INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE
CASE CONCERNING APPLICATION OF THE CONVENTION ON THE
PREVENTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE
(CROATIA v. SERBIA)
COUNTER-MEMORIAL
SUBMITTED BY THE REPUBLIC OF SERBIA
ANNEXES
Volume II
December 2009 VOLUME II
TABLE OF CONTENTS
SECTION I: The Independent State of Croatia 1941-1945
and Genocide against Serbs, Jews and Roma /Historical Sources/
Annex 1: Map of the Independent State of Croatia 1941–1945 .................................7.......
Annex 2: Excerpts from the Legal Decrees of the Independent State of Croatia ..............11
Annex 3: Fikreta Jelić-Butić, Ustashe and the Independent State of Croatia, Zagreb,
1977, pp. 166–167, 185–187 .................................................53...................
Annex 4: Report of the State Commission of Croatia for the Investigation
of the Crimes of the Occupation Forces and Their Collaborators,
Crimes in the Jasenovac Camp, Zagreb, 1946;
translated by Sinisa Djuric ................................................65.......................
Annex 5: Map of the Jasenovac Concentration Camps ...................................................... 143
Annex 6: Photos from the Jasenovac Concentration Camps .............................................. 147
Annex 7: Photos of the Children Victims of the NDH Concentration Camps ................... 161
SECTION II: The 1990s Croatian Historical Revisionism and the Revival
of the Ustashe Principles /Excerpts from Contemporary Literature
and Original Sources/
Annex 8: Chronology of the Ustashe Movement after World War II ................................ 175
Annex 9: Efraim Zuroff, Operation Last Chance, New York, 2009, pp. 131–150 ........... 181
Annex 10: Karl Pfeifer, Croatia – Tudjman and the Genesis of Croatian Revisionism,
Searchlight Magazine, 2003 ....................................................................... 205
Annex 11: Viktor Ivančić, Točka na U, Split, 1998, pp.113–115, 132–133 ...................... 211
Annex 12: Excerpts from Aleksa Crnjaković, Interview with Dinko Ljubomir Šakić,
former Commandant of the Jasenovac Camp, I did my duty
(Obavljao sam svoju dužnost), published in Magazin, Zagreb, 1995 ........ 223
3 SECTION I
The Indeagainst Serbs, Jews and Roma1-1945 and Genocide
/Historical Sources/ ANNEX 1
Map of 1941–1945endent State of CroatiaAnnex 1: Map of the Independent State of Croatia
Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Croatia_41_45.gif
Source: http://www.zum.de/whkmla/histatlas/balkans/yugo1942.gif
9 ANNEX 2
Legal Decrees of the Independent State of Croatia
Ministry for Justice and Religion, Zagreb, 1941–1942 (Zbornik zakona i naredaba Nezavisnethe
Države Hrvatske, izdanje Ministarstva pravosudja i bogoštovlja, Zagreb, 1941. i 1942.) LEGAL DECREE ON DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE
AND THE STATE
1. Whoever violates or has violated or w ho offends or has offended in any way the
honour, life’s interests of th e Croatian people or who threatens in any way the
survival of the Independent State of Croatia or its state authorities, even if such an
act is only attempted, shall be held accountable for the crime of high treason.
2. Whoever shall be held accountable for the crime referred to in paragraph 1 above
shall receive the death penalty.
3. In order to try cases under this legal decree, the Minister of Justice shall appoint, as
appropriate, irregular people’s courts comprising three people, which shall hear
cases under summary procedure in accordan ce with the regulations contained in
the repealed Croatian penal code governing courts marshal.
4. The Minister of Justice shall appoint members of the court marshal.
5. This legal decree shall come into force immediately.
AZ41lreb,
) r e d a e L ( k i n v a l g o P LEGAL DECREE
ON THE PROHIBITION OF THE CYRILLIC SCRIPT
§ 1
The use of the Cyrillic script shall be prohibited in the territory of the Independent
State of Croatia.
§ 2
This legal decree shall come into force on the date of its proclamation in “Narodne
Novine” and its implementation shall be entrusted to the Ministry of Interior.
Zagreb, 25 April 1941
) r e d a e L ( k i n v a l g o P
No. XXV-33-Z.p.-1941
Head of
the Legal Office
under Poglavnik
Dr. Milovan Zanic (Signed)
LEGAL DECREE
ON COURTS MARSHAL
Article II
[…]
For all the above punishable acts co mmitted from the date of the proclamation
of a court marshal, a sentence of execution by a firing squad shall be pronounced before the
court marshal.
Article VIII
No legal remedy shall be allowed against a judgment reached by the court marshal,
while a request for pardon shall not stay the execution of a judgment.
Article IX
The sentence of death shall be executed by a firing squad three hours after the time of
the pronouncement of the sentence.
LEGAL DECREE
ON THE PROTECTING OF CROATIAN PEOPLE’S PROPERTY
[Excerpt]
1. Any legal business signed between Jews themselves or between Jews and third
parties that had been entered into within the period of two months prior to the proclamation of
the Independent State of Croatia shall be decared null and void, if the value of the deal
exceeds the amount of 100,000 dinars and if the deal is not subsequently approved by the
Minister of Justice, to whom such deals should be submitted for approval within ten days after
the proclamation of this Legal Decree.
14 LEGAL DECREE
ON CITIZENSHIP
[Excerpt]
Article 2
A citizen shall be considered a member of the State of Arian origin who has proven by his
conduct that he has not acted against the liberation aspirations of the Croatian people and who is
willing and ready to serve the Croatian people and the Independent State of Croatia faithfully.
LEGAL DECREE
ON THE RACE
[Excerpt]
Article 1
A person of Arian origin sh all be considered one who has ancestors belonging to the
European stock of races or who has descendants of that stock outside Europe.
Unless there are no other legal decrees for o fficial purposes, an Arian origin shall be
proven by a certificate of birth or a marriage ce rtificate of ancestors, first or second removed
(parents or grandparents). For members of the Islamic community who cannot produce these
documents, it is necessary to submit in writing testimony of two credible witnesses who knew
his/her ancestors, to the effect that they were not of non-Arian origin.
In case of ambiguity, the Ministry of Inte rior shall make a decision at the proposal of
the Racial/Political Office.
15 LEGAL DECREE
ON THE PROTECTION OF THE ARIAN BLOOD AND HONOUR OF THE
CROATIAN PEOPLE
[Excerpt]
Article 1
A marriage of Jews or other persons of non- Arian origin with persons of Arian origin
shall be prohibited. Also prohibited shall be marriages of persons who, besides Arian
ancestors, also have one ancestor second remove d who is a Jew by race or another European
non-Arian, with persons who are racially of equal origin.
Which persons shall be considered Jews or non-Arians shall be determined by the
Legal Decree on the race.
LEGAL DECREE
ON SENDING DISOBEDIENT AND DANGEROUS PERSONS TO FORCED
LABOUR AT CONCENTRATION AND LABOUR CAMPS
[Excerpt]
§ 1
Disobedient persons who are a threat to public order and security, or who may threaten
peace and tranquility of the Croatian people or the achievements of the liberation struggle of
the Croatian Ustasha Move ment may be sent to forced la bour in concentration and labour
camps. These camps shall be authorized to be es tablished in some places in the Independent
State of Croatia by the Supervising Service.
§ 3
The decision to send an individual to for ced labour at concentration or labour camp
and on the duration of that stay or the level of alert or threat shall be made under the terms of
this Legal Provision by the Ustasha Police, as an organ of the Ustasha Supervising Service.
All administrative and self-administered regions including the institutions of the
Ustasha Movement shall be obliged to report persons referred to in § 1 of this Legal Decree to
the Ustasha Police through the district police headquarters of their region.
No legal remedy or an appeal may be lodged to the Administrative Court against the
decision of the Ustasha Police on the sending toforced labour at concentration or labour
camps.
16 LEGAL DECREE
ON THE CONFISCATION OF THE PROPERTY OF PERSONS DISTURBING
PUBLIC PEACE AND ORDER
[Excerpt]
§ 1
Against persons convicted of having violat ed public peace and order because they
alone, or in community with armed formations, committed a crime against the present state
system or constitutional order, or against the armed forces of the Independent State of Croatia,
a court of law shall find, in principle, in th e judgment pronounced for the said crime, that the
property of such persons shall be confiscated in favour of the Independent State of Croatia.
LEGAL DECREE
ON THE SUPPRESSION OF VIOLENT AND PUNISHABLE ACTS AGAINST THE
STATE, CERTAIN INDIVIDUALS OR PROPERTY
[Excerpt]
I. Sending to collective camps
§ 1
Some members of family of individuals who on their own, or in community with
armed formations, disturb public order and secu rity, or who violate peace and tranquility of
Croatian people, or who commit a violent punishab le act against the state, individuals or
property, including family members of those who had fled their homes, may be sent for forced
stay in collective camps. Such camps shall be authorized to be established by the Ministry of
Interior, the Office for Public Order and Securty in places of the Independent State of
Croatia.
1718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051 ANNEX 3
Dr Fikreta Jelić-Butić, Ustashe and the Independent State
of Croatia 1941–1945, Zagreb, 1977,
pp 166–167, 185–1875758596061626364 ANNEX 4
Report of the State Commission of Croatia for the Investigation
of the Crimes of the Occupation Forces and their Collaborators,
Crimes in the Jasenovac Camp, Zagreb, 1946; translated bz Sinisa
Djuric
Source: http://www.pavelic-papers.com/documents; also available from Antun Mileti ć,
Concentration Camp Jasenovac (K oncVol. II, Belgrade,asenovac),
Jasenovac, 1986, pp 1090-1118.6769707172737475767778798081828384858687888990919293949596979899100101102103104105106107108109110111112113114115116117118119120121122123124125126127128129130131132133134135136137138139140141 ANNEX 5
Map of the Jasenovac Concentration Camps
Source: Antun Miletić, Concentration Camp Jasenovac (Koncentracioni logor Jasenovac),
Belgrade, Jasenovac, 1986.145 ANNEX 6
Photos from the Jasenovac Concentration Camps
Jasenovac (Koncentracioni logor Jasenovac), Belgrade, Jasenovac, 1986.entration Camp149150151152153154155156157158159160 ANNEX 7
Photos of the Children Victims of the NDH
Concentration Camps
Jovan Mirković, the Genocide Victims Museum, Belgrade, 2006.ited by Dragoje Luki ć and163164165166167168169170171172 SECTION II
The 1990`s Croatian Historical Revisionism and the
Revival of the Ustashe Principles
/Excerpts from Contemporary Literature and Original Sources/ ANNEX 8
Chronology of the Ustashe Movement
after World War II
Prepared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia CHRONOLOGY OF THE USTASHE MOVEMENT
AFTER WORLD WAR II
- 1945–1948 – the Ustashe commandos called Crusaders ( Križari) were engaged by the
Western intelligence services and sent to raid into Tito’s communist Yugoslavia. Most
of their attempts failed. One of the arrested Crusaders who was sentenced to death was
the infamous Jasenovac Commander, Ljubo Miloš. Another Jasenovac Commander,
1
Miroslav Filipović-Majstorović (Father Satan), met the same court sentence in 1947.
- 1948 – Poglavnik Ante Paveli ć and his closest supporters arrived in Argentina via
2
Italy, following the infamous “Ratlines” of the war criminals.
- 1949 – Pavelić lives openly in Buenos Aires an d forms the Croatian Statehood Party
3
(Hrvatska državotvorna stranka), which aspires to be the NDH government-in-exile.
- 1956 – Pavelić forms a new terrorist organization - the Croatian Liberation Movement.
Twelve former ministers of the NDH have affixed their signatures to the founding
4
manifesto.
- 1957 – Attempt on Paveli ć’s life in Argentina by Blagoje Jovovi ć, a Chetnik from
5
Montenegro. Pavelić is seriously injured.
- 1959 – Pavelić dies in Madrid.
- 1962–1966 – Three Yugoslav diplomats are killed in Germany by the Ustashe
6
organization led by Maks Luburić.
- 1968 – Ustashe terrorists plant a bomb inside a cinema in Belgrade: one person is
7
killed and 85 are injured in the attack.
- 1969 – Maks Luburi ć is massacred in his villa in Valencia by the Yugoslav secret
8
agent.
- 1971 – Yugoslav Ambassador to Sweden Vladimir Rolović is assassinated by the neo-
9
Ustashe terrorist Miro Barešić.
1US Army declassified file, Central Intelligence Group, The Do Marius Report, dated 6 May 1947, available from
2ttp://pavelic-papers.com/documents/pavelic/ap0031.html
US Army declassified file, Reported Arrival of Ante Pavelic in Argentina, dated 2 December 1948, available from
3ttp://pavelic-papers.com/documents/pavelic/ap0031.html
Cali Ruchala & Siniša Djuri ć, The Ustashe Movement 1929–1986: An historical overview , available from
http://pavelic-papers.com/timeline/ustasetimeline.html
4Ibid.
5Tihomir Burzanović, Two Bullets for Pavelić, available from http://pavelic-papers.com/features/tbfp.pdf
6Cali Ruchala & Siniša Djurić, Op.cit.
7Ibid.
8
9Ibid.
Ibid.
177 - 1972 – Ustashe terrorists hijack a Swedish airliner and demand Barešić’s release and a
cash ransom. Both demands are met. Later in the same year, Ustashe claim
responsibility for planting a bomb on board a Yugoslav airliner which explodes in
mid-air, killing 26 people. 10
- June 1972, Operation “Phoenix“ – Following the suppressed Croatian Spring Movement,
19 members of the neo-Ustashe terrorist group from Australia try to organize an uprising
in Herzegovina with the aim to re-establish the Independent State of Croatia. After 37
days, all members were killed or arrested, but 34 members of the Yugoslav army and
11
police forces also lost their lives in the battle on the Raduša Mountain.
- 1975 – A bomb explodes in a storage locker at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, killing
11 and injuring 75 people. The attack has long been attributed by the police and
12
investigative journalists to the Ustashe.
13
- 1976 – Four Ustashe hijack an American TW plane. One police officer is killed.
14
- 1980 – The Ustashe plant a bomb in the Statue of Liberty, though no one is injured.
15
- 1980-1983 – RICO trials in the USA for numerous crimes committed and attempted
by the Ustashe terrorists, inter alia, the conspiracy to carry out attacks on the United
16
Nations Headquarters and the Grand Central Terminal in New York.
- 1984 – Before the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games in Sarajevo, the West
17
German authorities arrest twelve Croats who are in possession of arms and explosives.
- 1986 – Former Minister of Interior of the NDH Andrija Artukovi ć is extradited from
the United States, nearly four decades after his illegal entry, following extreme
pressure by Holocaust survivors. Suffering from advanced senility, he dies in a
Yugoslav prison hospital a year after his trial. 18
- 1993 – Croatian President Franjo Tu đman appoints Ivo Rojnica, the 1941 Ustashe district
leader for the area of Dubrovnik and war criminal responsible for numerous crimes against
Serbs and Jews, for an Ambassador in the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 19
10Ibid.
11Milan V. Petković, VOS i UDBA nisu isto (VOS and UDBA are not the same), Belgrade, 2005.
12Cali Ruchala & Sinisa Djuric, Op.cit.
13
14Ibid.
15Ibid.
The Federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupted Organizations.
16John Pryor, Canadian Among Croatian Group Charged with Violent Criminal Operatio,nUPI, 19 February 1982,
see also The First Otpor RICO Trial in New York City, 25 January 1983, Lexis/Nexis.
17The FBI declassified file, San Francisco Office, 7 February 1984, available from
http://pavelic-papers.com/documents/odpor/odp0012.html
18New York Times, Croat, at Trial, Defends Concentration Camps, 18 April 1986.
19
Official Gazette of the Republic of Croatia, 24 September 1993.
178 - 1994 – Ivo Rojnica is honored by the Croatian President Tu đman with a „Great Order
Medal of Duke Trpimir with Necklace“. 20
- 1994 – Franjo Tudjman meets Dinko Ljubomir Šaki ć, one of the former Commanders
21
of the Jasenovac Death Camp in Buenos Aires.
- February 1995 – in an interview published in Zagreb, Šakić says: „The NDH formed a
22
ground on which the present-day Croatia has been built“.
- 1998 – Following the pressure by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Šaki ć is extradited to
the Republic of Croatia. He is sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment, but he dies the
same year. He is buried in Ustashe uniform. At his funeral, Croatian Dominican priest
Father Vjekoslav Lasi ć made a speech in which he said that "the court that indicted
Dinko Šakić indicted Croatia and Cr oats", and that "every Croat should be proud of
Šakić's name". 23
- 2007 – At the rock concert of Marko Perkovi ć Thompson the crowds openly display
Ustashe symbols and sing song glorifying the crimes committed by Maks Luburić. His
concerts as neo-Nazi ones were banned in The Netherla nds, Austria and Switzerland,
24
but not in Zagreb, where he drew a crowd of 60,000 fans.
25
- 2008 – In Zagreb, a mass was held for the Ustashe Poglavnik Ante Pavelić.
20
Nenad Antonijević, Ustaški stožernik Ivo Rojnica i njegova uloga u zoinima u Dubrovniku 1941. godine (Ustashe
Leader Ivo Rojnica and his role in crimes in Dubrovnik 1941) , in Hans-Georg Fleck & Igor Graovac, Dijalog
povijesničara-istoričara (Dialogue of Historians,)Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, No. 6, Zagreb, 2002, p. 335.
21Drago Hedl, Čuvar logora u ustaškom periodu (Camp guard during the Ustashe time ), AIM - Alternative
Information Network, France, 12 April 1998, available from
22tp://www.aimpress.ch/dyn/pubs/archive/data/199804/80412-001-pubs-zag.htm
Aleksa Crnjakovi ć, Obavljao sam svoju dužnost ( I did my duty), Interview with Dinko Ljubomir Šaki ć,
published in Magazin, Zagreb, February 1995.
23Hrvoje Šimičević, Zuroff Mesiću: osudite organizatore Šakićevog sprovoda (Zuroff to Mesic: Condemn the
organizerrs of Šakic’s funeral), Nacional, 29 July 1998, Zagreb, available from
http://www.nacional.hr/clanak/47685/zuroff-mesicu-osudite-organizatore-…
24Wiesenthal Centre Expresses Outrage at Massive Outburst of Nostalgia for Croatian Fascism at Zagreb Rock
Concert; Urges President Mesic to Take Immediate Action, available from
www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=fwLYKnN8LzH&b=245494&ct=… ; Thompson
greeted Norac, Swarm chanted „ Kill the Serb“, available from www.index.hr/vijesti/clanak/thompson-
pozdravio-norca-rulja-uzvikivala-ubij-srbina/388987.aspx ).
25Available from
www.index.hr/vijesti/clanak/u-zagrebu-odrzana-misa-za-ustaskog-poglavni…
179 ANNEX 9
Efraim Zuroff, Operation Last Chance,
New York, 2009, pp. 131–150183184185186187188189190191192193194195196197198199200201202203 ANNEX 10
Karl Pfeifer, Croatia – Tudjman and the genesis of
Croatian revisionism, Searchlight Magazine, 2003Author: Karl Pfeifer | Date: July 2003
http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/index.php?link=template&
story=30
Croatia - Tudjman and the genesis of Croatian revisionism
On 31 October 2001, President Stipe Mesic of Croatia delivered a speech
to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, which signalled a major change in
attitude of his country towards its wartime history.
Mesic said, and it is worth quoting him at length:
“I am speaking of behalf of democratic Croatia, which upholds the traditions of anti-fascist and
freedom-loving Croatia from the times of the Second World War. I am speaking of behalf of that
Croatia which bows with respect and reverence to the memory of the millions of the victims of the
Holocaust … I am using every opportunity to ask for forgiveness from all those who were harmed
by the Croats at any time. Of course, from the Jews in the first place. As President of the Republic
of Croatia, I profoundly and sincerely regret the crimes committed against the Jews during the
Second World War on the territory of the Quisling entity called the Independent State of Croatia
that was neither independent nor Croatian. Just as the majority of the Croatian people knew at the
time that their place was with the anti-fascist resistance, also led by a Croat, Marshal Tito, present-
day Croatia knows that it can build its future and its relations with other countries only on the basis
of firm commitment to democracy and freedom, the foundations of which include the imperishable
values of anti-fascism. Over a short period of time, in the struggle for independence and directly
thereafter, the tragically misdesig ned concept of unity of all Croats resulted, on the one hand, in
the denial of the dark pages of our history,and, on the other, in the search for models precisely in
such pages.”
There can be little doubt that Mesic had his presidential predecessor Franjo Tudjman in mind. The
case of Tudjman, the Croat partisan who made a career in the Yugoslav army as a communist, is
indeed extraordinary because in the 1960s he co nverted to Croat nationalism and was imprisoned
for several years. As president of the right-wi ng nationalist HDZ party, he published a booThe
Horrors of War, in Zagreb in 1989.
By 1993 Tudjman was president of Croatia and his book had been translated into several
languages. It is a horrific example of Croat revisionism. In particular, the Ustasha’s Independent
State of Croatia (NDH) which from 1941 to 1945 incorporated Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
appears in a relatively positive light despite its Nazi basis and the appalling crimes of genocide
committed under it.
With regard to Jews, Croatian revisionists sucas Tudjman developed a number of theses, either
manipulating facts or telling outright lies. Thus, it was true, they said, that the NDH had adopted
racial legislation under Nazi pressure, but the legislation had never been implemented; Jasenovac
207was not a death camp but a work camp to which only legally convicted opponents of the regime
were sent; proportionally the largest number of Je ws in all European countries were saved in the
NDH and, incredibly, the Ustasha movement was never antisemitic. Liars like Tudjman cast doubt
on whether any genocide of Jews had taken place in the NDH at all.
In 1992, the Croatian parliament formed the Commission for Establishing War and Postwar Crimes,
which in autumn 1999 presented an utterly scandalous report. After seven and a half years of work
this commission managed to establish that only 331 Jews by religion and 293 Jews by nationality
had been “victims of war”. The report’s section on the Jasenovac death camp provides a figure of
only 2,238 dead, but lists neither their religion nor their nationality. Significantly, the Croat
parliament did not adopt the report.
More objective historians have dealt with these matters in a way that shows greater regard for the
truth. They have established that over 30,000 Jews were murdered in the genocide carried out by
the NDH between 1941 and 1945 and that only 9,000 Jews survived the war. In other words, 76%
and 80% of the Jewish community, in what are today Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina
respectively, were murdered.
Tudjman’s book pretends to be a rebuttal of the so-called “Jasenovac myth” of the genocidal nature
of the Croatian people. He often uses the example of the Jews to support his ridiculous thesis that
nations have suffered from, and inflicted genocide on, other nations since time immemorial, and
that this is the very destiny of nations. For example he makes a facile comparison between the
Holocaust Jews suffered and Israeli violence towards Palestinians, asking, “What does this small
step from Nazi fascism to Judeo Nazism teach us?”
The Horrors of War contains about 80 pages on Jews and Jewish matters together with numerous
misquotations of sources with which Tudjman was clearly unfamiliar and on the basis of which he
drew false conclusions. Tudjman’s patently selective choice of data reduces to the barest minimum
the number of victims of Croatian Nazism, especially Serbs, with the claim that “in fact only several
thousand (probably 3,000-4,000) prisoners of Jasenovac camp were killed, mostly Gypsies,
followed by Jews and Serbs, and also Croats”.
He also adopts a bizarre “distribution of guilt” approach to minimising the responsibility of the
murderous Ustasha and claiming that the Jews, except as Jasenovac victims, were joint culprits in
the crimes inflicted upon them. Discussing the conduct of Jews in Jasenovac, Tudjman relies
exclusively on the fabricated evidence of three former Jasenovac prisoners who claimed that Jews
had held a privileged position in the camp, that the “camp administration was run by Jews [and]
they were the inner authority in the camp”, that Jewish camp officials had “participated in the
killing” and “were greatly responsible for ‘selecting’ prisoners for ‘liquidation’, and partly even its
implementation …”.
One source of Tudjman’s account of the Jews’ conduct in the Jasenovac slaughterhouse is Through
Europe Alone during the War (1939-1945) by the controversial Croat politician and publicist, Ante
Ciliga (1898-1992). Ciliga, a renegade communist, was arrested in the Soviet Union under Stalin
during the 1930s but was later released because he was an Italian citizen. At that time he was
accused of being a Trotskyist. After 1945 he successfully pretended to have remained so, while still
maintaining close connections with Croat clerical-fascist circles.
These links were probably formed when Ciliga was held in Jasenovac, where he enjoyed special
treatment, had a room to himself and was even allowed to write an anti-communist book. In 1942
he was released and reached Vienna, where he had an eye operation, with the help of Hitler’s
Gestapo. He then went to the Croat embassy in Berlin and left the city with the last Ustasha
diplomats. After the war he found refuge in France, where no one knew about this dark part of his
past.
Ciliga was obsessed by Jewish themes. Almost a quarter of his 580-page book on his strange
odyssey through war-torn Europe is devoted to Je ws and Jewish matters. Tudjman echoes some of
Ciliga’s views, which were based, so he claims, on observing Jews in the camps of Stara Gradiska
and Jasenovac, where Ciliga was incarcerated from December 1941 to December 1942.
208Among other things, Tudjman quotes Ciliga to the effect that the Jews in Jasenovac were under the
influence of Moses’s teaching “that, as the chosen people, they were allowed”, so other people
envied and hated them, but in fact they are “the unhappiest people on earth … victims of their own
pretensions and those of others” and the authors of their own misfortunes.
“Moses’s most extreme commandment … ‘God commands you to exterminate others and take their
place because you are the chosen people’ is always alive in Jews – it is the root of their ‘ruthless
and overbearing self-assertiveness’ which tells them ‘you are killing others to save yourselves and
your group’.” wrote Ciliga. Thus the Jews in Jasenovac, said Tudjman quoting him, “took the
initiative in preparing and provoking not only the individual but also the mass slaughter of non-
Jews, communists, partisans and Serbs”. Tudjman expressed no reservations when making these
and similar claims in the late 1980s, but must surely have given some thought to their patent
falsehood and absurdity.
While he refrains from quoting Ciliga’s even more fantastic hallucinations, Tudjman omits anything
positive Ciliga wrote about the Jews. Finally, he disregards hundreds of testimonies and thousand
of documents that demonstrate the solidarity of the great majority of Jewish prisoners with other
prisoners, and the “privileged treatment” that ended in the murder of all Jewish prisoners.
It is this part of The Horrors of War that provoked the most public indignation. Under pressure from
Israel, and American and West European Jewish institutions, Tudjman eventually made a formal
apology to the American Jewish B’nai B’rith organisation, carefully expurgating all antisemitic
invective from the abridged American edition of his book and reducing it in the most sensitive parts
of its fifth Croatian edition.
But these changes do not and cannot mitigate the consequences of Tudjman’s revisionism. Many of
his followers among Croatian journalists and publicists in the 1990s routinely adopted his views
from the first editions of The Horrors of War, making abundant use of them in their defence of the
Ustasha NDH.
Tudjman’s personal responsibility for the promotion of Croatian revisionist historiography has to be
placed alongside his even greater responsibility for being the main patron of revisionism in political
and public life. Military terminology, the terminology of government documents and the new names
given to state institutions were a further sign of continuity with the NDH. Under Tudjman,
monuments and memorials (2,964 in all) to fighters killed in National Liberation Struggle of the
Second World War and to victims of Ustasha and Na zi terror were destroyed or removed. Streets,
army barracks and institutions in various towns were named after Ustasha officials and army
commanders. Worse, notorious Ustasha songs became part of public celebrations and other events.
Revisionist terminology eventually found its way into lexicographic works, which otherwise had no
connection with revisionism, as well as into many other publications.
The situation changed after Tudjman’s HDZ party was defeated in the elections on 3 January 2000.
Even so, much more effort will be required before the consciousness of real events and
relationships, the consciousness of what was really going on, who was on the right side and who
was on the wrong side in the Second World War, seeps into and prevails among the Croatian
general public.
This article is based on the article “Croatian President apologises for Croatia’s Nazi
past” and a chapter of Ivo and Slavko Goldstein’s book, Holocaust in Zagreb, published in
English by Voice of the Jewish Communities in Croatia, No 4, Zagreb, winter 2002/2003.
© Searchlight Magazine 2003
209ANNEX 11
Viktor Ivančić, Točka na U,
Split, 1988, pp. 113-115, 132-133213214215216217218219220221222 ANNEX 12
Excerpts from Aleksa Crnjaković, Interview with Dinko
Ljubomir Šakić, former Commandant of the Jasenovac
Concendužnost), Magazin, Zagreb, 1995avljao sam svoju225226227228229230
volume II