Croatia plans to build monument to honor its Nazis

Associated Press ^ | May. 8, 2003

[Tarsk]

May. 8, 2003

Croatia plans to build monument to honor its Nazis

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - ZAGREB, Croatia

The Croatian government announced Thursday it plans to buy land in southern Austria to build a monument honoring thousands of Croat Nazi troops and civilians who were killed in the aftermath of World War II.

The announcement came just a few days ahead of Sunday's anniversary of the 1945 killings of tens of thousands of Croat soldiers and civilians who fled to Austria in fear of reprisals from antifascists.

They gathered in Bleiburg, a small town near the then-Yugoslav border, waiting for days while the British authorities who were in charge of that part of Austria decided on their fate.

The British eventually sent the crowd back to Yugoslavia, where vengeful antifascists in Yugoslavia killed tens of thousands.

The event is surrounded by controversy, but Vice Prime Minister Goran Granic said a memorial was needed anyway.

"We owe it to the victims," Granic said, adding the land purchase should be carried out in a "dignified way, without any influence of politics." Negotiations about the land purchase have yet to be launched, and it was not immediately clear whether the owners were willing to sell the land.

Croatia was a Nazi puppet state during World War II. Tens perhaps hundreds, of thousands of Jews, Serbs, Gypsies and anti-fascist Croats were killed in Croat-run concentration camps from 1941 to 1945.

In Croatia, the events at Bleiburg have been disputed for decades.

The communist authorities of the former Yugoslavia that Croatia was part of until 1991 sought to diminish the killings. The nationalist government of the late President Franjo Tudjman revived and magnified memories of Bleiburg while diminishing crimes committed by Croatia's Nazis.

The pro-Western government that took power 3 1/2 years ago has tried to take an impartial stand, condemning both Nazi and communist wrongdoings.

It has assisted the reconstruction of Jasenovac, the most notorious Nazi-run concentration camp, and President Stipe Mesic will attend the anniversary of a foiled inmates' escape this Sunday.

Croatian nationalists exaggerate the number of those killed and claim the atrocities committed after the Bleiburg journey were worse than those carried out by Croatia's wartime pro-Nazi rulers.

Many Croats argue that killings following the Bleiburg, known in Croatia as The Way of Crosses, shows that the postwar communist authorities were just as fierce killers as the fascists.

[MattinNJ]

You nailed it right on the head.

[Alouette]

The current government of Croatia is a strong supporter of Israel.

[Alberta's Child]

Serbia as a fundamentally decent nation will be rehabilitated in fairly short order.

And the one time the United States dealt with this "fundamentally decent nation," we decided instead to bomb their cities on behalf of a rogue nation of Islamic narco-terrorists.

So what the hell does that say about us?

[Alberta's Child]

That's a good point -- I wasn't aware of that.

Maybe you can confirm this, but I read somewhere that until the recent troubles in Israel, Germans made up one of the largest groups of foreign tourists to visit Israel in any given year.

Time heals a lot of wounds -- even bad ones.

[wideawake]

Good point.

[Alouette]

I can't confirm the number of German tourists, but I do know that a few years ago, not long after the Oslo process collapsed and I think right after Sharon's first election, the Prime Minister of Croatia visited Israel, did the Yad Vashem tour, made a public declaration of remorse on behalf of the Croatian people, and pledged his nation's support of Israel.

It took a lot of courage to do that, and I am sure it made the Croatian PM unpopular in many circles. If some Croats want to put up monuments to people who were killed by the Communists, that's not any of my business. I have a lot of respect for the Croats.

[Modernman]

There were small nations in Europe that, though conquered, refused to play along with the Nazis. Look at the Danes, who refused to turn over Danish Jews and whose king put on an armband with a Star of David. Look at Serbia, where officials burned census records listing religion so as to make it more difficult for the Nazis (and their Croatian puppets) to round up Jews.

The Croatians decided not only to collaborate with the Nazis, but to do so with gusto. They were the only puppet-state to set up its own death-camp for Jews, Gypsies and Serbs. visiting SS officers found the camp to be too brutal for even their liking (executions were conducted with sledgehammers).

Sure, the Croats were a pupper-regime of the Nazis, but their actions during the war went well beyond what was necessary to placate their German overlords.

[Alberta's Child]

Your examples weren't exactly relevant. Sure, the Danes may have resisted the Nazis -- but Denmark did not have to cope with potential outside force from two sides.

And Serbia may have resisted the Nazis, but they were supported by (and supporters of) a Soviet government that was just as brutal and repressive as the Nazis were.

If you look at any nation in Europe that had to contend with either the threat of invasion from the outside (any country that lay between Berlin and Moscow, for example) or with warring factions inside the borders that were supported by foreign elements (Spain, for example), you'll find that almost every one of them eventually chose one side or another. There's no way any of them are going to look good in hindsight.

[Seydlitz]

Good point. The Danes provided a Waffen-SS regiment, and the Serbs provided the Serbian Volunteer Corps, to the Axis. Both probably had 7,000-10,000 volunteers over the course of the entire war.

[joan]

And Serbia may have resisted the Nazis, but they were supported by (and supporters of) a Soviet government that was just as brutal and repressive as the Nazis were.

Serbia was not supported by the Soviets. They resisted alone - where were the Russians when the Serbs were sent to concentration camps by the Croatians and Germans? Where were the Soviet planes when the Germans bombed Serbia? Only after Russia was invaded by the Nazis and the Russians beat them out and back then marched continually westward did they come to Serbia and clear out Germans from the Belgrade area.

The Soviets cleared out the Germans just in time for Tito's Partisian (Communist) forces to conquer Serbia. The US and British were involved in bombing Serb targets and civilians (acted as Tito's airforce) to help Tito the Communist conquer Serbia. Both the US and British, after initially praising the Serbian uprising against the Nazis, threw their support to Tito.

[Hoplite]

but to grossly mischaracterize one's enemies is to misunderstand them

Wow - that's never happened on a Balkans thread.

= )

[presidio9]

Show me the monument to a Croation SS battalion and I'll say they were memorializing Nazis. Otherwise I'll say they memorialized men risking their lives to protect their families.

[ginle]

Agree with Modernman.

The Croatian Ustache just don't get enough publicity for being the complete bunch of murdering bastards that they were.

Their stated policy for the Serbs that had the misfortune to end up in the territory alloted to the Ustache was "shoot a third, exile a third, and forcibly catholicise a third".

I don't think they were that interested in fighting communism as such, I think they were more interested in 'wacking' as many Serbs as they could in the shortest time possible.

It was judged by a war crimes tribunel after the war that the Ustache had managed to exceed Hitler's percentage of own population gratuitously murdered.

Naturally the leaders of the Ustache got a free pass from the west after they were kicked out of power. Ante Pavolich the leader dying many years later in a Catholic seminary, i think in Spain.

Archbishop Stepenic who was not quite in the regieme, but was at least a fellow traveller, was just recently beatified by the Pope, sainthood is the next step.

[George W. Bush]

Your observations are entirely apt.

The Croat massacre of Serbs was caused by Croat Catholicism wishing to extinguish or forcibly convert Serbian Orthodox. Nazism and Communism were lesser factors in a wider tragedy. In Croatia, the nuns marched with the storm troops happily. The commandant of the largest death camp was a Roman priest. The Roman officials were clearly instigating the persecution and murder of the Serbs.

The pope has apologized to everyone else. Maybe he should instead apologize to the Serb Orthodox for what Roman priests and hierarchy in Croatia, to victims that are still living. But then, it's much easier to apologize when all your victims are dead, I suppose.

The revisionism and denial of Rome continues in the murder of the two million lost in the Serbian Orthodox holocaust at the hands of the Croat Catholic Ustashi.

[ExpandNATO]

You both are invited to read some real history about the Catholic Church's actions in Croatia and not Goldhagen's and Communism's lies.

Goldhagen v. Pius XII

[crazykatz]

And, ISRAEL WAS A STRONG SUPPORTER OF THE SERBS IN THE YUGOSLAVIAN CIVIL war. THEY SECRETLY SUPPLIED THEM IN THEIR BATTLES AGAINST THE MUSLIMS!! ISRAEL ONLY RECENTLY, OPENED RELATIONS WITH CROATIA.

YES, AND NOT TOO LONG AGO THE LATE LEADER OF THE CROATS IN THAT CIVIL WAR WAS TELLING FOLKS HOW GLAD HE WAS THAT HIS WIFE WAS NEITHER A JEW OR A SERB.

CROATIA.... OWNED BY ALL THE BIG COMPANIES OF EUROPE.

HOW ODD THAT GERMANS NOW OWN SO MUCH OF CROATIA.

[crazykatz]

Serbian Chetniks saved over 500 American flyers from German and Croatian nazis.

Croatians were so brutal in their murderous ways of killing Serbs, Jews and Gypsies that even Hitler was shocked.

Ante Pavlic was the head Croatian fascists... he escaped to Argentina to work for another nazi fan, Juan Peron!! He was the head of Peron's murderous security agency. How appropriate.

Perhaps Croatians can "rehabilitate" old Pavlic's history and make a memorial for him.... I hear they are working on it right now. Some dorks are raising the funds for it right here in the USA in the LARGE Croatia apologist societies all this country.

I am sure you know about them, right?

[yonorono]

You seem upset that not everyone buys the fact that all who fought on the Axis side were Nazis.

[yonorono]

I have a lot of respect for the Croats.

Thank you Alouette. We Croatians are strong supporters of Israel.

[yonorono]

Thank you sir. I lost three great uncles who were Homeguardsmen during this criminal repatriation.