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.
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?
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