Neo-Nazism In Croatia/ Obsession With Historical Paradox

Over 60,000 fans celebrating Croatia's Nazi past with a Hitler style hand salutes - "Sieg Heils". Many children in Croatia are raised in Ustashe tradition. Neo-Nazism in Croatia is scarcely, if at all, restricted by the law - as of year 2004, and Croatia silently allows people to use symbols of the Independent State of Croatia and Ustaše freely. Since gaining independence, Croatia has often been accused of ignoring its dark past and erasing evidence of former Fascist and Nazi crimes. In one prominent case, Zagreb's "Square of Victims of Fascism" was renamed the "The Square of The Great Men of Croatia", provoking widespread criticism of Croatia's attitude toward the Holocaust. Many streets have been renamed after prominent Ustasha figures such as Mile Budak, which provoked outrage in the Serbian minority, that still numbered 12% in 1991. despite of WWII genocide.The memory of the Ustasha genocide was still very vivid when Croatia started secession from SFRY, and Serbs in Croatia were frightened from the new developments. Croatia has no laws against historical revisionism and holocaust denial, nor does it regard denazification as a major priority. Unlike Germany and Austria, Croatia places no restrictions on the exhibition of Nazi and Ustaše symbols. Although prohibitions existed under the Communist regime of Yugoslavia, they disappeared with Croatian independence in 1992, and public display of such symbols is now relatively common, if controversial. To their modern supporters, the Ustaše are considered to have been merely victims of the Bleiburg massacre and there have even been proposals by President Tudjman to rebury them together with victims of Jasenovac concentration camp as a sign of national reconciliation, although it should be noted that Croatian partisans were only a very small proportion of casualties at Jasenovac.Croatian Serbs, whose cousins died in the Jasenovac concentration camp and other concentration camps in Croatia, were insulted by such proposals. The resurgence of the Ustaše movement in present-day Croatia is partly due to the financial support of Ustaše emigration to HDZ during the 1990s. That resurgence is today publicly visible even at the Croatian government level. An attempt was made to bring to the justice Nada Sakic who was a guardian at the Stara Gradiska concentration camp; her cruelty towards the prisoners is reflected in diverse testimonies that were the basis for her extradition in in November 1998 to Croatia - where she was held until her release. Croatian government granted her Croatian citizenship. Mrs. Sakic, then 72, was never even indicted by the Croatian authorities. The Croatian government falsely claimed that no evidence or witnesses exist to indict Mrs. Sakic. However, the New York based Jasenovac Research Institute was in contact with Survivors living in Yugoslavia who had given eyewitness testimony to Mrs. Sakic's crimes at Stara Gradishka (part of the Jasenovac camps). At the First International Conference on Jasenovac in New York City in 1997 one of these Survivors, Mara Vejnovic, gave an eyewitness account of Nada Sakic's activities as a death camp commander. Proving the existence of a ready audience for fascist thought in Croatia, Mein Kampf was published and sold in the year of 1999 - in the number more than 600 copies in hardback within days at the remarkable price of 500 kuna (75 dollars each) - roughly equivalent to a week's average salary here. That time German foreign minister Joschka Fischer was prompted to press his Croatian opposite number Mate Granic to have Hitler's book banned in Croatia. In 1999 a suit was filed at a court in San Franciso against the Vatican Bank (Institute for Religious Works) and against the Franciscan order, the Croatian Liberation Movement (the Ustashe), the National Bank of Switzerland and others. The suit was filed by Jewish, Ukrainian, Serb and Roma survivors, as well as relatives of victims and various organizations that together represent 300,000 World War II victims. The plaintiffs demanded accounting and restitution. One of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs is Jonathan Levy. "Many of the plaintiffs have been reluctant to be pictured, after all these years," says Levy. "Many are still terrified of the Ustashe, the Serbs particularly. Unlike the Nazi Party, the Ustashe still exist and have a party headquarters in Zagreb." In protests, supporters of Ante Gotovina and other suspected war criminals often carry nationalist symbols and pictures of Ante Pavelic. Among children, black Ustaše uniforms are now more commonly seen in Croatia than are those of the Young Pioneers. Public appearance of the Ustashe veterans seen in Zadar are tepidly condemned by some newspapers. Singing infamous Jasenovac i Gradiska Stara song which glorifies Ustashe and their genocide over Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies is popular even among schoolchildren and treated more like as yelling or screaming in public.

Channel: News & Politics
Uploaded: November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am
Author: matrixECS

Length: 00:24
Rating: 4.07
Views: 7639

Tags: Croatia  Fascists  Germany  History  Hitler  Jasenovac  Krajina  Murder  Nazis  NDH  Sadistic  Serbian  Ustasa  Ustasha  Ustashi  WW2  

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