Croatia's handball world champions throw a big USTASHA party

Croatia: Prime minister condemns Nazi salutes at handball team welcome party, AP, February 7th 2003

ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) - The prime minister on Thursday condemned parts of a crowd and the singer at a public welcome-home party honoring Croatia's newly crowned handball world champions for giving Nazi salutes.

About 50,000 people gathered Monday in Zagreb's main square to welcome the team home. Folk singer Marko Perkovic Thompson, who performed at the party, shouted a slogan used by Croatia's Nazi forces during World War II. Dozens of fans answered with Nazi salutes.

Prime Minister Ivica Racan on Thursday said such behavior "cannot be tolerated in Croatia."

"Such scenes ... cast a shadow on the handball team's victory and besmear the face of Croatia," Racan said. "Croatia has long ago broken with its Nazi past."

Racan spoke at the government's session as his Cabinet allotted 100,000 kuna ($14,285) in prize money for each of the 17 members of the handball team for their surprise victory at the world championship on Sunday in Portugal.

Nationalists in Croatia revere Thompson, whose concerts often incite outbursts of nationalism and racism. Some of the handball players reportedly insisted that he sing at the party.

Most Croatian media have condemned the salutes, but an association of veterans of Croatia's 1991 war insisted Thursday that it was a "traditional Croatian salute." The war pitted Croat forces against rebel Serbs.

Insignia and rhetoric reminiscent of Croatia's Nazi past were often seen in Croatia during the 10-year-rule of the late President Franjo Tudjman's nationalists.

Now, three years after the pro-Western government took power, nationalism is again rising and some analysts believe the nationalists could return to power in elections, expected to be held by the end of the year.

Anti-Semitism was rampant everywhere in the world except perhaps America, Canada, and China and Japan (where there were virtually no Jews) at that time. Also, democracy was not well-established historically as a viable form of governance. Thus, ALL European countries had dirty hands.

France and Spain contributed thousands upon thousands of troops, both elite and not-so-elite, to Germany.

Many men from the stereotypically handsome and blonde countries were happy to join the quest for racial reasons. People in other countries who supported fascism before the war were attracted to the political message. Eastern Europeans liked the fact that he wasn't any worse than Stalin or the local bad boys. Muslims liked that he hated Jews.

Many idealistic, liberal young men were even attracted to his one-world, "fighting for the workers" B.S. He should have played this card more, as it was quite possibly the best in his deck.

Am I excusing any of them? No. But ridiculously, some commentators in the former non-functional World War II allies (i.e. the "liberated" as opposed to the "liberators") have in the past couple of days have attempted to make political capital out of what various European puppet dictators did for Hitler during WWII with a pistol pointed at their heads, apparently in order to discredit the contributions to the cause of freedom these nations are currently making.

Dear American Soldier,

To be a Neo-Ustasha is not a attitude - it's a crime. In WW 2 this Croatian mass murderers exterminated Serbs, Jews and Gypsies in a very sadistic and barbaric way. Even allied German SS-Soldiers were shocked by their criminal acts.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (<- Click)

Do you know who German SS Soldiers were?

Today they have expelled pretty all serbs from their holy neofascist country (they solved at last their in WW 2 unsolved problem), wheras Serbia & Montenegro is still multiethnic.

Moreover, Serbia & Montenegro houses over 1,000,000 refugees from Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. It's the biggest refugee camp in Europe.

Karadjordje

I give you an example of the Ustasha deeds:

Letter written by Privislav Grizogono, a Croat and a Roman-Catholic, ex-member of the Yugoslav Diplomatic Corps, addressed to Dr. Aloisius Stepinac, Roman-Catholic Archbishop of Zagreb, Croatia, February 8, 1942. Published in translation by the ‘American Srbobran’, a Yugoslav paper in Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S.A., February 24, 1943:

"These atrocities do not amount to killings alone. They aim at extermination of everything Serbian, including women, children, and aged men, and in terribly wild tortures of the victims. These innocent Serbs were stuck on poles alive, and fires were built on their bare chests. Literally, they were roasted alive, burned to death in their homes and churches. Boiling water was poured on live victims before mutilation; their flesh was salted. Eyes were dug out of live victims, ears amputated, noses and tongues lobbed off. The beards and mustaches of priests, together with their skin, were ripped off rudely by knives. They were tied to trucks and dragged behind them. The arms and legs of the victims were broken and their heads were spiked"

"They were thrown into the deep cisterns and caves, then literally bombed to pieces. Crowbars smashed their heads. Their children were thrown into fire, scalding water, and fed to the fired lime furnaces. Other children were parted by their legs; their heads crushed against walls and their spines dashed against rocks. These and many other methods of torture were employed against the Serbs-tortures which normal people cannot conceive. Thousands of Serbian bodies floated down the Sava, Drava, and Danube rivers and their tributaries. Many of these bodies bore tags: "Direction - Belgrade. To Serbian King Peter". In one boat on the Sava river there was a pile of children's heads, with a woman's head (presumably the mother of the children) labeled: "Meat for John's Market - in Belgrade" (meaning meat for the Serbian market)"

"Then, in Bosnia, a huge pile of roasted heads was found. Utensils full of Serbian blood were also discovered; this was the hot blood of their murdered brothers that other Serbs were forced to drink.

Countless women, girls, and children were raped - mothers before daughters and daughters before mothers - while many women, girls, and little female children were ushered off to Ustashi garrisons to be used as prostitutes. Rapes were committed even before the altars of the Serbian Orthodox Churches. About 3,000 Serbs were murdered in the Serbian Orthodox Church at Glina, and the massacre of Serbs before the altar at Kladusha Orthodox Church with sledgehammers is something never mentioned in history....

There are detailed and official reports about these unheard-of crimes. They are so terrible they have shocked even the Germans and Italians. Many pictures were taken of these massacres and torture orgies. The German soldiers and officers claim the Croats did these same things in Germany during the Thirty-Year War and that, since then, there is a proverb in Germany: "God save us from plague, hunger, and the Croats". Even the Germans from Srem (Syrmia, a province in Northern Serbia) hate us and act friendly toward the Serbs. The Italians have photographed a vessel holding 31.5 kilograms of Serbian eyes, and one Croat decorated with a wreath of Serbian eyes came to Dubrovnik with two wreaths of Serbian tongues.

Though we Croats shall never be able to erase this shamefulness which we brought upon ourselves with these crimes, we can at least lessen our responsibility before the world and our consciences if we raise our voices in protest against all these crimes. This is the last hour for us to do so. After all the great crimes in history, punishments follow! What will happen to us Croats if the impression is formed that we participated in all these crimes to the finish?!"

Karadjordje

I am well aware of Holocaust history and I believe many more Europeans should've died at the end of the hangman's noose for their crimes against humanity at the end of WWII.

That said, does it seem reasonable to you that the French, thousands of whom volunteered for the SS (more than were likely in the "Resistance"), are celebrated as Allies and therefore dare to drum up WWII as a way of slandering people in "New" Europe?

I'm not excusing anything anyone did to innocent civilians during WWII, however the timing of this story, which seems to have received a disproportionate amount of press coverage, could well aid a campaign by Old Europe to discredit the Vilnius Group, those bold nations of New Europe which have stood up for the march of freedom rather than bowing to the EU.

I don't think that you'll find a single person here who doesn't agree that Farra-con is a head case. I didn't argue that we don't have racists, we have plenty, only that they are not accepted by people who are in anyway "mainstream."

That is one of the things that is great about the US: we are able to examine ourselves and say "we need to fix this." Then we fix it. It took time, but most realized that racism is wrong and counter to our fundamental beliefs that all men are created equal and entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness by God. Some other countries are able to replicate this attitude toward self-improvement to some degree or other. Turkey tossed their islamokazis out of power, England produced the Magna Charta, the Japanese pragmatically chucked milatarism, and so on.

In countries with outstanding problems in this area, we see a lack of this attitude. People from these nations often cannot be argued with about anything pertaining to their homes or cultures. Any criticism on anything is considered a personal insult, and so attitudes tend to stay frozen and static. Especially detrimental are those attitudes that were forged in bloody strife during the middle ages, and have no place in the modern world.

One can see this manifested plainly in the way that many formerly Axis-alligned peoples refuse to acknowledge that they were in the wrong, and even celebrate the awful deeds of their fathers from this "glorious", short-lived age of power over their ancient enemies--in this case, the Croats over the Serbs.

As to what one, or a country, can do to end nonsense like this, I am at a loss. Prayer seems to be the only recourse, since people cannot be forced to change their minds.

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