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New nation from old ones The Vatican frowns on the birth of Yugoslavia - Catholic policy of penetration and disintegration - Croat Separatism and the Catholic Church - Catholic storm troopers - The Ustashi. |
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The year of political assassinations The murder of a Chancellor, of a Foreign Minister and of a King. |
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The birth of a monster: the independent Catholic State of Croatia Catholic crusaders turn into Storm Troopers - A Catholic Gestapo - How a puppet King was made - A Fascist delegation to the Pope - Ante Pavelic and Pius XII plan a secret campaign. |
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The nightmare of a nation The Archbishop and Bishops support a Catholic Dictator - "We have three million bullets." - Catholic concentration camps for children - Orders: "Cremate people alive." |
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The triumph of terrorism Punitive expeditions - The pattern of mass executions - The Franciscan pupil who cut the throats of 1,360 prisoners - Pushed alive into their graves - Orthodox Serbs crucified - Eyes torn from their sockets. |
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"Christ and the Ustashi march together." Catholic priests and friars lead Ustashi bands - Franciscan padres as bandits - Catholic fathers as Ustashi storm troopers - Archbishop Stepinac issues a pastoral letter - Catholic padres as Ustashi commissars. |
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Catholic friars, priests, executioners, bishops and murderers Orthodox clergy murdered - The Canon with the bull whip - Catholic persuasion and bayonets - Certificates of honesty for re-Christening in the Catholic Church - Conversion or death - "He converted six thousand persons." - A Franciscan monster: Father Filipovic. |
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The true inspirer, promoter and executor of the religious massacre: the Vatican Catholic Bishops advocate "forcible conversions." - Archbishop Stepinac, Supreme Apostolic Vicar of the Ustashi Army - Forcible conversion legalized - Forcible conversion for the "lost souls" of Orthodox children - The Catholic Church's directives for forcible conversions - Pope Pius XII blesses Pavelic and his Ustashi. |
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Catholic campaign of denial, smear and falsification How the First News reached the outside world - Dr. Sekulich and the "Gestapo." - A Catholic liar at the White House - Winston Churchill issues a writ - What Mrs. Roosevelt said - "I write to save my soul." - The Archbishop's answer: "I have forwarded everything to the Vatican." |
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The Pope, Stepinac and Pavelic try to save Croatia They ask the "right Allies" for guns - Archbishop Stepinac is promoted head of the Ustashi Government - Ante Pavelic hides inside the Vatican - Stepinac, Cardinal Mindszenty and Pius XII prepare for a new war. |
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The Catholic church prepares for the future The Pope pigeon-holes a Bishop's memorandum, promotes a phony religious campaign - Stepinac is arrested and imprisoned - The World Press whitewash the Ustashi horror - The Ustashi Army are resurrected abroad - Pavelic forms a new Ustashi Government. Makes ready for "The Day." |
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The Vatican and the USA as the defenders of the Fascist criminals of World War II The Vatican and the USA as the protectors of the Croatian war criminals - The Vatican becomes their refuge - Falsifications of passports - Fake identities "made in Rome." - Secret Vatican-USA instructions to "validate" them. |
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The Vatican, the Mafia and the USA. Why they enlisted war criminals, Stalin and one third of Europe The Mafia recruited by the Vatican and the USA - The Mafia helps the Vatican save tons of holy silver - Why the Vatican and the USA enlisted war criminals - The menace of Soviet Russia - Stalin swallows up one-third of Europe - The Vatican-USA secret Alliance to stop him. |
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The USA and the Vatican's secret plan to rescue war criminals American and World Jewish reaction - The Jews are mobilized against the State Department and the Pope - The State Department and the Vatican are scared - They adopt a policy of "maximum prudence." - The USA by-passed Jewish vigilance, by massive equivocal legislation - Official classification of evidence - Estimated 10,000 Nazi collaborators still in the USA. |
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The Vatican saves the Catholic war criminals of Croatia - Roman monasteries as their asylums -The Croatian Holocaust minimized The Pope saves a top war criminal from execution - The Nuns of Rome who were Croatian Ustashis - Monasteries and Nunneries invaded - The Catholic American grand conspiracy - The man who escaped from Yugoslavia with the first documentation of the Croatian atrocities. |
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The Croatian Holocaust - Invention or Reality? The Ambassador and the Cardinal - The Archbishop of Canterbury's fit of temper The English Cardinal who kept his silence - An Embassy buys 2000 copies of the book - Distributions to the House of Lords and Commons - The launching of a book in Northern Ireland - The Archbishop of Canterbury's unecumenical fit of temper - The Londoner who defied him. |
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The Ambassador and the Pope's Nuncio in a Red Embassy, a Vatican victory The Ambassador changes his mind - No more books about the Croatian Holocaust - Communist amnesty for all Croatian criminals - Communist Yugoslavia makes peace with the Vatican - The Vatican Ambassador in a Communist Embassy; its political meaning - Ustashi settlements abroad. |
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Ustashi terrorism after World War II The silent efficiency of Ustashi killing - Dr. Sekulich's experience - The Serbian Convention of Chicago and the Ustashi's shadow - The lecturer who was shot and killed - The speech advocating mutual tolerance between Serbs and Croats, which saved the life of the author - The would-be killer asks for an autograph. |
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Forty years after - crime and punishment Effectiveness of the protective legislation of the USA for war criminals - Thirty years of efforts to have a top Ustashi arrested - Artukovic, former Interior Minister of Catholic Croatia, is extradited - He is sentenced to death - Total absence of the religious motivation of the Croatian Holocaust - Distortion of the true nature of his trial - American and world opinion hoodwinked. |
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The Virgin Mary and the Secretary of the USA Navy call for World War III Consecration of the World to the Virgin Mary - The Cult of Fatima - Its anti-Russian significance - Catholic volunteers with the Nazi Armies on the Russian Front - USA-Russian atomic race - USA theologians advocate atomic war - The American Secretary of Defense jumps from a 16th floor window - USA Cardinal Spellman and Pope Pius XII support "the morality of a preventive atomic war." - Ante Pavelich and the Ustashi make ready for World War III. |
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The Grand Central European plot - the Pope, the Cardinal and CIA The CIA and the Vatican Intelligence unite to carry on a "revolution." - They designate a Cardinal as the future Premier of Hungary - Cardinal Mindszenty's failure - He is imprisoned - He is driven into Budapest by three Hungarian tanks - The CIA and the Vatican are defeated by the Soviet invasion of Hungary - Cardinal Mindszenty as the "twelve year guest" of the American Legation in Hungary - Death of Pius XII - The Secret of Fatima. |
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The Malta Inquisition - vote Catholic or be damned Catholic punishing expedition against their opponents - Catholic children as whistling political hooligans - Church bells to silence anti-Catholic speakers - The bells ring THREE SOLID HOURS to silence the Socialists - Father confessors as political advisers - Grilled in the flames of hell if you vote against the Church - Refusal of absolution to exert political pressure - Voters terrorized by vigilante padres - "Vote Catholic or be damned." |
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Vietnam - the Croatia of Asia The religious origins of the Vietnamese conflict - Buddhists protest against a Catholic dictatorship - The Catholic Trio of a President, an Archbishop and a Security Chief - Catholic discrimination against Buddhists - Buddha's birthday forbidden - The first 16,000 American "advisers." - President Kennedy cold-shoulders Catholic Diem - Consents to Diem "assassination." The Catholic Church "loses" the war for the USA - Collapse of the USA Anti-communist front caused by Catholic intransigence. |
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Where will be the next Inquisition? |
Last photo of Mr. Manhattan before his homegoing in Nov. 1990
A shory biography of Baron Avro Manhattan
Born April 6, 1914, in Milan, Italy, of American and Swiss/Dutch parents. He was educated at the Sorbonne in Paris and the London School of Economics. He was jailed in Italy for refusing to serve in the Fascist dictator Mussolini's army. While imprisoned in the Alps he wrote his first book on astronomy.
During the war, Mr. Manhattan operated a radio station called Radio Freedom broadcasting to the partisans in occupied Europe. For this service he was made a Knight of Malta. His aristocratic roots meant that he was a Knight of the House of Savoy as well as a Knight Templar and a Knight of the Order of Mercedes.
His more than 20 books include the best-selling The Vatican in World Politics, one of the best-selling books of all time. It was translated into most major languages including Chinese, Russian and most recently, Korean.
He was a member of the Royal Society of Literature, Society of Authors, Ethical Union, P.E.N., British Interplanetary Society, etc.
His other books include:
The Rumbling of the Apocalypse, Airoldi, 1934;
Towards the new Italy (Preface by H.G. Wells), Lindsay Drummond, 1943;
Latin America and the Vatican, C.A. Watts, 1946.
The Catholic Church Against The Twentieth Century, C.A.Watts, 1947, 2nd edition, 1950;
The Vatican in Asia, C.A. Watts, London, 1948.
Religion in Russia, C.A.Watts, London, 1949.
Catholic Imperialism and World Freedom, C.A. Watts, London 1952, 2nd edition, 1959;
Terror Over Yugoslavia, the Threat to Europe, C.A. Watts, London, 1953;
The Dollar and the Vatican, Pioneer Press, London, 1956, 3rd edition, 1957.
Vatican Imperialism in the 20th Century, Zondervan, Michigan, 1965.
The Vatican Billions, Chick Pub., Los Angeles,1983.
Catholic Terror in Ireland, Chick Pub., Los Angeles, 1988.
Vatican Moscow Washington Alliance, Chick Pub, 1982.
Vietnam . . . why did we go?, Chick Pub, Los Angeles, 1984.
The Vatican's Holocaust, Ozark Books, Springfield, MO.1986.
Murder in the Vatican, American Russian and Papal Plots, Ozark Books, Springfield, MO. 1985.
His friends included H. G. Wells, Pablo Picasso, George Bernard Shaw, and scientist Marie Stopes.
A WORD FOR THE FIFTH EDITION....
A copy of this book was hurled across St.
Paul's Cathedral, London, England, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, to the
stupefaction of a vast congregation gathered there to pray for Christian
unity. A journalist bought a copy to use it as a "shield",
expecting to be attacked by the three thousand people who had participated at
the launching of the book in the Ulster Hall, Belfast, Northern Ireland,
simply because they approved of its contents. The book was also kicked,
trampled and spat upon by a Catholic student in Belfast.
None of these people had read a line of it.
The Anglican primate had lost his temper—and, even more tragically his reason—as swiftly as had the newsman and the university intellectualloid, at the mere sight of its title.
A striking demonstration, if there be need for one, of how religious disputes can still madden people beyond redemption.
If to this is added political strife, then the two turn into the most perilous explosive.
Nations react more irrationally even than single individuals. Since the cumulative weight of history, wishful thinking and vested interests will trigger off the most emotional fanaticisms within otherwise civilized lands.
Yet, wise is the nation which makes ready for the worst to happen.
Avro Manhattan,
London.
Foreword
To the readers of the British editions:
This book has been criticized, condemned, banned, mutilated, destroyed and
even burned as frequently as it has been quoted, recommended, reproduced and
praised in many parts of the world, because of the events and revelations it
describes. The ordinary individual cannot accept as yet the startling facts
that only a few years back, for instance, the Catholic Church advocated
forcible conversions, helped to erect concentration camps, and was
responsible for the sufferings, torturing and execution of hundreds of
thousands of non-Catholics. Deeds coolly perpetrated by her lay and
ecclesiastic members. Furthermore, that many of such atrocities were carried
out personally by some of her Catholic priests and even monks. One of the
main purposes of this book is to relate where, when and by whom such
atrocities were committed. It took the author almost half a decade of
painstaking investigation before he accepted what seemed unbelievable. The
result is this account, documented from as authoritative and as varied
sources as possible. Among them, people with whom the present writer became
personally acquainted. Some of these played no mean role in the religious,
political and military events herein narrated. Others were eye-witnesses.
Indeed, not a few even victims of the incredible atrocities sanctioned and
promoted by the Catholic Church. The names of most of the participants,
Catholic laymen, military, priests, friars, bishops, archbishops and
cardinals, as well as those of their non-Catholic victims, men, women and
children, including clergymen, are as genuine as the names of the localities,
villages and cities where the atrocities took place. Their authenticity can
be verified by anyone willing to do so. Documents and photographs of Catholic
concentration camps, Catholic mass executions and Catholic forced
conversions, some of which are in this book, are kept in the archives of the
Yugoslav Government, of the Orthodox Church, of the United Nations and of
other official institutions.
The Ecumenical revolution, although seemingly alluring, has shown itself to be nothing more than a Trojan Horse via which Catholic power, apparelled in contemporary garb, continues to assert itself as effectively active as ever. The striking samples of contemporary Catholic terrorization which occurred in Malta and Vietnam, many of which took place during the days of "good old Pope John" and, indeed, under the pontificate of Pope Paul VI, need no elucidation. They are the most damning proof that the Catholic Church, notwithstanding all her alleged liberalization, fraternization and up-to-dateness, basically, has not changed an iota. The portentous significance of what is here described, therefore, should be carefully scrutinized. Lest the past be repeated in the future. Indeed, now. In the present.
Avro Manhattan,
London.
PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITIONS:
THE VATICAN'S HOLOCAUST is not a misnomer, an
accusation, and even less a speculation. It is an historical fact. Rabid
nationalism and religious dogmatism were its two main ingredients. During the
existence of Croatia as an independent Catholic State, over 700,000 men,
women and children perished. Many were executed, tortured, died of
starvation, buried alive, or were burned to death. Hundreds were forced to
become Catholic. Catholic padres ran concentration camps; Catholic priests
were officers of the military corps which committed such atrocities. 700,000
in a total population of a few million, proportionally, would be as if
one-third of the USA population had been exterminated by a Catholic militia.
What has been gathered in this book will vindicate the veracity of these
facts. Dates, names, and places, as well as photos are there to prove them.
They should become known to the American public, not to foster
vindictiveness, but to warn them of the danger, which racialism and
sectarianism, when allied with religious intolerance can bring to any
contemporary nation, whether in Europe or in the New World. This work should
be assessed without prejudice and as a lesson; but even more vital, as a
warning for the future of the Americans, beginning with that of the USA.
Avro Manhattan,
Acknowledgments
The compilation of this book has required the cooperation of divers individuals, organizations and Governments. To avoid political partisanship, the author has collected documentation from all sides, using it impartially, so long as it was authenticated. Acknowledgments are due to the following:
The Government of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in exile, under King Peter.
The Government of the Federal Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia, under Marshal Tito.
The Orthodox Church of Yugoslavia.
The Serbian Eastern Orthodox Church for the USA and Canada.
Adam Pribicevic, Hon. Pres. of the Independent Democratic Party of Yugoslavia.
Dr. Vladimir Belajcic, former Justice of the Supreme Court of Yugoslavia.
Dr. Branko Miljus, former Minister of Yugoslavia. Certain members of the United Nations.
Grateful personal acknowledgments are also due to: Dom Luigi Sturzo, founder and leader of the Catholic Party of Italy (renamed Christian Democratic Party after the Second World War).
Cardinal W. Godfrey, former Apostolic Delegate, Archbishop of Westminster and Cardinal Primate of England.
Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, leader of HMO, House of Lords, London, Great Britain.
Mgr. X of Vatican City.
Count Carlo Sforza, Foreign Minister of Italy.
General D. Mirkovic, the man who overthrew the Yugoslav Government after the latter had signed a pact with Hitler (March 27, 1941). Dr. M. Sekulich, the first official bearer of the details of the religious massacres of Croatia to the Allied Governments during the Second World War. Last but not least to all those eyewitnesses and even victims of the Ustashi horrors who cared to supply the author with further documentation.
Chapter 1
NEW NATIONS FROM OLD ONES
When in 1917, during the First World War, the Papal Nuncio in Munich, E. Pacelli, secretly negotiated with the Central Powers to accomplish the Pope's Peace without Victory, in order to save both Germany and Austria-Hungary from defeat, he had already made his first attempt to strangle a nation as yet unborn; Yugoslavia. If the Vatican's attempt was directed at preserving its most useful Hapsburg lay partner, it simultaneously had another no less important goal: to prevent a motley of nationalities from springing out of the Empire's ruins as sovereign States in their own right. In such States, Poland excepted, Catholicism would have sunk to the level of a minority. Worse, it would have been dominated by heretical churches and their political Allies: i.e. by the Protestant and Liberal in Czechoslovakia, by the Orthodox in Yugoslavia. With its last attempt to save the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Vatican therefore struck a final blow against the yet unborn "Hussite" Czechs and the Catholic Slovaks on one side, and the Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats and Slovenes on the other, the fulfillment of their dreams lying as it did in the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian colossus.
The Emperor Charles was advised to transform the Empire into a Federation. The idea, which originated at the Vatican, was repellent to both, as it meant, besides the loosening of Imperial control, the loosening of Catholic control over the various races of the tottering Empire. But in the circumstances the alternative was total collapse. In October Charles announced the transformation of the Hapsburg Monarchy into a Federal State. The offer—which, significantly, was made only at the last moment—although accompanied by secret papal moves, left the Allies determined to end for good the rule of the double-headed Austrian eagle. President Wilson's reply to Charles, and thus to the Pope, was firmly hostile. The USA, said Wilson, admitted "the justice of the national aspirations of the Southern Slavs." It was for these people, he added, to decide what they would accept.
As far as the USA was concerned, he concluded, it had already recognized Czechoslovakia as a belligerent independent State. The American reply had sealed the fate of Austria-Hungary. On October 28, 1918, the Czechoslovaks declared their independence. On the 29th the Yugoslavs proclaimed theirs. On December 1 the Yugoslav Council invited the Regent, Alexander, in Belgrade, to proclaim the Union. The new independent kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes—Yugoslavia—had come into being.
The birth was welcomed in certain quarters—e.g. by the Allies—and was unwelcome in others—e.g. the Vatican—to which the new nation, besides being the unnatural creature of the Allies' political blindness, was a religious aberration not to be tolerated. Orthodoxy, swept away in Russia, where it had seemed unassailable, with the birth of Yugoslavia had now become paramount in a country the population of which was more than one-third Catholic. Worse still, in addition to permitting Orthodoxy to rule Catholics, Yugoslavia was preventing the latter from setting up a wholly independent Catholic community. When to the above was added the fact that Yugoslavia, by her mere existence, represented the greatest obstacle to the long-range Catholic strategy, the Vatican's feeling, more than one of hostility, become one of implacable hatred, a wind which boded no good to the young nation. This hatred became the main inspirer of the Vatican's anti-Yugoslav strategy, the objective of which was the destruction of Yugoslavia. Having embarked on such a course, the Vatican began a vigorous campaign, the fulfillment of which to some extent depended on another factor: the collapse of Bolshevik Russia, the early disappearance of which was, at that period, taken almost for granted by everyone, particularly by the Allies, who had dispatched sundry armies to hasten her collapse. The Vatican counted, then, on a Russian collapse in order to execute its policy of a forced Catholic domination of the Balkan peninsula through the sword of Pilsudski. The creation of the Catholic Danzig-Odessa Polish Empire would have meant one thing: the death of Yugoslavia and other Balkan Orthodox and Protestant countries. When, however, Pilsudski's bloody adventure terminated and the Allies' efforts to destroy Bolshevik Russia relaxed, the Vatican changed its tactics and embarked on a new policy: destruction of Orthodoxy by penetration, instead of by force. Consequently, when in 1920 Pilsudski's Catholic Empire vanished, and the Pope set out to convert Russia, a parallel policy was pursued in connection with Yugoslavia. Although the keynote of this new anti-Orthodox strategy was penetration, its tactics were different in each country. Thus, whereas in Russia they were meant to penetrate in order, in the long run, to dominate her religious life, in Yugoslavia they consisted of penetrating Yugoslav political life in order, once Catholics had come to control it, to enhance the power of Catholicism, and thus ultimately stultify, and indeed paralyze, the Orthodox Church throughout Yugoslavia.
Such a policy, vigorously promoted, mostly by ambitious, clerically-dominated Catholic politicians in Croatia, yielded no little success. In no time Catholic clericalism became a power behind the scenes, with the result that, within a few years, the Hierarchy began to exert undue weight in the administration, not only of Croat affairs, but also of those of Yugoslavia as a whole. This alarmed several honest Catholic Croats, notably Radich, leader of the powerful Croat Peasant Party, aware of the danger that such tactics were creating both for Yugoslavia and for Croats. Defying the Hierarchy—and thus indirectly the Vatican—he began to combat the Catholic Trojan-horse tactics, warning Croatia that, by permitting their politicians to be led by the Hierarchy in political matters, they were bound, sooner or later, to lead all Croats to disaster. Radich's counsel was followed; and for almost a decade Catholic strategy, weakened where it should have been at its strongest, was far less successful than if Radich had acted otherwise.
But in 1928 Radich was assassinated. The assassination coincided with the general overhaul of Vatican European strategy towards Communism. In that same year the Curia finally broke off its negotiations with Soviet Russia. The Papal Nuncio in Germany, E. Pacelli, led the powerful Catholic Centre Party sharply to the extreme Right, thus allying it with the forces which were to sky-rocket Hitler to power. In Italy the Vatican strengthened Fascism by signing a pact with Mussolini (1929). Fascist Catholic movements rose everywhere. An era of Catholic policy had ended, and a new one had begun. The policy of penetration had been replaced by one of active agitation and the swift mobilization of all the religious and political forces of Europe against
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Strip of photographs from the Album of Terrorists, maintained by the Yugoslav Secret Police, as early as 1933. Bottom row, first left, Ante Pavelic, the future Leader of the Independent Catholic State of Croatia. Prior to the latter's establishment, all the men above, as sworn Ustashi were engaged upon the promotion of a policy of terrorism, within and outside Yugoslavia. This they did by murdering singly or collectively, political enemies or innocent people alike. They placed explosives in public places, ships or trains. For instance, a train compartment was blown up by an Ustashi bomb at Zemum, killing the family of Professor Bruneti. Before the Second World War these men were active all over Europe. Their most spectacular success was the simultaneous assassination of the King of Yugoslavia and of Mr. Barthou, the French Foreign Minister, during a State visit to France, 9 October 1934. The double murder was the forerunner of a series of many others which were to contribute to the birth of the Independent Catholic State of Croatia. The Ustashi and Ante Pavelic were "protected" by Mussolini, and tacitly but effectively by the Vatican. Both supported them financially. |
Bolshevik Russia. Thus, while in the West the Vatican had launched upon a global hate campaign against Communism, in the Balkans, after Radich's death, it embarked upon a policy directed at the disintegration of Yugoslavia.
Radich's successor, Dr. Macek, reorientated the Croatian Peasant Party into a rabid nationalist movement which, by becoming increasingly bold, became an active factor for the growing political tension inside Yugoslavia. From this period onward, Separatism became the keyword of Croat Nationalism, with the result that the latter began increasingly to play into the hands of the Catholic Hierarchy and thus into those of the Vatican. The Vatican's policy in the first decade implied Yugoslavia's existence as a united nation; in the second—i.e. since the emergence of a naked Separatism—it overtly aimed at Yugoslavia disintegration. In the promotion of the Vatican's new grand strategy, Yugoslavia was reckoned a major obstacle even more than in the past, in that now it was impeding the swift Fascistization of Europe and the eventual Fascist attack on Soviet Russia, with all the ensuing Balkan commotion which, it was hoped, would cause the tumbling of Yugoslavia itself. In connection with the latter, the Vatican laid down a three-fold policy:
- (a) The detachment of Catholic Croatia from the rule of Orthodox Serbia,
- (b) the setting up of Croatia as an independent Catholic State, and, last but not least,
- (c) the possible creation of a Catholic Kingdom in the Balkans.
For such goals to be attained, one thing was necessary: the partial or total disintegration of Yugoslavia.
To assert that Yugoslavia succumbed thanks only to Vatican machinations would be to falsify history. On the other hand, to minimize its role would be a crude historical distortion. Factors alien to religion played into its hands. These could be summarized as: the animosities of the Croats and the Serbs in the domestic field, the political ambitions of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in the international. Croat Separatism became an increasingly important factor as the internal and external tension grew. Its identification with Catholicism made it almost a blind tool of the Catholic Hierarchy, and thus of the Vatican, which unhesitatingly used it to further not only its local interests, but also its vaster Balkan schemes of religio-political domination.
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Typical portraits of Ustashi leaders. Men like the above were the brains behind the numberless acts of terrorism carried out by the Ustashi in Yugoslavia, Austria, Hungary, Germany, France and in other countries, chiefly from their headquarters in Fascist Italy. (Left) Mijo Bzik, known as "Miko," was chief of the Ustashi camps in Italy, and the recruiter of the assassins who came from Yanka-Pusta. One of his main tasks was the placing of internal machines in public buildings, or crowded places. (Centre) Eugen Kvaternik, one of Ante Pavelic's principal accomplices. He personally accompanied from Italy to France, the assassins, who went to murder the King of Yugoslavia. Pavelic created him Minister of Police when Catholic Croatia became independent. (Right) Zvonimir Pospishil, one of the most brutal of terrorists. He belonged to a special group of Catholic Ustashi charged with the assassination of eminent personalities. He was given the task of killing King Alexander, by blowing him up in Paris had the Marseille plot failed in 1934. |
The Croat leader, Radich, never tired of warning the Croats against following the Vatican in political matters; in this he echoed the voice of another great Catholic patriot, the leader of the Polish Nationalists, Roman Dmowski, whose slogan became a by-word of certain Catholic Polish Nationalists: "Never rely upon the Vatican in political affairs."
Hostility to Vatican political directives by Catholic political leaders was born out of bitter experience: e.g. during the First World War, when Roman Dmowski, having gone to Rome to ask for help to establish Polish independence, was greeted with open disfavour, such Vatican hostility being inspired by political interests identified with those of Austria and other great European Powers who had worked against Polish aspirations for centuries. The extraordinary result of this was that the Poles never got any support from the Vatican, even when they rose against the Czars—an attitude which incensed them to such a degree that one of their great national poets, Julius Slowacki, coined the famous warning: "Poland, thy doom comes from Rome." Which subsequent events proved was more than prophetic.
Radich adopted the same slogan, although with more tact. When, however, his Party was taken over by Macek, the original ideal of Ante Starcevic was swiftly injected with a new overdose of undiluted extremism, which made it turn sharply to the extreme Right. The main exponent of this new trend was one Ante Pavelic, an individual obsessed by the idea of an independent Croatia, inspired by racialism, erected upon Fascism, wholly impregnated with Catholicism, a formidably compact miniature totalitarianism. A movement sprang out of this weird conception; its backbone a ruthless core of terrorist bands, led by Pavelic himself, whose policy consisted of blackmail, murder, plots, and assassinations. The shadow of powerful protectors from across the sea descended swiftly upon them, thus enabling them to carry on their activities in defiance of national or international procedure—e.g. from Italy and Germany, both of whom saw in Pavelic's Croatia a useful instrument for Fascist and Nazi expansion in the Balkans.
The expansionist policies of these nations often ran parallel with that of the Vatican, which, by skillfully manipulating them, could frequently promote its own interests. It did that, not by remaining only an aloof spectator of various Fascist and Nazi activities, but by promoting a most vigorous anti-Yugoslav policy of its own.
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The Vatican and Fascism helped each other from the beginning. Pope Pius XI (1922-1939) ordered the Leader of the Catholic Party to disband it (1926), the better to consolidate the regime of Mussolini. The latter negotiated the Lateran Treaty and Concordat with the Church (1926-1929). By virtue of the first, the Vatican became a sovereign state within Rome. While with the second, the Church was granted immense privileges and Catholicism was declared the only religion of Fascist Italy, which it wholeheartedly supported. Bishops took an oath of allegiance to the Fascist Dictatorship, and the clergy were ordered never to oppose it or incite their flock to harm it. Prayers were said in Churches for Mussolini and for Fascism. Priests became members of the Fascist Party and were even its officers. One of the main supporters of the Fascist-Vatican pact was Mgr. E. Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII), then in Germany. His brother, a lawyer, became one of the chief secret negotiators. He is seen in this photograph standing behind Cardinal ...... Later, the Papal Nuncio to Germany, Mgr. E. Pacelli saw to it that his brother was made a Prince. |
This yielded a rich harvest sooner than was expected. While the Vatican's Fascist associates were busy engineering political or terrorist activities, Catholic diplomacy—as previously in Spain, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, and France—came to the fore with the promotion of a powerful Catholic fifth column. This, which had already gnawed at the internal structure of Yugoslav unity, consisted of all those Croats infected with national-religious fanaticism, of the Catholic Hierarchy of Croatia, and of an illegal Nationalist Army composed of bands of Catholic terrorists, called the Ustashi, the last led by Ante Pavelic, supported by Vladimir Macek, leader of the Croat Peasant Party, who in 1939 arranged for Mussolini to finance him with 20 million diners for the Croat Separatist Movement, and by [1] Archbishop A. Stepinac, leader of the Catholic Hierarchy in Croatia.
The specific role played by the Vatican followed the familiar pattern: use of the Hierarchy to help political and military plotters engaged in undermining or overthrowing the legal Government. Unlike its practice in other countries, however—e.g. Petain's France or Franco's Spain—here the Catholic Church attempted to erect, and indeed did erect, a State in complete accord with all her tenets. The result was a monster standing upon the armed might of twin totalitarianism: the totalitarianism of a ruthless Fascist State and the totalitarianism of Catholicism—the most bloodthirsty hybrid yet produced by contemporary society. What gives to such a creature of Vatican diplomacy its peculiar importance is that here we have an example of the Catholic Church's implementing all her principles, unhampered by opposition, or by fear of world opinion. The uniqueness of the Independent Catholic State of Croatia lies precisely in this: that it provided a model, in miniature, of what the Catholic Church, had she the power, would like to see in the West and, indeed, everywhere. As such it should be carefully scrutinized. For its significance, by transcending its local background, is of the greatest import to all the freedom-loving peoples of the world.
Footnotes
1 See The Ciano Diaries, 1946, pp. 46,48,50-60.
Chapter 2
THE YEAR OF POLITICAL ASSASSINATIONS
One day some time in 1933 an Austrian railwayman, having casually made a discovery which he thought might be of interest, was getting ready to inform his Union when he was approached by a functionary of the Austrian Government. What was the price for his silence? If he was willing to forget all about certain goods in certain carriages, a large sum would be put at his immediate disposal. The railwayman spurned the offer, passed the information to his Union, who handed it over to the Press.
Overnight an obscure occurrence became an international sensation, and what the Catholic Austrian Government had until then carried on in the utmost secrecy was promptly made known to the world. The Foreign Offices of Europe began to hum with unusual activity as the threads of a vast international plot, enmeshing half a dozen countries, gradually came to light.
What the railway trade unionist had discovered was that Austria was blatantly dealing in arms, with the connivance of Catholic Dictator Dollfuss. At this period Austria, in common with other defeated countries, was supposed neither to buy nor sell arms, nor indeed have anything to do with parties connected with arms production. The discovery disclosed to Europe that an armaments factory at Hinterberg, in Lower Austria, was in full production. More, that the Austrian factory was manufacturing rifles, not for the Austrian army, but for semi-Fascist Hungary. Highly placed officials of the Austrian Government, an extraordinary percentage of whom proved to be fervent Catholics, semi-Fascists, or, indeed, fanatical Fascists, were implicated in the smuggling.
The affair created a political furor. But more was yet to come. The rifles it was eventually discovered, were not for Hungary; they were being sent there solely as a temporary depot. The weapons in reality were intended for Fascist Italy. Had that been the end of the story, the Austrian discovery would have caused sufficiently serious international repercussions. But that was by no means all. Further investigations proved that the ultimate destination of the weapons was with certain separatists who, in accord with Mussolini, were planning an armed rising, to detach themselves from their central Government. The separatists: certain Catholic Nationalists of Croatia. The central government they wanted to fight: that of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
The association of such extremists with an aggressive great Power had thus transformed a purely regional affair into an international plot. This raised awkward international complications, not merely of a diplomatic and political nature, but of a racial and religious character as well, which, by trespassing national barriers, affected the domestic and foreign policies of various countries, of which Fascist Italy was one. Mussolini had developed a grand expansionistic design of his own in connection with the Balkans. One of the first steppingstones to its fruition was the partial or, if possible, the total dismemberment of Yugoslavia. This would have implied not only the disappearance of a stumbling-block to Fascist Balkanic ambitions, but also the incorporation into Fascist Italy of former Yugoslav provinces, the most coveted of which was Dalmatia.
Italian-Yugoslav relations at this period became so strained that Mussolini began to toy with the idea of accelerating the political disintegration of the Yugoslav Kingdom by force of arms. This could result in war. Mussolini's aggressive plans were welcomed by none more than by certain Separatists (in Croatia). This for the obvious reason that a Fascist dismemberment of Yugoslavia would have given them the unique opportunity they dreamed of to set up an "independent Croatia." Mussolini, the most powerful Fascist dictator at that period, being in a position to bring about such changes, became therefore the main hope of all those who backed his anti-Yugoslav policy. These, realizing that their interests ran parallel with his, soon banked upon his active help. The understanding was of a concrete nature, thanks mainly to the fact that Mussolini had become the protector of various terrorist bands operating throughout the Balkans, the chief aims of such bodies being the destruction of the Balkan status quo, which conformed with Fascist Italy's expansionist designs.
In Bulgaria one of these bands was run by members of the GRIM or VRMO (Organization Revolutionnaire Interieure Macedonienne). Among other things, it was violently anti-Yugoslav. Because of this, one of its leaders, Ivan Mihailoff, nicknamed Vantcha, was subventioned by Mussolini with millions of lire. In April, 1929, Vantcha met Ante Pavelic, the Ustashi leader, near Sofia. Pavelic had recently fled from Yugoslavia into Catholic Austria, King Alexander having set up a special tribunal (January, 1929) for the protection of the State against the subversive Separatist activities of the Ustashi extremists, of whom Pavelic was the chief. The purpose of the meeting was to join forces against Yugoslavia, and to put the Bulgarian and Pavelic's terrorist organizations under the joint protection of Fascist Italy. In that year ORIM was granted 44 million lire. Pavelic visited Mussolini, and asked for financial help. He got 25 million lire, plus the promise of further financial aid and political protection to come.
On July 17, 1929, the Yugoslav Government condemned Ante Pavelic to death in absentia. Pavelic, invigorated by the Duce's money and blessing, went from Rome to Vienna to organize, with ORIM and Italian Fascist agents, nothing less than a plot for the assassination of King Alexander of Yugoslavia. The plan of the assassination had been studied in all its details by Mussolini, who, to help Pavelic's work, granted him every facility. Pavelic organized his terrorist bands or Ustashi. At first a villa at Pessario was put at his disposal; then, when his bands grew, they were installed at the Fascist camp of Borgotaro, near Bologna, where they were reinforced by a brigade of the Fascist Secret Police, the OVRA. Pavelic was further supplied with a false passport, arms, and counterfeit Yugoslav money. All this with a view to achieving the first Mussolini-Vantcha-Pavelic objective: the assassination of King Alexander. A sum of 500,000 lire was promised by Mussolini to the Ustashi who would execute the King. The attempt took place in Zagreb in 1933. It was made by Peter Oreb, a terrorist, but failed completely. Mussolini's anger knew no bounds. To make sure that the next attempt should not misfire, he charged his son-in-law, Count Ciano, with the task of organizing a second coup. Senator Bocini, Chief of OVRA, and Antonio Cortese, head of the Political Department of the Fascist Foreign Office, were put at Ciano's disposal.
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King Alexander of Yugoslavia, reclining on the rear seat where he was about to expire after having been shot by the Ustashi assassins during his official visit to France, October 9, 1934. King Alexander had gone to seek French support against the terroristic activities of Mussolini and of Ante Pavelie, whose headquarters were in Fascist Italy. Pavelic, and with him the Catholic Hierarchy, wanted the collapse of Yugoslavia so as to set up an Independent self-ruling Croatia. The plotters were all Catholic Ustashi. On October 6, 1934 they met in Paris. On October 9 King Alexander landed at the old port of Marseilles. An Ustashi approached the royal coach, and, to the cry of "Long Live the King!", fired his revolver, killing the King and the French Minister Barthou. The assassin was killed on the spot by the police. His accomplices were imprisoned for life. Ante Pavelic was condemned to death by France, but managed to escape. |
Yugoslavia and France, meanwhile, owing to the deterioration of the political situation in the Balkans, were planning to strengthen the "Little Entente," the Entente Balkanique. Promoted partly by King Alexander himself, this went straight against the schemes, not only of Fascist Italy, but also of Nazi Germany, who had begun the promotion of a successor to the Kaiser's Drang nach Osten. Last but not least, it was anathema to Pavelic and his followers. The better to consolidate the Entente, King Alexander planned to visit Bulgaria and France. On receiving this news, Count Ciano summoned Ante Pavelic and Vantcha Mihailoff to Rome. There, at the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, they discussed ways and means of killing the King. Mihailoff wanted to carry out the attempt at Sofia. Ciano, Boccini, and Cortese, however, were against this, fearing that Boris, the Bulgarian King, might be killed at the same time. Boris was no mean King. The interests of three Powers depended for their success on his head being left on his shoulders. Boris' assassination, in fact, would have alienated Mussolini, the Vatican, and the House of Savoy. The preservation of Boris' life rested in the fact that he had married King Victor's daughter; that by such a marriage Mussolini counted on expanding Italian influence in the Balkans; and that the Vatican's plan was to have the Royal children brought up as Catholics, in order to install a Catholic king in Orthodox Bulgaria, and thus strangle the Orthodox Church there from above.[1]
In order to avoid such risks, therefore, at the next meeting which took place at the Hotel Continental in Rome, it was finally decided to kill King Alexander in France. Following this, Pavelic would stir up trouble in Croatia, while the followers of Mihailoff rebelled in Macedonia. Mussolini would intervene to ensure their success, and thus, by setting a foot in the Balkans, carry out his expansionist scheme in those regions. Once these plans had been agreed, Mussolini met the plotters in his Villa Torlonia. These were Vlada Georgief Cernozemski, a Bulgarian, who had already killed two members of the Bulgarian Parliament in Sofia; Eugene Kvaternik, later head of the police of Zagreb in the Independent State of Croatia; and three more Catholic Ustashi, Kralj, Pospisil, and Raitch.[2]
On October 6, 1934, the plotters met in Paris. On October 9 King Alexander landed at the old port of Marseilles. As soon as the procession began, Cernozemski approached the royal coach in which King
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The body of the French Foreign Minister, Barthou, immediately after the assassination. Monsieur Barthou, who was driving in the same coach as King Alexander, was also purposely killed by the Ustashi for his support of the King's policy. His death suited not only Mussolini but also Hitler. Hitler had wanted to get rid of Dictator Dolfuss, of Austria, who had prevented him from incorporating Austria into Germany. On July 25, 1934, three months before the murder of King Alexander, a group of Nazis had entered the Austrian Chancellory and assassinated Dolfuss. The triple murders set the pace of Fascist, Ustashi and Nazi terror throughout Europe leading to the outbreak, in 1939, of the Second World War. Pavelic was supported in turn by Mussolini and Hitler. But always tacitly by the Vatican, which intermittently dealt with all three to further the interests of anyone ready to further the interests of the Church. |
Alexander and Louis Barthou, the French Foreign Minister, were riding, and, to the cry of "Long live the King" fired his revolver, killing both. Cernozemski was instantly killed by the police. His accomplices were arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment [3] but Ante Pavelic managed to escape, and was condemned to death, in absentia, by a French tribunal.
But if the first part of the Mussolini-Pavelic plot had succeeded, the second, the Pavelic revolt in Yugoslavia, was a complete failure: nothing happened. Pavelic and Kvaternik fled to Italy. The French Government asked for their extradition, but Mussolini refused, going so far as to declare that if Yugoslavia pressed for Pavelic's extradition he would consider the request a casus belli. Yugoslavia appealed to the League of Nations. The League, being, like the United Nations, its successor, a pawn of the Great Powers, ignored the case and did nothing. The assassination created turmoil throughout Europe. In Berlin the reaction was ominous: Nazi Germany accelerated the promotion of her Drang nach Osten policy. At the sudden elongation of the Hitlerian shadow over the Central European landscape, Mussolini became cautious. Hesitation and, above all, the growing power of Hitler weakened his resolution, and soon the Duce-Pavelic adventure, having become unwholesomely risky, was shelved, pending better times.
Hitler, meanwhile, had not been idle. He had been plotting on his own, going so far as to develop a plan in Central Europe opposed to that of Mussolini, viz. the incorporation of Austria into Nazi Germany. This was being promoted at the very time when Mussolini and Pavelic were hatching their plot against Yugoslavia. Indeed, Hitler had decided on the assassination of the Catholic Dictator, Dollfuss, prior to Mussolini and Pavelic having carried out their plans against King Alexander. On July 25, 1934, in fact, a group of Nazis entered the Austrian Chancellory in Vienna, murdered Dollfuss, and attempted to seize the Government. Mussolini promptly dispatched two divisions to the Brenner Pass to impede Hitler from upsetting the Balkan equilibrium and thus throwing out of gear the schemes of Italian Imperialism in those regions. Hitler repaid Mussolini by cold-shouldering him after the killing of King Alexander. The two assassinations, however, awoke Europe to reality.
Mussolini and Hitler decided to forget their pride and reach a tacit agreement. Mussolini left Austria to Hitler, and Hitler supported Mussolini in his seizure of Abyssinia. From then onward Fascist-Nazi terror filled with ever-increasing echoes the political corridors of Europe and even of Asia: the assassination of the Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss and of King Alexander of Yugoslavia in 1934, the Fascist war on Abyssinia in 1935, Hitler's occupation of the Rhineland in 1936, Japan's attack upon China in 1937, Hitler's incorporation of Austria in the spring of 1938, Munich in the autumn of that same year, Hitler's dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1939, Hitler's attack on Poland in the autumn of 1939.
While all these ominous events followed one another, Pavelic, directly in touch with Catholic and Fascist authorities, presided over sundry plottings and intrigues, turning now to Mussolini and now to Hitler, according to which of the ambitions of the two dictators seemed to have the greater chance of success. Pavelic's strategy consisted of submitting plans to both Mussolini and Hitler for waging a terrorist campaign throughout Yugoslavia in order to force the Central Government to grant autonomy to Croatia. With the approaching storm of the Second World War, however, Hitler, having fitted Yugoslavia into a vaster scheme of his own, reoriented his policy and promoted one aimed at neutralizing Yugoslavia—indeed, at making her an ally. To avoid antagonizing the Yugoslav Government, Pavelic's activities were greatly reduced and officially discouraged.
Hitler's policy paid him handsome dividends. When the Second World War broke out, Yugoslavia remained stubbornly neutral. Indeed, on March 24, 1941, she entered the Nazi camp, signing a pact with Germany. Pavelic's dream seemed to have been flung into the dim future. Yet he continued to wait, in the hope that the day when destiny would call on him to implement his life's work was, perhaps, not far off.
1. For more details of the Vatican's plan, see the author's Catholic Imperialism and World Freedom.[Back]
2. The chief of OVRA gave them all false passports and false names. Cernozemski was given two passports, one Czechoslovakian under the name of Suck, the other Hungarian under the name of Kalemen. Kralj became Silny and Mulny; Kvaternik became Kramer; Pospisil became Nowack, while Raitch became Benes, in order to embarrass Benes, the President of the Czech Republic.[Back]
3. To be eventually liberated by the Nazis in 1940.[Back]
Chapter 3
THE BIRTH OF A MONSTER: THE INDEPENDENT CATHOLIC STATE OF CROATIA
The Yugoslavs were stunned. But not for long. Two days later, on March 27, 1941, an anti-Nazi coup d'etat, carried out by General Mirkovic, unsaddled the pro-Nazi Yugoslav Government. While the rest of Yugoslavia celebrated the event in Zagreb, circulars, full of threats, were found on the doors of Serbs. Pavelic, who only a few days before had been relegated to the background, suddenly found himself the centre of feverish activities. Orders were conveyed to all the Ustashi, inside and outside Yugoslavia, to be ready for action. Ustashi leaders from Germany and Italy moved at speed towards the Yugoslav frontier. The German Army moved with them. On April 6, 1941, Hitler attacked the Yugoslav Kingdom.
Many of Pavelic's followers joined the Nazi invaders; others directed their arms against Yugoslavia; still others turned plain traitors—e.g. Colonel Kren, an active fanatic, a secret member of Pavelic's army, an Ustashi who flew from Belgrade airdrome to give the Nazi Air Force the secret location of all Yugoslav aircraft, with the result that the Yugoslav war planes were destroyed on the ground by Nazi bombers, which Kren directed. Thanks to Ustashi Kren's action, the whole of the Yugoslav Air Force was thus annihilated in one single blow.
While Belgrade was still burning after the Nazi air raids, Ante Pavelic addressed the Croats by radio: "Croat soldiers," were his words, "use all your weapons against all the Serbian soldiers and officers. We are already fighting shoulder to shoulder with our new Allies, the Germans and the Italians."
On April 7 the Yugoslav Government left Belgrade for Montenegro. Two days later, on April 9, Vladko Macek, its Vice-President, in his turn deserted it. Macek was a Croat, a Catholic, and the leader of the Catholic Croat Peasant Party. Yet this individual, while acting as the leader of that Party, and, indeed, as Vice-President of the Yugoslav Government, was simultaneously plotting with Fascist Italy for the disintegration of his country. As early as 1939 Macek had, in fact, established contact with Mussolini, who had agreed to pay him 20 million diners to finance his bold Separatist plot—that is, to destroy Yugoslavia in order to set up a Catholic Fascist State of Croatia, as was subsequently disclosed by none other than the Fascist Foreign Minister, Count Ciano.[1]
The Minister of Commerce, another Catholic, followed Macek's example, soon imitated by a third Minister, who treacherously and for a long time had been a secret member, not only of the Ustashi, but also of Nazi Intelligence. He was, in fact, a liaison with the main Nazi Intelligence Agent in Yugoslavia, D. Tomljenovitch, former Austrian officer and a Catholic, to whom he passed details of all the secret deliberations on defense which took place in the Yugoslav Cabinet, of which he was a member.
Following all this, while Slavko Kvaternik, having arrived in Zagreb from Italy, announced the formation of the Independent State of Croatia, Macek incited his followers to recognize the New State: "I invite all the members of the Peasant Party of Croatia to recognize the change, to help the New Croatia, and, above all, loyally to obey all its laws."[2] Within a few days all the secret members of Pavelic's Catholic terrorist organization within the civil administration and the Yugoslav Army came to the fore, working havoc wherever they appeared; and this to such an extent that they quickly succeeded in paralyzing the prosecution of the war against Hitler.
Standing in sinister prominence among them all, the Ustashi initiated vigorous fighting in the rear of the Yugoslav units; while others within the Yugoslav Army carried out fifth-column activities to such an extent that nothing could be done according to plan. Ustashi officers like Colonel Kren fled to the Germans, to whom they disclosed vital military information. Units of Macek's "Peasant Guard" immediately became Ustashi units and disarmed units of the Yugoslav Army. The widespread disorganization created by Catholic extremists was such that it turned out to be one of the paramount factors enabling the swift Nazi conquest of Yugoslavia.
This was confirmed by Lorkovitch, Minister of the Foreign Affairs of the Independent State of Croatia, in full Parliament (February, 1942):
It was thanks to the support of the Croat people and of the Croat revolution, which have shortened the duration of the war in Yugoslavia, greatly reduced the losses of the Germans and Italians, and permitted, at the Eastern frontier of Serbia, the death-blow to be given to Yugoslavia.[3]
The promotion of such a large treacherous body within the country would have been impossible without the active cooperation of the Catholic Church. Pavelic's terrorist bands, the Ustashi, had been morally and financially encouraged and supported by her. Indeed, their backbone had been formed by priests, monks, and even bishops. Monasteries had been used as the clandestine headquarters of the Ustashi long before the Nazi attack. Secret separatist and military activities had been disguised for years under the cloak of religion. The Catholic priesthood in Croatia, Herzegovina, and Dalmatia had repeatedly convoked so-called Eucharistic Congresses which in reality were for extremist political purposes (e.g. those held in Pozega as late as 1940, under the fictitious name of Mary's Congregation). The sundry semi-military, illegal terrorist movements were likewise screened by the mantle of religion. Most of them were affiliated with Catholic organizations under the direct supervision of Catholic Action, which was strictly controlled by the Catholic Hierarchy—e.g. the Brotherhood of the Crusaders, with about 540 societies and 30,000 members; the Sisterhood of the Crusaders, with 452 societies and 19,000 members; the Catholic Student Associations, Domagoj, and such like.
Most of the members of such religious organizations were active in sabotage, acts of terrorism, and a good number of them even participated in the treacherous disarming of the Yugoslav Army following Hitler's attack. As soon as they came into the open, many of them appeared transformed into Ustashi authorities, functionaries in Ustashi commissions, heads of district councils, or even of concentration camps. The President of the Great Crusaders' Brotherhood, Dr. Feliks Niedzelski, was nominated Ustashi Vice-Governor of Bosnia and administrative head for the Ustashi youth, while Father Grga Peinovic, also a director of Catholic Crusaders, was appointed President of the Ustashi Central Propaganda Office.[4] Many of the priests of the Crusaders' Brotherhood and of Catholic Action took or
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Archbishop Stepinac, Head of the Croatian Hierarchy, welcomes Ante Pavelic at the opening of the Ustashi Government in Zagreb, February 23, 1942. Stepinac was a steady, zealous and efficient partner of Pavelic's Dictatorship. He supported the Ustashi Government from the beginning until the end. Indeed, even after Ustashi Croatia collapsed following the disintegration of Nazi Germany. Stepinac was not only the Head of the Council of Croatian Bishops and of the Committee which carried out a policy of forcible conversions, he was none other than the Supreme Military Apostolic Vicar of the Ustashi Army. When Ustashi Croatia fell in 1945 as a result of the defeat of Nazi Germany and Pavelic had to run for his life, Archbishop Stepinac, in a vain effort to save the Regime, succeeded him as Head of Ustashi Croatia. Stepinac ordered special ceremonies in all the Catholic churches on Pavelic's birthday, and he frequently invoked the blessing of God upon the Ustashi. |
gave military training, or were sworn officers of the Ustashi formations—e.g. Father Radoslav Cilavas, a Franciscan monk, who on April 10 and 11, 1941, disarmed the local gendarmerie, captured the Post Office, and drew local plans to prevent the mobilization of the Yugoslav Army; or Father Chaplain Ivan Miletic, who, in collaboration with the Nazis, led bands of guerrillas against the Yugoslav Government. In Herzegovina the centre of the Ustashi movement was located in the Franciscan monastery and in the high school of Siroki Brijeg.
On the same day as the German Army had entered the capital of Croatia, one of the chief Ustashi leaders, Kvaternik, proclaimed the Independent State of Croatia (April 10, 1941), and, while fighting between the Germans and the Yugoslav Army was still going on in the Bosnian mountains, Archbishop Stepinac called on the leader of the Ustashi and urged all Croats to support the New Catholic State. On that very day the newspapers of Zagreb carried announcements to the effect that all Serbian Orthodox residents of the new Catholic capital must vacate the city within twelve hours, and that anyone found harbouring an Orthodox would immediately be executed. On April 13 Ante Pavelic reached Zagreb from Italy. On the 14th Archbishop Stepinac went personally to meet him and to congratulate him on the fulfillment of his life-work. What was Pavelic's life-work? The creation of perhaps the most ruthless Fascist tyranny ever to dishonour Europe.
The establishment of Pavelic's dictatorship was rapid, efficient, and ruthless. Immediately on his return he reorganized the Ustashi throughout the New State by setting up local branches, known by the names of Stozer, Logor, Tabor, and Zbir, through which he initiated a veritable reign of terror. The objective of his systematic crimes of murder, torture, pillage, and wholesale massacre was nothing less than the total extermination of all non-Catholic, anti-Fascist elements in the New State.
Simultaneously with the reorganization of the Ustashi, Pavelic set up a political body modeled on the Nazi Gestapo and on the Fascist OVRA, called Ustashka Nadzorna Sluzba (Ustashi Supervisory Service), which exercised absolute control over the whole population. This Ustashi Gestapo was composed of thirteen different types of police: Ustashi Police; Intelligence Service; Defense Police; Security
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At the opening of the Ustashi Parliament, Archbishop Stepinac, after offering special prayers to God in a ceremony in the Cathedral, ordered the singing of a solemn Te Deum, as thanks to the Almighty for the establishment of the Ustashi Dictatorship. On April 13, 1941, Pavelic reached Zagreb. On the 14th, Archbishop Stepinac blessed him. At Easter, 1941, Stepinac solemnly announced from Zagreb Cathedral the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia. On April 28, 1941, he issued a Pastoral Letter, ordering the Croatian clergy to support the new Ustashi State. On June 28, 1941, Stepinac, with other Bishops, visited Pavelic. After promising total cooperation with him, Stepinac prayed for him. "We implore the Lord of the Stars to give his divine blessings to you, the leader of our people," were Stepinac's words. In the photograph, Stepinac accompanies Pavelic to the Cathedral steps after having prayed for him and for the Ustashi. |
Service; Supreme Office for Public Order and Security; County Police; Gendarmerie; Military Police; Defense Squads; Security Service of the Poglavnik, a body-guard; Reserve Gendarmerie; Police Guard; and Industrial Police. Parallel with this, Pavelic set up courts extraordinary, entitled Prijeke Sud; Pokretni Prijeki Sud (Mobile Courts); Izvanredni Narodni Sud (People's Court Extraordinary); and Veliki Izvanredni Narodni Sud (Grand People's Court Extraordinary). These courts, thirty-four in number, passed sentences after a procedure which did not offer the defendant any possibility of defense. The judges, all sworn Ustashi, condemned without examination of the charge, on the basis of collective responsibility. The courts could pronounce only death sentences, against which no appeal was allowed.
In addition to passing special legislation against anyone who refused to accept the New Croatia, to permit police organizations to arrest, deport, and execute at will, special tribunals to condemn to death on the flimsiest of pretexts, and, indeed, to mobilize the whole machinery of the State for legalized terror, Pavelic terrorized by means of a Statutory Order "For the direction of the Undesirable and Dangerous Persons to Compulsory Detention in Concentration Camps," dated September 25, 1941. In virtue of this, the Ustashi Supervisory Police could at will send "any undesirable persons dangerous to public order...to compulsory detention in concentration camps" (pares. I and 3). No appeal was allowed against any such decisions.
Within the briefest of periods, Pavelic and his Ustashi had become the arbiters of the freedom, the life, and the death of all men, women, and children in the New State of Croatia, which in a matter of weeks was thus converted into the most ruthless Fascist State in the world, including Nazi Germany. Yet what was the attitude of the Catholic Church when faced by such an abominable transformation? The Catholic Church, represented by the Hierarchy and the Catholic Press, following Stepinac's example, promptly initiated a feverish campaign of praise for Pavelic and Hitler. A leader of the Crusaders wrote:
God, who directs the destiny of nations and controls the hearts of Kings, has given us Ante Pavelic and moved the leader of a friendly and allied people, Adolf Hitler, to use his victorious troops to disperse our oppressors and enable us to create an Independent State of Croatia. Glory be to God, our gratitude to Adolph Hitler, and infinite loyalty to chief Ante Pavelic."[5]
A few days later, on April 28, 1941, Stepinac issued a pastoral letter, asking the whole Croatian clergy to support and defend the New Catholic State of Croatia.
At Easter, 1941, Stepinac announced from the Cathedral of Zagreb the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia, thus giving the solemn sanction of Church and Vatican to Pavelic's work. On June 28, 1941, Stepinac, with other bishops, went to see Pavelic. After promising the wholehearted cooperation of the entire Hierarchy, the Archbishop solemnly blessed Pavelic, as the leader of the Croatian people: "While we greet you cordially as head of the Independent State of Croatia, we implore the Lord of the Stars to give his divine blessings to you, the leader of our people." Pavelic, it should be remembered, was the same man who had been sentenced to death for political assassinations: once by the Yugoslav courts, and once by the French, for the murders of King Alexander and the French Foreign Minister, Barthou.
In his hour of triumph Pavelic did not forget that all those who had helped the birth of a strong united Yugoslavia had contributed to the death of the Catholic Austro-Hungarian Empire, the political pet gendarme of the Vatican, and, significantly enough, as a belated tribute to the old Austrian-Vatican alliance in the Balkans, he ordered the confiscation of the real property of "any persons who had volunteered with the Allies against Catholic Austria-Hungary during the First World War" (Statutory Order, dated April 18, 1941).
This last move, like numerous others of a more tyrannical character, was followed with fascination by the Vatican, where the murderer of King Alexander came to be regarded as a great Catholic hero, blessed by none other than Pope Pius Xll himself, who bestowed his paternal protection upon him and the New Croatian State. That was not enough. Pius Xll, that holiest of all modern Popes, spun some of the most unholy diplomatic webs, with the specific object of bestowing upon the political creatures of the devout regicide Pavelic some kind of a king. For to the Catholic Church kings are, next to Catholic dictators, still her most cherished political dodos.
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At a Ustashi Meeting. (From right to left) Archbishop Stepinac; General Roata, Commander of the Fascist forces of occupation in Yugoslavia; Field Marsbai Slavio Kvaternik; and the Commander of the German forces of occupation in Croatia. As Supreme Military Apostolic Vicar of the Ustashi Army, Archbishop Stepinac participated in military and political functions, mingling with the Fascist, Nazi and Ustashi Commanders. At one time Stepinac directed Ustashi guerrillas following Pavelic's flight. He established contacts and coordinated the scattered Ustashi bands, directing priests and monks to act as liaison with them. When, finally, on November 8, 1945, Ustashi Croatia disintegrated, Slepinac reconsecrated the Ustashi Crusaders' force with a fiat in his own Chapel. After which he received "a pledge from Ustashi intellectuals" to fight to the end for the liberator of Ustashi Croatia. He was in constant contact with the Ustashi detachments raiding Orthodox villages and towns. Also with the Nazi occupational forces in and outside Croatia.
Ante Pavelic, the inspirer, creator and leader of the independent Catholic State of Croatia. He employed terrorism, political extremism and religious fanaticism with such ruthlessness as to outsmart even his two main Fascist protectors, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. He was the brains behind the assassination of King Alexander and other political murders which preceded the disintegration of Yugoslavia and thus the erection of his super-Nazi, super-Catholic independent Ustashi Croatia. He enjoyed the protection of Pope Pius XII, who helped him via diplomatic and monetary means to achieve his ultimate objective. When Ustashi Croatia collapsed, Pavelic hid at the Vatican, then, disguised as a monk, fled to the Argentine where he set up an Ustashi Government, waiting for "the Day." Sundry Catholic hierarchies openly helped him in exile. Pre-war acts of terrorism were begun anew. Pavelic became the victim of a murder attempt himself. He died shortly before and after the deaths of his two main ecclesiastical supporters, Pope Pius XII and Cardinal Stepinac, still dreaming of resurrecting anew Catholic Ustashi Croatia. |
The throne of Croatia had originally been assigned to the scion of the Hapsburgs—i.e. Otto. As, however, Hitler suffered from anti-Hapsburg phobia, plans had to be somewhat modified. Otto had to be discarded. A feverish exploration amid the remaining forlorn royal crowned heads of Nazified Europe was speedily initiated. The new King's paramount virtue had to be a very obvious one: he must be persona grata to the Fuehrer. Catholic Providence, which has always provided the Vatican with an uninterrupted shower of Peter's pence—or, to be more up-to-date, with an ever-increasing shower of Peter's dollars—again proved that her cornucopia could still supply a mankind confused by all the errors of republicanism with that increasingly rare commodity: kings. Now kings have become very rare and, in fact, exceptional. Hence the need for an exceptional man to carry out an exceptional commission. The man: Pope Pius Xll.
Pius XII had been the recipient of portents—that is, of phenomena with which only saints, it is said, are privileged. This even though such phenomena as a rule occur after death, and always when a rational scrutiny of the miracles has become impossible. During the Conclave of 1939, convened to elect a new Pope, Cardinal Pacelli was visited by Pius X in person. Pius X announced that the next Pontiff would be him, Pacelli. It was a miracle. It must have been, for Pius X had died almost three decades earlier. Pacelli was indeed elected Pope. The fact that he cast his own vote for himself did not really affect the issue. Pacelli became Pope Pius XII, choosing the name of Pius in honour of Pius X. [6]
Ten years later, in 1950, Pius XII, after patient years of self-canonization, saw the sun zig-zag in the sky of Rome. Not once, it must be noted, but on three successive days. As if this were not enough, the very Mother of God appeared to him, within the convulsed sphere, "in a spectacle of celestial movements in transmission of mute but eloquent messages to the Vicar of Christ."[7] It was not difficult for so extra-holy a successor of St. Peter, therefore, to find a worthy king. The fact that Pius XII had to conduct down-to-earth secret, hard bargaining with Mussolini was discreetly hushed up. The chosen one? Victor Emanuel, King of Italy, whom Pius XII himself not long before had blessed as "the august and wise Emperor of Ethiopia,"[8] following Fascist Italy's ruthless
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Pope Pius XII (1939-1958) was a brilliant diplomat, a cunning politician. These characteristics made of him one of the paramount personalities of our times. A match for his fellow Fascist and Communist Dictators. He, more than anybody else outside Germany, helped Hitler to power. This he did by steering the German Catholic Party, and top Catholic leaders, to support the Fuehrer. Pius' pet obsession was Communism. After World War 1, he allied the Church with Italian, Spanish and German Fascism, and with the USA after World War 11. He became the main instigator of the Cold War that followed. Besides being ruthless in political matters, he was unscrupulous in religious ones. He self-sanctified himself with alleged miracles. He claimed that the Virgin Mary worked a miracle personally for him, alone. He claimed also that none other than Jesus Christ himself visited and spoke to him. He practiced nepotism, that is, the granting of undeserved titles, riches and privileges to his own family. He was a paranoiac, on a par with Hitler and Stalin. He transformed the Catholic Church into a global political instrument, using the Catholic masses as gullible expendable pawns in his own ideological gambles. |
conquest of Coptic Abyssinia, where Fascism and Catholicism were jointly to implant Catholic-Fascist civilization. King Victor, although physically a midget, was a very brave man. He was already resignedly suffering under the weight of two crowns: the kingly crown of Italy and the Imperial crown of Abyssinia. The idea of a third, that of Croatia, fired him with the most admirable democratic conviction that three crowns upon the head of one single man might be considered by envious masses as a genuine social injustice. So Victor, for the first time in his life, took a decision. To the chagrin of that most virtuous trinity, Pope, Duce, and Pavelic, he shouted an immortal ditty, "Now then, that's truly much to much, even for me" and refused. Following a moment of bewilderment, and hasty confabulations with the other two members of the trio, Pius Xll, thanks to a supernatural hint, found a priceless substitute: the cousin of Victor, the Duke of Spoleto.
The life of a mere Duke nowadays is somewhat dull. The Duke of Spoleto, although a mere Duke, was born with above-average ducal ambition. Hence, when political fortune blew his way, he seized her tightly by the hair. Having first made quite sure that the somewhat moody Austrian commoner who had promoted himself to the Chancellorship of Germany approved of him, secondly that the son of a blacksmith from Romagna would smile on him, and last but not least that His Holiness Pius Xll would give him a triple blessing, he accepted the royal Croatian sceptre with a blush. A name worthy of such a crown was selected, approved, and hailed. And so it happened that a poor unknown Duke suddenly found himself the head of a new dynasty in the Kingdom of Croatia, and became His Most Gracious Exalted Majesty, Tomislav II.
At such wonderful news a massive Ustashi delegation, led by Ante Pavelic, rushed to Rome, where, in the very seat of the Fascist Empire, on May 18, 1941, Tomislav II's gracious acceptance of the Croatian Crown took place, punctuated by clicking of military heels, Fascist salutes, and hurrahs. At the Vatican the happiness of the Pope was unbounded. Yet his fatherly heart was made a little heavy by the fact that Tomislav II, his triumphant political godchild, could not openly be given a solemn papal blessing. Pius XII was the head of the Universal Church. Catholics by the million were at that very moment fighting with the Allies to smash that very Fascist world with which Pius was on such cordial terms. In addition to that, Pius was simultaneously the head of the Vatican State and as such—oh, happy coincidence!—a king himself. To recognize his new royal colleague at that juncture would have been interpreted by the democratic camp as a breach of "papal neutrality." His Holiness, therefore, had to use caution.
Popes claim they can unlock gates—in heaven and in hell. That is why they have St. Peter's massive keys. But very often they can open back doors as well down here. And, the world being what it is, that is even more important. Particularly on occasions when the official gates of international diplomacy have to remain firmly closed. Adept in the age-old Catholic Macchiavelliana Pius XII solved the riddle triumphantly. He received good King Tomislav one day before the ceremony of his coronation. Who could say this was a breach of "papal neutrality?" The Duke of Spoleto was not yet officially a king. His Holiness the Pope had received him before he had legally become His Exalted Majesty, King Tomislav II.
That same day Croatia was officially proclaimed a kingdom. The devout murderer of King Alexander of Yugoslavia—that is Pavelic—was granted a long and very private audience by the Pope. Only one stenographer, who cautious Pavelic had brought with him and who was made to take the oath never to reveal what he heard, was present. Strengthened by what Pius Xll had told him, Pavelic called on Mussolini, with whom he signed a treaty. Following all this, the indefatigable Holy Father received and solemnly blessed Pavelic's Prime Minister and his whole Ustashi delegation. Who, again, could label this a breach of "papal neutrality?" All those excellent people had been received merely as "Catholic individuals," not as the heads of the Government of the New Croatia, declared the Osservatore Romano. Honi soil qui mat y pense. Yet the real significance of it all did not escape those who knew. Pius XII had granted all those good people a special audience, not because they were mere "Catholic individuals": he had specially received, specially blessed, and specially praised them because, while members of the Mother Church, they were, above all, the representatives of the newly born Independent Catholic State of Croatia, a political creature stubbornly nurtured and ruthlessly promoted by that most malign of all its conceivers, the Vatican.
1. See The Ciano Diaries, foreward by Sumner Welles, Doubleday & Co, Inc., 1946, pp. 46,48-50,60,87,97.
2. Memoire de l'Organisation Musulmane Yougoslav, to the National Committee for Free Europe, New York, May, 1950.
3. W.D. Isla, CommentairessurlesvProblemes Yougoslaves, p. 45, Geneva, 1944.
4. See Nedelja, August 10, 1941.
5. See Nedelja, April 27, 1941.
6. Pius XII claimed to have seen Pius X during the conclave of 1939, and that the latter foretold him that he would become the next Pope. For more details, see The Cross, organ of the Passionist Fathers, Dublin, March, 1948.
7. This occurred on three successive days, October 30 and 31 and November 1, 1950. The official description of this repetitive miracle, given by Pius XII's special delegate, Cardinal Tedeschini, was the following:
The Holy Father (Pius XII) turned his gaze from the Vatican gardens to the sun, and there was renewed for his eyes the prodigy of the Valley of Fatima.... He was able to witness the life of the sun under the hand of Mary. The sun was agitated, all convulsed, transformed into a picture of life, in a spectacle of celestial movements; in transmission of mute but eloquent messages to the Vicar of Christ.
Cardinal Tedeschini, at the Shrine of Fatima, Portugal, 13.10.1951. See world and Catholic Press, 14-15-16.10.1951. For more details of the concocted papal visions and the political objectives of their manufacturers see the author's Catholic Imperialism and World Freedom (Watts 500 pp.).
8. Words used by Pius XII, December 21, 1939, when blessing King Victor.
Chapter 4
THE NIGHTMARE OF A NATION
The Independent Kingdom of Croatia, having thus officially sprung into existence, set forth with burning zeal to fulfill all the hopes so obstinately entertained by its religious and political promoters: the Vatican and Fascism. Inspired by the graciously remote majesty of good King Tomislav II, under the patronage of His Holiness the Pope, protected by Hitler, watched by Mussolini, ruled by Catholic terrorists, and policed by Catholic bayonets, the New Croatia began to transform itself into the ideal commonwealth as advocated by Catholic tenets.
A State, however, according to papal dicta must be regulated not only by civil but also by religious authority. So Pavelic, having determined that a religious equivalent of himself should partake of the rights and duties of rulership, saw to it that the head of the Hierarchy became a de facto ruler of the New Croatia. Archbishop Stepinac, the Croatian Primate, and others, members of the Hierarchy, the religious equivalent of the Ustashi, were duly elected members of the Sabor (Totalitarian Parliament). The military, political, and religious architraves of the new State having thus been erected, Pavelic and Stepinac set out to transform its whole structure into what a true Catholic-Fascist State should be. Movements, institutions, men, and everything else were made to conform to the letter and spirit of Catholicism. All potential opponents—Communists, Socialists, Liberals—were either banished or imprisoned. Trade unions were abolished, workers' organizations became pitiful caricatures of their former selves, the Press was paralyzed when it was not altogether gagged, freedom of speech, of expression, and of thought became memories of the past. Every effort was made to dragoon youth into Catholic semi-military formations; the children were marshalled by priests and by nuns. Catholic teaching, Catholic tenets, Catholic dogma became compulsory in all schools, in all offices, in all factories, and everywhere the iron heel of the new State was felt. Catholicism was proclaimed the main religion of the State. Other religions and those professing them were ostracized, chief among these, the Orthodox; while the Jews were compelled to wear the Star of David on their clothes, all members of the Orthodox Church went in fear for their property, their personal and family safety. To be Orthodox had suddenly meant to be a potential victim. Soon, in all parks and public transport vehicles, a new inscription appeared: "Entry forbidden to all Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and dogs." The Ministry of the Interior, led by Andrija Artukovic, issued the following decree: "All the Serbs and the Jews residing in Zagreb, the Capital of Croatia, must leave the town within 12 hours. Any citizen found to have given them shelter will be immediately executed on the spot."
While Ante Pavelic was transforming Croatia with a mailed fist, his religious equivalent, Archbishop Stepinac, facilitated the revolution by a timely nationwide mobilization of the whole of the Catholic Church. No opportunity was allowed to pass without Stepinac openly singing the praises of, or sprinkling with oral or holy-water blessings, the new Catholic Croatia, her great Leader Pavelic, the Duce, and the great Fuehrer. When dates commemorating the bloody ascent of Fascism to power were celebrated in Fascist Italy or in Nazi Germany, Stepinac, although in Croatia, celebrated them with no less fervour. Thus he punctiliously celebrated October 28, the day when, in 1922, the first Fascist dictatorship was installed in Italy. While Mussolini annually paraded His Black Shirt battalions in Rome on that date, Stepinac annually commemorated the march with speeches, prayers, and congratulations, distributed with equal generosity also to Hitler on his ever-gloomier succeeding April birthdays. When it came to his own new Fascist State, however, the archiepiscopal panegyrics became impassioned recommendations for everything done by the New Croatia. After Parliament was convoked in February, 1942, Stepinac, with all the sacred authority of the chief pillar of the Mother Church, asked the Holy Ghost to descend upon the sharp edged knives of the Ustashi, and to settle, at least while the parliamentary session lasted, upon the brow of Pavelic. Special prayers and extra ounces of incense were offered in all Catholic churches on Pavelic's birthday. [1]
When the pocket-sized Ustashi Navy departed for the Black Sea, to destroy, side by side with the Germans, the Red Navy of godless
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A copy of the original document dealing with the conversion to the Catholic Church of all Orthodox persons employed by the Government. Issued in Zagreb by the Ministry of Justice and Religions. Everyone had to be or to become a Catholic. Refusal meant instant dismissal, loss of property, or arrest. And, very often, all three. Additional decrees were issued, e.g. "Law concerning the conversion from one religion to another." On June 1, 1941, the Ustashi Premier set up an Office of Religious Affairs, in charge of "all matters pertaining to questions connected with the conversion of the Orthodox Church" (Decree No. 11,689). Such legislation rested upon the tenet that "the movement of the Ustashi is based upon the Catholic Church," as enunciated by Mile Budak, July 13, 1941, at Karlovac. Forcible conversions became the standard practice of Ustashi Croatia. The conversions were duly legalized by the State and gave immunity to the new Catholics, from arrest, from seizure of property and from execution.
A mass execution carried out by the Ustashi at Brode, early in 1941. Nazi troops were looking at some of the victims. The Nazis, who for a time were posted in Croatia, were so horrified at the Ustashi atrocities that they set up special commissions to investigate them. The Orthodox Church of Serbia, in fact, appealed directly to the Nazi General Dulkeman to intervene and stop the Ustashi horrors. The Germans and the Italians managed to restrain the Ustashi while they were under their supervision. When the Nazis left Croatia, however, the Ustashi multiplied their atrocities, unreprimanded by the Government. Since the latter's policy was one of total elimination of the Orthodox Serbian population via forcible conversions, expulsion, or straightforward massacre. Victims were executed in groups without trial on bridges and then thrown into the river. In May 1941 the Ustashi besieged Glina. Having gathered together all the Orthodox males of over fifteen years of age from Karlovac, Sisak and Petrinja, they drove them outside the town and killed 600 of them with guns, knives and sledge hammers. |
Russia, Stepinac flanked by Dr. Ramiro Marcone, the representative of that lover of peace, Pius XII, celebrated the triumphal departure in Zagreb, surrounded by the Catholic Hierarchy, mumbling Latin incantations for speedy victory by those brave aquatic crusaders. Stepinac's colleagues imitated their leader with unmatched zeal—e.g. Bishop Aksamovic, of Djakovo, who was personally decorated by Pavelic because "His Excellency the Bishop has from the very beginning cooperated with the Ustashi authorities." Or Archbishop Saric—the bosom friend of Jure Francetic, the commander of the Black Legion—who raised his right hand in the Ustashi—that is, the Nazi—salute at every opportunity, public or private.
The transformation of the Catholic Hierarchy into a de facto Ustashi Hierarchy had a most dreadful significance. It meant that the whole machinery of the Catholic Church in Croatia had been put at the complete disposal of the ruthless individuals determined to make of the new State a compact political and military unit, cemented by the most secure guarantees of the State's indestructibility. Such a policy implied, not only the transformation of the Croatian social, cultural, and political fabric, but also the complete extirpation of whatever was "alien" to Croatian stock and to its national religion. This required the total elimination of whoever was not a Catholic Croat. Not an easy task, as a large portion of the new State was composed of bulky racial-religious groups wholly foreign to Ustashi Catholicism. Out of a population of 6,700,000, in fact, only 3,300,000 were Croats. Of the remainder, 700,000 were Moslems, 45,000 were Jews, followed by sundry smaller minorities. Over 2,000,000 were Orthodox Serbs.
The inclusion in the New Croatia of so many alien elements was due to the territorial ambitions of Croat Separatism. These, as we have already seen, had been epitomized in the conception of the "Greater Croatia" of Ante Starcevic, who founded an extreme political party, the Croatian Law Party, subsequently elevated to the level of a fanatical National programme by Ante Pavelic. The Party's ideology, although one of racial and religious exclusiveness, accepted geographical expansion. This meant the inclusion in an independent Croatia of disputed territories, and hence of non-Catholic elements, which became automatically the greatest obstacle to the complete Catholicization of the new Croat State. To solve the problem, a policy directed at the swift elimination of all the non-Croat, non-Catholic population was adopted and promptly set in motion. This was repeatedly and publicly enunciated by members of the Ustashi Government—e.g. on June 2, 1941, in Nova Grarfiska, Dr. Milovan Zanitch, Minister of Justice, declared:
This State, our country, is only for the Croats, and not for anyone else. There are no ways and means which we Croats will not use to make our country truly ours, and to clean it of all Orthodox Serbs. All those who came into our country 300 years ago must disappear. We do not hide this our intention. It is the policy of our State, and during its promotion we shall do nothing else but follow the principles of the Ustashi.
Dr. Mile Budak, Minister of Education and of Cults, lost no time in enlightening his listeners of the nature of such principles. During his first Press interview as a Minister, when asked what the policy of Croatia would be in relation to the non-Croat racial and religious minorities, his reply was an ominously simple one: "For them" (the minorities), he said, "we have three million bullets." This was not the boasting of a fanatical individual. It was the epitomization of a policy, coolly planned by Pavelic in concert with the Catholic Hierarchy, which was set in motion immediately when the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia. Dr. Milovan Zanich, Dr. Mirko Puk, Dr. Victor Gutich, Ustashi Ministers, unhesitatingly declared that the New Croatia would get rid of all the Serbs in its midst, in order to become 100 per cent Catholic "within ten years." On July 22, 1941, the plan was again officially confirmed by Dr. Mile Budak: "We shall kill one part of the Serbs," were his words, "we shall transport another, and the rest of them will be forced to embrace the Roman Catholic religion. This last part will be absorbed by the Croatian elements." Ways and means to enact such a scheme were swiftly adopted. The most radical and most ruthless: mass removal of Serbians from the contested zone. According to the Ministers, one-third of these were to be transported to Serbia proper, one-third would be "persuaded" to embrace Catholicism, and the remainder would be "disposed of" by other means. "Other means" soon signified biological extermination, and "persuasion" forcible conversion.
Conversion and extermination spelt one thing: the total annihilation of the Orthodox Church. That, in fact, turned out to be the official policy of the New Catholic State of Croatia. Such a policy was
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"The Pit of Death" An Orthodox Serb being thrown alive into a mass grave in the notorious concentration camp of Jasenovac, in 1942. "The Pit of Death" was reserved for those Serbs who challenged their Catholic converters. The camp, when run by the Franciscan Monk, Father Filipovic, squalled in horrors Dachau Concentration Camp. These horrors, however, were often committed in rural districts as well. On April 28, 1941, for instance, Ustashi storm troopers encircled the villages of Gudovac, Tuke Brezovac, Klokocevac and Bolac, in the district of Bjelovar, and arrested 250 Orthodox peasants, among whom was Stevan Ivankovitch and the Orthodox priest, Bozin. Having led them all to a field, the Ustashi ordered them to dig their own graves. This done, their hands were tied behind their backs. Thereupon, they were ALL PUSHED ALIVE INTO THEIR GRAVES. The barbarity created such a commotion, even among the Nazis, that they set up a Committee to exhume the bodies and took photographs as evidence. The oral process was incorporated in an official Nazi document, "Ustachenwerk bet Bjelovar." |
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Corpses of children starved to death in the notorious Concentration Camp of Jasenovec, whose Commandant at one time was a Franciscan Monk, Father Filipovic. Father Filipovic, following the advice of Father D. Juric, let more than 2,000 other Orthodox children die while the camp was still under his rule, Jasenovac Concentration Camp distinguished itself because of the number of young inmates sent there. In 1942 the Camp held over 24,000 Orthodox youngsters. Twelve thousand of them were murdered in cold blood by the Commandant. Special camps for children were set up in many parts of Croatia. Those who were sick or too old to change their religion were made to perish through neglect or where simply massacred. An Ustashi named Ante Urban, a pious Catholic, protested indignantly at his trial after the war when accused of having killed hundreds of children. He asked the Judge to consider the accusation a lie, "Since," he explained, he had killed personally "only sixty-three of them." |
formally put forward in Parliament by, among others, Dr. Mirko Puk, the Ustashi Minister of Justice and Religion: "I shall also make reference to the so-called Serbian Orthodox Church," he said. "In this regard I must emphatically state that the Independent Croatian State cannot and will not recognize the Serbian Orthodox Church."[2]
Pavelic's triple programme was made to operate simultaneously everywhere, following the establishment of the New State. Its execution was simple, direct, and brutal. It ranged from hurried decrees—like that issued by his new Minister of Public Instruction only four days after Hitler's attack (April 10, 1941), which barred members of the Serbian Orthodox Church from entering the University unless they had given up the Orthodox faith before April 10, 1941—to wholesale deportations, like those carried out on July 4 and 5, 1941, by the Ustashi in Zagreb; to the massacre of men, women, and children, like that of Kljuch, on July 31, on August 31, on September I and 2, 1941, when the "Flying Ustashi" summarily executed approximately 2,000 Serbs.[3]
In a State insanely bent on a policy of racial-religious extermination, laws and legality, when observed, were nothing but tragic mockeries. The Courts Extraordinary already mentioned, for instance, always condemned regardless of evidence, did not permit the right to appeal, and their sentences had to be carried out within three hours of pronouncement. Thus, these courts sentenced an immense number of people to death without offering them any opportunity for defense, and their sentences were strictly applied. In most cases the courts punished "collectively," under the guise of "trials." One bench alone, for instance, that of Zagreb, within two days—August 4 and 5, 1941—sentenced to death 185 persons; that of Stem, from August 3 to 25, 1942, 217 persons; the proceedings at the mobile court at Ruma on August 3, 1942, lasted only two and a half hours, during which twenty-six persons were sentenced to death. At Stara Pazova, on August 8, 1942, the court proceedings lasted only half an hour, and eighteen people received the death sentence. At Ruma on August 10, 1942, a defending counsel appointed by the Ustashi handled the defense of twenty-five persons, whom he met for the first time at the trial, the chairman of the bench allowing him only two minutes for each person. The Tribunals, a most tragic mockery of justice, were veritable instruments of extermination, as proved by the fact that within four years one bench alone of the mobile court extraordinary of Zagreb, headed by Ivan Vidnjevic, sentenced to death 2,500 citizens.
But while the Tribunals had at least a semblance of legality, the Ustashi found means to exterminate thousands of persons by a quicker method—i.e. by dispatching them to concentration camps and disposing of them there. The institution and supervision of these camps were exclusively in the hands of Pavelic, who personally attended to their management. The arrests and deportations to these camps rested with the Ustashi, who could send to them anyone they judged to be an "unreliable person," and who had absolute authority to kill immediately on arrival anyone taken there. Indeed, there "was agreement," to quote Ljubo Milos, Commandant of the Jasenovac concentration camp, "that all sentenced to three years, or not sentenced at all, were to be liquidated at once."3 By virtue of this, inmates of the camps were murdered indiscriminately, either individually or collectively, without even a legal excuse. Thus, in March, 1943, the inmates of the Djakovo Camp were purposely infected with typhus, causing the deaths of 567 persons; on September 15, 1941, all those inmates of the Jasenovac camp who were unable to work, numbering between 600 and 700, were killed; in the camp of Stara Gradiska, 1,000 women were killed. Of 5,000 Orthodox Serbs being taken to Jasenovac camp at the end of August, 1942, 2,000 were killed en route, the remainder were transferred to Gradina, where on August 28 they were put to death with hammers. In the Krapje Camp, in October, 1941, 4,000 prisoners were murdered; while in the Brocice Camp, in November, 1941, 8,000 prisoners were killed. From December, 1941, to February, 1942, at Velika Kosutarica, at Jasenovac, over 40,000 Orthodox Serbs were massacred, while in the Jasenovac camp, in the summer of 1942, about 66,000 Orthodox Serbs, brought from the villages of the Bosnian Marches, were slaughtered, including 2,000 children.
Children were not spared, and special concentration camps were set up for them. Nine of these were at Lobor; Jablanac, near Jasenovac; Mlaka; Brocice; IJstici; Stara Gradiska; Sisak; Jastrebarsko; and Ciornja Rijeka. The destruction of infants in these places would be incredible, were it not vouched for by eyewitnesses, one of whom has testified:
At that time fresh women and children came daily to the Camp at Stara Gradiska. About fourteen days later, Vrban [Commandant of the Camp] ordered all children to be separated from their mothers and put in one room. Ten of us were told to carry them there in blankets. The children crawled about the room, and one child put an arm and leg through the doorway, so that the door could not be closed. Vrban shouted: 'Push it!' When I did not do that, he banged the door and crushed the child's leg. Then he took the child by its whole leg, and banged it on the wall till it was dead. After that we continued carrying the children in. When the room was full, Vrban brought poison gas and killed them all.[4]
At his trial, Ante Vrban protested that he had not killed hundreds of children personally, "but only sixty-three."[5]
In 1942 there were some 24,000 children in the Jasenovac camp alone, 12,000 of whom were cold-bloodedly murdered. A very large portion of the remainder, having subsequently been released following pressure by the International Red Cross, perished wholesale from intense debilitation. One hundred of these infants, aged up to twelve months, for instance, died after release from the camp because of the addition of caustic soda to their food.
Dr. Katicic, Chairman of the Red Cross, shocked by these mass murders, lodged the strongest protest, threatening to denounce to the world this mass slaughter of infants. As a reply, Pavelic had Dr. Katicic flung into the concentration camp of Stara Gradiska.
That was not all. Even worse horrors—if worse there could be—took place in Pavelic's concentration camps. There were cases when the victims were burned alive:
The cremation at Jasenovac took place in the spring of 1942. In this they meant to imitate the Nazi camps in Germany and Poland, so Picilli had the notion of making the brickworks into a crematorium, where he did succeed, out of 14 ovens (7 a side) in making an oven for cremating people. There was then a decision to cremate people alive, and simply open the huge iron door and push them alive into the fire already alight there. That plan, however, excited terrible reaction among those who were to be burned. People shrieked, shouted and defended themselves. To avoid such scenes, it was resolved first to kill them and then to burn them.[6]
The representatives of the "only true Church" not only knew of such horrors: not a few of them were authorities in these same concentration camps, and had even been decorated by Ante Pavelic—e.g. Father Zvonko Brekalo, of the concentration camp of Jasenovac, who was decorated in 1944 by the leader himself with the "Order of King Zvonimir"; Father Grga Blazevitch, Assistant to the Commandant of the concentration camp of Bosanski-Novi; Brother Tugomire Soldo, organizer of the great massacre of the Serbs in 1941; and others. The worst abominations could hardly have been surpassed by the deeds of these individuals, the vilest betrayers of civilization and of man.
I. Katolicki List, June 11, 1942.
2. Speech by Dr. Mirko Puk, Minister of Justice and Religion. Excerpt from stenographic record of the proceedings of a regular session of the Croatian State Assembly, held in Zagreb, February 25, 1942.
3. All the crimes described in this book are authentic. For further atrocities of this kind, see the Memorandum sent to the General Assembly of UNO in 1950 by A. Pribicevic, President of the Independent Democratic Party of Yugoslavia, and by Dr. V. Belaicic, former Justice of the Supreme Court of Yugoslavia. Also Dokumenti, compiled by Joza Horvat and Zdenko Stambuk, Zagreb, 1946.
4. Statement made by witness Cijordana Friedlender, from the shorthand notes of the Ljubo Milos case, pp. 292-3.
5. From shorthand notes of the Ljubo Milos case.
6. Idem. See also official indictment of Ante Pavelic.
Chapter 5
THE TRIUMPH OF TERRORISM
To complement the wholesale manhandling, torturing, and legalized killing of the Ustashi, another terrible instrument, perhaps the most execrable of all, struck with fears an already terrorized population: the "punitive expeditions" carried out by Pavelic's own special militia, the Ustashi, who in no time acquired such an infamous notoriety as to equal the most abominable human monsters of the past. These expeditions destroyed houses and villages, arrested, tortured, plundered, and often massacred their inhabitants, usually without even bothering about any excuse or appearance of legality. Whole districts, such as Bosanska Krajina, Lika, Kordun, Banija, Gorski Kotar, Srem, and regions of Slavonia, were completely laid waste by them. Numerous small towns, such as Vojnic, Slunj, Korenica, Udbina, and Vrgin-Most, were entirely destroyed, while wholesale massacres took place at a number of places, such as Rakov Potok, Maksimir (near Zagreb), the Vojnovic plateau at Bjelovar, the Osijek town park, and Jadovno in Lika. At the last named place victims were wired together in groups of twenty, taken to the edge of a 1000 feet cliff, where the Ustashi killed the first persons only, so that they dragged the others down alive with them.
Pavelic participated personally even against Croat villages—e.g. on December 1, 1941, when Cerje, Pasnik, and Jesenje were razed, on which occasion seven women, four children, and nine old men were killed and thrown into a burning house; or in 1945, when the village of Jakovlje was razed, after most of its inhabitants had been murdered.
In April, 1941, in the village of Gudovac, 200 Serb peasants were killed by Ustashi, followed by larger groups in the villages of Stari Petrovac, in the district of Nova Gradiska, and in Glina. There, in the early days of May, 1941, Ustashi from Karlovac, Sisak, and Petrinja gathered together all males over fifteen years of age, drove them in trucks outside the town, and executed them all.
Often the executions were committed in the homes of the victims, with the most primitive weapons. Some Ustashi specialized in disposing of their charges by crushing their skulls with hatchets, or even with hammers. Incredible but authenticated atrocities were committed wherever the Ustashi appeared. At Dubrovnik, Dalmatia, for instance, Italian soldiers took pictures of an Ustashi wearing two "necklaces." One was a string of cut-out eyes, the other of torn tongues of murdered Serbs.[1]
Mass deportations and mass executions, mainly in isolated small towns and villages, were well-planned operations. As a rule, the procedure was a simple one. Ustashi authorities summoned groups of Serbs under the pretext of recruitment for military service or public works. Once rounded up, they were surrounded by detachments of armed Ustashi, taken outside the village, and executed. In the mountainous regions of Upper Dalmatia, like Bosnia and Herzegovina, women and children were taken to remote spots and massacred. In Brcko, the home town of Dzafer Kulenovic, Ustashi Deputy Prime Minister, the prisoners were executed on bridges and then thrown into the river.
At the beginning of May, 1941, the Ustashi besieged Glina, and, having gathered all Orthodox males over fifteen years of age from Karlovac, Sisak, and Petrinja, drove them outside the town and killed all 600 of them with guns, knives, and sledge-hammers. The following day all the other Serbs were also murdered. The center of the massacre was in the village of Bosanski Grabovac.
On August 3, 1941, over 3,000 Serbs were Likewise massacred in Vrgin-Most. On July 29, 1941, Bozidar Cerovski, chief of the Ustashi police in Zagreb, arrived in the locality of Vojnic; having rounded up more than 3,000 Serbs from Krnjak, Krstinje, Siroka Reka, Slunj, Rakovica, and other villages, he led them to Pavkovitch, where he had them all massacred near a village mill. In the villages of Baska, Perna, and Podgomolje, Bosanska Krupa district, in the summer of 1941, 540 women and children were locked in houses, which were then set on fire.
In the village of Crevarevac about 600 people were burned in their houses. In the district of Cazin, at Mlinici Smiljanic, more than sixty women and children were burned to death. Five hundred people were massacred at Bugojno. At Slavonska Pozega, 500 peasants, brought from Bosnia, were
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Ustashi cutting the throat of one of their Serbian Orthodox victims. Notice how a Ustashi is holding a vessel to collect the first spurt of blood and thus prevent their uniforms from being blood stained. The brutal crime—one of many—look place near Cajaice in 1943. This type of execution was not exceptional. Some Ustashi specialized in dispatching their Orthodox prisoners in this manner. Catholic priests, friars, and, indeed, even some of their pupils, followed their example. The case of Peter Brzica is undoubtedly one of the most incredible in this category. Brzica was a law student and an ardent member of the foremast Catholic organization called the Catholic Crusaders. During the day and night of 29th August 1942, Brzica cut the throats of 1300 prisoners in the Concentration Camp of Jasenovac. He was rewarded with a gold watch and proclaimed King of Cutthroats. Dr. Nikola Kilolic, a Croat and a Catholic, was an eyewitness to the deed. |
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From left to right: Djuro Vranjesh, the author, and Slanko Djokie. Djuro Vranjesh, Orthodox Serb, was born at Selo Cetina, Velika, Dalmatia. His uncle, Illija A. Vranjes, one day in July 1941 was arrested by a detachment of Ustashi, who without even bothering to give any legal excuse tortured him to death, hacking him to pieces, while still alive. This they did with such horrifying fiendishness that once he was finally dead, his nephew, Djuro Vranjesh, seen above, had to use a blanket in which to collect the chopped members of the body. On the 30 January 1942 the Ustashi descended on the village of Bosanska Ribnica, where Stanko Djokic (above, right) lived with his family. While he was up in the woods the Ustashi dragged his wife and her five children to the banks of the nearby little river of Ribaica, and without even asking them if they wanted to become Catholics, massacred the lot. Six months later, when Stanko Djokic came back, he found the six corpses of his family still lying there where they had been killed. He buried them with his own hands. |
killed. In some districts of Stem, in the summer of 1942, over 6,000 Serbs were killed. At Bihac, within one single day in June, 1941, 2,000 Serbs were killed; while during July and August of the same year over 12,000 more were massacred. In the Bosanska Krupa district, in the summer of 1941, a total of 15,000 people were killed.
Such mass murders were carried out in the most systematic fashion, and were often planned directly from Zagreb. At times they were semi-legalized by statutory orders. For instance, On October 2, 1941, Pavelic issued a "statutory order" that in any case of attack against the Ustashi, as a reprisal, without any court procedure, ten persons to be chosen by the police were to be shot. On October 30, 1943, in another "statutory order" he ordered reprisals by shooting, hanging, or sending to concentration camps hostages to be chosen by the police, together with their parents, children, and spouses. On June 30, 1944, he appointed a special Deputy for pronouncing such measures of reprisal. Under these orders a large number of citizens were shot, hanged, or taken to concentration camps without any trial. At Ruma on August 14, 1942, for instance, ninety hostages were shot; at Sremska Mitrovica, on August 19, 1942, another ninety; and at Vukovar, on August 24, 1942, 140 hostages.
The worst atrocities, strange as it may seem, were carried out by members of the intelligentsia. The case of Peter Brzica is undoubtedly one of the most incredible in this category. Peter Brzica had attended the Franciscan College at Siroki Brijeg, Herzegovina, was a law student, and a member of the Catholic organization of the Crusaders (Krizari). In the concentration camp at Jasenovac, on the night of August 29, 1942, orders were issued for executions. Bets were made as to who could liquidate the largest number of inmates. Peter Brzica cut the throats of 1,360 prisoners with a specially sharp butcher's knife. Having been proclaimed the prize-winner of the competition, he was elected King of the Cut-throats. A gold watch, a silver service, and a roasted sucking pig and wine were his other rewards. A doctor, Dr. Nikola Kilolic, himself a Croat, was an eyewitness in the camp when the event took place, and subsequently testified to the authenticity of this astonishing deed.[2]
Mass murders were supplemented by the massacre of individuals and of small numbers, as part of the well-calculated policy of the Government, which had them carried out uninterruptedly in rural districts, with a view to terrorizing the populations. Cases of the utmost ferocity which occurred all over Croatia would be unbelievable were they not authenticated. In September, 1942, the Ustashi carried out a raid on the village of Dukovsko, and killed anyone on sight. Among other deeds they threw eight men into a pit. One of these saved himself by getting hold of a protruding rock. The Ustashi, noticing this, amused themselves by hurling heavy stones at him until he dropped to the bottom and died. Others—mostly people who were related, or members of the same family—were tied together and similarly thrown into a pit. In July, 1941, a youth of sixteen, Slavko Popovic, was taken by the Ustashi to a field, ordered to dig a grave, killed while doing so, and buried in it. On September 20, 1942, a group of escaping people were caught by the Ustashi. All of them—fifty-four men and women—were massacred, their bodies heaped up and set on fire. In June, 1943, the Ustashi, passing through the village of Zijimet, rounded up those who had not had time to escape—seventy-four old men, women, and children—put them into a shed, which they set on fire. All were burned alive. Among them were the aunt and her two children of Vojislav Zivanic, who lost twenty-five members of his large family, including his father and brother, massacred by the Ustashi during these raids.[3]
These were not isolated instances. The Ustashi more often than not massacred all the inhabitants of Serb villages, callously torturing and killing even children, and then setting the villages on fire. In the village of Susnjari, for instance, the Ustashi, after having killed most of the inhabitants, led away about twenty surviving children, whom they tied to the threshold of a big barn, which was then set on fire. Most of the children, of an average age of about ten, were burned alive. The few who survived, horribly scorched, were eventually killed. [4] Eye-witnesses testified to similar occurrences:
In the village of Gorevac, on September 13, 194i, children of about 3 years of age were impaled. In some places mothers threw themselves down with children in their arms, and one stake perforated mother and child. Some young girls had their breasts tied or cut, others had their hands made to pass through them. Men had their ears and noses sawn away, and eyes had been uprooted from their sockets."[5]
On April 28, 1941, Ustashi encircled the villages of (Judovac, Tuke, Brezovac, Klokocevac, and Bolac, in the district of Bjelovar,
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Orthodox worshippers, when not dispatched to concentration camps, suffered the same fate us their clergy. Congregations, unless willing to change their religion, were not only persecuted, hunted down and arrested; but, at times, besides being massacred by the Ustashi bayonets or machine guns, they were killed within their own churches. There were instances even when they were burned alive within them. To terrorize the population into becoming Catholic, the Ustashi very often hanged lay Orthodox Leaders and their Orthodox parish priests during mass executions under the very eyes of the faithful. This was one of the most tangible methods of "persuasion" whenever the Orthodox proved obdurate. Those who escaped with their lives were sent to concentration camps, while about 700 that is, one quarter of the total number of Orthodox priests—were murdered by the Ustashi in this manner. Above, Orthodox priests and Serbs, hanged together for defying the policy of the Ustashi and of the Catholic clergy. |
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The ordinary Orthodox clergy became the target of Ustashi Catholic ferocity. Priests were imprisoned, hunted down, or simply massacred. Orthodox priests, before being executed or hanged, very often were horribly tortured, e.g. Father Branko Dobrosavlievich, from Velinn, who had to read the obituary of his own son, whom the Ustashi killed in his presence after horribly mutilating him. On April 20, 1941, in the village of Svinjica, the Ustashi arrested the Orthodox priest, Father Babic, and after knifing him all over buried him, still alive, in an upright position. Within a few weeks the Ustashi, encouraged by Catholic Padres, murdered 135 Orthodox priests, of whom eight-five came from one single Orthodox diocese. Hundreds of Orthodox clergy perished thus only because they were priests of a religion which refused to join "the true Church." In this photograph: two Orthodox priests hanged in public, without trial, by the Catholic Ustashi. |
arresting 250 Orthodox peasants, among whom was Stevan Ivankovitch and the Orthodox priest, Bozin. Having led them all to a field, the Ustashi ordered them to dig their own graves; after which their hands were tied behind their backs and they were pushed alive into their graves. This feat created a commotion even among the Nazis, who set up a Committee charged with the specific task of exhuming the bodies and taking photographs as evidence. The "oral process" was incorporated in an official document of Nazi Germany, under the title of Ustachenwerk bet Bjelovar. In a memorandum drafted by an officer sent to protect the Orthodox population of Eastern Bosnia during the terrible massacre of August, 1941, there was, among other things, the following:
During our journey towards the hill of Javor, near Srebrenica and Ozren, all the Serbian villages which we came across were wholly deserted. But inside the houses very often we find whole families massacred. We even came across some barrels filled with blood. In the villages between Vlasenica and Kladanj we discovered children who had been impaled upon stakes, their small members still distorted by pain, resembling insects stuck upon pins." [6]
In the town of Sisak the Ustashi arrested an Orthodox Serb industrialist, Milos Teslitch, well known for his kindness, and burned him alive. One of those most responsible for this crime was Catholic Ustashi Faget.[7]
To crown all these horrors, some Ustashi did not hesitate to crucify their victims. To mention only two: Luke Avramovitch, former member of Parliament, and his son, who were both crucified and then burnt in their own home in Mliniste, in the district of Glamoc.[8]
Such atrocities occurred with a frequency that shocked even the Ustashi's ideological allies: the Italian Fascists and the German Nazis. This to such an extent that on more than one occasion both the Italian and German authorities not only deprived the Ustashi of the command of whole regions, but actually ousted them altogether, replacing them with Italian or German troops, to prevent a repetition of the terrible individual and mass murders committed by Pavelic's Catholic units. It will suffice for us to mention two typical cases which led to such a replacement. On August 2, 1941, the Ustashi authorities of Vrgin-Most and of Cemernica announced that all Serbs who did not wish to be molested had better assemble on the following day at 3 a.m. in Vrgin-Most,
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Mass executions, with the Ustashi, took sundry forms. Often they assembled the members of the village outside, and then shot the lot. Or they shut a whole congregation inside their church and then set fire to it. When in a hurry, however, they became experts at individual and mass hangings. Their expertise was a regular feature of their barefaced terrorization. This was particularly so during the last years of their regime. Here are a few examples. On August 7, 1944, they hanged ten persons: on August 26 at Jablanac, near Zapresic, thirty-six people. On September 30th, between the stations of Pusca, Bistra and Luka, ten persons. On October 4, at St. Ivan, twenty-nine persons. On October 5, again at Zapresic, five persons. On October 6th, Cucerje, twenty persons. On October 9, at Velika Gorica, thirteen persons. On the same at Svetaa Nedjelja, near Samobor, eighteen persons. On December 28, at Krusljevo Selo, fifty persons. Above, one of their last mass hangings, in Sarajevo, prior to the collapse of Ustashi Croatia in 1945. |
where Catholic priests would be waiting to convert them to Catholicism. About 5,000 people followed this advice. Instead of Catholic priests, units of Ustashi, armed with machine guns, encircled the assembled crowd, who were held prisoners until the following day, when they were all massacred. Among them were thirty-seven children under ten years of age.[9]
Not long afterwards, on August 20, 1941, another unit of the Ustashi arrested all Serbs in the neighboring region of Lijevno, took them to the woods of Koprivnica, between Bugojno and Kupres, and killed them all. A few days later they arrested all the surviving families, whom they also massacred on the same spot. Before the massacre, women and even young girls were raped, after which most of them had their breasts cut and arms and legs broken. Some old men, before being executed, were blinded by way of having their eyes cut with knives or torn from their sockets. [10]
Five hundred women and children were hurled into pits in the hills of Tusnica and Komasnica, while another eighty women and children were massacred in the village school of Celebic. The Italian Fascist authorities were so shocked by such incredible cruelty that, in addition to dispatching their troops to protect the surviving population and occupying the region of Lijevno and neighbouring places, they dispersed the Ustashi and sent a protest to Zagreb.
Ustashi were committing no less abominable atrocities in other parts of the country. In the town of Prijedor, for instance, during the night of July 31-August l, 1941, they massacred 1,400 men, women, and children, leaving their corpses to rot in the houses and in the streets. The Nazis nearby, horrified at such wholesale butchery, entered the town, compelling the Ustashi to leave. The Nazis had records of massacres of their own second to none. Yet the horrors committed by Pavelic's Ustashi troops proved to be of such bestiality as to shock even them: a most crushing evidence that the Ustashi massacres had surpassed anything experienced even by the Germany of Hitler. The magnitude of the butchery can best be gauged by the fact that within the first three months, from April to June, 1941, 120,000 people perished thus. Proportionately to its duration and the smallness of the territory, it had been the greatest massacre to take place anywhere in the West prior to, during, or after that greatest of cataclysms, the Second World War.
1. For further atrocities, see Memorandum on Crimes of Genocide Committed against the Serbian People by the Government of the Independent State of Croatia during World War 11, dated October, 1950, sent to the President of the 5th General Assembly of the United Nations by Adam Pribicevic, President of the Independent Democratic Party of Yugoslavia; Dr. Vladimir Belajcic, former Justice of the Supreme Court of Yugoslavia; and Dr. Branko Miljus, former Minister of Yugoslavia.
2. This event is described in his book, The Concentration Camp at Jasenovac, p. 282. See also above Memorandum.
3. The eyewitness, Bojislav Zivanic (father, Duko; brother, Bogoljub) from Dukovsko, related these events under oath before a group of Serbs and Croats, among them Dr. Sekulich, General Mirkovic, and the author, at a meeting specially held on May 20, 1951 in London.
4. Martyrdom of the Serbs, p. 145, issued by the Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese for the U.S.A. and Canada.
5. Eyewitness: Pritova, Bihac, Bosna.
6. See Dokamenti o Protunarodnom Radu i Zlocinima Jednog, Dijela Katolickog Klera, Zagreb, 1946. Also above Memorandum to UNO.
7. Assassins au Nom De Dieu, Herve Lauriere, Paris, 1951.
8. See Dokumenti o Protunarodnom Radu i Zlocinima Jednog Dijela Katolickog Klera, Zagreb, 1946. Also file of Yugoslav State Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes.
9. Eyewitness: Stanko Sapitch, of Blakusa.
10. Evidence given by a survivor, Marija Bogunovitch.
Chapter 6
"CHRIST AND THE USTASHI MARCH TOGETHER"
If the first ingredient of Ustashi super-nationalism was race, the second was religion. The two could hardly exist independently, having been so closely intertwined as to have become almost synonymous. The word Croat, in fact, signified Catholic, as much as, in Croatia, Catholic came to signify Croat. If this was useful to Ustashi racialism, it was no less beneficial to Catholicism, in so far as, once the theory had been established that Catholic meant Croat, the idea that Croatia had to be totally Catholic not only became firmly rooted: it was turned into one of the basic tenets of the new State.
The results of such an identification were portentous. For, while nationalism had embarked upon a policy of 100 per cent racialism, the Catholic Church had embarked upon an inevitable parallel policy of 100 per cent Catholicism. The two policies were in effect one single policy, the political authorities automatically furthering the religious interests of Catholicism, while the religious authorities furthered the political interests of Ustashi racialism.
The actual process of integrating the two into an inseparable organic, religio-political unit, not only was conducted by individual Catholics or Catholic organizations, like the Crusaders, or Catholic political leaders like Macek: it was promoted by the Catholic clergy prior to the birth of the Ustashi State. Catholic priests, in fact, vigorously preached Fascism before the Second World War. The Catholic Press, controlled by them, became Fascism's mightiest propaganda organ. In it they advocated the Fascist Corporate State, praised the Fascist Catholic dictators, and preached racial theories—e.g. the theory that the Croats were not of Slav descent, but were Gothic German. One of the founders of this race theory was a well-known Catholic priest, Kerubin Segvic, who as far back as 1931 wrote a book entitled, The Gothic Descendance of the Croats, with a view to creating racial odium against the Slavs, which was synonymous with "Orthodox." Fascist nations were hailed as glorious examples for the future Croatia. In its issue of April 3, 1938, for instance the Catholic daily, Hrvatska Straza, praised Fascist Hungary for "solving the social problem by accepting the main principle of the Christian Corporate State." The same paper, on March 2, 1938, greeted the Anschluss with: "Young Croatia for Anschluss."
The Catholic Press preached Catholic Nazism on the model of that planted in Slovakia by the Catholic Nazi dictator priest, Mgr. Tiso. The Zagreb Katolicki List, the organ of Archbishop Stepinac, in January, 1940, carried an article entitled "Catholicism and Slovakian National Socialism," which read in part:
In a modern state, which placed the interests of the people above all other considerations, the Church and the State must cooperate in order to avoid all conflicts and misunderstandings. Thus, in accordance with the teachings of Christ, the Church in Slovakia had already exerted itself to arrange a new life for the Slovakian people. The views of Dr. Tuka are fulfilled by the formation of a 'people's Slovakia, which has the approval of the President of the Republic, Mgr. Dr. Josip Tiso. In the National-Socialist system in Slovakia, the Church will not be persecuted. Persecutions will be used against the opponents of National-Socialism.
The achievements of Catholic Fascism were continually glorified in Hungary, in France under Catholic Petain, in Spain under Catholic Franco. The chief Catholic daily, Hrvatska Straza, the editor of which, Dr. Janko Shimrak, became a bishop under Pavelic, openly and consistently praised Hitler's successes in domestic and foreign policy. In the issue of March 12, 1938, Hitler's occupation of Austria was defended and praised. Later this paper hailed Hitler's successes in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and France. The Katolicki Tjednik, organ of Catholic Action, published under the direction of the Archbishop of Sarajevo, Dr. Ivan Saric, printed articles entitled "A New Order Must Come" (e.g. in issue No. 4, 1941), before Hitler attacked Yugoslavia.
The Catholic Press, by propagating Nazi-Ustashi ideas, played a tremendous role in conditioning the people to what eventually happened, reaching as it did people in all walks of life. Its influence was great, and helped to an enormous extent to represent Pavelic and the Ustashi as having been sent by God to the Croatian people. It became especially skillful in sowing the seeds of religious hatred towards the Serbs, racial hatred towards the Jews, and hatred for Yugoslavia. Immediately after the proclamation of the Independent State of Croatia it placed itself unreservedly at the disposal of the Ustashi, thus following the example of the Catholic clergy, who took an active part in helping the Ustashi, with weapons in their hands, in the disruption of the Yugoslav Kingdom.
At many points Catholic priests, and even Catholic friars, helped to form treacherous Ustashi armed bands with the precise objective of attacking the Yugoslav Army from the rear. Many of these clerics boasted openly of their military activities. The exploits of others who fell in battle were recalled in their obituaries.
The Catholic weekly, Nedelja, in its issue of June 22, 1941, describes in an article entitled, "The Last Convulsion of Yugoslavia on the Island of Pag," the manner in which the priest on that island took part in disarming the Yugoslav Army:
Late at night younger Croatians would follow the development of events. The Reverend Stipanov in Vlasici on Pag would also listen to the news and ride to inform the officers and soldiers. Thus the news events found us prepared and enthusiastic. It was decided to disarm the officers from Serbia
The Ustashi paper, Hrvatski Narod, on July 4, 1941, hailed the Franciscan priest Dr. Radoslav Glavas as a great organizer of the Ustashi. The article said in part:
A young and energetic Franciscan, Dr. Radoslav Glavas, came to Siroki Greg and placed himself al the head of the struggle. A plan was even drawn to prevent the mobilization of the Yugoslav Army. Thus the historic day of April 10 was welcomed, and in the night between April 10 and 11 the Ustashi disarmed the local gendarmerie and captured the post office.
The Ustashi periodical, Za Dom, No. 1, of April, 1941, adds:
Another priest, joining forces with two customs guards, captured two generals and 40 officers, while a Franciscan brother, with the help of a number of youths, disarmed an entire Serbian company.
Hrvatski Narod, No. 251, of June 4, 1944, page 3, carried a death notice, written by priest Eugen Beluhan, of Chaplain Ivan Miletic, which in describing his Ustashi activities asserted: "As a priest he assisted in the disruption of the Yugoslav Army during the revolution." There is an endless list of such reports in the files of the War Crimes Commission.
Following the fall of Yugoslavia and the rise of the independent State of Croatia, the Catholic Press came all out for Pavelic and his Ustashi. Vjesnik Pocasne Straze Srca Isusova (The Courier of the Honourable Guards of Christ's Heart) contained, in issues Nos. 5 and 6, 1941, an article entitled, "The Banner of Croatia—the Heart of Christ," in which the "resurrection" of Croatia was compared to that of Christ:
In the early spring the Croatian people experienced their resurrection at the time of Christ's resurrection. The great son of the Croatian people returned and gave them their liberty and ancient rights. And this is also the work of God; the Lord did it all and that is why it is strange to our eyes.
Glasnik Biskupije Bosanske i Sremske (The Voice of the Bosnian and Srem Bishoprics), No. 13, of July 15, 1941, imitating Pope Pius XI, who had called Mussolini the man sent by Divine Providence, called Pavelic a man of Providence:
Holy is this year of the resurrection of the Independent State of Croatia. The gallant image of our chieftain appeared in the rainbow. It can and it must be said of him that his is a man of Providence.
Glasnik Sv. Ante (The Voice of Saint Anthony), in its issue of December 12, 1941, went further, declaring that the birth of the Independent State of Croatia was God's work:
The Croatians, who are mostly a Catholic people, consider such a great historical event as some fortunate accident, or as a stroke of luck. No, this is the work of God and Providence.
Even this was not enough. The Ustashi were compared to no one else but Christ. Witness the voice of the Crusader movement, Nedelja, which, in its issue of June 6, 1941, in an article entitled, "Christ and Croatia," declared the following:
Christ and the Ustashi and Christ and the Croatians march together through history. From the first day of its existence the Ustashi movement has been fighting for the victory of Christ's principles, for the victory of justice, freedom, and truth. Our Holy Saviour will help us in the future as he has done until now, that is why the new Ustashi Croatia will be Christ's, ours and no one else's.
Catholic leaders, priests, and indeed bishops were given positions in the Ustashi State. Immediately after Pavelic assumed power many priests were appointed to local and provincial administrative posts in the newly created Ustashi State. To mention only a few: the Catholic priest Ante Klaric Tepelun, from the village of Tramosnica, district of Gradacac, who in April, 1941, became an Ustashi tabornik, and took part in disarming the Yugoslav Army. Father Emanuel Rajich, priest in Gornji Vakuf, who participated in disarming the Yugoslav Army, organized Ustashi rule in Gornji Vakuf, and was appointed Ustashi tabornik, in which capacity he organized the first Ustashi army unit in Gornji Vakuf.
Novi List, No. 54, in 1941, reported the appointment of priest Stjepan Lukic to the post of logorni pobocnik (camp adjutant) of the Zepce camp. Cecelja Martin, priest in Recica, District of Karlovac, was appointed to the post of Ustashi tabornik for the county of Recica. Dr. Dragutin Kamber, priest in Doboj, was appointed in April, 1941, to the post of Ustashi commandant for the District of Doboj, with all political and civil powers thus concentrated in his hands.
No. 34 of the same paper, dated July I, 1941, carried an order of the Government appointing priest Didak Coric to the post of tabornik in Jaska; Ante Djuric, priest in the village of Divusa, to the post of tobornik for the district of Drvar; and priest Dragan Petranovic to the post of logornik in the camp of the district of Ogulin.
Catholic leaders directly under the orders of the Hierarchy were given the highest positions—e.g., the President of Crusaders, priest Dr. Felix Niedzielski, who was made Ustashi Vice-Governor of Bosnia during the first days of Pavelic regime. Another Catholic priest, Grga Peinovic, Director of the Crusaders, was made nothing less than President of the Ustashi Central Propaganda Office, as reported in Fledelja on August 10, 1941. In an article entitled, "Crusaders in the Independent State of Croatia," the same paper pointed to the fact that many persons trained in the Crusader organization were now occupying high offices, which was indeed true.
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A collection of Catholic newspapers issued in Ustashi Croatia, all showing Pavelic's portrait. The press, including the Diocesan and Episcopal papers, all supported and praised the Ustashi, from the first to the last. Besides the propagation of Nazi-Ustashi ideas, the Catholic press played a tremendous role in conditioning the Croatian people to the horrors that were eventually to occur once Croatia came into being. It represented the Pavelic Regime as the instrument of justice and the vengeance of God. It became especially skillful in sowing religious hatred against the Orthodox Serbs. The official organ of the Archbishopric of Zagreb, Katolicki List, No. 16, 1941, declared that Ustashi Croatia had been created by an all powerful Providence. So did Glasnik St. Ante (The Voice of St. Anthony), December 12, 1941: "This is the work of Cod." The paper Nedelja, June 6, 1941, the organ of the Catholic Crusader movement, declared "Christ and the Ustashi march together." |
The active participation of so many Catholic leaders and Catholic clergy in the formation of the Ustashi State of Croatia had been possible only thanks to one thing: the consent of, and indeed instructions from, the leaders of the Catholic Hierarchy. This was proved from the very first by the incontrovertible fact that high and low clergy cooperated whole-heartedly with Pavelic. Catholic parishes, as well as Catholic Cathedrals, and, indeed, the very radio, were used as a political platform for Pavelic and the Ustashi. Witness Radio Zagreb, which on April l l, 1941, the day after Kvaternik and the German Army had entered the Croatian capital, instructed the people to welcome the German Army and "to seek answers to all questions from the Catholic parish offices, where instructions will be given about the future work."
The official organ of the Archbishopric of Zagreb, Kato-licki List, No. 16, 1941, declared that the independent State of Croatia had been created by an all-powerful Providence. The Catholic Church, it concluded, prayed God that the New Croatia should find its fulfillment. The same paper went farther, and soon afterwards published "The Principles of the Government of the Independent State of Croatia and of the Ustashi Movement," to acquaint its readers with the basic directives regulating the life of every individual in the new puppet State. These directives soon helped Pavelic to convert Croatia into a virtual concentration camp. Archbishop Stepinac, on April 28, 1941, issued a pastoral letter, in which he asked the clergy to respond without hesitation to his call that they take part in the exalted work of defending and improving the Independent State of Croatia, declaring that from then onwards in the "resurrected" Croatian State the Church would be able in complete freedom to preach "the invincible principles of eternal truth and justice." The pastoral letter, which was also published in Nedelja and Katolicki List on April 28, 1941, said the following:
Honourable brethren, there is not one among you who did not recently witness the most significant event in the life of the Croatian people among whom we act as herald of Christ's word. These are events that fulfilled the long-dreamed-of and desired ideal of our people.... You should, therefore, readily answer my call to do elevated work for the safeguarding and the progress of the Independent State of Croatia.... Prove yourselves, honourable brethren, and fulfill now your duty toward the young Independent State of Croatia.
The pastoral letter was read in every Croatian parish. It was also read over the radio. The impression it had on the people, and especially on the clergy, was indicated by Father Peter Glavas, who, during his trial after liberation, said in his own defense: "The order given by Archbishop Stepinac to the people over the radio to fight for the Independent State of Croatia constituted a political directive to the clergy." Like any other priest, he had to obey.
The Ustashi section of the clergy, which had been active in terrorism even before the war, did not need this circular to tell them how to act. Yet many who until then had hesitated, after Stepinac's instructions accepted his directives and actively engaged in supporting the Ustashi. The Catholic clergy did not join the Ustashi merely to chant Latin hymns. They joined in order to carry out the Ustashi racial and religious terror programs.
When Pavelic returned from Italy to Zagreb, to assume leadership of the New Croatia, he stopped in the town of Ogulin, on April 13, 1941, where he conferred with one of his most fanatical lieutenants, the Ustashi Catholic priest Canon Ivan Mikan. On that same day, in a public speech, Canon Mikan foretold the shape of things to come: "There will be purges," shouted priest Mikan. "Yes, there will be purges." On the same evening, not far from that region, the first Ustashi punitive expedition attacked individual Serbs in several villages.
Were these massacres committed only by the followers of Pavelic? They were often promoted and carried out by Catholic priests claiming to be the followers of Christ and the representatives of a Church trumpeting to the four winds that she preached universal love. It will suffice for us to mention only a few. The first Ustashi commandant in the District of Udbina was the Franciscan priest, Mate Mogus, who had organized the Ustashi militia and disarmed Yugoslav troops. At a meeting in Udbina on June 13, 1941, he gave the following homily: "Look, people, at these 16 brave Ustashi, who have 16,000 bullets and who will kill 16,000 Serbs, after which we will divide among us in a brotherly manner the Mutilic and Krbava fields"—a speech which was the signal for the beginning of the slaughter of Serbs in the district of Udbina.
In Dvor na Uni, priest Anton Djuric kept a dairy of his activities as an Ustashi functionary. The diary shows that on his orders the Ustashi plundered and burned the village of Segestin, where 150 Serbs were murdered, and that in the village of Goricka he arrested 117 people, who were sent to a concentration camp, where most of them were killed.
A group of Franciscan priests, who tortured and finally killed twenty-five Serbs in the village of Kasle, took photographs of their victims. In the village of Tramosnica, priest Ante Klaric became the first Ustashi commissar, the personally led Ustashi units in attacks on Serbian villages. He organized the Ustashi militia and, according to witnesses, spoke from the pulpit as follows:"
You are old women and you should put on skirts, for you have not yet killed a single Serb. We have no weapons and no knives and we should forge them out of old scythes and sickles, so that you can cut the throats of Serbs whenever you see them.
Priest Bozo Simlesa, in the village of Listani, was one of the most active members of the Ustashi. He held the post of chief of the district of Livno. During the slaughter of the Serbs in the county of Listani he told the people from the pulpit that the time had arrived to exterminate all Serbs living in Croatia. He personally organized the Ustashi militia and obtained arms for them. On July 27, 1941, he held a meeting in the village, and when he was informed that all Serbian men had been murdered and that women and children were to be killed that night, he told them not to wait for the night, for twenty-four hours had already passed since the chief had issued his order that not a single Serb must be left alive in Croatia.
The Catholic Dean of Stolac, in Herzegovina, priest Marko Zovko, was responsible for the murder of 200 persons, whose bodies were thrown into a ditch in a field in Vidovo. Franciscan Mijo Cujic, of Duvno, personally gave instructions for the massacre of Serbs in the villages of Prisoje and Vrila, where not one person was allowed to remain alive.Were these the abominable deeds of some few individuals maddened by religious and racial fanaticism? Indeed they were not. They were an integral part of the official policy of the Catholic Church, which, screened behind the mantle of the Independent State, had inspired and promoted all the horrors which soaked the historical land of Croatia in a sea of blood.
Chapter 7
CATHOLIC FRIARS, PRIESTS, EXECUTIONERS, BISHOPS AND MURDERERS
As Ustashi racialism had embarked upon a policy of Serbian extermination, it followed that its twin counterpart, Catholicism, could do no less than embark upon the extermination of its main religious foe: the Orthodox Church. State and Church, consequently, to implement their mutual scheme of total racial-religious exclusiveness, set out to pursue parallel policies, epitomized in the extermination of the racial elements, the Serbs, by the political authorities, and in that of the religious elements, the Orthodox, by the Catholic Hierarchy.
The Catholic Church did not leave the execution of a religious war to the secular arm, as she had done in similar circumstances in bygone centuries. She came down into the fighting field, full tilt, shunning precautions and brandishing the sword against those whom she had decided to exterminate, with a directness that had not been seen for a long time. Many of the Ustashi formations were officered by Catholic priests, and often by friars, who had taken an oath to fight with dagger and gun for the "triumph of Christ and Croatia." Many of them did not hesitate to carry out the most infamous tasks, glorying in deeds that would have filled with shame any average "heathen or barbarian from the East." All in the name of religion. Thus, while some, as we have already seen, took charge of concentration camps, others led the armed Ustashi in the closing of Orthodox churches, in the confiscation of Orthodox records, in the persecution, arrest, and, yes, even in the murder of Orthodox people, including Orthodox priests. At Banjaluka, for instance, an official order directed that all the Orthodox Church records of marriages, baptisms, and burials be delivered forthwith to Catholic parishes, while at Pakrac Catholic priests took possession of the Serbian Bishop's residence, following the locking and sealing of the Orthodox cathedral (April 12, 1941).
Orthodox churches were converted into halls—e.g. that of Prnjavor, on July 10, 1941. Others were transformed into Catholic churches, when they were not pulled down altogether—e.g. in the provinces of Lika, Banija, and Kordun, where 172 churches were totally destroyed. Orthodox monasteries shared the same fate. At Fruska Gora fifteen Serbian Orthodox monasteries and churches were given to Catholic monks of the Franciscan order, as was also done with the Church properties at Orahovica, Pakrac, Lepavina, and other places. The monastery of Vrdnik-Ravanica, wherein were buried the remains of King Lazar, who led and died in the historical battle of Kosovo against the Turks in 1389 in defense of Christianity, was also taken over, as was Sremski Karlovci, the former seat of the Orthodox Patriarchate. There the great cathedral was first plundered of all valuables, then closed, after all its physical properties had been taken over by the Catholic Bishop. Within a short period 250 Orthodox churches were pillaged or destroyed. In the diocese of Diakovo, mentioned before, twenty-eight Orthodox churches became Catholic churches.
Together with the destruction of Orthodox churches, Catholic ferocity struck at the very backbone of the Orthodox Church: i.e. at the Orthodox clergy. Orthodox priests were imprisoned, sent to concentration camps, hunted down, or simply massacred. Hundreds of them, including Orthodox Bishops, perished, only because they were priests of the religion hostile to the "true Church."
Orthodox priests, before being executed or hanged, were often horribly tortured—e.g. priest Branko Dobrosavljevich, from Veljun, who was compelled to read the obituary of his own son, whom the Ustashi first killed in his presence, this preceding his own torture and death, which became the signal for the mass execution of hundreds of Orthodox inside the Orthodox churches of Kladusa, Veljun, Slusnica, Primislje, and other places. On April 20, 1941, in the village of Svinjica, the Ustashi arrested the Orthodox priest, Babic, and after torturing him buried him in an upright position to his waist in the ground. Within a few weeks the Ustashi and Catholic priests murdered 135 Orthodox priests, of whom eighty-five came from one diocese.
The higher clergy were not spared. On the night of June 5, 1941, on orders from the Ustashi chief, Gutic, the Orthodox Bishop Platon, of Banjaluka in Western Bosnia, together with several Orthodox priests, some of whom were former members of the House of Representatives, was taken to the outskirts of the town by the Ustashi. There the old Bishop's beard was torn out, a fire lit on his naked chest, then, after prolonged torture, he and all his companions were killed with hatchets, and their bodies thrown into the Vrbanja River.
Dositej, Orthodox Bishop of Zagreb, capital of the Independent State of Croatia, where Archbishop Stepinac had his residence, lost his reason as a result of the tortures inflicted upon him before his expulsion to Belgrade. Three Orthodox Bishops, Peter Zimonjic of Sarajevo, Sava Trlajic of Plaski, and Platon of Banjaluka, were murdered. [1]
Numerous Catholic priests and monks, some of whom were not even attached to the Ustashi formations, carried out indiscriminate executions with their own hands. Many of them methodically and with precision took part in the most incredible orgies of blood. Canon Ivan Mikan, already mentioned, made daily rounds of the prison and mercilessly beat Orthodox Serbs with a bull-whip, scolding the Ustashi for being lax in their work, personally ordering that the Orthodox monastery of Gomirje be looted and its inmates sent to a concentration camp, where they were all executed. Fra Anto, a Catholic priest of Tramosnjica, organized Ustashi bands with the object of capturing as many Orthodox Serbs as he could, whom very often he tortured personally, as he did at Brcko. Simic Vjekoslav, a monk of the monastery at Knin, personally killed numerous Orthodox. Sidonije Sole, a monk of the Franciscan monastery in Nasice, deported the Orthodox population of whole villages, while the Catholic priests Guncevic and Marjanovich Dragutin, in addition to acting as police officials, ordered the arrest of hundreds of Orthodox, whom they tortured and then killed, taking an active personal part in their execution.[2] German Castimir, abbot of the monastery in Guntic personally directed the mass murder of the Orthodox Serbs of Glina, a hundred of whom were murdered inside the Orthodox church there. The names of many others have been put on record by the Serbian Eastern Orthodox diocese of the USA and Canada, by the Orthodox Church of Yugoslavia, by the Yugoslav Government, and by other official agencies.[3]
The purpose of all this terror was to destroy the enemies of Catholicism. Yet, while the Catholic Church, whenever given total power, can become a ruthless destroyer of her enemies, bursting with dreams of expansion, she can simultaneously follow a no less ruthless campaign of absorption. Absorption can be accomplished by only one means: by conversion.
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In the village of Mikleus, 1942, a Catholic parish priest "converting" in bulk hundreds of peasants. Many Catholic priests were at the head of the Ustashi. Witness priest Mate Mogus, of the parish of Udbina, in the province of Like. "We Catholics," he told the to be forcibly converted Serbs, "until now have worked for Catholicism with the cross and with the book of the Mass. The day has come, however, to work with the revolver and with the gun." Father D. Juric, a Franciscan, was appointed head of a Ministry charged with plans for the systematic conversion of all those Orthodox who bad been spared from Concentration Camps or massacre. Most of the forcible conversions were duly announced by diocesan bulletins. Witness, Katolicki List, organ of the Bishopric of Zagreb, controlled by Archbisbop Stepinac. In its issue No. 31, 1941, it reported that "a new parish of over 2,300 souls" bad been created in the village of Budinci, as a result of the entire village having been re-christened to the Catholic Faith. Collective resistance was met by ruthless collective punishment.
"Converting" the Orthodox Serbs, December 21st, 1941, Friars, besides Priests, participated in forcible conversions. They were no less ruthless than the parish clergy, e.g. Monk Ambrozjie Novak, Guardian of the Capucine Monastery in Varazdin, who, utter surrounding the village of Mostanica with Ustashi contingents, told the people: "You Serbs are condemned to death, and you can only escape that sentence by accepting Catholicism." Catholic Padres did not hesitate to liquidate those who resisted. Witness Father Dr. Dragutin Kamber, a Jesuit priest and a sworn Ustashi, who ordered the killing of 300 Orthodox Serbs in Doboj and the court martial of 250 more, most of whom were shot. Or Father Dr. Branimir Zupanic, who had more than 400 people killed in one village alone: Ragoije. Father Srecko Peric, of the Gorica Monastery, near Livno, advocated mass murders with the following words: "Kill all Serbs. And when you finish come here, to the Church, and I will confess you and free you from sin." This resulted in a massacre, on August 10th, 1941, during which over 5,600 Orthodox Serbs in the district of Livno alone lost their lives.
A Franciscan monk converting Orthodox villagers in Mikleus, near Kutina. On their murderous expeditions, the Ustashi were always accompanied by Catholic Padres—most of these themselves Ustashi officers—whose task was to supervise the operations and, above all, to ensure that the Orthodox Serbs were converted to the Catholic Church. Conversion meant the avoidance of arrest, loss of property and even of life. Father Dionizio Juric, Ante Pavelic's confessor, was quite blunt about it. "Any Serb who refuses to become a Catholic should be condemned to death," he declared at Staza, in the district of Banjia. With Catholic storm troopers nearby the threat was a reality. There were instances where those who refused conversion were executed on the spot. Witness the case of Father Ilja Tomas, of the village of Klepac, who promised safety to the fleeing Orthodox if they became Catholics. Because they changed their minds, however, the Ustashi murdered the lot.
The Orthodox churches became the main targets of the Catholic storm troopers, the Ustashi, and even of the Catholic clergy. These churches were seized, evacuated, closed, transformed into Catholic churches, or burned down altogether. In the province of Lika, Banija and Kordum, in 1941, 172 Orthodox churches were totally destroyed.. At Fruska Gora, 15 Orthodox monasteries and churches were given to Franciscans. Out of 189 churches in the diocese of Gornjo Karlovachka, 175 were destroyed or burned down. There were cases when the Ustashi, after having shut the Orthodox worshippers inside their church, set fire to the building. The worshippers were machine gunned when attempting to escape. Thousands perished in this way, killed by bullets, falling masonry, or burned alive. In 1941 Glina witnessed such a spectacle. The photograph shows the remains of an Orthodox church burned there by the Ustashi with about 2,000 men, women and children who had gone to pray in it.
Catholic Brothers, and Monks, when visiting villages to "convert" the Orthodox population, were always escorted by the heavily armed Catholic storm troopers, the Ustashi. The terrible reputation of the Ustashi for ruthlessness was often sufficient to "persuade" people to embrace the Catholic Church and their bayonets helped the Catholic Padres to baptize those who hesitated. The alternative, the preachers warned, was seizure of their property, arrest, concentration camps, or even execution. Father Franjo Pipinic, the parish priest of Pozega, for instance, towards the end of 1941 converted thousands, "assisted" by the Ustashi Captain Peranovic. He always began and ended his sermons by explaining that "conversion" was the only way to stay alive. The sight of the grim, armed Ustashi nearby induced whole communities of Orthodox to embrace the "true" Church. The Commission for Investigating War Crimes reported how hundreds of cases of such Catholic "persuasion" had occurred throughout Croatia. Above, Franciscan Padre, Bozidar Braie, is seen while delivering a sermon to the soon to be converted Orthodox congregation at Zemun, July 12, 1942, escorted by Ustashi. The large letter "U" on the open air pulpit stands for "Ustashi."
The Franciscan Monk, Father Miroslav Filipovic. Left as a priest, wearing his cassock. Right, in Ustashi uniform. Father Filipovic was the Commandant of the terrible concentration camp at Jasenovac. Father Filipovic, chief ecclesiastical murderer of Croatia, although a Monk of the Order of St. Francis, was a fanatical Ustashi long before the Second World War. His political and religious ruthlessness can be judged by the fact that, while addressing a battalion of the armed Ustashi in the village of Drakulic, he killed an Orthodox child with his own hands. Resenting the Orthodox reluctance to be "re-baptized," he told the armed Ustashi to "re-Christen these degenerates in the name of God. You follow my example." One thousand five hundred Orthodox Serbs were executed in one single day. As Commandant of the Jasenovac Concentration Camp, Father Filipovic, aided by Father Zvonko Brekalo, Father Z. Lipovac, and Father Culina, caused the death of 40,000 men, women and children during the period of his administration.
The non-Catholic population in Catholic Croatia were given two basic alternatives: conversion or death. Their churches were closed, parish documents destroyed, ecclesiastical buildings burned down. Orthodox worshippers very often were arrested inside their own churches, and kept there or in local halls while awaiting their fate: i.e. forcible conversion, concentration camps or execution. Their survival, more often than not, depended upon the whim of the Ustashi Commandants of the Catholic Padres accompanying them. There were occasions, however, when the Orthodox Serbs were given no chance at all to escape with their lives. Some Catholic Priests being implacable. Witness the Abbot of the Monastery in Guntic, Father German Castimir, who personally directed the mass murder of the Orthodox Serbs of Glina, a hundred of whom were massacred inside their Orthodox Church there. In this photograph, Orthodox worshippers inside their church at Hrvatska Dubica, prior to their all being murdered, August 21, 1941.
Once inside the sundry concentration camps, the inmates were still liable, not only to be tortured, but to be executed as well. The camp Commandants had unwritten authorization to kill anyone taken there. Indeed, to quote Ljubo Milos, Commandant of the Jasenovac Concentration Camp, there was "an agreement" that all prisoners sentenced to three years were to be "liquidated" at once. By virtue of this, inmates at times were murdered indiscriminately without even the slightest legal excuse. Justification for mass killings was sometimes of the flimsiest nature. For example, on September 15, 1941, all those inmates of the Jasenovac Camp unable to work, numbering between 600 and 700, were executed. In the Camp of Stara Gradiska, 1000 women were killed. In the Krapje Camp in October 1941, 4000 prisoners were murdered. To save themselves physical trouble, at times the Ustashi used typhus, e.g. in March 1943 the inmates of the Djakovo Camp were purposely infected with typhus, causing the death of 567 persons. In the photograph, corpses of victims taken out of water wells at the Lepoglava Camp.
Bodies of Orthodox Serbs executed by the Ustashi contingents at Sinj on August 26,1941. The Ustashi perpetrated countless mass murders on the slightest pretext, it being the official policy of their Government to get rid of the Orthodox Serbian population in their midst, since Catholic Croatia must be inhabited ONLY by Catholics. By virtue of such a principle, the Ustashi arrested, tortured and slaughtered their Orthodox prisoners without pity. This even when the prisoners had been designated to Concentration Camps. Witness the case of the 5,000 Orthodox prisoners who, in August 1942, having been assigned to the notorious Concentration Camp of Jasenovac, were decimated by the Ustashi en route. Two thousand of them were murdered in cold blood. Those who survived were transferred to Gradina, where on August 28,1942 they were all put to death by the Ustashi with the butts of their rifles and with hammers. The corpses were then buried in common graves or cremated in rudimentary ovens.
The Ustashi not only detained, arrested and "punished" people whom they considered hostile, they tortured and even executed them, regardless of any legal justification. During their first years of indiscriminate power they carried out numberless executions. Single individuals or small groups were punished or massacred on the spot. Whole Orthodox families were wiped out. More often than not, the pleading victims were not spared, even when some of them, to save their lives, made ready to be "re-baptized" into the Catholic Church. Later on such willingness saved thousands on the advice of the Catholic padres, who accompanied the Ustashi contingents. In 1945, however, when the fall of Independent Catholic Croatia loomed inevitable, the fleeing Ustashi resumed their ancient ruthlessness and massacred without any discrimination. When retreating from Sisak, for instance, they massacred the 380 prisoners of that camp in cold blood. The victims were then hurled into the river. This photo shows some of the corpses of those thus murdered on the banks of the Sava.
Another case of throat cutting, which took place in Croatia in 1943. The photograph was found in the pocket of a dead Ustashi. One of his companions is holding up the already severed head of a victim, for his friend to take a photo. The Ustashi committed the most execrable crimes with the utmost indifference. Frequently they amused themselves with prolonging the tortures of their prisoners, to pass the time. They did not spare women or children. To quote only one instance: In the villages between Vlasenica and Kladanj the Nazi occupational troops discovered children who had been impaled upon stakes by the Ustashi, their members still distorted with pain. Catholic priests, too, advocated the killing of children. Witness Father D. Juric. "Today it is no longer a sin to kill a child of seven," he said, "should such a child be opposed to our movement of the Ustashi."
Mass murders were supplemented by the massacre of individuals, mostly in rural districts. Instances of the utmost ferocity occurred. The Ustashi very often used the most primitive weapons, such as forks, spades, hammers and saws, to torture their victims prior to their execution. They broke their legs, pulled off their skin and beards, blinded them by cutting their eyes with knives and even tearing them from their sockets, as a survivor, Marija Bogunovitch, testified. Sometimes executions were committed on the home ground of victims, carried out with conventional guns and revolvers. Some Ustashi specialized in disposing of their "charges" by crushing their skulls with hatchets or even hammers. At Dubrovnick, Dalmatia, Fascist soldiers had photographs of an Ustashi wearing two necklaces. One was a string of cut-out eyes, the other of torn out tongues of murdered Orthodox Serbs. In this photograph Ustashi are torturing an Orthodox Serb with a saw prior to executing him. Somewhere in Bosnia, in 1943. The photograph was found in the pocket of a dead Ustashi in 1945.
Indiscriminate mass deportations and muss executions became one of the most characteristic features of the Ustashi. Very often the life or death of the prisoners depended upon the whims of the local Commander or even the local Catholic priest. Ustashi authorities would summon the Orthodox Serbs to perform public works or to listen to some new law. Once they were gathered in a given place, they would be surrounded, marched outside the village or town, and executed without further ado. In the most remote regions of Upper Dalmatia, like Bosnia Herzegovina, there took place such veritable extermination. Women and children were not spared. Some detachments of Ustashi, with the idea of saving themselves the trouble of burying the bodies, shot their victims on bridges. In Brcko, for instance, the home town of Deafer Kulenovic, the Ustashi Prime Minister, the Orthodox prisoners were all executed on the local bridge and then immediately hurled into the river. This photograph shows the bodies of people executed by the Ustashi and flung into the river Kupa, in May 1945.
The Archbishop of Sarajevo, Dr. 1. Saric, giving the "Heil Hitler" with a group of Ustashi civilians and Nazi officers at the airport of Butmir, in 1943. Archbishop Saric had been an Ustashi as early as 1934. He spoke, plotted and acted as the veritable Ustashi leader that he was. He exhorted his clergy to act as Ustashi and to "employ revolutionary methods to the service of truth (i.e. the Catholic Church), declaring that it was "unworthy of the disciples of Christ to think that the struggle...should be conducted...with gloves on." Many Catholic priests, bishops and monks were sworn officers of the Ustashi, e.g. Father Ivan Miletic, who led guerrillas against the Central Government of Belgrade. Or Father Kadoslav Glavas, a Franciscan Monk, who on April 10 and 11, 1941, disarmed the local police and captured the Post Office. In Herzegovina, the centre of the Ustashi movement was a Franciscan monastery.
The Orthodox Church became one of the prime targets of Catholic Croatia, which, very often, used the German armies of occupation, outside Croatia, to round up obstinate Orthodox Serbs. One of the most effective means of paralyzing any resistance of the Serbian Orthodox Church was that of asking the Nazi authorities to arrest the Orthodox clergy. The policy was carried out throughout Yugoslavia. The result was that soon Orthodox resistance became very weak and, in fact, in certain parts of occupied Yugoslavia, even tacitly cooperated to avoid deportation and even execution. The policy was carried out everywhere. In this picture Dr. Gavrilo Dozitch, the Orthodox Patriarch is arrested by the (Gestapo, in the convent of Ostrog, in Montenegro. The Ustashi cooperated with the Nazis wherever they could harass, embarrass and destroy the Orthodox Church, which they considered the mortal enemy of the Catholic Church. |
The Catholic Church has never believed in persuasion, which is used only when she cannot enjoy absolute power. Her actions have always been based on one of the most incontrovertible and typical Catholic dogmas: naked force. This, not only to smite, but also to convert. In Croatia she used force to do both, destruction and conversion having been, in all her wars of religion, two facets of the same grand strategy.
It was thus that, while demolishing Orthodox churches, while massacring Orthodox clergy and bishops, she was at the same time converting their congregations to Catholicism, using a "persuasion" behind which stood boycott, threats, force, and even death. Catholic priests became the natural leaders of this specialized operation, priests and monks competing to see who could convert most Orthodox to the "only true faith."The spirit in which the campaign was conducted can best be judged by a typical leaflet, issued in 1941, by the diocesan journal of Djakovo, which read:
The Lord Jesus Christ said that there shall be one pasture and one shepherd. Inhabitants of the Greek-Eastern faith, hear this friendly advice.... The Bishop of Djakovo has already received thousands of citizens in the Holy Catholic Church, and these citizens have received certificates of honesty from State authorities. Follow these brothers of yours, and report as soon as possible for re-Christening into the Catholic Church.
This was not a unique example of Catholic "persuasion" backed by the bayonet. Priests openly told Orthodox to become Catholics if they wished to avoid persecution, concentration camps, and extermination. Franjo Pipinic, priest of Pozega, for instance, carried out mass conversions of Serbs towards the end of 1941, with the assistance of the Ustashi Captain Peranovic, telling the Serbian people that acceptance of Catholicism was the only way in which they could save themselves from death in concentration camps. In the files of the Commission for Investigating War Crimes there are hundreds of cases of this "persuasion," of which we quote only a few.
One of the most fanatical missionaries for conversion was priest Ante Djuric, in the district of Dvor. He ordered the slaughter, plunder, and burning of many villages, and sent hundreds of Serbs to the concentration camp in Kostajnica. He personally mutilated and killed Serbs from Bosanska Kostajnica. In his speeches he always emphasized that the Serbs in his district "have only three ways out: to accept the Catholic faith, to move out, or to be cleansed with the metal broom."
Priest Ambrozije Novak, Guardian of the Capucine monastery in Varazdin, in 1941 went to the village of Mostanica, accompanied by Ustashi, and ordered the Serbian people to assemble, telling them: "You Serbs are condemned to death, and you can only escape that sentence by accepting Catholicism."
Priest Mate Mogus, of the parish of Udbina, in the province of Lika, was even more explicit: Until now, my brothers," he preached in his church, "we (the Catholics) have worked for our Catholic religion with the cross and the book of Mass; the day, however, has now come to work with the revolver and the gun." Some, however, wanted to use guns to bring an abundant crop of forcible conversions on a far larger scale. The words of Father Petar Pajic, published in the organ of the Archbishop of Sarajevo, bear witness to that: [4]
Until now, God spoke through papal encyclicals...And? They closed their ears.... Now God has decided to use other methods. He will prepare missions. European missions. World missions. They will be upheld, not by priests, but by army commanders, led by Hitler. The sermons will be heard, with the help of cannons, machine guns, tanks and bombers. The language of these sermons will be international.
Such sentiments were shared by priests holding the most influential positions—e.g. Mgr. Dionizije Juric, one of the heads of the Ministry of Cults, and, more important still, the confessor of none other than Ante Pavelic himself. When in Staza, in the district of Banija, Father Juric put the matter of forcible conversions in a nutshell: Any Serb who refused to become Catholic should be condemned to death, he said, because "today it is no longer a sin to kill a child of seven, should such a child be opposed to our movement of the Ustashi."
The Ustashi had committed and were committing massacres beyond counting. Yet the devout Catholic Mile Budak, in an address at Karlovac on July 13, 1941, did not hesitate to declare that "the movement of the Ustashi is based upon religion." Catholics who had any qualms about it could reassure themselves simply by examining the professions of many of the leaders of the Ustashi, a great proportion of whom were monks, priests, and even bishops—e.g. Dr. Ivan Saric, the Archbishop of Sarajevo, an Ustashi since 1934. This pillar of the Holy Catholic Church, as soon as Catholic terror descended upon Croatia, spoke and acted as the veritable Ustashi that he was, inciting his subordinate clergy to act as Ustashi, and indeed, "to employ revolutionary methods to the service of the truth, of justice and of honour"; words which he repeatedly printed in his Katolicki Tjednik, where he never tired of declaring that "it is unworthy of the disciples of Christ to think that the struggle against evil (sic) could be conducted in a noble manner and with gloves on." This in addition to writing poems to Pavelic, and inciting all Catholics to follow Pavelic's example and the example of the Ustashi.[5]
But if open refusal of conversion spelt death, acceptance of "the true faith," although very often an insurance of terrestrial life, was not always a guarantee of safety. The slightest reluctance on the part of the Orthodox individuals, any obvious indication that they were becoming Catholic as a means of saving themselves, very often aroused Catholic vengeance. Apart from that, there were times when the call to conversion became only an excuse for wholesale massacre.
Curate Ilija Tomas, from the village of Klepac, for instance, was responsible for the death of hundreds of Serbs in that district. In order more easily to capture frightened victims who were fleeing to the mountains, he promised that no harm would befall them if they would embrace the Catholic religion. When many, believing this, called on him, he turned them over to the Ustashi, who murdered them all. In the village of Stikade, in Lika, Catholic priest Morber, leader of the Ustashi, invited the Serbs to be converted to the Catholic religion. Because those who accepted his proposal to be converted showed some reluctance, the Ustashi surrounded and massacred them with rifles and hammers and threw their bodies into a ditch. When the bodies were dug up later it was established that many had been alive when buried.
Josip Orlic, priest in Sunja, an old sworn Ustashi, compelled the Serbs in his district to accept Catholicism by threatening them with concentration camps. A great majority of the Serbs there changed to Catholicism, in fear for their lives. But as many of those re-christened made it clear that they did so to save their lives, they were carried away to the Jasenovac concentration camp in May, 1942, where practically all of them were killed. Some priests and monks specialized in forced mass conversions. The Ustashi priest Dionizije Juric, the Franciscan and close friend to Pavelic whom we have already mentioned, was appointed to head this division, which devised a plan for the systematic conversion of those Serbs who had been spared from persecution and massacre.
The daily mass murders taking place before them became the most powerful weapon of mass persuasion. Many followed the "friendly advice" and were "converted." Conversions of individual and mass character became increasingly frequent. Most of these were duly announced in the Catholic Press. Katolicki List, organ of the Bishopric of Zagreb, controlled by Stepinac, in its issue No. 38 in 1941, for instance, reported that "a new parish of over 2,300 souls" had been created in the village of Budinci, as a result of the entire village having been re-christened to the Catholic Faith, and added that preparations for the re-christening had been made by a Franciscan from Nasice, Father Sidonije Solc. A similar mass conversion in the vicinity of Osijek, carried out by Father Peter Berkovic, was described in Ustaska Velika Zupa, No. 1372, of April 27, 1942:
His work covers the period from preparation of the members of the Eastern Orthodox Church for conversion to Catholicism until they were actually converted, and thus in the counties of Vocin, Cacinci, and Ceralije, he converted more than 6,000 persons.
An Ustashi administrator, Ante Djuric, priest of Divusa, forced all heads of families to assemble round their local teacher, bringing a 10 diners tax stamp, in order to write out petitions for conversion for themselves and their families. The alternative: forfeiture of their residences and posts. The curate of Ogulin, Canon Ivan Mikan, charged 180 diners for each forced conversion, so that in one Serb village along—Jasenak—he collected 80,000 diners.
A frank admission of how these mass conversions were made was given by Nova Hrvatska, an Ustashi paper, on February 25, 1942: "The re-Christening was carried out in a very solemn manner by the curate of Petrinja, Michael Razum. An Ustashi company was present at this solemn occasion."
The re-christenings, as they were euphemistically labeled, were frequently celebrated with, in addition to water, blood. Priest Ivan Raguz had no inhibitions about it. He repeatedly urged the killing of all Serbs, including children, so that "even the seed of these beasts is not left." His worthy colleague, the curate Bozidar Brale, from Sarajevo, took part in Serbian liquidation with gun in hand, loudly postulating the "liquidation of the Serbs without compromise." The Spiritual Board of the Archbishop of Sarajevo was eventually to see Brale. As a culprit before an ecclesiastical tribunal? Far from it. As that Catholic body's President.
With the Catholic Hierarchy as the brains of such a policy of terror, with the ruthless armed Catholic bands at their disposal, the expected occurred. Individuals, whole families, entire villages, and even small towns embraced Catholicism. Their official entry into the "true Church" usually took place during mass ceremonies performed by Ustashi priests, "watched" by armed units of Ustashi. Refusal, or even postponement, on the part of the prospective converts brought upon them immediate requisitioning of property, threats against themselves, their relatives, and their very lives.
Thousands embraced Catholicism in this manner. Following their "conversion," the new Catholics wound in a procession to the local Catholic Church, as a rule escorted by units of piously armed Ustashi, chanting about the happiness of having at last become the children of the true Church, and ending up with Te Deums and prayers for the Pope. As if this were not sufficient, the villages where Serbs had been re-christened had to send congratulatory telegrams to Stepinac. For the eager Archbishop had, as befitted a good shepherd, ordered that the news of any mass conversions performed in any parish throughout Croatia be sent directly to him. Telegrams bearing such happy tidings were printed in the Ustashi paper, Nova Hrvatska, as well as in Stepinac's own official Diocesan Journal, Katolicki List. In its issue of April 9, 1942, the former printed four such telegrams, all addressed to Stepinac. In these, the mass entries into the bosom of Mother Church were laconically and succinctly described. One, for example, read:
2,300 persons assembled in Slatinski Drenovac, from the villages of Drenovac, Pusina, Kraskovic, Prekorecan, Miljani and Gjursic, accepted today the protection of the Roman Catholic Church and send their profound greetings to their Head.
Thirty per cent of Orthodox Serbs in the New Croatia were converted to Catholicism within a remarkably short period. The use of fear of losing property, or even life, however, was still not sufficient for most members of the Catholic Hierarchy engaged on this type of proselytization, and whenever resistance was encountered, Catholic clergymen ordered and, in fact, themselves often carried out the execution of many Orthodox. When collective resistance was met, ruthless collective punishment was inflicted upon the reluctant Orthodox. More often than not that meant torture and even execution.
Instances of such priestly murderers are many. Suffice it to mention a few. For example, Father Dr. Dragutin Kamber, a sworn Ustashi, but also a Jesuit priest. Father Dragutin ordered the killing of about 300 Orthodox Serbs in Doboj, and the court martial of 250 others, most of whom were shot. Or Father Dr. Branimir Zupanic, who had more than 400 men, women, and children killed in one village alone, Ragolje, and who was a personal friend of Ante Pavelic. During one of his sermons in the church of Gorica, Father Srecko Peric, of the Gorica monastery near Livno, advocated mass murders with the following words: "Kill all Serbs. First of all, kill my sister, who is married to a Serb, and then all Serbs. When you finish this work, come here to the Church and I will confess you and free you from sin." This resulted in a massacre, on August 10, 1941, during which over 5,600 Orthodox Serbs in the district of Livno alone lost their lives.
The chief ecclesiastic murderer, however, was neither a mere Catholic clergyman nor a fanatical Jesuit. He was no less than a member of the Order of meek St. Francis: Nliroslav Filipovic, an Ustashi since long before the war, and a Franciscan monk. Father Filipovic killed a child with his own hands in the village of Drakulic, while addressing a battalion of Ustashi: "Ustashi," was his curt brotherly exhortation, "I re-Christen these degenerates in the name of God. You follow my example." One thousand five hundred Orthodox Serbs were then executed on one single day. Jasenovac, an Ustashi concentration camp which equalled Dachau in horror, not long afterwards received a new Commandant: Father Filipovic. In his new role, Filipovic, cooperating with Father Zvonko Brekalo, Zvonko Lipovac, and Father Culina, caused the deaths of 40,000 men, women, and children in the camp during the period of his administrations. [6]
The losses inflicted by these frenzied attempts of the Catholics to destroy the Orthodox Church were immense. The material damage amounted to 7 milliard pre-war gold diners. Out of twenty-one Orthodox bishops in Yugoslavia, one was taken to internment in Italy, two were forcibly removed from their sees and sent to Serbia, one was imprisoned with Patriarch Gavrilo, and then sent to Dachau concentration camp, two were beaten and sent to Serbia, where they died shortly afterwards, two died in internment camps, and five were murdered in cold blood. [7] About 400 Orthodox priests were sent to concentration camps, while about 700 (one-quarter of the total number of Orthodox priests) were killed. One-quarter of monasteries and churches were completely destroyed, about half of the total number were damaged, an unknown number were transformed into Catholic churches or Catholic halls. Out of 189 churches in the Gornjo Karlovachka diocese, for instance, 175 were burned and destroyed. [8]
The greatest losses, however, were inflicted among the humble members of the Orthodox Church. In Pavelic's New Ustashi State, in fact, between April, 1941, and the spring of 1945, thanks to Ustashi units, Ustashi police, and concentration camps, at least 850,000 members of the Orthodox Church and citizens of Yugoslavia, including numerous Croats (plus 30,000 Jews and 40,000 Gypsies), perished thus. [9] Hundreds of Catholic priests and Catholic friars contributed, either directly or indirectly, to this colossal massacre.
To say that these were the deeds of individuals suffering from religious mania, or that these same individuals had discarded the most elementary rules of humanity, acting on their own initiative after scoring the admonitions of their Church and rebelling against her authority, is untrue. The Ustashi massacres, all the atrocities committed by either Catholic officials, priests, or monks, fell within a coolly calculated scheme for the total elimination of the Orthodox masses, actively or passively resisting their absorption into the Catholic fold. Indeed, it was the premeditated policy of the Catholic Hierarchy, acting on behalf of its true inspirer, the Vatican.
1. See Memorandum on Crimes of Genocide Committed against the Serbian People by the Government of the Independent State of Croatia during World War 11, dated October, 1950, sent to the President of the 5th General Assembly of the United Nations by Adam Pribicevic, President of the Independent Democratic Party of Yugoslavia; Dr. Vladimir Belajcic, former Justice of the Supreme Court of Yugoslavia; and Dr. Branko Miljus, former Minister of Yugoslavia.
2. See also Martyrdom of the Serbs, p. 176.
3. For list of names of Catholic priests who personally committed such crimes, see Martyrdom of the Serbs (p. 176), prepared by the Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese, for the USA and Canada, Palandech's Press, Chicago, 1943. Archbishop Stepinac, had he been willing, could have punished them, with military sanctions, as their military vicar. It is sinisterly significant that the Vatican permitted Stepinac to become military vicar, in October, 1940, before Yugoslavia was invaded. See also Tablet, January 17, 1953.
4. Katolicki Tjednik, No. 35, August 31, 1941.
5. Hrvatski Narod, December 25, 1941; Novi List, November 10, 1942.
6. Filipovic was regarded as abnormal even by many of his Ustashi colleagues. All the cases just quoted are authenticated and can be found in the files of the Yugoslav State Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes.
7. Throughout Yugoslavia only six were left at their posts.
8. These losses include the whole of Yugoslavia. The largest proportion, however, were willfully caused by Catholics in Croatia (figures published in Glasnik, official paper of the Serbian Orthodox Patriarchy, 1951).
9. These are official figures, reputedly on the conservative side. The Serbian Orthodox Patriarchy estimated the killings at 1,200,000.
Chapter 8
THE TRUE INSPIRER, PROMOTER AND EXECUTOR OF THE RELIGIOUS MASSACRES: THE VATICAN
The most ruthless promoters of bloodshed throughout the ages have invariably been religious and political fanaticism. The history of man has proved this to have been true, not only in the past, but, more portentous still, now in the present. Ustashi Croatia is the most frightening instance of modern times. There the identification of Church with State, of civil with religious authority, of spiritual with military ruthlessness, was found to produce individuals who committed barbarities unimagined even by themselves. Cassocks and tonsures have never given moral strength to clergymen nor rendered them immune to human frailty, passion, or vice. The murdering Catholic priests in Croatia were the victims of primitive frenzy. As such, they should be judged more with pity than with execration. Can, however, the master minds in Zagreb and in Rome, calmly exploiting the blind emotionalism and even wickedness of their clerical subordinates, be acquitted from the condemnation which history has already passed on them? Their calculated promotion of the Ustashi terror cannot be either minimized, excused, or condoned. For the mass murders carried out by individuals appareled in clerical garb truly were instigated from the archiepiscopal palaces of the Catholic Hierarchy. That Hierarchy knew, nay, it approved and tacitly encouraged the sanguinary task. Not one single member of their clergy, while the Independent Kingdom of Croatia lasted, was ever called to account by them. Not a single priest was by them ever punished, suspended, or unfrocked. Archbishop Stepinac, or any Catholic Bishop, could have done that at any time, had he been willing, not only when dealing with the most flagrant crimes, but also with minor transgressions—e.g., clerical
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A Catholic priest "converting" a whole village. As a rule this meant collective mass baptism, particularly when villages had been surrounded by Ustashi detachments. The Catholic padres often used shock tactics to speed up matters, e.g., Father Ante Djuric, of the District of Dvor, who always opened his sermons with the following preliminary: The Orthodox of this district have only three ways out: to accept the Catholic faith, to move out (leaving behind them all their possessions), or to be cleansed with the metal broom.... The higher clergy were no less explicit. Witness Bishop Mgr. Aksamovitcb, of Djakovo, who sent the following proclamation to all Orthodox Serbs in his diocese: Up to now I have received into the fold of the Catholic Church several dozens of thousands of Orthodox. Follow the examples of these brothers of yours, send without delay your request for your prompt conversion to Catholicism. By being converted, you will be left in peace in your home.... For those who refused, or rebelled, the alternative was persecution, arrest, concentration camps, or even death.
The Ustashi, after raiding some Orthodox village, as a rule deported the women and children, either to concentration camps or to the nearest convent, where the "heretics" were re-baptized. This task was carried out by "Caritas," a Catholic organization run by the Hierarchy. Very often, however, women and children were massacred with the rest. In the village of Susnjary, for instance, after killing most of the inhabitants, the Ustashi led away about twenty surviving children, whom they tied to the threshold of a barn, which was then set on fire. Most were burned alive. The few who survived, horribly scorched, were then killed. As testified by eye witness Gjordana Friendlender, the Ljubo Milos case. On September 13, 1941, several youngsters were impaled. Girls had their breasts cut and their hands made to pass through them. Many died of starvation or disease in concentration camps ran by priests or monks. In this photograph, the surviving women and children of a raided village near Bosanska, Dudica, are being taken to a camp. (1941) |
fomentation of racial and religious hatred by word of mouth, writing, or deeds. A Catholic priest may not write in the Press without episcopal approval. Canon Law is very specific on this matter. It decrees this: "Any priest who writes articles in daily papers or periodicals without permission of his own Bishop contravenes Canon 1386 of the Code of Canon Law." Yet what happened? Clerical incitements to hate, to convert by force, and to massacre appeared in the ordinary Press without the Bishops uttering a single word of reprimand. They were even printed in the very ecclesiastical Press of the Catholic Hierarchy. Indeed, many bishops became the open advocates of forcible conversion, as proved by Mgr. Aksamovic, Bishop of Drjakovo, who sent the following proclamation to all Orthodox Serbs in his diocese:
Up to now I have received into the fold of the Catholic Church several dozens of thousands of Orthodox. Follow the example of these brothers of yours, and send, without any more delay, your request for your prompt conversion to Catholicism. By being converted to the Catholic Church you will be left in peace in your homes...and you will have ensured the salvation and the immortality of your souls...
Some priests, to their credit, protested openly, declaring that such instructions did not harmonize with the spirit of Christian teaching. Their bishops brought pressure upon them, to compel them to carry out the policy of forcible conversions. This was testified by none less than Bishop Aksamovic's chaplain, Dr. Djuka Maric, at a hearing before Yugoslav authorities:
I and my friend and colleague, Stjepan Bogutovac," said the chaplain, "were forced by our Bishop, Aksamovic, to go as missionaries to the Orthodox towns of Paucje and Cenkovo and to perform there the rituals of re-Christening all the inhabitants within a week's time."
The result was that, in the Bishopric of Djakovo, under the personal leadership of Bishop Aksamovic, there took place one of the biggest mass-conversions of Orthodox in the whole of Croatia.
The responsibility of the head of the Catholic Hierarchy is further demonstrated by the fact that he could have used disciplinary authority, in addition to having at his disposal canonical power. Stepinac, in fact, was not only the Chairman of the Bishops' Conference; he had supreme control over the writing of the entire Catholic Press as Chairman of Catholic Action. Had he been willing to do so, he could have silenced any member of his clergy preaching the extermination of non-Catholics. Further to that, Archbishop Stepinac was invested with civil power, which he could have used, being a fully fledged Member of Parliament. Such power he shared with other prelates, among them: Mgr. Aksamovic, Bishop of Djakovo; Father Irgolitch, of Farkasic; Father Ante Lonacir, of Senj; Father Stjepan Pavunitch, of Koprivnica; Father Juraj Mikan, of Ogulin; Father Matija Politch, of Bakar; Father Toma Severovitch, of Krizevci; Brother Boniface Sipitch, of Tucepa; Franjo Skrinjar, of Djelekovac; Stipe Vucetitch, of Ledenice.
With such authority Stepinac could easily control and direct all the Catholic clergy. Had he been met with open defiance, he could simply apply military sanctions. For Stepinac was not only the highest ecclesiastical authority in the land: he had been created Supreme Military Apostolic Vicar of the Ustashi Army at the beginning of 1942. All priests attached to the Ustashi units were directly under him, as military subordinates. And, as a rule, these were the ones who either incited the soldiers to commit crimes or committed them themselves.
That the Catholic Hierarchy were the veritable promoters of the campaign of forcible conversions is further demonstrated by the fact that forced membership of Catholicism was made legal by governmental decree on May 3, 1941, when the Ustashi Government published a "Law concerning the conversion from one religion to another." Additional measures on this matter followed. For instance, in June, 1941, the Ustashi Prime Minster set up (decree No.11,689) an Office on Religious Affairs, in charge of "all matters pertaining to questions connected with the conversion of the members of the Eastern Orthodox Church." Did Stepinac or the Catholic Hierarchy protest at the decree? Far from it; they whole-heartedly supported the law. In fact, they saw to it that the Department had at its head a priest, that same intimate friend of Pavelic whom we have already encountered, Father Dionizije Juricev. This office came into being following the very private audience with Pius Xll accorded to Pavelic a month earlier. And perhaps of even greater significance is the fact that on June 30, 1941, the Minister of Justice and of Religions sent an official letter to all Catholic bishops, in which the Ustashi Government confirmed what had already been agreed with Archbishop Stepinac—namely, the
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The Bishops and Archbishops of Croatia gave full support to the Ustashi. Indeed, many of them were themselves Ustashi long before Ustashi Croatia came into being, e.g. Dr. Ivan Saric, the Archbishop of Sarajevo, who had been an Ustashi agitator since 1934. Or Mgr. Dionizije, one of the Heads of the Ministry of Cults, dealing with forcible conversions, who was Ante Pavelic's confessor. Others became full fledged members of the Ustashi Parliament, e.g. Mgr. Aksamovic, Bishop of Djakovo. The Hierarchy were the inspirers of the forcible mass conversions. A Committee of Three dealing with them was composed of the Bishop of Senj, the Bishop of Krizevci, Dr. Simrak, and Archbishop Stepinac himself, working in conjunction with the Ustashi Minister of Justice. The whole Hierarchy gave canonical sanction to forcible conversions, following a Bishops' Conference in Zagreb, November 17, 1941. Ante Pavelic's regime stood upon the Hierarchy's unqualified support. Here, he is seen surrounded by the Croatian Bishops and Archbishops during one of their frequent conferences with him.
The Vatican was well informed of what was going on inside Ustashi Croatia. Not only because the Catholic Hierarchy sent the Pope regular reports, but because the Pope had his own personal representative there. The duty of the Papal Legate was to send regular and accurate information on the exertions of the Catholic clergy and Bishops. Also on the political and military doings of the Ustashi Government and of its leaders. Pope Pius XII's representative on the spot was the Papal Legate, Mgr. Marcone, who was accredited to the Ustashi Government and to Pavelic. Mgr. Marcone was minutely briefed on every aspect of the Catholic Hierarchy and the Ustashi collaborators. In fact, he was the spokesman, not only of the Croatian Hierarchy when reporting to the Vatican, but equally of Pius XII when reporting to Archbishop Stepinac and Pavelic. Above, Mgr. Marcone, flanked by Archbishop Stepinac and Nazi-Ustashi officers, at a Ustashi Meeting. |
pursuance of a policy of liquidation of all the most influential strata of the Orthodox population—this to be carried out through refusal to accept them into the Catholic Church. "It is the wish of the Government," said the circular, "that all the priests, teachers, and, in fact, all the intellectuals belonging to the Orthodox Church, in addition to businessmen, industrialists, and the rich peasants, must on no account be accepted into the Catholic Church. Only the poor Orthodox population must be converted."
The fanatical determination of the Catholic Hierarchy to destroy the Orthodox religion at its very roots is demonstrated by their cold-blooded attitude towards the surviving Orthodox children who, unlike their parents, had escaped extermination. All these children were placed in public homes directed by Catholic priests or Catholic sisters, under the auspices of Caritas, the Catholic organization run by the Hierarchy. In many cases they were put in the care of private Catholic families. What was the real objective of such extraordinary Catholic compassion? The implanting into their "lost souls" of "the true faith," as a prerequisite for their bodies being saved. Their religious assimilation was speedy, ruthless, and efficient. Officially converted to Catholicism, re-baptized with Catholic names, growing up in Catholic surroundings, these children, under continuous relentless Catholic pressure quickly lost all contact with their original ethnic and religious group. The inevitable result was that they were soon absorbed into the Catholic fold. Their assimilation was so thorough that even after Pavelic's collapse it became impossible to trace most of them, documents relating to their origin often having been willfully destroyed. Fleeing Ustashi took a number of such children with them to their main country of refuge, the Argentine. Others were taken to Italy. The wholesale kidnapping of Orthodox children was a characteristic feature of the forcible conversion, through terror, of Orthodox adults.
The former Apostolic Administrator and Bishop of Krizevci, Dr. Simrak, like many of his episcopal colleagues, publicly promoted, discussed, and encouraged plans for the whole campaign, and published directives to his clergy in the official Bishopric News of Krizevci, No. 2, 1942. Part of the text reads as follows:
Directive regarding the conversion of the members of the Eastern Orthodox Church in Slavonia, Srijem and Bosnia.
Special offices and church committees must be created immediately for those to be converted.... Let every curate remember that these are historic days for our missions and we must under no circumstances let this opportunity pass.... Now we must show with our work what we have been talking about for centuries in theory. We have done very little until now because....we are afraid of complaints from the people. Every great work has someone opposing it. Our universal mission, the salvation of souls and the greatest glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, is involved in this issue. Our work is legal because it is in accord with official Vatican policy and with the directives of the saintly congregations of the Cardinals for the Eastern Church.[1]
If these extraordinary directives had been issued by one single bishop, or even by several bishops, their significance would have incriminated the Catholic Church beyond excuse. But when it is considered that the Bishop of Krizevci, far from acting on his own, was officially following the instructions promulgated by his own very Primate, then the gravity of such instructions assumes a meaning transcending the deeds of a local Hierarchy and trespassing into fields affecting the most sacred principles of religious liberty of all men. The programme of forcible conversions was given canonic sanction after Stepinac had convened a Bishops' Conference in Zagreb on November 17, 1941—that is, the year before. From that date onward the entire Catholic Hierarchy adopted a programme which was officially followed until the fall of Pavelic. Indeed, the programme which gave hierarchical sanction to the policy of forcible conversions was further strengthened by the actual setting up of a Committee of Three. The task of the holy triumvirate? To promote the policy of the forcible conversions, in conjunction with the Ustashi Minister of Justice and Religion. The names of the Members of the Committee need no comment: the Bishop of Senj, the Apostolic Administrator, Dr. Janko Simrak, and the Archbishop of Zagreb, Mgr. Stepinac. Some of the revealing clauses of the decree read thus:
The Council of Croatian Bishops, at a conference held in Zagreb on the 17th day of December, 1941, upon deliberations in regard to the conversion of Serbians of Orthodox faith to Roman Catholicism, promulgates the following decree:
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The Papal legate (in white), Archbishop Stepinac, Ante Pavelic (in Ustashi uniform) and his wife, at the opening of a home for children at Tuskanac. Pope Pius XII's representative participated in most of the official and semi-official functions of Ustashi Croatia. He was an eyewitness to the promotion of Pavelic and to Stepinac's policies of terrorization and Catholicization of Croatia. He knew of the atrocities and horrors taking place. He watched the progress of the forcible conversions, was aware of the wholehearted participation of the clergy in the wholesale massacre of thousands of Orthodox Serbs. All these things he faithfully reported to Pope Pius XII. In addition, Croatian Bishops wrote dispatches on the Ustashi horrors to the Pope, e.g. Dr. Ujchich, Catholic Archbishop of Belgrade. The purpose of Homes for Children was usually to re-baptize Orthodox orphans and thus convert them to the Catholic Church.
Catholic Religious Orders gave total and continuous support to the Ustashi. Before the establishment of the Independent Stale of Croatia (1941) their convents were hiding places for Ustashi terrorists, concealed Ustashi presses and were depositories of Ustashi subversive literature and even of hand grenades, guns and dynamite. The Ustashi carried out their activities screened by the members of Religious Orders, male and female. Nuns prepared uniforms, emblems and medical equipment for Ustashi detachments. Nuns looked after "poor little orphans," i.e. children whose parents had been murdered by the Ustashi, all of which children were re-baptized into the Catholic Church. In this manner thousands were converted to "the true faith." Hundreds of Catholic nuns became specialized in the "conversion" of the young. In this photograph, Ante Pavelic is shown surrounded by Catholic nuns after one of his visits to a Catholic convent engaged upon the furtherance of the Ustashi Catholicization of Croatia. |
- Concerning the vital question of the conversion of those of Serbian Orthodox faith into Roman Catholicism, the Catholic Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, according to divine right and church canons, retains sole and exclusive jurisdiction in issuing necessary prescriptions for said purpose, consequently, any action from any other but ecclesiastical authority is excluded.
- The Catholic Ecclesiastical Hierarchy has the exclusive right to nominate and appoint missionaries with the object of converting those of the Serbian Orthodox into the Catholic faith. Every missionary shall obtain permission for his spiritual work from the nearest local church authority...
- It is necessary that for conversions to be achieved, a psychological basis should be created among the Serbian Orthodox followers. With this object in view they should be guaranteed not only civil rights, but in particular they should be granted the right of personal freedom and also the right to hold property.[2]
Thereupon the Conference of these holy men released a complementary resolution (No. 253). In this they explained in more detail how certain forcible conversions were to be carried out. Then a second committee, which was directly under the Conference of the Catholic bishops, was set up, with the task of putting into practice the policy of forcible conversions. The list of its five members is significant: Dr. Franjo Hermann, Professor of the Theological Faculty of Zagreb; Dr. Augustin Juretitch, Adviser to the Conference of the Catholic Bishops; Dr. Janko Kalaj, Professor of Religious Education; Dr. Krunoslav Draganovitch, Professor of the Theological Faculty of Zagreb; and Mgr. Nikola Boritch, director of the Administration of the Archbishopric of Zagreb.
When examined without the frills and obscurities of their official phraseology, the various directives issued by these Hierarchical bodies turn out to be but faithful copies of similar instructions repeatedly given for centuries throughout the Christendom of the darkest Middle Ages. For that is what in reality they are. That a Catholic Hierarchy should have been permitted to re-issue them in the middle of the twentieth century is certainly one of the most sinister social phenomena of a civilization in swift decay.
The revival of a policy of forcible conversion assumes an even more portentous significance when one remembers that it occurred with the tacit approval of the Vatican. Had the Vatican disapproved, not a single priest could have taken part in the massacres or forcible conversions. A village priest can act only with the approval of minor Hierarchs who themselves cannot move without the permission of their Bishop, while the Bishop, in his turn, must act according to the instructions of his Archbishop; the Archbishop only on those of the Primate; the Primate on the direct instructions of the Vatican. The Vatican is the personal dominion of the Pope. The Pope being the central pivot of the vast Hierarchical machinery, it follows that the ultimate responsibility for all members of the clergy—or, to be more precise, for the collective action of any given national Hierarchy—rests with him. This cannot be otherwise. For policies of great import must be submitted to him before their promotion by all Hierarchies the world over, the Pope being their sole authority. If the responsibility for the monstrous persecutions rests with the head of the National Hierarchy—i.e. Stepinac—it has automatically to rest also with the Head of the Universal Church, without whose consent the Catholic Hierarchy would not have dared to act—i.e. with Pius XII.
Pius XII could not plead ignorance of what was going on in Croatia by bringing forward the excuse of the obstacles of war. Communication between Rome and Croatia was as easy and as free as in peace-time. From the very beginning of hostilities the Nazi Ambassador at the Vatican was treated as of far greater importance than all the Allied diplomats. In 1940-2 the Vatican was on the most cordial terms with Hitler. Political and religious Ustashi leaders came and went between Rome and Zagreb as freely as did the Germans and Italians, the Ustashi State then being a satellite of Nazi Germany, and hence a province of the Nazi Empire. Moreover, the Pope knew what was happening in Croatia, not only through the Hierarchical administrative machinery, which kept him up to date on all Croatian events, but also through other reliable sources. They were:
(a) The Papal Legate. Pius XII, it should never be forgotten, had a personal representative in Croatia, whose task was to implement Vatican policy and coordinate it with that of Pavelic, as well as reporting on religious and political matters to the Pope himself. The Papal Legate to Croatia was Mgr. Marcone, who openly blessed the Ustashi, publicly gave the Fascist salute, and encouraged Catholics (e.g. when he went to Mostar) to be "faithful to the Holy See, which had helped that same people for centuries against Eastern barbarism"—that is to say, against the Orthodox Church and the Serbs. Thus, the Pope's official representative openly instigated religious persecution, as well as praying for victory "under the leadership of the Head of the State,
Pavelic," against the Yugoslav National Liberation Army in 1944-5.
(b) Cardinal Tiseran, head of the Holy Congregation of Eastern Churches. This congregation's specific task was to deal with Eastern Churches. Cardinal Tiseran received detailed reports of every forcible conversion and massacre in Croatia. Between April and June, 1941, over 100,000 Orthodox Serbs were massacred; yet Cardinal Tiseran, on July 17, 1941, had the audacity to declare that Archbishop Stepinac would now do a great work for the development of Catholicism in "the Independent State of Croatia...where there are such great hopes for the conversion of those who are not of the true faith."
(c) Ante Pavelic, who, by his representative to the Vatican, through whom Pius XII sent "special blessing to the Leader (Pavelic)," forwarded regular reports, at times straight from the Minister of Religions, about the "rapid" progress of the Catholicization of the New Croatia.
(d) Last but not least, Archbishop Stepinac himself, who in person visited Pius XII twice, and who supplied His Holiness with figures of the forcible conversions. In an official document, dated as late as May 8, 1944, His Eminence Archbishop Stepinac, head of the Catholic Hierarchy, in fact, informed the Holy Father that to date "244,000 Orthodox Serbs" had been "converted to the Church of God." [3]
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Monks and Friars were the backbone of the policy of forcible conversions. Many participated in acts of terrorism. E.g. Simic Vjeckoslav, a Monk of the monastery at Knin, who killed dozens of Orthodox with his own hands. Sidoniie Solo, another Monk of the Franciscan monastery in Nasice, deported the Orthodox population of whole villages. The Abbot of the monastery of Gunlic, Father G. Castimir, directed the massacre of hundreds of Orthodox at Glina. Father Dr. Dragutin Kamber, a Jesuit, ordered the killing of about 300 Orthodox in Doboj, and the court martial of 250 others, most of whom were shot. Father Srecko Peric, of the Gorica monastery, on August lit, 1941, personally incited the massacre of more than 5,600 Orthodox in the district of Livno. Friars were Ustashi officers. Others Commandants of Concentration Camps .Above, Ante Pavelic during one of his periodical visits to Franciscan monasteries.
A band of Ustashi robbing the Orthodox Serbs of their possessions before shooting them. This picture was taken near Mount Kozara, in 1942. The Ustashi, prior to executing their prisoners, very often mutilated and tortured. When dealing with Orthodox churches, they kept all the valuables to themselves or shared them with the Catholic Padres. The latter not only accepted the "gifts" but transferred to the Catholic Church the property of the Orthodox parishes. Such property included the baptism registers and all other official and semi-official documents. Catholic padres and the Ustashi asked for money also as a condition for saving the lives of those they converted, e.g. the Catholic priest of Ogulin, Canon Ivan Mikan, who charged 180 diners for each forced conversion. In the Orthodox village of Jasenak alone he collected 80,000 diners. Catholic Monasteries became gorged with Orthodox valuables and goods. Many of these were sent to the Catholic Bishops. |
1. Glasnik krizevacke nadbiskupife, No. 2, 1942.
2. Other clauses of the decree:
3. Such missionaries shall be responsible only to the local church authorities or directly to the local Catholic priests.
4. The Roman Catholic Church will recognize as binding only those conversions which have been made in accordance with these dogmatic principles.
5. Secular authorities shall have no right to annul conversions made by the Church representatives.
6. The Croatian Catholic Bishops constitute a directorium consisting of three persons...they are authorized to consult with the Minister of Religion on all questions relating to necessary and proper procedure....
9. Concerning the rites to be applied in the conversions, the Croatian Roman Catholic Bishops will adopt in full the rule prescribed by the Holy Congregation of the Eastern Church as of July, 1941, and which has been communicated to the President of the Bishops' Council....
10. The Committee of the Croatian Catholic Bishops for conversions will organize courses for those priests who are to act as instruments in the conversions of the Serbian Orthodox into the Catholic Church. In these courses they will receive both theoretical and practical instructions for their work.
3. The authenticity of his reply was personally confirmed by Dr. Grizogono's son, Dr. N. Grizogono, a practicing Catholic. For further details, see Ally Betrayed, by David Martin, 1946. Archbishop Stepinac wrote to Pavelic about the conversion—more than once. See Mgr. Stepinac's long letter to Pavelic on the conversions, first translated and published by Hubert Butler.
Chapter 9
CATHOLIC CAMPAIGN OF DENIAL, SMEAR AND FALSIFICATION
Rumours of the forcible conversions of the Ustashi massacres began to leak out of the Independent Catholic State of Croatia from its earliest stage. At first they received hardly any credence. That people should be killed for their religion could not be accepted in the middle of the 20th Century.
Yet the tales of individual witnesses, when added to the stories of Italian Fascist troops and even Nazi ones, could not be ignored forever. In view also of the fact that many described the Croatian horrors in their letters home, some having even taken "snaps" of the deeds.
When, finally, these could no longer be denied, counterrumors began to circulate to the effect that they were anti-Catholic propaganda, anti-Croat lies. Indeed, even "Gestapo-cooked" inventions. The Croats and their Catholic supporters accused the Nazis, the Communists, the Serbs, and even the Allies, in turn, of having started the atrocity stories.
Since evidence, however, went on accumulating, they were finally compelled to adopt three well defined tactics, which they carried out with simultaneous consistency: (a) the prevention of the arrival of fresh news; (b) the playing down or minimization, and even denial, of what had already become known; and (c) a smear campaign against all and sundry engaged upon telling about events in Croatia.
The intrigues, lies, plots and utter falsification directed to these ends became a grand strategy in themselves. We shall content ourselves with a few characteristic examples, since each is typical of the methods adopted from the very beginning.
In 1941 Dr. Milosh Sekulich, then in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia, was charged with a mission of a military, political and ecclesiastical nature: to take certain important documents to the Allied Headquarters in London. Those who sent him: General Mihailovich, leader of the Chetnik forces, and the Bishops of the Orthodox Church of Serbia.
Having accepted, he undertook the perilous journey, left Yugoslavia and successfully reached Istanbul, Turkey on 27th September, 1941. The exiled Yugoslav Government in London, having been informed of Dr. Sekulich's task, proposed on 6th October, 1941, on the initiative of their Premier, General Simovich, that the trip to London be financed by the Government. In view of the importance of the Doctor's mission, the Premier's motion was unanimously accepted.
Assured of the blessing of the Yugoslav Government, Dr. Sekulich then proceeded to Egypt. From Egypt he went to the Sudan, from there to the Congo, and finally to Lagos. It must be remembered that at this period the Fascist and Nazi armies were in control of North Africa and of the Mediterranean. Once in Lagos, however, he had to stop. The funds had been cut short. What had happened?
A Minister of the Yugoslav Government in charge of Finances, a devout Catholic Croat, had withdrawn the necessary money.
Unable to proceed further, Dr. Sekulich, with his documents, would have to remain in deepest Africa for "the duration." The evidence of the forcible conversions and Catholic massacres in this manner would never reach the Allies. Or, at least, would be greatly delayed.
The Croat's plan almost succeeded. But for the generosity of a Czechoslovak, the Manager of Bata in Lagos.
Dr. Sekulich brought to London two important documents: one hidden in the sole of his shoes and the other sewn into the lining of his suit. (A) A map of Mihailovich's Chetnik Headquarters, (B) two Appeals by the Serbian Orthodox Church, sent first to General Schroeder, Commander-in-Chief of the Nazi occupational forces in Serbia and then to General Dunkelmann, who had replaced General Schroeder. In these two appeals, the Serbian Orthodox Church asked the Nazi Generals to intervene with Ante Pavelic to stop the massacre of the Serbs. The documents began as follows:
"The persecutions of the Orthodox Serbs started from the very beginning of the existence of the Independent State of Croatia... Following the departure of the German and Italian occupying troops (in 1941) persecution, plunder, torture of the Serbs, which until then had been checked, turned into a veritable program, directed at a complete extermination of the Orthodox Serbian people. Catholic Croatian Minister, Dr. Lile Budak, Dr. Milovan Zanic, Dr. Mirko Puk, and the Ustashi leader Dr. Victor Gutic competed against each other to incite the Croatians against the Orthodox Serbs.
"As a result of such policy, thousands of Serbs were taken to concentration camps, Orthodox priests and their families were arrested, the birth, marriages and deaths registers of the Orthodox Church were handed over to the Catholic diocesan authorities, Orthodox Churches were destroyed, monasteries plundered, and the Serbian people forced to abandon their Orthodox religion and adopt Catholicism. We are sorry to have to relate that in all these misdeeds, the Catholic clergy also participated....
"We estimate that, so far (August 8th, 1941), the number of people killed surpasses 180,000....
"One of the first victims of Ustashi terror was Platon, Bishop of Banjaluka, together with the Orthodox Canon Dusan Subotich, of Bosanska Gradishka. They were murdered on the night of 5th-6th June, 1941, on the road between Banjaluka and Kotor Varos. Their bodies were thrown into the river Vrbanja....
"Canon Branko Dobosavljevic, of Vljuna district of Slunj, who was ordered by the Ustashi to dig the grave of his own son, a student.... In the end he, too, was tortured and killed on the same spot. Their killer: Ustashi Ivan Scheifer, a teacher....
"The Orthodox priest, Djordje Bogic, of Nasice, killed 18th June, 1941. Priest Bogic was tied to a tree and tortured. They first cut off his ears, nose and tongue, then pulled off his beard together with the skin. He died only after they ripped open his chest....
"Dusan Brankovic, a Member of Parliament, had his throat cut on 19th June, 1941....
"Dr. Veljko Torbica, who, before being killed near Gracica had his flesh cut into slices and salt put into his wounds....
"Milos Teslitch, a manufacturer of Sisak. His body was washed ashore from the river Sava with his eyes stubbed out, flesh cut off his face, and his whole body covered with knife slashes... The Ustashi photographed themselves with this disfigured body...."The Metropolitan of Zagreb, Dositej, Bishop Nikolaj of Mostar
|
On the left, Bogdanovic, executed by the Communists, beside Disan Brancovic. Brancovic, a Member of Parliament, was executed without even the presence of legality. Prior to his murder, the Ustashi amused themselves by slashing his chest with knives and ultimately scooped his eyes from their sockets. He was a close friend of Dr. Milos Sekulich (third from left), the man whom the Orthodox Church of Serbia charged with taking their appeals and documentation of the Ustashi atrocities to the Allies in London. The Ustashi tortured and executed Members of Parliament, including Orthodox clergy and Bishops. Very often they seized their relatives, whom they sent to concentration camps or forced to become Catholics. The Ustashi persecuted Orthodox personalities even after the collapse of Hitler and of Ustashi Croatia. Going so far even as to terrorize their fellow Croatians abroad by extorting "contributions" from them for the cause and by planting bombs in homes and public places, e.g., West Germany in 1964, Australia in 1965, and the USA in 1967.
One of the most horrifying documents of Ustashi brutality, Milos Teslitch, an Orthodox Serb industrialist, after having been burned in the town of Sisak. One Ustashi is holding the heart of the victim. The photograph was taken as a souvenir by an Ustashi who took part in the execution. Mainly responsible for this notorious crime was Catholic Faget. The Ustashi did not hesitate to crucify their victims, e.g. Luka Avramovitch, former Member of Parliament, and his son, who were both crucified and then burned in their own home in Mliniste, in the district of Glamoc. On the 20th August 1941 the Ustashi took all Orthodox Serbs to the woods of Koprivnica, between Bugojeo and Kupres, and killed the lot. Before the massacre, women had their breasts cut, arms and legs broken. Some men were blinded by way of having their eyes cut with knives. During the night of 31st July/ Ist August 1941, in the town of Prijedor, the Ustashi massacred 1,400 people. The Nazis were so horrified that they occupied the town and compelled the Ustashi to leave. |
and Bishop Sava Trlajic of Plasko, with many of their priests, were all deported... Today there are no longer any Orthodox priests in Croatia, except for those arrested. To realize the seriousness of these measures, it should be remembered that there are eight Orthodox Dioceses in the Independent State of Croatia, with a large number of clergy, all of whom are now missing... In this manner the Serbian people are entirely without their spiritual leaders, left to the mercy of the Ustashi and of the Catholic clergy...."
The Appeals thereupon gave numerous accounts of the crimes committed until then by the Ustashi, some of which we have already examined. Faced by such circumstantial evidence, Catholic propagandists then engaged upon a campaign of vituperation and distortion. They began by saying that Dr. Sekulich was a Gestapo Agent. This, although as soon as he arrived in London Dr. Sekulich had been received by Mr. Leopold Amery, Minister of State for India and right-hand man of Winston Churchill, then British Premier.
At the same time they asserted that the "atrocity stories" were lies. Sava Kosanovich, Yugoslav Minister, declared from the USA "This is the work of Nazi and Fascist propaganda... to which some people have lent themselves as naive accomplices." (November 1941).
Others affirmed that only the Ustashi had committed the crimes. "I repudiate all attempts to associate the Croatian people with Pavelic and his Ustashi," said Catholic Croat Dr. Subavich, Governor of Croatia in exile, "or to accuse them of the massacres which are going on...if they are going on, " he ended. (15th November 1941).
In spite of denials and distortions, the fact remained that the Croatian atrocities had occurred. And no one knew about their authenticity better than the members of the Yugoslav Government. Should they lend their authoritative voice to the Appeals of the Serbian Orthodox Church?
There followed a serious crisis. Croat and Slovene members, all Catholics, threatened the Government with an irreparable split.
At this time it must not be forgotten that the paramount concern of the exiled Government was to remain united. That is, to keep together the three main nationalities—Serbs, Croats and Slovenes—which formed Yugoslavia, and so prevent the disintegration of the Kingdom, while at the same time offering a united front against Hitler.
To avoid a major split, the Government finally decided NOT to publish the news of the massacres. Indeed, to remain silent, and even to deny altogether that they had occurred.
Notwithstanding this decision, however, the news soon leaked out. The News Chronicle published an article about them (3rd January 1942), "180,000 die in Serb Terror. Mass murders of men, women and children are described by the Archbishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church in a document which has reached the Yugoslav Legation in London. It is the most ghastly record of bestiality yet compiled during the present war.... In the village of Korito, the Archbishops records, 163 peasants were tortured, tied into bundles of three and thrown into a pit. Some were found still alive, so the Ustashi threw in bombs to finish them off..."
"...266 bodies are consigned to this pit. Subsequently petrol was poured into it and set alight. More than 600 people were killed in and around Krupa between July 25th and 30th. Most of them had been cut to pieces with knives, axes and scythes. In one place, four Orthodox Serbs were crucified on the doors of their houses, tortured and finally killed with knives," reported the Daily Telegraph (3rd January 1942). "It is suggested that the names (of the criminals) should go before an international court of justice to be set up after the war..."
The Press releases created a sensation. There were protests on both sides of the Atlantic, led by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Catholics set in motion a by-focal campaign of minimization and defamation. One of its most successful promoters was an American Catholic left-winger, of Slovene origin, Louis Adamic. Adamic set out to prove to the American people that the massacres were not true. Or that, if true, they had been rigged. And, last but not least, that the "Chetnik Courier," as he labeled Dr. Sekulich, was a Nazi Agent.
Since Adamic's tactics were universally adopted during and after the war, it might be instructive to glance at them.According to him: "the atrocities were all propaganda...to stir up anti-Catholicism..." However, to give the impression of "impartiality," Adamic eventually explained, in a book entitled My Native Land, how he dealt with the issue.
"What could we do," he wrote, referring to the news of the Croatian horrors. "There just might be some basis for these horrible stories... (note his reluctant admission).... None of our little group in New York could get into occupied Yugoslavia to investigate the facts. The nearest we could get was London.
"The following resume includes facts learned and corroborated," he continued. "Large scale massacres of Serbians in Croatia occurred. But," he commented, "the total number of victims was not anywhere near 180,000 (the lowest figure previously reported). Reliable estimates from inside Yugoslavia were TENS OF THOUSANDS ONLY.
"Secondly, "the massacres were not perpetrated by the Croatian people, but by the Ustashi."
Thirdly, "Yes, Catholic priests converted the Orthodox," Adamic admitted, but "Catholic priests in Croatia accompanied Ustashi murder squads and 'converted' thousands of Orthodox Serbians to Catholicism under the threat of death from Ustashi guns, much as the Spanish padres accompanying the conquistadors 'converted' the Central and South American Indians."
Adamic could not deny the existence of photographs. But no one should believe them, he commented. Here are his words:
Photographs of the massacres existed. I saw them. Some were horrible beyond utterance. There were pictures of vast piles of bodies, of stacked up heads, tubfulls of necklaces of human eyes... But only a few looked authentic...it was clear that most of them were arranged by Gestapo photographers. In two or three pictures, men in the garb of Catholic priests were among Ustashi.
After which Adamic drew his own conclusion:
ALL OR MOST of the pictures," he said, "were taken by Gestapo agents, who turned them over to Serbian Orthodox clergymen... The Orthodox priests reacted just as the Gestapo had expected... They must get this information to the Yugoslav Government in London... The Gestapo helped to arrange this. A Serbian messenger, Dr. Sekulich, got out of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia with a German and a Quisling passport...and gave the photographs, the report of a puppet bishop, and other documents - all Gestapo approved - to the Yugoslav diplomatic officials in Istanbul. The material was then rushed to London by the same courier, Sekulich... British authorities arrested him...as a Nazi Agent...but he was released on the insistence of the Yugoslav Government's inner clique...."The inner clique,'' continued Adamic, "relayed the Gestapo information about the massacres by diplomatic pouch to Fotich in Washington and elsewhere... It also submitted the story to the Bishop (sic) of Canterbury, who reacted just as the clique, and Hitler, desired...." and so on.
Adamic's tactics were too good to be ignored. He was the Catholic spearhead of another Catholic master truth-distorter who was to plague the USA a decade later, Senator Joseph McCarthy. As with Senator McCarthy, so also with Adamic the ponderous Catholic machinery was set in motion to promote the Adamic line.
The Catholic and Catholic-controlled Press and Radio of the U.S.A. and Allied Governments followed suit. Result: the atrocities were minimized, their genuineness questioned when not attributed to anti-Catholic propaganda, and finally they were forgotten. Had the Adamic lobby been confined to that, it would have been bad enough. But it succeeded in preventing the truth from reaching quarters with sufficient authority to prevent the prolongation of the situation, e.g. the President of the USA. For Adamic and his supporters had, indeed, managed to get the ear of President Roosevelt himself.
The insidiousness of the Adamic technique can be judged by the fact that Adamic was eventually to give account to Dr. Sekulich in court. Another wrongly accused victim: Winston Churchill. Adamic's book, Dinner at the White House, (to quote the Law Report, January 15th, 1947, High Court of Justice) "purported to be a description of a dinner party given at the White House by the late President Roosevelt, at which Mr. Winston Churchill, then Prime Minister, and the author were present. With this dinner as the starting point, the book proceeded to a criticism of both Mr. Churchill personally . . . and of his actions and supposed policy in relation to the war..."
In this book Mr. Adamic insinuated that "the motives of the British Policy in Greece were at least partly linked to the fact that Hambro's Bank of London, the chief British creditors of Greece (getting up to 17 per cent on their loans) had bailed Winston Churchill out of bankruptcy in 1912...."A grosser libel upon a public man holding the high position which Mr. Churchill held is difficult to conceive... But the reflection made upon his solvency is as nothing to the suggestion that in his capacity of Prime Minister he had allowed his private feelings and his private interests to sway and influence the policy and conduct of public affairs by the Government of which he was the head, and especially in regard to operations of war in which blood was shed." [1]
Churchill, like Sekulich, issued a writ for libel action. Four years later, in 1951, Mr. Adamic was shot dead in Milford, USA. The reality of the Catholic massacres and forcible conversions remained hazy to many people: not only because of their incredible nature, but also because of the Catholic lobby. The present author himself for some years remained skeptical about them. Used as he was to the saturation technique of war propaganda (being, at that time, employed in the Intelligence and Political Warfare of the Allies' war machine), even after meeting Dr. Sekulich he accepted the Croatian atrocities with skepticism. It took some years before finally he became convinced of their veracity. During this time he contacted Yugoslavs of all classes. From General Mirkovich, the man who caused the overthrow of the Yugoslav Government when the latter signed a pact with Hitler and thus brought his country into the Allies' camp (1941) to the humblest manual worker.
Not content with this, the author personally interrogated numerous Orthodox Serbs, and even Catholic Croats, who had been eyewitnesses of the Ustashi massacres. Indeed, he even met victims who had escaped them. In addition to which, on the 20th May 1951, Dr. Sekulich, General Mirkovich and he held a special meeting in London. This was attended by victims of the Ustashi residing in England, from whom further documentation was received. All authenticated with names, dates and places.A typical case was that related by a survivor of the Ustashi, Vojislav Zivanic (father, Duko; brother, Bogoljub), from Dukovsko, before witnesses and under oath, which we have already mentioned elsewhere. In June 1943 an Ustashi contingent, passing through the village of Zijimet, rounded up seventy-four villagers, put them into a shed, and set this on fire. Among the victims were the aunt of the eyewitness and her two children. This man lost twenty-five members of his family, all burned alive.
The author of this book was not the only doubter of the Croatian nightmare. Thousands of others shared his skepticism. The result of the insidious Catholic brainwashing propaganda, promoted by Catholics who had adopted Adamic's techniques. An early victim was an illustrious personage who, because of her status and that of her husband, gave added significance to the damage which the Catholic Adamic falsifications of history worked in responsible places. Not long after Mr. Winston Churchill took Adamic to Court (1947), the present author, at a private dinner party in Upper Brook Street, Mayfair, London, met Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of the late American President. Since, at this period, the author was engaged upon his inquiries concerning the authenticity of the Ustashi, he asked Mrs. Roosevelt whether she had ever heard of them.
One of the worst, if not the worse, crimes of the war, was her prompt reply. I heard of them in the winter of 1941-2. Neither I nor my husband at first believed them to be true.
"I did not believe them either," the present author commented. I assumed them to be propaganda."
We thought the same, replied Mrs. Roosevelt. "The Catholic lobby was the most successful at the White House for years."
Had she ever heard of an American author, L. Adamic? She had. One of the many who had persuaded her husband that the atrocity stories from Croatia had been concocted by the Nazi propaganda machine. Could she explain why these Catholic atrocities were not as well known as the Nazi ones? Nazi Germany is no more," replied Mrs. Roosevelt. "The Catholic Church is still here with us. More powerful than ever. With her own Press and the World Press at her bidding. Anything published about the atrocities in the future will not be believed...."The present author thereupon told her he was writing a book about them."Your book might convince a few," she commented. "But what about the hundreds of millions already brainwashed by Catholic propaganda?" A few years later, in 1953, when the book was eventually published, although two editions were sold within weeks, no part of the British or American Press dared even to mention it.
The Yugoslav Government bought a few thousand copies, which were distributed free to the members of the House of Commons and House of Lords. Apart from a massive silence from both Houses, the only comments to reach the author were "utter nonsense," "rubbish" and "things of the past." And "even if true, why revive them now?" Mrs. Roosevelt had been right.[2]
During 1942, however, news of the massacres finally reached the outside world. And while the majority of Catholics denied or minimized them, not a few condemned them, e.g. Dr. Ivan Chok, a Catholic Slovene, who on 15th March 1942 ended a broadcast by saying "the long arm of justice will surely reach the guilty ones, to punish them mercilessly."Another Slovene, Dr. Kuhar, a Catholic priest, in the Catholic Herald, 20th February 1942, and in the Catholic Times, 22nd February 1942, repudiated the Croatian methods of forcible conversion. "We as Catholics...have the right and have the duty to condemn with all our might any conversion to our faith by force," he wrote. Dr. Vilder, a Croat and a Catholic, during a broadcast condemned not only the atrocities but also those who tacitly encouraged them. "Orthodox people are being forcibly converted to Catholicism, and yet we do not hear one single word of protest from Archbishop Stepinac," he said (16th March 1942). Another Catholic Croat, Mr. Jerich, who escaped from Yugoslavia, issued a declaration jointly with a Dalmatian Croat, Mate Ruskovich (23rd July 1943): "We protest against mass massacre and forced Catholicization of Serbian Orthodox population...."
Catholics and non-Catholics alike not only protested, but addressed themselves to the Catholic authorities, both in Croatia and in Rome. Their protests, however, fell upon deaf ears. While Archbishop Stepinac and Pope Pius Xll went on giving ever more frequent thanks to a merciful God for the increasing number of forcible conversions, additional protesting voices began to be heard with mounting insistence within and without Croatia. The sneers of those who at first had regarded the news as a crude form of anti-Catholic propaganda, as reliable information began to leak out ceased and gave way, first to astonishment and then to horror. Appeals were made to Stepinac, the Pope and the Allies from all over Europe. Not only from Serbs, who had every reason for letting the world know, but also from Catholics, who could not accept such a bloody degradation of their religion. Some lodged horrified protests with Archbishop Stepinac, and, indeed, direct with the Vatican. Perhaps one of the most outstanding was that written by Prvislav Grizogono.
Grizogono was a Minister of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, a Croat, and a devout Catholic. Yet nothing could more eloquently indict his Church than his letter, the words of which were most carefully considered and scrupulously weighed:"
Your Grace: I write this to you as man to man, as a Christian to a Christian. Since the first day of the Independent Croatian State the Serbs have been massacred (in Gospich, Gudovac, Bos. Krajina, etc.) and this massacring has continued to this day.
He follows with a detailed enumeration of some of the crimes perpetrated. After which he concludes:"
Why do I write this to you? Here is why: In all these unprecedented crimes, worse than pagan our Catholic Church has also participated in two ways. First, a large number of priests, clerics, friars and organized Catholic youth actively participated in all these crimes, but more terrible even Catholic priests became camp and group commanders, and as such ordered or tolerated the horrible tortures, murders and massacres of a baptized people. None of this could have been done without the permission of their Bishops, and if it was done, they should have been brought to the Ecclesiastical Court and unfrocked. Since this did not happen, then ostensibly the Bishops gave their consent by acquiescence at least. The Catholic Church has used all means to Catholicize forcibly the remaining Serbs... The province of Stem is covered with the leaflets of Bishop Aksamovitch, printed in his own printing shop at Djakovo. He calls upon the Serbs, through these leaflets, to save their lives and property, recommending the Catholic faith to them.' What will happen to us Croats if the impression is formed that we participated in all these crimes to the finish? Again it is the duty of the Church to raise its voice: first because it is a Church of Christ; second because it is powerful. I write to you this, about such terrible crimes, to save my soul, and I leave it to you to find a way to save yours.
Signed, Prvislav Grizogono, former Minister of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. At Zemun, February 8, 1941.
Not content with that, Dr. Grizogono dispatched another letter to the Catholic Archbishop of Belgrade, Dr. Ujchich, who seemed sympathetic to his request. In it the Catholic former Minister of Yugoslavia begged the Archbishop to ask the Pope to order the Catholic Hierarchy to stop the mounting Ustashi terror by the prompt enforcement of ecclesiastical discipline and, if necessary the use of papal authority. Did the Archbishop of Belgrade state that the persecutions were pure fabrications or, at least, were grossly exaggerated? The Archbishop denied nothing. In fact, by his reply he confirmed their authenticity. Indeed, he disclosed that he was fully conversant with what was then happening. Here is what he wrote to Dr. Grizogono:
I thank you for your letter. The information about the massacres we have already received from many different sources. I have forwarded everything to the Vatican, and I believe that everything possible will be done. [3]
The outcries of the civilized world echoed as vainly in the halls of the Catholic Hierarchy as in those of the Vatican. The saintly Pope and the worthy Archbishop were mute. Their silence cost the lives of 850,000 men, women and children, the bloodiest religious massacre of the century. Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum—Such evil deeds could religion inspire.
1. The Times, London, January 16, 1947, Law Report, January 15, 1947, High Court of Justice.
2. Terror over Yugoslavia, Watts, London, 1953.
3. The authenticity of his reply was personally confirmed by Dr. Grizogono's son, Dr. N. Grizogono, a practicing Catholic. For further details, see Ally Betrayed, by David Martin, 1946. Archbishop Stepinac wrote to Pavelich about the conversions—More than once. See Mgr. Stepinac's long letter to Pavelich on the conversions, first translated and published by Hubert Butler.
Chapter 10
THE POPE, STEPINAC AND PAVELIC TRY TO SAVE CROATIA
As in the darkest Middle Ages, so also now the Catholic Church firmly believes that the ruthless brandishing of the Catholic sword is the surest way of saving the souls of men. This, not so much to confer on them eternal bliss, as to further the Church militant—that is, her expanding dominion on earth. Archbishop Stepinac and Pope Pius XII, therefore, let the terror in sealed Croatia take its course to the very end. Indeed, far from ever attempting to curtail it, they kept it alive, until the Kingdom tumbled with the fall of Fascism.
And yet before the echoes of the dictators ceased to be heard the Vatican suddenly appeared by the side of the victors, in a stealthy attempt to save moribund Fascism wherever it could.
Following consultations with Rome, Archbishop Stepinac and Ante Pavelic set in motion a joint plan to prevent their model State from crumbling as Fascist Europe was doing all around them. This consisted of:
(a) preventing the Yugoslav Government from scattering the Ustashi armies;
(b) persuading the Allies to occupy Yugoslavia, so as to prevent the Central Government from taking over the Independent Catholic State of Croatia.
The two set out with desperate determination to implement their new policy, sustained by the belief that the Vatican would use its influence among the big Powers to save them. While waiting, however, they began to reorganize the Ustashi armies, with the specific objectives of (a) preventing the collapse of Ustashi Croatia, and (b) of resisting and possibly destroying the new Central Yugoslav Government.
To the latter, such stubborn hostility was of the utmost seriousness, as at that period it was busily engaged in cleansing the country of resisting pockets of Nazi troops. The fight it had simultaneously to maintain against the Ustashi bands, therefore, put a considerable additional strain on the new Central Government. This was rendered even graver by the fact that in the international sphere Yugoslavia was considered a pawn for the already quarreling victorious great Powers, each of which was ready to negotiate with anyone, in or outside that country, to advance its own projects.
Stepinac and Pavelic did all they could to see that Yugoslavia might be occupied by the "right" Allies—that is to say, by those willing to strike a deal with the Vatican for continued "independence" of Croatia. The true nature of their exertions can best be gauged if it is remembered that since 1941 Yugoslavia had been one of the Allies herself. Stepinac and Pavelic approached the Supreme Allied Command for the Mediterranean, and duly submitted a memorandum, openly outlining their policy: indeed, asking specifically for a prompt Allied occupation of the whole country. Anglo-American armies should be dispatched with speed, they said. Ustashi troops would welcome them, and more would join them. The "right" Allies must not lose another day. Civil war had broken out all over Yugoslavia. They must intervene.
Having invoked the guns of the "right" Allies, the good Archbishop set out to use the spiritual guns of the Church. On March, 24, 1945, he summoned his own bishops to a conference. Result: the blatant use of the spiritual authority of the Church for the promotion of political and military designs. Stepinac, backed by most of the bishops, issued a pastoral letter. After duly praising Ante Pavelic, their lordships attacked the Yugoslav National Liberation movement with all the pious venom of which they were capable. Thereupon they ordered all Croats to help the Ustashi bands to fight the Yugoslav troops. Only thus they thought would Ustashi Croatia survive.
As the situation worsened it became necessary to take another step. Following hasty consultations with the Vatican shortly before the total disintegration, Ante Pavelic asked a trusted friend to take hold of the reins of Ustashi Government. His name? Archbishop Stepinac.[1] It was a shrewd move. A last desperate attempt to unite the Ustashi State into a truly compact unit. Stepinac—or rather the Vatican, which had inspired it—had fancied that, once the spiritual, political, and military forces of the State were centralized in the head of the Catholic Hierarchy, the Archbishop's authority would delay the disintegration of the State—indeed, by strengthening its fabric, might even prevent its collapse, and thus enable Vatican diplomacy in the meantime to exert its growing pressure on certain Allies, until these consented to save the Ustashi State from obliteration.
The move neither stopped the swiftly advancing Yugoslav Army nor saved from total collapse the fast-tumbling European Fascism. The Ustashi State had been doomed long before Stepinac tried to save it. In a losing battle to prevent its inevitable fate, Pavelic and his bloody bands, months before, had unloosed such a reign of terror as almost to surpass the previous ferocity. People were hanged, executed, or liquidated as hostages on the slightest suspicion.
To take the city of Zagreb and its immediate environs, in the course of only seven months (From August, 1944, to February, 1945) 379 hostages were publicly hanged. On August 7, 1944, between the villages of Precec and Ostrono, ten persons were hanged; on August 26, at Jablanac, near Zapresic, thirty-six persons; on September 30, on the railway between the stations of Pusca Bistra and Luka, ten persons; on October 4, at St. Ivan, twenty-nine persons; on October 5, again at Zapresic, five persons; on October 6, at Cucerje, twenty persons; on October 9, at Velika Gorica, thirteen persons; on October 28, at Djurinac, twenty persons; on the same day at Sveta Nedjelja, near Samobor, eighteen persons; on December 1, at Brezovica, ten persons; on December 20, at Odra, thirteen persons; on December 28, at Krusljevo Selo, fifty persons; on January 4, 1945, at Zitnjak, twenty-five persons; on January 25, at Konscina, forty persons; on February 3, again at Zitnjak, ten persons; on February 10, at Remetinac, thirty persons; on February 13, at Vrapce, twenty persons; on February 22, again at Vrapce, another twenty persons.
Notwithstanding all this, the end approached fast. Within a few days, Zagreb, the Croatian capital, was liberated. The Ustashi tried to save what they could. At the end of April, 1945, Pavelic, with the full consent of Stepinac, ordered the burial, in the Franciscan monastery in Zagreb Cathedral city, the Capitol, of thirty-six chests of plundered gold and valuables—rings, jewelry, gold watches, gold dentures, gold fillings which had been wrenched from the jaws of victims whom the Ustashi had massacred—and about two truckloads of silver. Then, when the collapse was complete, having entrusted to the care of Stepinac himself their most important documents, [2] the Ustashi ran for their lives. Some were executed. Many escaped. Pavelic fled to Austria, where he was made a prisoner by the American forces near Salzburg. While preparations for his official trial were well on their way, a "mysterious intervention" stopped the proceedings. Why! Pavelic was released unconditionally. Pius XII, through Stepinac and the Archbishop of Salzburg, had seen to it that his protégé did not suffer the fate of many other war criminals who were hanged. Pavelic, rendered immune by the powerful papal protection, traveled to Italy and found it in the Vatican City, where he waited for easier times.
After a while, to avoid scandal, the Pope, now a pillar of the victorious democracies, required Pavelic to quit Rome. Pavelic went from one monastery to another in monkish disguise under various aliases, Father Benares, or Father Gomez.
Meanwhile in Croatia—Stepinac, in accord with the Holy Father, continued his ominous preparations for war. The Ustashi, instead of disbanding, became guerrillas. They were, as in olden times, to fight in the hills and woods of "occupied Croatia." Their new enemy: the Central Government of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, which had replaced the Yugoslav kingdom. Their new terrorist activities were to be cloaked again in innocent-sounding religious organizations. The old name of "The Crusaders" was adopted. After clandestinely meeting with the Ustashi Chief of Police in September, 1945, Stepinac summoned another Bishops' Conference in Zagreb. Once more their Graces, claiming to be men of peace, incited to war. In a pastoral letter they asked the people in so many unctuous words to rise and overthrow the Government.
Before such battle orders were issued, a flag, a symbol of the great holy army of the Ustashi, was consecrated to the Ustashi Crusaders' forces. Where did the ceremony take place? In Stepinac's chapel. On November 8, 1945, the good Archbishop received an agent who brought from Salzburg the "Pledge of Ustashi intellectuals"—to fight the Yugoslav Government till the end "for the liberation of the Croatian people."
The pledges of the surviving Ustashi, the activities of Archbishop Stepinac, were no shadow of resistance, but concrete and real. Stepinac employed dangerous, ruthless individuals. To cite only one, the former Ustashi Chief of Police. This individual launched a programme of sabotage and of assassination of the officials of the New Yugoslav Republic, with the Archbishop's approval. Stepinac furthermore established contact with the scattered armed bands of the Ustashi, directing priests and monks to act as liaison with them. These holy men traveled all over the country, keeping the illegal Crusader groups in communication with one another. They zealously reported their position, strength, and equipment to Stepinac in Zagreb. The Archiepiscopal Headquarters saw to it that such reports reached the Vatican, which, as a genuine champion of all democracies, forwarded them to the USA.[3]
The chain—Ustashi, Stepinac, Vatican, USA—was not merely a clandestine news agency. It was something more: a bait to induce certain Allied forces to promote a timely military intervention against Yugoslavia. For, indeed, Stepinac and his illegal bands based their hope of ultimate success upon that. The Vatican, far from counseling moderation, encouraged the Ustashi resistance, and added continual fuel to their burning hopes with repeated assurances of forthcoming military intervention. The Allies would come to their help. They must hold on, as the international situation was bound to change in their favour. The Western Powers were going to turn against their recent ally, Soviet Russia. A war of liberation was in preparation. Once that had begun, Yugoslavia would be wiped out, and Ustashi Croatia would spring again to the fore. The Ustashi guerrillas talked of nothing else. Stepinac saw to it that their expectations were maintained at the highest level, lest their enthusiasm change to despair, and thus cause the total collapse of organized military resistance.
To this effect, the prestige and authority of religion were once more unscrupulously employed. "The Fathers"—that is, the various Catholic padres whom the Archbishopric of Zagreb had duly attached to the illegal terroristic Ustashi bands—went from hideout to hideout, encouraging the impatient Ustashi troops to endure a little longer. The British and Americans were just coming. But they must be patient, as, naturally, to plan a good military expedition took time. The assurances of the Catholic padres were repeated day in and day out, until they became a refrain for the Ustashi loops, expecting "the day" as, simultaneously, their day of deliverance and the new birthday of a more glorious Ustashi Croatia. This was not merely the conviction of the underground Ustashi formations or that of the priests. It was that of Stepinac himself, sure that once the Allies intervened, the Ustashi would be given help by the peasants, who "one day will rise."[4]
The Archbishop, however, was not content only with wiping out Yugoslavia as a political unit in order to ensure the resurgence of a new Catholic Croatia. He was allured by visions of superb grandeur—nothing less than that an Allied intervention would be a stepping-stone leading them to Belgrade and, then, to Moscow. The issue, according to conservative forecasting, rested on conventional military weapons. Stepinac, however, although a Catholic Archbishop, was a man of progressive ideas. He believed in the power of scientific achievements, such as the recently discovered atomic energy. The atom bombs dropped without a warning on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had in a few seconds blotted out of existence 100,000 men, women, and children. Catholic Providence had not given the Christian West atomic bombs for nothing. It was the duty of the Western Allies to use them. Stepinac was a logical man. If he had used the Ustashi to impose Catholicism upon the Serb Orthodox, it was perfectly natural for him to look "upon the West to use its atomic power to impose Western civilization on Moscow and Belgrade, before it is too late."
The ruthlessness of such advocacy was typically Catholic. Christianity (that is, Catholicism) could be—indeed, had to be—imposed upon those rejecting Christian civilization, and, failing persuasion, this must be done by force. Such Catholic reasoning had made Ustashi Croatia possible; the same Catholic reasoning now had begun looking on wider horizons, to make a new Ustashi regime of a whole Continent.
Was that the personal whim of Archbishop Stepinac? It was the basic Catholic policy emanating directly from the Vatican. This was proved only three years later (1949) when another pillar of the Catholic Church—i.e. Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungary—having planned to overthrow the Hungarian Government, reckoned on the military intervention of the "right" kind of Allies. Such intervention would have meant general war, and hence the use of atomic bombs. Cardinal Mindszenty had acted on the assumption that the overthrow of the Hungarian Government, with the consequent "restoration of the Hungarian Catholic Monarchy of Hapsburg in its place, could be achieved with help from abroad...in case a new world war created such a situation," to quote his own words.[5] "I regarded it (the outbreak of the third world war) as a basis," said the Cardinal. Mindszenty could well think and act in this fashion, in the comforting knowledge that behind him stood the Vatican, bent upon furthering its vast political schemes, on the assumption of a third world conflict. Vatican political post-war designs had precisely that "as a basis."
Are these speculations? Actions speak louder than words. Pius XII at this same period was not idle. He held talks with prominent military leaders of the "right" Allies upon whom first Stepinac and then Mindszenty had counted so much. British and, above all, American generals came and went in endless procession to and from His Holiness. To give one typical example: On one single day in June, 1949, Pius XII received five USA generals in successive audiences; General Mark Clark, wartime Commander of the U.S. Fifth Army in Italy, and subsequently Commander in the Korean war; Lieut.-General J. Cannon, Commanding General of the U.S. Air Force in Europe; Major-General Robert Douglass, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Armed Forces in Europe; Major-General Maxwell Taylor, Deputy Commander, European Command; and Lieut.-General Geoffrey Keyes, Commanding General of the U.S. forces in Austria.[6] All these went to see, not the self-styled papal Prince of Peace; they went to talk with the Pope, like them, a man of war.[7]
With the Vatican as a busy center of vast war designs, it was inevitable that some of its dignitaries in various countries should become its political reflections or spokesmen. Archbishops and Cardinals consequently spoke and acted on the assumption of war, and hence the use of atomic bombs. The Vatican, which within an astonishingly brief period had developed the most intimate relations with certain malign forces in the USA, was not merely indulging in wishful thinking when it passed on such information to its emissaries abroad. It informed them of what was going on behind the scenes in certain quarters. That this was a most sinister, incredible reality was demonstrated to a stunned world the following year. On August 27, 1950, Mr. Francis Matthews, during a speech in Boston, called upon the United States to become the first aggressor for peace. [8] In plain words, to launch a third world conflict. That is, to initiate an atomic war. Mr. Francis Matthews was neither a crank nor an irresponsible citizen. He was a powerful man in the American Government: none other than the Secretary of the American Navy. But Mr. Matthews was also something which at this juncture was perhaps even more ominous. He was a fanatical Catholic, honoured many times for his services to Catholic welfare work; and, more than that, Mr. Matthews had been the head of the most villainous Catholic organization in the whole of the USA—that is, the Knights of Columbus. And, as if that were not sufficient, he was nothing less than a secret Papal Chamberlain of Pope Pius XII.
With individuals so highly placed, the Vatican could not help being so well-informed of what was brewing in certain quarters preparing to be the first aggressors for peace. The information it passed to the Servants of the Church, therefore, moulded the policies of bishops and Cardinals, such as Stepinac and Mindszenty, playing the complicated Vatican game on the chessboard of postwar Europe. The declarations of secret Papal Chamberlains, of Cardinals, and of Archbishops, consequently, far from being the personal opinions of individuals, were the expression of hopes and policies entertained at the source which, as early as 1946, had already inspired all the main schemes and beliefs of Stepinac—namely, the Vatican.
1. This was done ten days before the final collapse.
2. Ustashi Ministers left their belongings in Stepinac's care. Minister Alajbegovic, later extradited by Anglo-American authorities and condemned to death by Zagreb on June 7, 1947, for instance, buried the files of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Archbishop's palace, while Pavelic himself had all the phonograph records of his own speeches carefully concealed among the files of Archbishop Stepinac's Spiritual Board in Zagreb.
3. Very often it was the other way round. This was openly admitted by American diplomats. For a frank appraisal of this American Vatican intelligence traffic, see Lying in State (published 1952), the Memoirs of Mr. Stanton Griffis, who was U.S. Ambassador in Warsaw in 1947 and 1948. In it Mr. Griffis describes how he transmitted letters from Polish bishops to the Vatican, giving the names of the Church's representatives, to whom he also handed sums of dollars, although the illegal possession of dollars was then considered a capital offense.
4. Stepinac's statement to a British liaison officer. See New Statesman & Nation, London, October 26, 1946.
5. For more details, see the author's Catholic Imperialism and World Freedom (Watts), Chapter 20, "The Spectacular Case of Cardinal Mindszenty."
6. See announcement in Osservatore Romano, also Universe, June 10, 1949.
7. For more details of the Vatican's activities with the USA. at this period, see the author's Catholic Imperialism and World Freedom (Watts), Chapter 4, "Papal Promotion of Contemporary Religious Superstition for Political Purposes."
8. See The Times, London, August 28, 1950. Also the New York Times.
Chapter 11
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH PREPARES FOR THE FUTURE
It is the duty of any State, independently of its religious or ideological nature, to defend itself when threatened by domestic or external enemies. The Central Government of Yugoslavia, aware of Archbishop Stepinac's activities, past and present, could not continue to watch them indefinitely and aloof. Sooner or later, it had to consider steps to end them.
If the Government had had to deal with a simple political or military leader, the solution would have been ready at hand. But here the issue was complicated by the fact that a political leader was also the head of the Catholic Hierarchy. His arrest would raise complex religious repercussions at Rome, and therefore practically throughout the Western world.
The Yugoslav Government decided to solve the problem tactfully, by removing Stepinac, without raising the religious hornet's nest issue. To that end, it approached Pius Xll, demanding the Archbishop's withdrawal from Zagreb. The Vatican, true to its reputation as a master of Sibylline moves, in October, 1945, charged an American in Yugoslavia, Bishop J.P. Hurley, of Florida, at that time acting as the Vatican Apostolic Nuncio there, to investigate the case and report on it direct to the Pope.
Bishop Hurley made extensive inquiries and wrote a comprehensive memorandum, which was speedily sent to Pius XII. Pius XII read it, mused upon it, and then decided to proceed as already planned with regard to Stepinac. Hurley's findings were promptly pigeonholed, and never heard of again.
The Yugoslav Government waited. As the head of the Government himself testified, "waited four months without receiving any reply."[1]
The Vatican was silent because Pius XII planned a war of his own, in which Stepinac was to play a very prominent role. It was the beginning of a psychological papal cold war. In this war religion would be used as the main instrument, directed at stirring up emotional hatred for political ends. Stepinac had to be sacrificed to the requirements of Catholic world diplomacy.[2] Having embarked on this course, the Vatican first contacted, not the waiting Yugoslav Government, but Archbishop Stepinac, whom it ordered to carry on.
When the War Crimes Commission, which, meanwhile, was collecting documentation on war criminals, produced its evidence concerning the head of the Catholic Hierarchy, and presented it to the Yugoslav Government, the latter, after further vain attempts with the Vatican, decided to act. On September 18, 1946, Archbishop Stepinac was arrested. The utmost care was taken that the trial should be fair, in view of the fact that it was certain to raise all kinds of religious and political complications within and outside Yugoslavia. Although only about one-third of the Yugoslav population is Catholic, the Government saw to it that all the officials at the trial were Croatian Catholics. The world Press was invited to attend, which it did. On October 11, 1946, after a ten days' hearing, the Court—composed, it should be remembered, of Catholics—sentenced Archbishop Stepinac to sixteen years imprisonment.
The Vatican uttered a cry of horror, instantly amplified a thousandfold by the Catholic Hierarchies, Catholic agencies, and Catholic Press the world over. Pope Pius Xll ordered the excommunication of all those who had taken part in the trial, from Tito himself down to the last official connected in any way with Stepinac's indictment. All received a solemn Catholic guarantee of eternal damnation in genuine Catholic brimstone and inextinguishable infernal fire. The thing was made even more fearsome by a papal afterthought, which promised the personal attention of Lucifer himself on all those so excommunicated. The Prince of Devils would torture all the unChristian persecutors of the Archbishop during eons without end. Papal authority had decreed so. Amen.
Had such authority been exercised only in hell, it would have worried fewer Christians than is generally believed. Infernal candidates must first emigrate to the next world, and no case has as yet been authenticated of anybody dying because of the scorching effect of the spiritual papal bolts. With millions of the living, however, this same papal authority is neither problematic nor fictitious. It is real, widespread, and dangerous. It can tap vast sources of power at will, whether to help its friends and allies or to dismay its enemies. Last but not least, it can engender the darkest currents of religious and political emotionalism, to control and use the deceived masses of Catholics and non-Catholics alike to further its own interests. The case of Stepinac once more strikingly demonstrated this.
The Pope set in motion the vast machinery of Catholic propaganda, which in no time flooded the world with such mountainous distortions and such plain dishonesty as to shame the most deceitful of all the devils in hell. Overnight Stepinac, the authoritarian leader, the political plotter, the politician, the promoter of the forcible conversions, the tolerator and indirect instigator of the Ustashi massacres, was made to appear as Stepinac the defender of true democracy, the most holy Archbishop, the courageous champion of religious freedom, the persecuted and the martyr. Millions accepted the Catholic version. The result was that soon large sections of the Western world, who until then had not even bothered with the whole thing, hailed Stepinac as the pitiful victim of anti-Christian barbarism.
The lay Press followed suit, exalting Stepinac as the champion of Christianity fighting the powers of darkness. Religious and political leaders joined in the chorus. Foreign Offices, heads of States, and, indeed, whole Governments of Catholic and non-Catholic lands sent official protests against "such unheard-of religious persecution." Questions were heatedly asked in the British House of Commons, in the French, Italian, and Belgian Chambers of Deputies, in the American House of Representatives and Senate. In the USA. President Truman was subjected to a tremendous pressure to force him to intervene on behalf of the "martyred Stepinac." A worldwide movement was set up to induce the United Nations to come to the rescue of a man who had defended all the religious and civil liberties for which the United Nations was said to stand.
The emotional mass distortion engineered by the master minds at the Vatican soon began to yield its poisonous harvest, not so much in the religious realm as where it was potentially a thousandfold more dangerous: that is, in the political field.
At this period, it must be remembered, the Cold War was still in its earliest stage. The blind emotionalism engendered by the trial and its aftermath was used to widen the growing gap between the Russian Dominated Communist and the American-led capitalist worlds.
Soviet Russia slowed down its demobilization and kept a large standing land army on a war footing. The USA pushed ahead its war preparations to such an extent that, after the Stepinac trial had taken place, it had already spent the colossal sum of almost one billion dollars on stock-piling.[3] By 1947 the military forces of the world numbered 19 million, and were maintained at an annual cost of 27,000 million dollars. This, less than two years after the fall of Hitler. From then onward military expenditure rocketed to astronomical figures. By the time that Yugoslavia—who, meanwhile, owing to ideological developments, had leaned towards the West—partially set Archbishop Stepinac free (winter 1951-2) and Stepinac, from Archbishop, became a Cardinal (1953), the world had been split asunder.[4]
The American factories were made to hum, while the American Air Force, Army, and Navy were posted throughout the world in main strategic places, ready to strike. Colossal expenditures for war were voted by the American Administration—e.g. 129,000 million dollars, voted by Congress within less than two years (1950-2) for military armaments and constructions.[5] By early 1953 in Europe alone the USA. had already built more than a hundred airfields, many specially equipped for atomic operations, as defensive-offensive bases against Russia.[6]
In Communist Russia preparations of the same magnitude as a defensive-offensive war policy were carried out, with impetus to match their Western counterparts. Within a few brief years from the end of the Second World War billions of roubles were appropriated for military purposes. In no time, while Soviet Russia became the arsenal of the East, the USA became the arsenal of the West, and its most powerful political military leader. The nations of the world, although not yet out of the second world massacre, made ready for the oncoming third. Politicians, generals, heads of governments, spoke of atomic wars. Armies reassembled, ready to march. A bloody rehearsal of another global slaughter, in imitation of the Spanish Civil War of 1939, where the USA ideologically hostile armies rehearsed a small conflict to be ready for a big one, was staged in Korea in the summer of 1950.
A gigantic armaments race undermined the economy of whole nations, thus rendering war between the two mighty Eastern and Western blocs not so much probable as inevitable.
While the increasingly powerful militaries asked for ever more colossal appropriations, from Vatican Hill came unctuous slogans for peace mingled with veiled threats, invocations to religion, and sanctimonious condemnations of the "atheistic enemies of Christianity." In cynical betrayal of the masses of honest, humble believers, the Vatican was plotting feverishly in the political-diplomatic fields to further its designs. Then one day, above all this, voices were heard—the official voices of the reorganized bands of Ustashi, calling to their members not to scatter, as the hour when they, the Catholic Ustashi of Croatia, would fight side by side with the democratic defenders of Western civilization was fast approaching. The glorious battalions of the Ustashi had to make ready. But while they were willing to fight for world liberty, they had to prepare to do so only in the name of Catholic Croatia, in Catholic units, and under the Croatian flag. No Ustashi, therefore, was permitted to join a foreign army. The appeal of the resuscitated terrorist bands—with the headquarters in the USA.—ran thus:
Headquarters of the V. assembly of Croatian Armed Forces, having jurisdiction over all subjects of the Croatian Armed Forces (Hr or Sn) living on the territory of the European States. It has been learned that some persons, unauthorized, are endeavouring to persuade individuals to enlist in foreign armies. By the order of the Supreme Command of all Croatian Armed Forces, all subjects living in any European State be notified that no individual person is authorized for such activity, nor is it permitted enlisting in foreign armies in any capacity, without a special authorized permit. The Supreme Command of all the Croatian Armed forces will call its forces to arm against Bolshevism when the time arrives to fight side by side with other anti-Communistic nations, under our own flag and within our Croatian army formations.
Headquarters V. Assembly,
General Drinyanin, August, 1950.[7]
These were noble words. The words of an idealist longing for liberty to prevail on earth. Many acclaimed the new defenders of freedom. In certain quarters, however, they knew better. For General Drinyanin was the alias of former Chief Commandant of all the terrible Catholic concentration camps of Croatia, the leader of the bloody "Ustashi Defense" formations responsible for the massacre of 200,000 prisoners in the camps of Jasenovac, the "protector" of all the jackbooted or soutaned monsters who, a few short years before, had been engaged in the forcible conversions to Catholicism, under the aegis of Stepinac, now Cardinal.
While the Ustashi, protected in the Western Hemisphere, were sounding a new trumpet-call from the north, their leader, Ante Pavelic, was busy in the south on the same type of activity on which he had been engaged prior to the Second World War. For Pavelic had in 1948, thanks again to Vatican help, managed to leave Europe. Supplied with false documents given in Rome on an international Red Cross passport, he went to another Catholic country harbouring Nazi leaders: [8] the Argentine.[9]
The false passport which had brought him to safety was furnished by another Catholic priest, a former Ustashi, Father Draganovic, residing in Rome. Priest Draganovic, to make sure that the former Chief should reach the Argentine safely, accompanied him personally as far as Buenos Aires. There he briefed certain high Argentine Hierarchs, after which he duly returned to Rome (end of 1949). Priest Draganovic had acted not only as a zealous Catholic, as a priest and as an Ustashi, but also as the representative of the Vatican, which was concerned with the future of a man, Ante Pavelic, and of an idea, ruthless Ustashi-ism, both of which, because they had succeeded in establishing a model Catholic State once, might succeed in reestablishing it in a future which was, perhaps, not far ahead.
Pavelic at once became active. Most of his meetings were held in Catholic parish halls in Buenos Aires. Catholic priests and friars participated in them—e.g. at the meeting held on February 5, 1951, five Catholic friars attended.[10] The majority of these meetings and similar activities were organized by priests, prominent among them the Ustashi Catholic Padre, the Rev. Mato Luketa. [11] Pavelic took to the Argentine three things:
(a) Papal blessing, as good an introduction to the Argentine Hierarchy, and hence to the Government, as any;
(b) loot from Croatia;[12]
(c) the Ustashi programme.
While some of his lieutenants kept Ustashi-ism alive in the USA and in Europe, Pavelic set about coordinating it in the Argentine. Meetings were held, papers were published, Ustashi abroad were organized. In 1949 Pavelic established the Hrvatska Drzavotvorna Stranka. In that same year he held six large meetings of the Ustashi, most of them in parish halls such as the Catholic Croat Parish Hall on Avenida Belgrano. Pavelic counseled that "all honest Croats in exile should belong" to his movement. Thereupon he instructed them all not to take Argentine nationality, so that they would be able to leave the country without any hindrance.
Pavelic talked of war and of blood. The titles of his articles told their tale: The Ideological War (La Guerra Ideologica),'[13] and The Call of Blood, the latter being an introduction to the proclamation of the resurrected Party. The basis of Pavelic's new policy was war. Like another pillar of political Catholicism before him—i.e. Cardinal Mindszenty—so also Pavelic hoped for the outbreak of the Third World War. "War will soon break out," he foretold on May 13, 1949, "and then the liberation of Croatia will come."
The next year, as we have already seen, the United States Secretary of the Navy, the secret Chamberlain of the Pope, shocked the world by openly asking the USA to start a "preventive atomic war" against Russia, in order to "liberate" the people of the earth.
The Republican platform adopted in Chicago (July, 1952), after demanding an end to "the negative futile and immoral policy of containment, which abandons countless human beings to a despotism and godless terrorism," [14] asked for a policy directed at the specific promotion of sabotage, raising of resistance movements, industrial disturbances, and, last but not least, the establishment of émigré governments.
The American people went to the polls (November 4, 1952) and sent to power the Republican Party. With few exceptions unbounded rejoicing greeted the Republican victory throughout the Catholic world. The Pope himself, on hearing that General Eisenhower had been elected President, hastened to send by cable his "divine blessing upon yourself and your administration,"15 Pavelic, in the Argentine, asked all the Ustashi to hail the Republican triumph. Ustashi priests gave special thanksgivings in South and North America, as well as in Europe. Te Deums were sung. Divine Providence was again coming to the rescue. It had sent into power an American Government which was determined to create "political task forces" to free "captive" countries. Indeed, to establish "émigré governments." Were not the reorganized Ustashi a "political task force?" Was not Catholic Croatia a "captive" country? Nobody could deny that Pavelic's new Ustashi Government was an "émigré government." For truly, Pavelic had set up a new Ustashi Government. The New Ustashi Government had in fact been officially established by him in 1951, in the Argentine. Its religious and political programme had not changed an iota from that of the old Ustashi dictatorship.With the Republican Administration in the White House, with a General determined on a strong foreign policy as President, with a Soviet Russia preparing ruthless counter-measures, the world continued to move faster and faster towards catastrophe. Fanatical groups prepared and waited for "the day." That is, for the outbreak of a third world war, when the establishment of "émigré governments" would take place, among them the New Government of Croatia, ruled by the Ustashi and the Church.
Ante Pavelic in South America, General Drinyanin in the USA, Father Draganovic in Rome, like hundreds of Catholic priests, friars, and laymen everywhere, had begun once more, as before the Second World War, to pray and work for World War III, so that they might be enabled again to bring "freedom"—namely, to unloose their reign of terror upon a newly devastated Croatia.To such depths can the ideal of Liberty be made to sink.
1. In the words of Marshal Tito:
When the Pope's representative to our Government, Bishop Hurley, paid me his first visit, I raised the question of Stepinac. "Have him transferred from Yugoslavia, I said, for otherwise we shall be obliged to place him under arrest. We waited four months without receiving any reply.
Tito, Zagreb, October 31,1946.
2. This was later confirmed by Stepinac himself, when, during an interview with C.L. Sulzberger, of the New York Times, having been told that Marshal Tito was willing to set him free or to transfer him to a monastery, Stepinac replied that "whether or not I shall resume my office, whether I go to a monastery or whether I remain here (in prison) depends only upon the Holy Father. Such things do not depend upon Marshal Tito. They depend only upon the Holy Father, the Pope, and upon no one else." See also Universe, November 17, 1950. This policy subsequently led to the breaking of Yugoslav/Vatican diplomatic relations (December 18, 1952) prior to and after Stepinac being made a Cardinal (January, 1953) and the projected visit of Marshal Tito to Britain in 1953. In an attempt to embarrass the British Government and the United Nations, the British Hierarchy attacked the Marshal as a persecutor of Catholics. At the same time an effort was made to whitewash Stepinac. Articles with these aims appeared in the Tablet and were reprinted in pamphlet form by the Sword of the Spirit. These efforts would have been comic, if the British public had not been ready to believe them.
3. The USA began war preparations less than one year after Hitler's death (1945). These consisted of stockpiling essential raw materials, a 100 percent war measure. On July 23, 1946, the USA passed Public Law 520 of the 79th Congress, approved by both Houses, for this purpose. The combined stock-piling in 1946 stood already at 4,536,000,000 dollars. From 1946 to 1950, before the Korean war began in June, the USA stockpile stood at 8,300,000,000 dollars. No figures were available from the USSR.
4. Owing to the split of Communist Yugoslavia from Soviet Russia, Yugoslavia became financially and militarily partially dependent upon the USA. American loans were asked for and granted. Tito himself publicly acknowledged that Yugoslavia had received over 1,000 million dollars' worth of aid from the West (Marshal Tito, Belgrade, March 16, 1952). The Vatican attempted to influence the negotiations, via Catholic pressure in the USA, putting as a condition the unconditional release of Archbishop Stepinac.
5. See The Times, London, November 10, 1952.
6. Officially disclosed by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Paris, November 25, 1952. This did not include the many bases in Britain, North Africa, Greece, and Turkey.See The Times London, Manchester Guardian, November 26, 1952, New York Times, and other papers.
7. Published in the Ustashi paper, Danitza, Chicago, ILL., No. 13, IX, 1950.
8. Franco's Catholic Spain, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, gave asylum to numerous Nazi leaders and war criminals—e.g. Dr. Schacht, Hitler's Finance Minister; Otto Skorzeny, the SS Agent who rescued Mussolini in 1943; Von Papen, Vice Chancellor under Chancellor Hitler in 1933. It is noteworthy that Catholic Von Papen, like many Ustashi leaders, used a religious smoke to carry out renewed Nazi intrigues for the revival of European Fascism, e.g. when ostensibly a private participant in the Eucharistic Congress in Barcelona, he had lengthy private interviews with General Franco (May, 1952). See Nazi plot in West Germany, 1953, et sequitur, The Times, etc.
9. Pavelic reached Buenos Aires on November 6, 1948, on the Italian passenger ship, s.s. Sestiere, under the name of Dal Aranyos. His ticket was No. 16. The Argentine Legation in Rome knew his real identity very well. It had repeatedly been pressed by the Vatican authorities to grant Pavelic a visa. The Argentine Co-ordination Federal, the counter-espionage police, had also been informed in advance of his identity.
10. Intelligence reports, files of the Yugoslav Government. "Pavelic, Dr. Ante - Some Biographical Notes and Activities since 1945."
11. This priest served in the Catholic Church in Avenida Belgrano, No. 1151, Buenos Aires. See the Yugoslav Government's official indictment of Ante Pavelic.
12. Consisting of twelve chests of gold and one chest of jewelry. This according to the official statement of the Yugoslav Government in its indictment of Ante Pavelic.
13. Dinamica Social, Nos. 5 and 6, 1951.
14. See Manchester Guardian, July 22, 1952.
15. Wire sent by Pope Pius XII to General Eisenhower, to which the President-elect replied: "Profoundly grateful to Your Holiness for your blessing and expression of goodwill." See Universe, November 14, 1952.
Chapter 12
THE VATICAN AND THE USA AS THE DEFENDERS OF THE FASCIST CRIMINALS OF WORLD WAR TWO
The Vatican, as the open protectors of Fascist Nazi Croatia and other extreme right-wing dictatorships of Europe, with the collapse of the Fascist World, became the secretive helper of those who were buried under the ruins of the Hitlerian Empire.
After the main actors of the Nazi regime, following the Nuremberg Trial, were executed by the victorious Allies, thousands of minor war criminals took cover under the protective wings of the Catholic Church.
Many sought refuge, literally in convents, monasteries, seminaries or other religious and semi-religious institutions. Catholic authorities acted mostly in the name of "Christian" charity or on humanitarian grounds, as many of them had already done with the Jews, when these were persecuted by the Nazis.
Others, however helped the fleeing war criminals, for purely ideological motives. Amongst these not only heads of Catholic institutions, but also Bishops, and indeed even Cardinals. Because of the latter, many important war criminals, those who had prominently assisted the Vatican to set up the Catholic satrapies of Croatia or Slovakia, were welcomed within the walls of Vatican City itself.
The result of such "hospitality" was that in no time Vatican City became overcrowded with "guests" whose main concern appeared to be not piety, but an obvious anxiety to avoid identification. Thanks to the tacit cooperation of the Vatican authorities, the "guests" obtained practical immunity from any official or semi-official investigation. Even then, curiosity of newsmen or of nosey anti-Fascist organizations and individuals, were carefully avoided and successfully shunned.
The Vatican campaign of protective secretiveness was maintained, owing to the fact that Vatican City was considered a sovereign state. This was also due to the fact that many of the victorious Allies did not wish to antagonize the Pope, whose notorious past had become part of recent history in his relationship with the Nazi regime.
The immunity given by the Vatican offered the best hope for many war criminals, who had been officially branded as such, from falling into the hands of the Allies. Since the protection of the Vatican offered the best guarantee of avoiding arrest and prosecution, the number of those seeking protection augmented until the secretive corridors of the Vatican could no longer contain them.
Many therefore were given Roman abodes or were placed with Catholic families where they could live undetected; protected as they were by the discretion of their hosts, all pious Catholics, or if not pious, at least eager for the money thus paid them by clergy charged with their welfare.
The discreet patronage of the local parishes and busy monsignori going to and from the Vatican offices, and the even more discreet mobilization of Catholic institutes, soon accommodated very large numbers of "refugees" feverishly seeking concealment.
Vatican City meanwhile became a veritable beehive of bureaucratic operations, mostly centered upon paperwork. Birth certificates, visas, passports, and similar other such documentations were manufactured, prepared, and delivered with professional efficiency.
Even more important such documents were "activated" with such proficiency as to defy the most scrupulous scrutiny on the part of any over-zealous official at the sundry frontiers of the victorious Allies.
The efficiency of such false documents astonished the authorities and the Allies themselves. It soon became an industry, even outside the Vatican walls. The explanation of course was a simple one.
First of all the Allies, or rather certain departments of the Allies, had issued discreet instructions that certain passports, even if of a suspicious nature, should not be over-scrutinized. The instructions were tacitly followed. This resulted in thousands of minor officially branded war criminals escaping the official net.
Thousands managed to flee to the South American Republics, to Australia and even to the USA itself. The influx of "wanted refugees" in those countries became such a controversial issue that it affected the relationship of various Allied governments when it became obvious that there had been put in operation a general policy directed at saving fleeing war criminals from Europe.
The suspicions had been anything but baseless. The policy had been made to operate since the collapse of Nazi Germany. And, curiously enough, it had been conceived by none other than certain sections of the USA Intelligence. The CIA at that time did not yet exist, but the equivalent of its predecessor did; certain elements within were already making preparation for a forthcoming war against the Soviet Union. Hence the discreet help to potential recruits for a potential USA-Allies invasion of the Russian provinces, as we shall see presently.
The success of the joint policies of the Vatican and the USA, directed at the concealment and escape of thousands of war criminals, was due also the fact that secretive gates had been created across the frontiers, with that specific purpose. Frontier officials had been briefed with the task of "detecting and protecting" individuals holding "specific" documents; that is false papers, visas and sundry documents, beginning with phony passports.
These, if and when recognized as false by officials not in the know, were made to become "positive." In other words, certain officials were authorized to accept them as "officially" genuine, thus permitting their holders to enter into the various countries of destination which included the USA.
Such general travesty would have been impossible had it been left exclusively to the various "false documentation" factories of Europe, beginning with those based in Italy, starting with that of the Vatican.
Chapter 13
THE MAFIA, THE VATICAN AND THE USA. WHY THEY ENLISTED WAR CRIMINALS, STALIN AND ONE-THIRD OF EUROPE
One of the major agencies connected with the operation was the Mafia. The Mafia had been revitalized by the USA, even before the Allies invaded Sicily. The USA in fact "recruited" the Mafia altogether into the U.S. Army. It became part and parcel of the USA command. Mafiosi became the principal strategists of the inexpert Americans.
The Mafiosi exploited the Americans with the cunning of Sicilian foxes and the alertness of keen businessmen, ready for any opportunity to make money. They "advised" American officers who knew nothing about local or Italian politics, making them commit blunders of the greatest magnitude.
The "Mafiosi" never let a golden opportunity to make money pass. Once they heard of the passports and visa factories, they entered into the field with a vengeance. Their expertise in the subtle art of falsification was second to none. They worked for the Vatican and even for the USA itself.
Thanks to the protection of the USA and their historical cunning, the Mafia eventually prospered to such an extent that in the process it built itself into the mighty Mafia Empire of the future, which spanned the Atlantic for decades to come.
It had political results of far reaching importance for Italy itself. It helped mightily to render Sicily a semi-autonomous island where the Mafia ruled supreme, affecting Rome and the Italian Administration, including Italian foreign policy. The relationship of the Mafia with the Vatican remained very closed during many years, not only after the war but also during the war itself. Indeed, the Mafia, on more than one occasion, acted as a fairy god-mother for the Vatican. The most striking case was when it helped the Vatican transfer tons of pure silver from Naples to Rome to avoid the Germans melting it down, to pay for expenses of the German occupation.
The present author, who during the war had been broadcasting daily to the partisans, advising them to harass the Germans who were then in Italy, went to Naples in 1975 and visited the cathedral. There he was struck by an altar, seemingly made of what appeared to be pure solid silver. Upon asking whether that was so, he was told by the altar's guardian that it was solid silver. The tons of silver, the man then explained, had been saved from the Germans then occupying Naples, thanks to the Mafia. To the present author's stupefaction, the individual then told a tale.
The Vatican, having heard rumours to the effect that the Germans, then occupying Italy, had made plans to melt down the silver of the altar of St. Januarius to pay for their occupation of southern Italy, contacted the Mafia and asked for their cooperation. The Mafia, whose members besides being keen businessmen are also immensely religious, accepted the Vatican's proposal with pious alacrity. Since they were cooperating with the Germans in sundry secret operations, they were permitted by the latter to transport their wares, food, black-market items and the like, to the North, that is to Rome. The result was that the silver of the altar was transported in Mafia lorries to the very entrance of the Vatican where it was safely deposited.
The present author made inquiries as to the veracity of the story. (During the war he had made many broadcasts about the Germans having experimented with the "liquification" of the blood of the Saint which, according to the Catholic Church is a "miracle." This is taken as such by the Neapolitan populace. The latter, take it as a good omen if the "miracle" occurs; as a bad one if the "blood" does not become liquid.)
He discovered that the Mafia, true to its reputation, had worked for all three employers, the Germans, the Vatican and the USA, simultaneously. A masterpiece of "international cooperation."
The recruitment of the Mafia would have been reprehensible on the part of both the USA and the Vatican, had it not been for the fact that both wished to help the flight of war criminals from Europe, each with its own objectives.
Whereas the USA wanted to rescue them to carry out political operations against Soviet Russia and the oncoming Cold War, the Vatican, while thinking upon the same lines, had been motivated by an additional objective. Namely to help former political and religious supporters whom it had blessed during, the reign of terror under the Nazi imperium. The Vatican protective attitudes had been prompted not only by seemingly Christian charity, but also by the consolidation of its newly born secret alliance with Washington.
The basic motivation of such strange Vatican-USA fellowship, which at first sight seemed to be a most improbable partnership, would have appeared incomprehensible, had not the motivation of both been taken into account. Their joint motivations were derived by the necessity of their part to recruit, as energetically and as quickly as possible, trustworthy anti-Russian, anti-Communist battalions ready to fight against Bolshevik Russia. And where could the Vatican and the State Department find such ready, dedicated, anti-Communist recruits, if not in the rank and file of the defeated anti-Communists of Europe, namely in the fleeing war criminals now seeking asylum in the Americas and the USA? Had they and their comrades not attacked, occupied and almost defeated the Russian hordes, almost single handed, while America wa