Aloysius Stepanic - to canonise or not to canonise - that is the question

Aloysius Viktor Stepinac (1898-1960)

Saint, martyr, collaborator, conspirator, antisemite or …?

Aloysius Stepinac has been a source of controversy for over 70 years.  Depending on who one listens to, or what one reads about this man, he has been either praised as a fearless bishop who defended to the best of his ability the Jews of Croatia who were slated for death by the Ustase; a Catholic martyr who gave his life in defence of the faith in the face of Communism; a pro-Ustase Croatian nationalist who was silent as Pavelic’s regime perpetrated some of the most horrible crimes against Jews, Orthodox Christian Serbs, Roma and more than a few of his fellow Croats.

The historical record is not clear.  There are sources from both sides that point to Stepinac’s protests at the murder of the Jews; but there is more documentation that demonstrates his intense dislike of Orthodox Christianity, a tacit approval of forced conversion, and, above all, the most significant historical fact of his relationship with the Ustase regime until the end of the so-called “Independent State of Croatia” in 1945. 

Stepinac’s defenders cite verified documentary evidence of the archbishop’s protests, but none are able to satisfactorily explain why he did not break with the Ustase once the enormity of their genocidal criminal actions became clear – which was virtually from day one of the regime’s life in 1941.  Attempts to explain his alliance with Pavelic as a way of mitigating the evils perpetrated are simply threadbare and hold no weight.  Further, arguments that Stepinac sought help from Pius XII are likewise weak, if only because Pius XII insisted on playing a diplomatic cat and mouse game with a regime he abhorred but considered a lesser evil to a communist alternative.  Even by the standards of the day – in the middle of a war – this logic was brutal and appalling. 

If Metropolitan Andrej Sheptysky of Lviv in the Ukraine who very quickly realized the German intentions towards the Jews and other “undesirables” could not only order his clergy and religious to open their doors to take in those fleeing for their lives but write forcefully to Hitler, Himmler and then the Pope protesting as strongly as he could denouncing the slaughter of the Jews and the enslavement of Ukraine begs the question why Stepinac could not have done the same? 

And while it is true that the murderers were, for the most part, fellow Croats not Germans, was it not the archbishop’s duty to speak the truth – “You shall not murder”?  And could he not speak to his fellow bishops, the clergy, religious orders and the Catholic people a word in the same way that bishops in France and Holland did?

After the war Stepinac was put on trial by the new communist regime charged as a collaborator and sentenced to life imprisonment.  After five years he was released to house arrest in his home parish of Krasic where he remained until his death in 1960. 

Pope John Paul II believed Stepinac was a martyr for the faith and declared him “Blessed” in 1998.  Catholic tradition allows a person to be beatified without the customary miracle if they are believed to have been a martyr.  In his homily the Pope said of Stepinac:

One of the outstanding figures of the Catholic Church, having endured in his own body and his own spirit the atrocities of the Communist system, is now entrusted to the memory of his fellow countrymen with the radiant badge of martyrdom.

Nothing was mentioned about the war years.

The cause for canonization proceeded slowly gaining pace under Benedict XVI.  By 2012 it appeared that canonization would indeed take place, a decision that was confirmed in early 2014.  The Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Irenij wrote a letter to Benedict asking that the canonization be halted until such time as all the evidence relating to Stepinac was studied.  A reply was received from Cardinal Bertone that made it clear that the matter was an internal Catholic affair, leading some to believe that Benedict did not see the letter.  Undaunted and with growing concern voiced by Serbs, Patriarch Irenij wrote again on 30 April 2014 to Pope Francis. 

In his letter to Pope Francis Patriarch Irenij wrote:

We are afraid that there are too many open questions and wounds which Cardinal Stepinac symbolizes. His canonization, to our great regret, would return the relations between Serbs and Croats, as well as between Catholics and Orthodox faithful, back to their tragic history… We ask you to remove the question of the canonization of Cardinal Stepinac from the agenda, and to leave it to the infallible judgment of God.

This time the reply was much different.  The canonization process was stopped in April 2016 on direction of Pope Francis.

Reactions from some Croatians were not positive, but the Archbishop of Zagreb showed pastoral restraint and welcomed the opportunity for a joint study of Stepinac’s life.  One of the most balanced articles was the short piece in the Jerusalem Post written by Drago Pilsel who argues convincingly that Francis’ decision was a sound and prudent choice.

An Orthodox delegation from Serbia met with Vatican officials to begin a conversation.  This led to the formation of a commission under the Presidency of Fr Bernard Ardura, president of the Pontifical Committee of Historical Sciences. 

The commission was made up of equal representatives from the Catholic Church in Croatia and the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Members of the Catholic Church of Croatia: Cardinal Josip Bozanić, archbishop of Zagabria; Bishop Ratko Perić of Mostar-Duvno; Bishop Antun Škorčević of Požega; Dr. Jure Krišto, Croatian Institute for History; Dr. Mario Jareb, Croatian Committee for Historical Sciences.

Members of the Serbian Orthodox Church: His Eminence Amfilohije, Metropolitan of Montenegro and of the Littoral; His Eminence Porfirije, Metropolitan of Zagabria and Ljubljana; Bishop Irinej of Novi Sad and of Bačka; Bishop Jovan of Slavonia, Professor Darko Tanasković, ambassador and permanent delegate of the Republic of Serbia at UNESCO.

The first meeting of the Commission met over 12-13 July 2016 in Rome.  The mandate of the Commission is to clarify questions about Stepanic’s life that is to be done as a joint “re-reading” of the evidence.  The Commission is not an alternative canonisation process; the original cause remains a matter for the Holy See.

Both sides said the meetings were positive and respectful.  The next meeting will be in Zagreb on 17-18 October 2016.

Whatever the outcome will be, this shared re-evaluation of documentation is a positive step not only in sound history and historiography, but for Catholic and Orthodox Christians it is a valuable and precious opportunity to grow in understanding of one another.  For Catholic Christians the need to understand the deep hurt that still resonates in many parts of Orthodoxy over the past is essential.  For Orthodox Christians the need to come to a more full appreciation of the diversity of Catholicism and the attempts at reform of the institution are also necessary. 

Jovan Culibrk "Historiography of the Holocaust in Yugoslavia"

Last night I was honoured to launch "Historiography of the Holocaust in Yugoslavia" by my colleague and friend, Bishop Jovan Culibrk of Slavonia.  I met Jovan in 2009 when I participated in a Yad Vashem sponsored seminar on Pope Pius XII.  Fr Jovan, as he was then, was a wonderfully hospitable host while I was in Jerusalem and I have valued his friendship.  Now as a bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church he is in a position to be a voice of historical scholarship for the preservation and memorialisation of those who died in Yugoslavia during the war especially the Jews and Serbs who perished at the hands of the Ustase and their collaborators.  Jovan is a man of towering intellect who knows Balkan history intimately, who knows the history of the Shoah and who likewise has a sound grasp on Catholic-Orthodox relations.  

There was a near-full house at the Sydney Jewish Museum including several Holocaust survivors who were born in Bosnia and Serbia.  They were enthusiastic in the welcome of the bishop.  Also present were many Serbian Orthodox Christians, including clergy and a considerable number of young people.  The Serbian Consul General also attended.

Jovan's reputation as a scholar of the Holocaust and modern Yugoslav / Balkan history places him in a unique position.  As part of his determination to ensure due honour and respect is given to those who died he invited the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew, to visit Slavonia, and come to the site of the Jasenovac concentration camp in September this year.  Bartholomew came.

He was recently appointed a member of the Vatican-Serbian-Croatian Commission to study the life of the controversial Archbishop of Zagreb, Aloysius Stepanic (1898-1960).  I will post an entry on Stepanic after this one.

This the transcript of what I said last night.

Jovan Culibrk (2014) Historiography of the Holocaust in Yugoslavia, Belgrade

I acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation as the first peoples of this land upon which we gather, and I pay my respects to Elders past and present and to any Aboriginal people present this evening.

I also wish Shanah Tova to everyone here tonight, may you be sealed in the Book of Life and may it go well over the fast.

29 September – feast of the Archangels Michael, Raphael and Gabriel – Latin Rite

21 November – Serbian Orthodox; patron of the Cathedral in Belgrade

In 1991 a student at my school who was not in my class asked to sit in one of my classes.  I was teaching the Arab-Israeli conflict at the time.  I asked why he wanted to "sit in"?  He said he wanted to listen and learn.  However, very early into the first lesson he began asking questions about the truthfulness of the historical record – questions about the veracity of Zionism and its claims for a Jewish homeland; the integrity of Theodore Herzl; the current situation in Israel and Occupied Territories; and finally, questions about the historical reliability of the received histories of the Holocaust, Antisemitism and Judeophobia.

There comes a time when one realizes that the child’s questions are coming from someone else.  I asked him why he was so interested in these questions.  I knew his background was Croatian – but not much more.  These were my pre-Yad Vashem days and my knowledge of the Shoah was only beginning to deepen.  My young man’s grandfather had been an Ustase officer during the war years.  I knew enough to be concerned.  It transpired that my student had been discussing my history classes with his grandfather who, it appears, was keen to give his grandson the “truth”.  It was a potent example of the hates of the Old World emigrating to Australia.  This boy was Australian, of Australian-born parents of Croatian descent.  His grandfather had brought the family to Australia after the war.  His pride in his grandfather’s membership in the Ustase was obvious – he had been richly fed on a diet of selective memory and history.  In his adolescent mind “he knew the truth” – and it was not the “truth” I was teaching.  I had to ask him not to attend any more classes.  This was my serious introduction to the complex, murky, oft-misunderstood, neglected and ignored world of Balkan history.

“The study of history itself is more important than the study of the writing about the history …  Nevertheless … this book has a certain duality, which is evident from its title: it primarily studies the scholarship about the destruction of the European Jews that took place in the region of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, but … also deals with the way in which historians in Yugoslavia regarded and studied the Holocaust.” (Culibrk 7)

Bishop Jovan chronicles with detail and academic rigour the course of Yugoslavia’s relationship with its Jewish subjects and citizens throughout the inter-war and war years.  It is not easy reading and is a reminder yet again, that while I am familiar with the history of the Shoah across Europe, there remain large gaps. One of those gaps bears the name “Yugoslavia”.

If I have read Bishop Jovan’s book correctly and done it justice, I believe the significance of his contribution to our understanding of the events of 1941-45 is great, but perhaps it is his meticulous study of how the history was created, rather than recorded.

The remains of the Jewish communities in Yugoslavia are scarce.  The ferocity of the German invasion in April 1941 was such that there was no time to save community records, create texts such Oneg Shabbat or even compile lists of names that would be remembered.  Literally, within months, most Jews in Yugoslavia were gone; and very few ever returned and fewer still recorded their experiences. 

It is not that we do not know what happened – there are the accounts created by the perpetrators and parallels with other experiences in other countries – but it is the intersection of the Jewish experience with the other genocidal action perpetrated by Ante Pavelic’s fascist Croatia against the Serbs that is more often remembered because of the horrific, horrifying, brutality and savagery employed by the Ustase and its collaborators.  Ustase sadism was so revolting that even the SS found it hard to stomach. The victims rapidly assumed a certain ”sameness”.  I think it fair to say that the two genocides merged into one.

The maxim – the victor writes the history – is appropriate in our understanding of the post-war years.  Bosnian Serb scholar, Vaso Cubrilovic, interestingly the last surviving member of the Black Hand group that assassinated Franz Ferdinand in 1914, wrote in 1958: “… our contemporary history could be divided into two epochs: the history of the old Yugoslavia (1918-1941) and the history of the new Yugoslavia, better said – the history of her People’s Revolution, from 1941 until today”. (39)

As I understand the development of Yugoslav historiography from 1945 until the collapse of the federation in 1992 was made to fit a Marxist ideological world view where the efforts of the Communists and Communism created the new Yugoslavia that rose from the destruction of the war.

1. Yugoslavia collapsed in 1941 for two reasons – firstly the Axis led onslaught overwhelmed the country, and secondly, the state itself was a “rotten bourgeois” creation of the Versailles Peace Conference.

2. Under the guidance of Marshal Josip Tito and the Communist partisan movement Yugoslavia was liberated.  A Yugoslavia built on brotherhood and unity effected a necessary class-revolution and a new age began.

3. Central to the founding mythology of Tito’s Yugoslavia was the role of the anti-fascists and partisans.  Nothing that would tarnish the image of the heroic partisan, including examples of antisemitism, was permitted.

4. Jewish suffering was a part of the suffering of all anti-fascists, not ignored, but not differentiated.  (Histories of the Holocaust in Yugoslavia were mostly written by Yugoslav survivors in Israel. (75))

5. Gathering of archival material was essential to not only secure the founding myths of the new Yugoslavia but for the recording and prosecuting war criminals, collaborators and others.

Interwoven in the historiographical narrative are other concerns such as the role of the Christian Churches, especially the Roman Catholic Church and its relationship with the Ustase and complicity in its crimes.  The trial of Aloysius Stepinac, Catholic Archbishop of Zagreb was, I believe, more about the new Communist-controlled government exerting total control over Yugoslavia, than solely about Stepinac’s action or lack thereof when confronted with the enormity of Ustase crimes.  In any case, Stepinac’s case is difficult even from 2016 – and needs more research, if only to prevent the Archbishop becoming a lightning rod for revisionists who would attempt to convince us that he was indeed a saint and possibly a martyr saint.  The same level of difficulty confronts the historian over the role of Pope Pius XII and the relationship, however tortured, between Pavelic’s Croatia and the Holy See. (Culibrk 65)

Upon the break-up of Yugoslavia and the Balkans war that followed, the historiography of the war years underwent another change fuelled in no small part by the resurgence of ethnic rivalries and ancient hatreds.  At the same time more and more investigation into the roles played by different groups across the former Yugoslavia led to a rise in the number of serious histories written in the 1990s, even as the war raged.  These included new studies of Croatia, the role of Bosnian Muslims and the Holocaust and fresh studies into the murder of the Yugoslav Jews including serious studies of individual camps and killing centres. (Culibrk 79-95)

By the 1990s historians were publishing an increasing number of monographs and studies on the Holocaust in Yugoslavia.  These writers were influenced by the growing study of the Shoah as an integral part of German government policy that relied on all agencies of the state, including the Wehrmacht, allied governments and their military and police forces. This process also applied to a growing number of historians in the former Yugoslavia.

Another element in the study of Yugoslav Holocaust historiography has been the appropriation of the words “Holocaust” and “genocide” along with an equal appropriation of the Holocaust to suit the political agendas of both Croatia and Serbia.  During the 1992-95 war international media and foreign governments used the language of the Holocaust to describe the Bosnian catastrophe.

What did I learn?

1. Historiography is an essential component for the study of history.  I am reminded of standard history teaching practice in my classroom – the “what, where, who, why and how” when examining sources.  Awareness of bias, subjectivity, objectivity, audience, reliability, usefulness, perspective, and above all, context/s.

2. There is no such thing as “simple” history.  All history is a vast and intricate tapestry of waft and weave that affords many different avenues and lines of enquiry.

3. History demands respect; Holocaust history demands greater respect – we are studying human beings, not abstract concepts.  Their stories matter.  The stories of victims, perpetrators, bystanders, beneficiaries and legatees are important. 

4. Yugoslavia’s history and its study are demanding.  For an Australian who lives in a country that has never known civil war or strife on the scale that the nation states of the Balkans have lived with, it is hard to “get into the zone” in order to begin appreciate the realities that confront historians; but it is necessary.

5. Bishop Jovan’s academic rigour is unrelenting and so it should be.  History is a discipline that requires serious effort and often arduous and time-consuming old fashioned hard work to find patterns, put pieces of the puzzle together, to connect previously unconnected ideas, chronologies, people and places, to uncover, recover and discover the past as truthfully as possible.

6. Finally, Bishop Jovan’s work is a testimony to the man’s integrity and honesty to being faithful to the past, honouring those who died and ensuring their memories are not forgotten.

The Vatican and the Ustasha

After posting the comments about the scandalous news of public memorials for the former leader and war criminal of war-time Croatia, Ante Pavelic, I began exploring the relationship between the Vatican and the Ustasha state in order to contextualise the documentation found in ADSS.  It has been a depressing exercise.  Unlike any other part of Europe during the war, the Catholic Church's relationship with the Ustasha state is overwhelmingly negative from the perspective of the Holocaust and the parallel genocides waged against Orthodox Christian Serbs.  Croatia holds the infamous distinction for carrying out a planned and state-sponsored genocide against Christians because they were not Roman Catholic.  I know of no other similar program carried out during the War. 

The Ustasha war against the Serbs was as much religious as racial.  The language used and the justifications fabricated were cloaked in "catholic" religious terminology.  The diplomatically neutral role of Apostolic Visitor, Giuseppe Marcone, precluded him from making formal protest, but did not prevent him from reporting what he heard and saw to the pope, Cardinal Maglione and others in the Secretariat of State.  It is impossible to suggest that Rome knew nothing, quite simply because they did know and admitted as much.

ADSS records some of the reports sent by Marcone indicating that the Croatian bishops were doing something to try and protect the Jews, but with next to no success.  There is evidence that attempts were made to rescue Jewish children and larger efforts to move as many Jews as possible into the Italian zones in nearby Slovenia and Dalmatia.

I will post some of these documents along with comments in the near future as well as continuing the account from Slovakia.  Given that both Slovakia and Croatia were "Catholic" states the history of the Holocaust in each place does provide a way of attempting to understand the action and reaction of the Vatican to the unfolding events.

For an introduction and overview to the Holocaust in Croatia see the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum pages on Yugoslavia.

On Croatia's relationship with the Catholic Church there is much material.  Michael Phayer's The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2000 and Pius XII, the Holocaust, and the Cold War, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2007 are, I believe, the best place to start.

If the reader can chart their way carefully through Carl Savich's sometimes contentious interpretation of history, The Vatican Role in the Ustasha Genocide in the Independent State of Croatia (2011) does have some interesting points.  I disagree not only on his reliance on John Cornwall's Hitler's Pope, but the lack of balance in parts.  It is historical fact that the Vatican did attempt to do something to help the Jews of Croatia-Serbia.  It is also historical fact that Archbishop Stepinac of Zagreb did speak against the murderous policies of Pavelic's regime.  These need to be acknowledged.  It is also dangerous putting too much responsibility on the shoulders of Abbot Marcone.  Marcone did let Rome know what was going on. Moral issues aside, the Vatican needed "its man on the ground" in order to have a conduit into and out of Croatia. 

Pavelic, Croatia and the Vatican

Over the last few months I have been reading my way through Volume 8 of ADSS.  It is a selection of documents that deal with the Vatican's attempt to help the victims of the war, especially the Jews.  I have posted a series of documents on the attempts made to stop the deportations from Slovakia.  In these texts we have seen how the Vatican used both its diplomatic efforts alongside the work of its representatives "in the field" combined with local and international influences. 

Between March and October 1942 about 58,000 Slovakian Jews were deported, most were sent to Auschwitz where they were murdered.  Deportations did not resume until September 1944 when the Red Army was approaching the eastern borders.

Slovakia's neighbour, the German-puppet state of Croatia, had many similarities.  Both were ruled by men who claimed legitimacy in part through Catholicism, both sought papal approval for their regimes, both employed German-style antisemitism as government policy, both used police and militia as enforcers of anti-Jewish laws, both exercised state-sanctioned persecution, imprisonment, exclusion, expropriation and extermination of Jews, and both relied in varying measures on the tacit approval of at least some of the Catholic clergy.

Croatia was different in a number of respects - all of them marking the Ustasha regime of Ante Pavelic as one of the most bloody and sadistic episodes not only of World War Two and the Holocaust, but of modern European history.  Not even the Balkan "ethnic cleansing" of the 1990s came close to the horrors of the Ustasha.  One indicator was the revulsion expressed by the different members of the German and Italian military, as well as the Gestapo, to the means by which the Ustasha murdered their victims.  The history of the mass murder of Jews, Orthodox Christian Serbs, and largely Catholic and Orthodox Roma by the Ustasha and their collaborators is by any standards sickening reading.

The Vatican's diplomatic involvement with the Pavelic regime began with the request from Pavelic for a papal representative in Zagreb.  Pavelic visited Rome in May 1941 in part to seek Pius XII's blessing for the new Croatian state as well as score the propaganda coup of having papal recognition done on the world stage.  Pavelic was to be disappointed on both counts. 

Pius has been widely criticised for receiving the dictator; but what choice did he have?  Having proclaimed neutrality at the outbreak of the war, the pope could not very well refuse to receive a head of state, even a Nazi puppet such as Pavelic who made so much of his Catholicism.  Nonetheless, the Vatican did move to ensure that the visit was as low key as possible. 

ADSS provides us with a timeline of how the Holy See saw the Pavelic visit and what was possible, what was probable, and what would certainly not happen.

The references come from Volumes 4: June 1940-June 1941 and 5: July 1941- October 1942.

4.348  16.05.1941  Note of Giovanni Battista Montini, Secretariat of State: Pavelic had requested an audience with the pope.  Pius will grant a private audience. It was standard Vatican diplomatic practice not to grant formal diplomatic recognition to a state created during wartime or to recognise altered borders of a state made during war.  While Pavelic was, as far as the Croatian and German governments concerned, the head of state, the Vatican still recognised the Yugoslavian government in exile in London as the legitimate government and accorded Sorgo Mirosevic (1884-1966) full diplomatic status as its ambassador.  Therefore there would be no discussion of "recognition" of the new Croatian state.

4.351  17.05.1941 Note of Domenico Tardini, Secretariat of State: Making reference to the previous note, Tardini writes that the situation is "delicate".  The question was how to grant the audience - it would be diplomatically foolish to deny one since Pavelic made much of his Catholicism - without it becoming a political spectacle.

4.352  17.05.1941 Note of Tardini:  The pope will receive Pavelic alone in a private meeting.  The diplomatic language was "without delegation".  Pavelic could arrive at the Vatican in whatever way he chose, but once inside, he was going to be treated as a private person, a Catholic meeting with the pope.  There would be no formal agenda, no photos, no exchange of gifts and no reception with honour guards, papal nobility etc.  It would be as plain as possible.

4.356  18.05.1941 Note of Montini:  Pavelic and his entourage were received by the pope in a general audience - ie, as a group of Catholics who have come to Rome to see the pope.

4.357  18.05.1941 Note of Montini: The rector of St Jerome [the Croatian National College in Rome] Monsignor Magjerec will fly the Croatian flag during Pavelic's visit.

4.358  18.05.1941 Note of Montini: Pavelic's audience with the pope.  Pius XII received Pavelic as a "son of the Church".  Any recognition of the new state must wait until the end of the war.

19/20.05.1941 L'Osservatore Romano published a full account of the Pavelic visit.

4.361  18.05.1941 Cardinal Luigi Maglione, Secretary of State to all Nuncios and Apostolic Delegates: Circular emphasising the apolitical nature of Pavelic's visit to the pope. The fact that this was sent to all the papal representatives is very significant.  Rome wanted no misunderstanding about the visit - it was private and was in no way an approval of either Pavelic's regime or the new state.  Diplomatically, this was a very begrudging acceptance of something considered very unpleasant and unwanted.  I have no doubt Pavelic would have been made aware of the circular.

4.364  19.05.1941 Maglione to all Nuncios and Apostolic Delegates: More information on the audience granted to Pavelic.  Pavelic and his entourage were received by the pope.  Pius and Pavelic then went into another room for a private conversation.  At the end of this the pope returned to greet the delegation.  The customary courtesy call to the Secretary of State did not happen.  This reinforces what was mentioned above and also points to the high degree of sensitivity the Vatican knew surrounded the visit.  Pius knew the visit would generate hostility from many quarters.  This is possibly the first recorded "public relations management" exercise by the Vatican.  Misinformation was not slow to appear.  See 4.373, 379,407

4.369  21.05.1941 Note of Montini: Sorgo Mirosevic, the Yugoslav minister, requested L’Osservatore Romano publish the precise details of the audience granted to Pavelic.  Reports from French Radio suggest the Pope gave official recognition to the new state and spoke of a concordat.

4.385  02.06.1941 Note of Tardini:  Sorgo Mirosevic had made a protest at news of a papal representative being appointed for Croatia.  The protest was rejected.

4.386  02.06.1941 Sorgo Mirosevic to Secretariat of State:  Official protest at the news that the Vatican will appoint a papal representative to Croatia. While Mirosevic's protest is understandable, the Vatican's position can not be ignored.  There was no advantage for the pope is he refused the opportunity of having a representative in Croatia.  It was a case of realpolitik.  A diplomat of Mirosevic's experience would certainly understood this.  The protest was a diplomatic formality.

4.392  07.06.1941 Note of Tardini:  The pope has promised the Archbishop of Zagreb, Alojzije Stepinac, that he will appoint a papal representative to Croatia.  I have written about this in an earlier post.

4.400  13.06.1941 Note of Tardini:  Pavelic has expressed dissatisfaction that Croatia is to receive a nunciature while Croatia is to be given an Apostolic Visitor who is only "an observer".  This was not accurate.  Giuseppe Burzio, the papal representative in Slovakia, held the rank of charge d'affaires, which was less than ambassadorial rank.  The nunciature was not restored until after the war.

4.404  14.06.1941 Secretariat of State to Sorgo Mirosevic:  The Vatican's formal response to Mirosevic's protest of 02.06.1941.

ADSS 5.17  22.07.1941 Note of Tardini:  (See to 5 and 9).  The papal representative to Croatia will not have the title of Apostolic Visitor because of papal diplomatic policy regarding states created during war. Evidently there was a change of mind as the title was retained.

5.21  25.07.1941 Maglione to Stepinac:  Abbot Giuseppe Marcone has been appointed as the papal envoy to Croatia.

Marcone's despatches from Croatia mirrored much of what Giuseppe Burzio was reporting from Slovakia, namely a regime with a murderous policy towards Jews and others deemed unworthy of participation in the building of the new Croatia.

Mourning Pavelic: Shame in Croatia

I have been following the controversy over memorial Masses for Ante Pavelic the now-long dead leader of Fascist Ustasha Croatia.  Efraim Zuroff is right in expressing his surprise at the lack of reaction to a very provocative act. 

"Controversy" is hardly the right word, since outside of a few media articles scattered here and there, the memorials have generated no reaction outside of The Jerusalem Post, an article in the English language Croatian Times, some of the more fringe hate groups and the academic server, Holocaust H-Net.  Perhaps things will develop over the next few days - I hope so.

Pavelic was a mass murderer of Jews, Roma and Serbs.  He sent his thugs into Serbia to murder Christians as much as Jews.  The Ustasha were so brutal and bloody in their killing frenzies that even the SS counselled moderation.  The Catholic Church was, to its shame, complicit in more than some of the killing, but that may be discussed here at a later time.  What is certain is that the pope, Pius XII knew something of the involvement of Catholic clergy in the murder rampages.

Interestingly, the article in the Croatian Times is a very abbreviated version of the original article and contains a defense from Zvonko Franc of the masses.  It would appear that Franc has little understanding of the canon law demand that the Mass never be used as a means of propaganda or that any memorial service could be seen as a source of scandal for "the Faithful".

The priest mentioned, Vjekoslav Lasic, is a Dominican friar of the Croatian province who has a reputation for supporting the memory of the Pavelic state.  He has travelled throughout Croatian communities abroad, including Australia, giving succour to Croats who yearn for "the good old days", that is, before Tito and Communism.  Lasic is currently listed as a "reserve councillor" for the Dominican province, which suggests that he is regarded as being in good standing with the Order.  Ironically, the motto of the Order of Friars Preacher, is "Veritas" - truth.

Nazi memorial in Croatia a disgrace to Europe



By Efraim Zuroff


04/01/2012


A service for Hitler is unthinkable. So why is the world quiet in response to a service for Ante Paveli?

Imagine for a minute that memorial masses were held in two major cities in Germany on the anniversary of the death of Adolf Hitler. Needless to say, such a ceremony would arouse fury, indignation, and widespread protests not only in Germany, but throughout the entire world. Last week, the local equivalent of such an event took place in Croatia, but instead of anger and demonstrations, not a single word of protest was heard from anywhere in the country.


I am referring to the December 28 memorial masses conducted in Zagreb and Split (and perhaps elsewhere as well) to mark the 51st anniversary of the death of Ante Paveli, the head of state of the infamous Independent State of Croatia, created by the Nazis and their Italian allies in 1941.


Following its establishment, rule was turned over to the local fascist movement, the Ustasha, headed by its Poglavnik (leader) Ante Paveli.



During the entire course of its brief existence (1941- 1945), the Ustasha sought to rid the country (which consisted of the area of today’s Croatia plus most of Bosnia-Herzegovina) of all its minorities, as well as their local political opponents. In order to do so, they established a network of concentration camps all over the country, the largest and most notorious of which was Jasenovac, located on the banks of the Sava River, southeast of Zagreb. There, many tens of thousands of innocent civilians were murdered in a variety of brutal ways, which earned the camp the nickname of the “Auschwitz of the Balkans.”


To this day, there continue to be disputes regarding the total number of civilians murdered by the Ustasha, but the number is certainly no fewer than several hundred thousand, primarily Serbs, along with Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croats. And while all those who participated in these atrocities bear criminal responsibility, the individual with the greatest culpability was undoubtedly Ante Pavelic, who headed the most lethal regime in Axis-dominated Europe.

THE MEMORIAL masses to honor Pavelic, who died in Spain in 1959 from wounds suffered in an assassination attempt two years earlier, mark a renewal of a tradition which began in the 1990s following the reestablishment of Croatian independence. In the wake of the conviction in
Zagreb of Jasenovac commandant Dinko Sakic and in response to protests by the Wiesenthal Center, the mass was stopped and the priest responsible,Vjekoslav Lasic, left Croatia.

Unfortunately, however, Lasic returned to Zagreb a few years ago and renewed his neo-fascist activity with impunity. At the funeral of Sakic, who insisted on being buried in his Ustasha uniform although in prison for his World War II crimes, it was Lasic who administered final rites.
According to the Dominican priest, although Dinko Sakic did not observe all the Ten Commandments (Thou shalt not murder?), he was a model for all Croatians, and every Croat should be proud of his name.

The question now is, how does such an event to honor the memory of one of the biggest mass murderers of World War II pass with nary a word of protest or condemnation? The obvious address for such indignation would be in Croatia itself, where many people fought with Tito’s partisans against the Ustasha, and a significant sector of the population have a strong anti-fascist tradition. But the same question applies outside the country as well.

Croatia is well on its way to membership in the European Union (slated for 2013), a membership which is ostensibly contingent on the acceptance of EU values and norms. Is a memorial mass for one of Europe’s worst war criminals compatible with EU membership?

The sad truth is that in this respect, the European Union has failed miserably in dealing with the resurgence of neo-fascism and the promotion of Holocaust distortion in its post-Communist members. Once admitted to the EU (and NATO), countries like Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Hungary and Romania have begun to take active steps to rewrite their World War II histories, minimizing or attempting to hide the highly-significant role played by their nationals in Holocaust crimes, with barely a word of protest or condemnation from Brussels.

Instead of actively combating the Prague Declaration of June 3, 2008, which promotes the canard of historical equivalency between Nazi and Communist crimes and undermines the justified status of the Holocaust as a unique case of genocide, the EU has failed to adequately respond to this dangerous challenge to the accepted Western narrative of World War II and

its tragic consequences.

I wish I could conclude with the good news that Israel and the Jewish world have responded appropriately, but unfortunately that is not the case. These developments have been purposely ignored by the Israeli government, which under Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman refuses to

respond to the assault on our past in those countries which have evinced no particular interest in championing the Palestinian cause.


Last week’s masses in honor of Ante Pavelic are a mockery of Christian values and an insult to all the victims of the Ustasha, their relatives, friends, and people of morality and conscience the world over. The time has come for effective protests from within Croatia, as well as from the European Union, the United States and Canada, Israel and the Jewish world.


That is the minimum that we owe the victims of that notorious mass murderer.






The writer is the chief Nazi-hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and director of its Israel Office. His most recent book is, Operation Last Chance; One Man’s Quest to Bring Nazi Criminals to Justice,  (Palgrave/Macmillan).

Dinko Sakic in Ustasha uniform, with wife, concentration camp guard, Nada Lubaric, 1943

Vjekoslav Lasic OP presides at the burial of Sakic in July 2008