Posted on 05/19/2015 3:33:08 PM PDT by Ravnagora
Efraim Zuroff, director of the Jerusalem Office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (AFP Photo/Christof Stache)
Zagreb (AFP) - The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center on Tuesday urged Croatia to stop paying pensions to people who served in the country's World War II Nazi-allied armed forces, labelling the policy an insult to their victims.
"In view of the horrendous war crimes committed in the so-called Independent State of Croatia (NDH)... such a policy is inherently mistaken," the centre's chief Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff said in a letter to Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic.
Paying pensions to members of the WWII Ustasha armed forces is a "horrific insult to the victims, their families and all Croatians with a sense of morality and integrity," Zuroff stressed in a Wiesenthal Center statement quoting from his letter.
The Nazi-allied Ustasha authorities persecuted and killed hundreds of thousands of ethnic Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and anti-fascist Croatians.
Croatia is currently paying around 10,000 such pensions, to those still living or their spouses, which costs the European Union member around 50 million euros ($56 million) yearly, according to estimates.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Ping!
I had no idea independent Croatia started paying pensions to former Ustasha members. Seems crazy.
It’s unfortunate that Croatia has decided to whitewash the Ustasha.
Similar events happened with Baltic collaborators as well.
People try to equate this with the Chetniks being rehabilitated, but the Chetniks weren’t loyal Nazi allies the way the left makes them out to be.
The Ustasha were terrible and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, but they were a small group of fanatics put in power by the Germans with very little support among the population. I think they must be referring to the "home army" or Domobrani, who did not share in the Ustasha ideology and many of whom deserted and joined the Partisans as time went by--the home army types were involved in few if any of the crimes of the Ustasha but they are sometimes referred to as if they were Ustasha.
I don't know anything about the pensions but I doubt there could be anywhere close to 10,000 real Ustasha (or their spouses) alive by this time.
The Ustasha were terrible and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, but they were a small group of fanatics put in power by the Germans with very little support among the population. I think they must be referring to the "home army" or Domobrani, who did not share in the Ustasha ideology and many of whom deserted and joined the Partisans as time went by--the home army types were involved in few if any of the crimes of the Ustasha but they are sometimes referred to as if they were Ustasha.
I don't know anything about the pensions but I doubt there could be anywhere close to 10,000 real Ustasha (or their spouses) alive by this time.
Seems a little late in the day for this. How many of these people can there be? Scores? How ancient must they all be?
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