Bosnia's top war crimes fugitive Radovan Karadzic doing fine, writing books

Free Republic sure has changed in the last year. Used to be conservatives debating conservatives or libertarians. Not it is socialists calling conservatives fascists and antisemites.

Or maybe those Jews fought for their lives? Anyway, I wrote this even when Croatian Jews who fought for Commie Tito and are much kinder to the memory of Archbishop Stepinac (since they live in Croatia) than none Croatian sources on this matter are also attacked by the Croatians. I guess the Croatians won't be happy until it is written that they were part of the Allies and not the Axis in WW2, eh?

It's a conservative site not a pro-Nazi web site.

I posted that just for you. It seems communist Jews are kinder to the memory of your Nazi loving Bishop than those living outside Croatia. Those other more critical websites I posted are American, one is from an American-Jewish association with offices in New York. Give them a call. Let them know how wrong they are.

Re: Slavko Golstein. He was used as proof by the government of Banjo Tudjman that its regime was not anti-semitic as Golstein was one of the few jews who didn't leave and didn't call the government anti-semitic, despite Banjo's famous remarks. Norman Stone, the Oxford(?) historian and Croatian propagana proxy wrote a piece in the Times Literary Supplement (1993/4?) to push the Croatian government's line.

This historian pretended that he knew serbo-croat but relied entirely on translations handed to him. His greed in trying to make a name for himself as a 'Balkan expert' was his undoing. Unfortunately, people like Noel Malcolm and Mark(?) Almond (i.e. not 'Tainted Love' but School for Eastern European Studies (?)) are still there.

VRN

Tell it to Pericles

Maybe Karadzic's website claims are not that far off, eh? Is the Conservative News Service a commie organ now too?

Vatican Faces Lawsuit For Alleged Nazi-Era War Crimes

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (CNS) -- Ukrainian victims of Nazi-era war crimes are filing a class-action lawsuit against the Vatican and a monastic Catholic order, whom they accuse of hoarding gold stolen by wartime fascists in the Balkans.

An American lawyer representing one of the plaintiff organizations told CNSNews.com the plaintiffs hoped the case would force the Vatican to reveal the participation of Catholic clergy and officials in war crimes, including help given to Nazis wanting to flee Europe. Jonathan Levy said from Ohio it was hoped the lawsuit would trigger suits by other victims of the pro-Nazi Ustashe ('Resurrection") regime that ruled Croatia during the Second World War.

In recent years the Vatican has refused appeals by Jewish groups to open its archives, after newly-unclassified wartime documents claimed the Vatican had taken possession of gold worth more than one hundred million dollars, confiscated from victims of the Ustashe.

The new suit was filed in a California court last week by two Ukrainian organizations, the Ukrainian Union of Nazi Victims and Prisoners and the Organization of Antifascist Resistance Fighters, representing more than 300,000 Ukrainian victims of the Nazis and Ustashe.

Apart from the Vatican Bank, the suit also names as defendant the Franciscan religious orders, which the applicants claim "conducted illicit financial transactions with the cooperation of defendant banks [after the war] in order to conceal the Ustashe Treasury for the benefit of Ustashe and Nazi war criminals for the purpose of evading capture and trial by war crimes tribunals and to attempt to preserve the Ustashe regime as a government in exile."

Levy conceded that the Ukrainians had the smallest claim on the Ustashe hoard allegedly held by the Vatican, and said negotiations were underway with organizations representing other victims.

"The Ukrainian claim is a small claim - the tip of the iceberg. We hope the lawsuit will be amended soon to include Yugoslav [veterans'] groups and Jewish groups [in the Balkans]," he said.

"The Vatican Bank claims may turn out to be as large as claims against Swiss banks. In fact, the figures may be much higher." Levy said apart from the "fiscal aspect," victims felt the need to get to the truth - "the chapter needs to be closed."

He said the main legal issue now related to whether the San Francisco court would take jurisdiction. He said it was noteworthy that a senior Ustashe war criminal had resisted extradition from California for 30 years, until finally sent for trial in 1986. During those 30 years he had spent "huge sums in legal fees" fighting extradition. "We have suspicions as to where the money may have come from."

In one of the less well-known atrocities of the war, between 700,000 and 900,000 people - mostly Serbs, but also Jews, gypsies and moderate Croats - died at the hands of the Ustashe regime, which allegedly sought to cleanse Croatia of non-Catholics. The Nazis allowed their Ustashe allies to keep the loot stolen from their victims, and the fascists in Croatia built up a huge treasury.

The Ukrainian claim relates to the fact the Ustashe also participated in the systematic Nazi looting of occupied Ukraine. U.S. Treasury documents declassified in 1997 claimed that after the war, the Vatican safeguarded millions of dollars of assets, mostly gold coins, looted by the Ustashe.

The amount kept by the Vatican was reportedly estimated at 200 million Swiss francs, worth some $170 million today. Accumulated interest would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars more. The Vatican rejected the allegations at the time, saying they were based on an anonymous source and could therefore not be relied upon.

The Treasury documents included a Oct. 1946 memo from Treasury agent Emerson Bigelow, who quoted "a reliable source in Italy" - apparently an American intelligence operative - as saying the Ustashe had taken 350 million Swiss francs looted in Yugoslavia out of the country after the fall of Nazi Germany. It said 150 million Swiss francs had been impounded by British authorities at the Austria-Swiss border and the balance was held in the Vatican.

Vatican officials in Croatia allegedly collaborated closely with the Ustashe. Pope John Paul, who has made reconciliation between the church and the Jews a key pillar of his papacy, caused a storm last year when he beatified Zagreb Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac.

Jews and Serbs said Stepinac collaborated with the Ustashes; Catholic supporters said he had initially backed the regime, but later withdrew his support because of the mass executions and forced conversions of Orthodox Christians to Catholicism. Stepinac eventually died under house arrest after being sentenced to life imprisonment for collaboration by the postwar communists.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center says the Vatican set up 22 committees after the war to help Nazis escape from Europe, and claims the gold looted by the Croats may have been used to finance the operation, known as the "rat-line." Among those who escaped was Ustashe leader Ante Pavelic, who made his way to Latin America using papers allegedly provided by the Vatican, and disguised as a Catholic priest.

In 1997, the center broached the matter during a brief audience with the Pope, and also asked senior Vatican officials to open its archives to allow research into allegations of complicity with the Nazis.

The Vatican refused, the SWC said. SWC Jerusalem office head Ephraim Zuroff told CNSNews.com Monday the center "hasn't changed its stance. But what can be done? The Vatican isn't exactly the most transparent agency around."

(Post date: November 23, 1999)

Report Summary: U.S. and Allied Wartime and Postwar Relations and Negotiations With Argentina, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey on Looted Gold and German External Assets and U.S. Concerns About the Fate of the Wartime Ustasha Treasury.

The Fate of the Wartime Ustasha Treasury

The so-called independent state of Croatia, established on April 10, 1941, as part of the German conquest and dismemberment of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, was denounced by the U.S. Government. Throughout World War II, it was U.S. policy to avoid any action that might imply acknowledgment of the Croatian protectorate, and to support the guerrilla forces seeking to overthrow the German-backed regime.

The Fascist Ustasha political movement in power in wartime Croatia carried out a murderous campaign aimed at Serbs, Jews, and others. As many as 700,000 victims, mostly Serbs, may have died in the camps. The Ustasha Croat campaign started with the internment of 35,000 to 40,000 Croatian Jews in the spring and summer of 1941, followed by the deportation of remaining Jews to Germany in 1942 and 1943. Only a few thousand Croatian Jews escaped after first finding temporary sanctuary in the Italian portion of the Croatian protectorate.

The Ustasha regime in Croatia accumulated a treasury that apparently included valuables stolen from the dispossessed and deported Jewish and Sinti-Romani victims of the ethnic cleansing campaign. A variety of wartime and postwar U.S. intelligence reports confirm a Ustasha regime treasury of some size, but no authoritative quantification proved possible. Nor was it ever clear how much came from Croatian Jewish victims -- although one U.S. intelligence report speculated that it might be as much as $80 million in gold, mostly coins. Official and postwar information does confirm that the Croatian regime transferred gold to Switzerland toward the end of the War, and at least 980 kilograms of gold (worth about $1 million), taken by the Croat officials from the Sarajevo branch of the Yugoslav National Bank in 1941, was transferred to the Swiss National Bank in 1944. In July 1945 the Swiss National Bank returned the gold to the new Yugoslav Government.

After the Ustasha regime collapsed at the end of the War, its leader, Ante Pavelic, and some companions fled to the British zone of occupation of Austria from where, according to intelligence reports, he escaped or was released after surrendering some or all of a quantity of gold he had brought from Croatia. Intelligence reports vary widely in the amount of gold Pavelic brought -- $600,000, $5-$6 million, or even $35 million. None of the information on the amount or makeup of the gold Pavelic was carrying or turned over to the British, some of which has the quality of legend, has been confirmed. What is known is that no gold was reported by British authorities to have been recovered, and none was turned over to the Tripartite Gold Commission for restitution. Pavelic made his way to Rome, where he arrived in early 1946.

U.S. and British intelligence reports agree that the College of San Girolamo degli Illirici in Rome served as a place of refuge and support for the Croatian refugees. San Girolamo, which is located outside the walls of the Vatican and pays Italian State taxes, provided living quarters for Croatian priests studying at the Vatican. After the War, it was the reported center of an extensive and effective underground that assisted Ustasha fugitives, including Ante Pavelic, to flee from Europe to South America. Pavelic hid in Rome at various locations from 1946 until his flight to Argentina in November 1948 without any decisive action by the U.S. or British authorities to apprehend him and make him available for a war crimes trial.

A prime mover of the Ustasha activity in Rome was Father Krunoslav Dragonovic, secretary of the College of San Girolamo. Taking advantage of his contacts inside the International Red Cross, Dragonovic helped Ustasha fugitives emigrate illegally to South America by providing temporary shelter and false identity documents, and by arranging onward transport, primarily to Argentina. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps and the Ustashi collaborated in running a "rat line," an escape route for defectors or informants who had come to Austria from the Soviet zone of Germany or from Soviet bloc countries. In 1951 the anti-Communist informer and Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie escaped to South America over the rat line. Some intelligence reports indicate that gold from the Ustasha treasury may have been used to finance the postwar underground activities involving Father Dragonovic at San Girolamo. There is no evidence in U.S. archives that the Vatican leadership knew of or gave support to the Ustasha activities outside its walls, but, given the location of the College, troubling questions remain.

The postwar fate of Croatian Ustasha fugitives, with or without portions of their wartime treasury, depended to a significant extent upon U.S. as well as British policies regarding Croatian Ustasha war criminals and escapees. In the first postwar months, U.S. and British policy was to turn over to the new Yugoslav Government of Marshal Tito anyone for whom the Yugoslavs could make a prima facie case of collaboration with the Nazis. This policy began to change in 1946 as the prisoner of war camps emptied. The standards for turning over Croatian prisoners of war steadily rose, and few were returned to Yugoslavia by late 1946. By May 1947 the U.S. Government became convinced that the Yugoslav Government was meting out unduly harsh treatment to its political enemies and perverting justice. U.S.-Yugoslav relations had cooled as a result of the Yugoslav regime's hostile actions, including harassment of U.S. Embassy personnel and accusations of espionage, the arrest and trial of Yugoslav employees of the Embassy on charges of espionage, attacks on unarmed U.S. aircraft over Yugoslavia, Yugoslav efforts to annex Trieste, and Yugoslav unwillingness to settle outstanding claims of American citizens for confiscated property. In addition, the U.S. and British intelligence services were relying increasingly on former Ustashi as sources of information and were consequently reluctant to antagonize these informants by extraditing their leaders to Yugoslavia. As a result, the policy of surrendering Ustashi was ended -- a policy with which the British concurred. Even when the Allies learned the precise location of Ante Pavelic, the leader of the murderous Ustashi regime, they refrained from taking any action to bring him to justice.

U.S. official records provide only an imperfect understanding of the fate of the Croatian Ustasha treasury and the uses to which it may have been put. Evidence presented by the Croatian delegation to the December 1997 London Conference on Nazi Gold gives encouragement that more can be learned from Croatian sources. The bizarre circumstances attending the movement of Croatian State gold to Switzerland during the War and the flight of Ustasha leaders to Austria at War's end as well as the underground activities of Ustasha priests in Rome give rise to the hope that more information on the fate of Croatian Ustasha gold, including any possible victim gold, may come from the records of the Swiss National Bank and the British occupation forces and intelligence organizations, as well as from the archives of the Vatican and the Croatian State Archives.

yeah the conservative news service is a den of Bolsheviks paid by Milosevic himself ...............

Tro........still polishing that statue of Francetic your beloved Aryan hero ?

Judging from the State Depts' own report on how the Vatican and British/Americans helped the Croatian butchers escape, I don't think Karadzic's claims of an anti-Serb conspiracy are that far off.