the bad guys (Ustashi) win, so now these Nazis & neo-Nazis are revered as "national heroes". And by "bad guys", I don't mean "Croats" or "Croatia", but rather the Ustase and their ideology, specifically.
I don’t think bombing Serbia occurs to many drunk Australians.
They aren't ashamed, they are proud, because they won!
By demanding to see their papers, and then lining them up against a wall to be shot? BTW, the Ustasha weren’t drunk when they did that during WWII.
I think this would be a bit difficult in modern Australia, which WAS my whole point. Disgusting as the Croatian celebration is, the likelihood of any harm's resulting to Serbian-Australians seems very limited.
"Physical harm" in the light of day, probably not.
But hate-groups make members bolder about their bigotry and make their target victims either scared, angry or both (fight or flight). I think that it does increase the likelihood of a confrontation of some kind by somebody.
If you are a Jew and see people openly celebrating Hitler, or you are Black and see the Klu Klux Klan partying in the open and celebrating their evil deeds, it does have an affect on you whether you want it to or not.
In America at least, we put up with it. And who in their right mind would make themselves a social outcast by joining the KKK? They defeat themselves.
I'm much more bothered by people who think that these groups should be banned or somehow censored.
After we've seen what can happen to people like Brigitte Bardot, no one is suggesting making what they do "illegal".
However, when you have a group of people who think one of Hitler's minions was "a hero", you can call attention to why they & their little celebration is very "uncool"!
Those are good observations, and I agree that drawing attention to this incident lets people know that such trash are out there.
The Croatian diaspora is quite large, especially in places like Melbourne. However those that still celebrate April 10th are a very, very small segment of the Croatian diaspora and are dying off.
Why wasn’t I flagged to this?
I saw your name mentioned above and thought that he pinged you, so I didn’t. Now I see that you weren’t pinged. I was wondering where you were!
Absolutely, and even if it were in a banquet hall, it still wouldn't be representative of Croatia or the Croatian diaspora. Still these guys are jerks, and should be called on it.
Exactly, and let's sympathizers know they'll be called on their actions. Called on, not sued or thrown in jail.
A factoid that might interest you is that the man who declared independence, General Slavko Kvaternik, was married to a Jewish woman. Her father, Josef Frank, was the spiritual founder of the Ustashe who were known as "Frankovci" (Frankists) prior to being known as Ustashe.
Sunlight makes the roaches scurry back into the woodwork, as it were.
On a tangent, this sort of thing makes me even happier than usual to be an ethnicity-free non-hyphenated American. I suspect it's why my old folks left Europe long ago.
So you admit to being an old European-American, like me.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
A bit off topic, but I always laugh at the eurocentircs, ala Kerry, that's why our forebearers left for goodness sake.
Who the h*ll in America wants to be a European, and if they do, go, quickly, before the fuel surcharges go up.
Europe is still there.
Yes, I can’t show my bland, Midwestern face without being tagged as a European-American of no obvious distinctive background. (I’d actually hoped to pass for some sort of preferred illegal alien at the DMV, but that’s a long story, and it would never have worked!)
I agree with you about Americans who think Europe is superior. “Please leave, we don’t need you.”
I lived in Melbourne for 5 years, great city, real Aussies are fantastic but.....
When we were about to move there, a Kiwi acquaintance said “Melbourne, every wog and his dog!!!!!
Mellies is the posterchild of multiculturalism run amok.
Every little group is set up on its own & hates every other and it is truly becoming Balkanized and violent.
I must admit I greatly enjoy Europe, different food, smells, ways of life, all next door to one another. Lively conversation with people who on average seem more interested in the big world than average Americans do.
But unlike my husband who is sold on Italy, I wouldn't want to live there. It's too socialist for me. And the very things that used to make it interesting -- the uniqueness of its cultures -- is becoming homogenized.
My heritage comes from Montenegro for a number of generations on both sides and yet I alway got taken for "Scandinavian" by people.
Funny, because when I participated in the National Geographic Genome project a couple years ago, my mother's side's gene pool tracks to of all places -- Norway!
So, I've given up assuming I know what anyone is, anymore.
Excuse me?
If you’re gonna mention me, please flag me out of courtesy.
The collapse of Communist Yugoslavia was a good thing. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher both strongly supported Slovenian and Croatian independence.
How interesting! Those Norwegians really got around - couldn’t stand the weather in Norway, I suppose :-).
Dio, I don't give a damn if your Croatian but it's clear your judgment is formed by your nationalistic identity, however long that lasts. Croatians are very hard core nationalists and you can see that by walking in the cities in Croatia let alone the attitude. I know, I'm part Cro. if you really must know and that crap turns me off.
But the funny thing with Croats is that they think they are really free when in fact they sold their soul to Brussels. You will see when the EU starts to get more invasive with your “freedom” and “sovereignty”. I told you before, just wait until EU expands. You will know what Uncle Squid was talking about.
Also, I never said communism was good. In fact that's where I agree with you. I think Yugoslavia should have never been put together. But the political pressures were such that most wanted it.
Tell me Dio: What moves steps have you made to bridge the hatred between Christian Serbs and Christian Croats? Because you see, in the end, the nation state will be obsolete.
That is less than the whole truth, Dio.
Josef Frank, founder of the "Frankovici" (a group which morphed into "the Ustase"), was born Jewish but converted to Catholicism early on. Josef Frank then married a Croat Catholic woman and had the daughter married to Kvaternik.
Based on Jewish law, the daughter married to Kvaternik was NOT "a Jewish woman", because her mother was not a Jew.
Josef Frank was like Mladen Scwartz (author of "The Protocols of Zion, the Jews and Adolf Hitler") -- or even writer Stephen Schwartz --men who were born to Jewish parents but who hated every part of their Jewish heritage and turned into something else. In the case of Josef Frank and Mladen Scwartz, that "something else" became rabid, racist, Serb-hating and Jew-hating, Croat nationalists.
I always do, Dio. ;) But where was the question mark?
Pavelic's wife was from a Jewish family, while others like Mirko Puk and Ivan Orsanic (both Ustashi ministers) were married to Jewish women (non-converts). Thousands of Jews in NDH were given "honorary Aryan" status so that they could avoid deportation to Auschwitz, but most could not be saved due to extreme German pressure.
As for Mladen Schwartz, he has no Croatian ancestry in him whatsoever, and was born in Belgrade. A complete and total buffoon, similar to Vojislav Seselj.
What “Ustashe” won?
NATO didn’t dismember Yugoslavia, squid. As for Croatia and the EU, that is our choice and not yours.
No. That's an allegation, not a fact. Mladen Schwartz, born in Zagreb, 1947
Thousands of Jews in NDH were given "honorary Aryan" status so that they could avoid deportation to Auschwitz, but most could not be saved due to extreme German pressure.
From The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust", Vad Yashem, 1990, Pg 323 & 325
Anti-Jewish legislation. A few days after taking control, the Ustaša enacted anti-Jewish legislation, most of it based on the precedents set in the Third Reich, the GENERALGOUVERNEMENT, and SLOVAKIA. It included racial statutes on the model of the NUREMBERG LAWS, which defined who was a Jew and stripped the Jews of their civil rights. But there was an innovation in these laws – a paragraph empowering the head of state to bestow the title of “Honorary Aryan” – which provided an opportunity for corrupt practices. Most of the legislation dealt with economic affairs: Aryan trustees" were appointed to take over Jewish businesses; Jewish factories, enterprises, and real property were “nationalized”; Jewish civil servants were dismissed; and Jewish professionals (lawyers, doctors, veterinarians, and so on) were prohibited from dealing with non-Jewish clients. Collective fines, which had to be paid in gold or its equivalent, were imposed on the Jewish communities. Overnight, a pseudolegal expropriation drive was launched, which before long turned into an unbridled countrywide campaign of plunder and pillage in which everyone who stood to profit took part – trade unions, youth organizations, sports clubs, the armed forces, and government officials of all ranks. Ordinary citizens also took part in this campaign wherever they could; indeed, the share of “private” elements in the plunder was enormous – at least half of the property of which the Jews were robbed apparently never reached the state treasury but remained in the hands of individual Croatians.....
"The mass arrest of Jews was set in motion with a decree issued by Ante Pavelic on June 26, 1941, that accused the Jews of spreading lies in order to incite the population and of interfering with the orderly supply of essential commodities, “well known black-marketeers that they are. …I declare that the Jews are collectively guilty and order them to be imprisoned…in concentration camps.”
Also, please don't try to twist history by creating this perception that the poor suffering Croatian people where like black slaves in Mississippi back in the 1800’s and just wanted their freedom. Croatians were part of the Pan-Slavic Nationalistic movement for Yugoslavia.
Also, in more recent history, you fail to see that Tito wasn't even a Serb, he was born a Croat with a Slovene mother. He has no Serb blood line. In fact he fought against Serbs during the first world war. Hell even the man that preceded Tito was Croatian; Ivan Ribar.
Croatians like Franjo Supilo, Ante Trumbic and Ivan Mestrovic wanted and pushed for a Pan Slavic union because they wanted to resist the great European powers at the time. That means Croatia saw a security and diplomatic benefit by being part of a larger entity.
I don't know why I'm wasting my time because you will never acknowledge such facts. You're so interested in spreading your kind of ethnocentric perception that you have lost your way.
Good luck Dio.
Same ideology with the next generation carrying on "the tradition".
Like I said before, the old Ustase never died, so there never really was "a break" between the end of WWII and the 1990's. There was just "regrouping" in the diaspora until it was time to take the ideology back to Croatia -- and literally take back Croatia.
Both Father Vladimir Mrvcin (translator for Artukovic's first deportation trial) and Major Felman told me, back in the 1980's, that "the Croat lobby in Congress is more powerful than you think. In our zeal to defeat communism, the US befriended fascists and gave them a seat at the table." At the time, I was skeptical -- a few years later, they both proved terribly right.
That’s interesting, considering that Schwartz himself told me that he was born in Belgrade. And thanks for reinforcing my point about the “Honorary Aryan” status.
Sorry, the ideology was completely different in 1990 than in 1941. And the Ustashe were long gone. Those who were still lingering had no significant role in the creation of the new Croatia.....HOP had close to zero support.
Like I said before, the old Ustase never died, so there never really was "a break" between the end of WWII and the 1990's.
You're joking, right? The 1990s were led by those who fought the Ustashe...men like Tudjman, Manolic, Djodan, etc.
There was just "regrouping" in the diaspora until it was time to take the ideology back to Croatia -- and literally take back Croatia.
Except that Ustasha ideology was rejected.
Both Father Vladimir Mrvcin (translator for Artukovic's first deportation trial) and Major Felman told me, back in the 1980's, that "the Croat lobby in Congress is more powerful than you think. In our zeal to defeat communism, the US befriended fascists and gave them a seat at the table." At the time, I was skeptical -- a few years later, they both proved terribly right.
Except of course for the fact that Croatia's independence drive was led by those who fought the Ustashe.
We did just want our freedom. And we fought for it. And we won it.
Croatians were part of the Pan-Slavic Nationalistic movement for Yugoslavia.
Which of course was shown to be an error with the adoption of the centralist Vidovdan Constitution in 1921, which led to the rise of the HSS and the rejection of Yugoslavism as nothing but Greater Serbianism.
Also, in more recent history, you fail to see that Tito wasn't even a Serb, he was born a Croat with a Slovene mother. He has no Serb blood line. In fact he fought against Serbs during the first world war. Hell even the man that preceded Tito was Croatian; Ivan Ribar.
Which of course is why Tito extended amnesty to Serbian Chetniks but not to Ustashe. Which of course is why Tito said that "The Ustashe must be destroyed". Which of course is why Tito removed Eastern Srijem from Croatia and gave it to Serbia. Which of course is why the police, both regular and secret, in the SR Croatia were overwhelmingly Serb.
Croatians like Franjo Supilo, Ante Trumbic and Ivan Mestrovic wanted and pushed for a Pan Slavic union because they wanted to resist the great European powers at the time. That means Croatia saw a security and diplomatic benefit by being part of a larger entity.
Which they later regretted, as testified by each of them. 1921 was a big turning point.
I don't know why I'm wasting my time because you will never acknowledge such facts. You're so interested in spreading your kind of ethnocentric perception that you have lost your way.
Because you don't have a handle on facts. Sorry, but Serbian rule for us was a disaster and we want nothing to do with them other than to be good neighbours and trade.
Tudjman moved further and further to the right over the years.Tudjman openly revived all the old Ustasa to prominence.
"....Ante Stojanov was an accomplice in the murder of Yugoslav Ambassador to Sweden Vladimir Rolovi in 1972 and Sabor deputy Vinko Nikolic}, an ideologist of the Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945) and the member of the Ustasha headquarters and the ideologist of the Ustasha youth. Nostalgia for Ustasha leaders. Croatia is rehabilitating the leaders of the Ustasha movement, renaming streets, squares, schools and other institutions after them. The Victims of Fascism Square in Zagreb has been renamed in Great Croatians Square, anti-fascist memorials are being pulled down (over 2 000 memorials commemorating the victims of fascism have been demolished in Dalmatia alone), Pavelic's pictures are flooding the barracks of the Croatian Army, Croatian military units are given the names of notorious Ustashas such as Franceti}, Boban and Luburi}, cafes and restaurants are named "Poglavnik" (the Supreme Leader, the title given to Ante Pavelic during World War Two), "Ustasha" or "U" and Pavelic's pictures are displayed in public places. On 6 August 1995, Croatian units entered the defeated and ethnically cleansed Knin singing Ustasha songs and waving Ustasha symbols.
Fascists given positions in Tudjman's Government. The Tudjman regime has appointed former Ustasha officials to high positions in present-day Croatia. Former members of the Ustasha movement have filled the ranks of Croatian diplomacy, military and police. Among them, as reported by "The New York Times", is an Ustasha woman terrorist in the Croatian Embassy in Washington.
President Tudjman has also rehabilitated the high-ranking Ustasha official from Dubrovnik, Ivo Rojnica, appointed him Croatian Ambassador to Argentina and decorated him with a high Croatian order. Rojnica had said that he would have done what he did from 1941-1945 over again. He had signed a racist order of the Independent State of Croatia in 1941 and was decorated by Ante Pavelic for his "dedicated work in carrying out the entrusted duty in the Ustasha movement".
By a decision of President Tudjman, Vinko Nikolic}, member of the Ustasha General Staff and the ideologist of the Ustasha youth, who from 1941-1945 participated in the genocide against the Serbs, Jews and Romanies, has been appointed member of the House of Counties of the Sabor of the Republic of Croatia...."
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