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TESTIMONY FOR UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE

STUART E. EIZENSTAT

HOUSE BANKING COMMITTEE
On the U.S. Government Supplementary Report on Nazi Assets

June 4, 1998

Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank the Committee for giving me the opportunity to discuss with you a subject that has captured the world’s attention due in some measure to the pioneering work of this Committee.

I particularly want to single out the efforts and the leadership of Chairman Leach and the Committee beginning with your first hearing on this issue in 1996. You have been a leader from the outset in raising the consciousness of America and the world on Holocaust assets issues. You exhibited leadership in convening a very useful hearing last June in the wake of our preliminary report with historians from many of the affected countries to comment on our findings. Your efforts continued with last February’s pathbreaking hearing in February which focused on art and insurance. And today’s hearing, with the gathering of such distinguished panelists, is yet another example of this Committee’s work to ensure that this complex and emotional issue receives both the proper attention and consideration by the U.S. Congress in an appropriately bipartisan fashion.

This supplementary report that we released this week, like our preliminary study completed in May 1997, reflects a solemn commitment by the United States to confront the largely hidden history of Holocaust-related assets after five decades of neglect. I would like to acknowledge the tireless work and dedication of the State Department Historian Dr. William Slany and my Senior Advisor Bennett Freeman in preparing this report. I would also like to acknowledge the work of the World Jewish Congress, the World Jewish Restitution Organization, the American Jewish Congress, the Jewish Agency, American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and Eli Rosenbaum and Dr. Barry White of the Justice Department.

Our preliminary study was prepared by Dr. Slany in cooperation with ten other agencies of the U.S. Government and released in May 1997.

Our most significant findings were the overall movement of looted gold flowing to and through Switzerland from Germany; the fact that the Swiss National Bank must have known that some portion of the gold it was receiving from the Reichsbank was looted from occupied countries; and that the gold received by the Swiss National Bank from the Reichsbank included some stolen from Holocaust victims, although there is no evidence that the Swiss National Bank knew this fact.

These findings were confirmed by the bold and probing gold report that Switzerland’s Bergier Commission presented initially at the London Nazi Gold Conference in December 1997 and now by its more conclusive report released on May 25, 1998.

SCOPE OF THIS STUDY

Before highlighting for you the major new substantive findings of the report, let me first explain the relationship between the new, supplementary report and the preliminary study we released last May. This supplemental study is the substantively appropriate follow-up to the first report. The preliminary report focused on how Nazi Germany financed its war effort using looted gold. Switzerland figured so prominently because our focus was on looted gold and the key role it played in the German war effort. This report focuses on the uses to which that looted gold was put – that is, the ability of the Nazis to use the Swiss francs they obtained in exchange for the gold they looted to purchase, in turn, critical war supplies from the other neutral countries necessary to sustain the war effort. In this way, by illuminating the trade as well as the financing side of the equation, our two reports together provide a comprehensive view of the important part the wartime neutrals cumulatively played in the structure of the German war economy.

Further research has allowed us to provide a more detailed analysis of the economic roles played by other wartime neutrals – Argentina, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Turkey – and the factors that shaped those roles. We have focused on these countries’ trading links with both the Axis and the Allies, as well as on their handling of looted assets——especially gold. Let me begin by highlighting our findings in this respect.

NEUTRALS SUPPLYING GERMAN WAR EFFORT

This report makes clear that whatever their motivations, and however acceptable by the standards of the time for neutrals, the cumulative trade of the World War II European neutral countries helped to sustain the Nazi war effort by supplying key materials to Germany essential to their conduct of the War -- in many cases well past the point where, from the Allied perspective at the time, there was a genuine threat of German attack.

As you can see from Chart 1 (Appendix) on the Neutral Countries’ Supply of Germany’s Major Resources, Portugal and Spain together provided Germany with almost 100 percent of Germany’s wartime supply of vitally-needed wolfram, the essential mineral in processing tungsten for steel alloys used in machine tools and armaments, especially armor-piercing shells. The strategic significance of wolfram was not lost on the Portuguese. Prime Minister Salazar himself acknowledged in early 1944 that denying wolfram to Germany "would reduce her power of endurance, and the war would be accordingly shortened."

Sweden provided Germany’s wartime industry with a major portion -- as Chart 1 shows, in some war years up to 90-100 percent -- of its requisite iron ore (including a high proportion of the high-grade ore needed for the production of the specially hardened steel used in German weapons and armored vehicles) and ball-bearings.

Turkey conducted a robust commerce (in chart 1) with both sides that raised its gold reserves from 27 tons to 216 by the end of 1945. In 1943, for example, Turkey provided essentially 100 percent of German requirements. Chart 1 shows that in 1943 Turkey’s exports supplied Germany with up to 100 percent of its annual requirements. According to Hitler’s Armaments Minister Albert Speer, the German war machine would have ground to a halt without chromite ore. Indeed, Speer wrote in his memoirs that he told Hitler in November 1943: "Should supplies from Turkey be cut off, the stockpile of chromium is sufficient for only 5-6 months. The manufacture of planes, tanks, motor vehicles, tank shells, U-boats, almost the entire gamut of artillery would have to cease from one to three months after this deadline, since by then the reserves in the distribution channels would be used up."

Implicitly or explicitly, the neutrals resisted Allied economic diplomacy and expressed fear of German reprisal if their economic relations were curtailed. This invocation of force majeure by the neutrals could not be easily countered by the Allies in the early years of the War when their vulnerability was all too apparent. But the invincibility of the German war machine was belied during 1943 with a series of major defeats that foreshadowed the Allied victory. The neutral nations recognized the turn of the tide and the receding danger of German attack or reprisal, and began, at Allied demand, to curtail trade and other measures that supported the German war effort. By late 1943, the Allies were less willing to accept neutral claims of the threat of force majeure as a reason to justify their continuing economic interaction with the Nazi regime.

Chart 2 (appendix), which presents a Timeline of Trade, Belligerency and Postwar Gold and Asset Negotiations and Agreements between the Allies and the neutrals, summarizes the key information in our report about the international legal and economic relationships of the neutrals.

The first three columns summarize these major exports of the neutrals to Germany, the other contributions of the neutrals to the German war effort, and, in this third column, those major contributions of the neutrals to the allied war effort.

The next three columns in the timeline show, based on the information presented in the report, how the allies perceived the diminution of German military threat to the neutrals in the course of the war, how [in this next column] this is related to the significant concessions the neutrals eventually made to the allies, and [in the adjoining column] when the neutrals in fact finally ceased their exports to Germany. Another column indicates that two of the neutrals, Argentina and turkey, actually declared war on Germany in the closing months of the war.

The final four columns show the dates when the various neutrals began the gold restitution and assets negotiations with the allies, when they were completed, and when gold and assets were actually delivered to the allies. The details of the results of these negotiations are presented in this chart.

COMPLEXITY OF NEUTRALITY

The report also sheds light on the complexities of "neutrality" – the different forms that neutrality took in different countries for different reasons – in ways that should dispel any monolithic concept of neutrality during World War II. The wartime neutrals often faced similar pressures and counter-pressures but reacted to them in varied ways, reflecting their specific wartime circumstances, the attitudes of their leaders, and the more enduring features of their own economies and geography.

There was no such thing as a uniform or absolute neutrality during World War II. The ideological leaning of Franco’s regime in Spain was clear and unmistakable; Franco’s dispatch of the Blue Division to join the Wehrmacht at the Russian front underscores this pro-Axis tilt. So, too, leading members of the Argentine military regimes were also openly sympathetic to the Axis. Sweden’s permission for German troops to regularly transit its territory and to protect German shipping in the Baltic were hardly "neutral" acts; neither was Portugal’s granting access to the British to bases in the Azores, even though it was a welcome and important contribution to the Allied war effort.

Different factors shaped the "neutrality" of Argentina, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey, ranging from long-standing policies of avoiding entanglements in European wars to the fear of invasion and the desire to reap economic rewards. These interests, in turn, produced decisions and actions which were at various times both consistent and inconsistent with their claims of neutrality. These inconsistent decisions and actions were at times helpful to Nazi Germany and at other times helpful to the Allies. They were often based on their own strictly legal interpretations of what was permissible under existing international law, as distinct from moral considerations of what was right or wrong. All these seemingly inconsistent decisions and actions co-existed and contributed to the complex phenomenon of neutrality during World War II——a war which was in many ways different from previous wars because of the unprecedented scope of the assault on human values and the horrors of the Holocaust.

There are a number of questions that should be addressed today by all the nations involved in World War II, including the wartime neutrals, questions which can help them come to terms with their role in the War. For example, at what point during World War II did it become evident that Nazi aggression was not just another in an endless series of European wars, but was qualitatively different in its brutal treatment of civilians and its threat to basic human values? At what point did the threat of a Nazi invasion recede sufficiently so that with little risk, trade with Germany in critical commodities could have been sharply curtailed or stopped? If neutrality was defended during the War as a way of self-defense, why was there so little cooperation with the Allies after the War in returning looted Nazi assets which had come into the possession of the wartime neutrals or in liquidating German assets for the benefit of stateless refugees and the reconstruction of war-torn Europe? These are difficult questions to which there are no easy or certain answers, with or without the benefit of hindsight.

There appears to have been a clear preponderance of sympathy for the Allied cause in several of these countries, and significant elements of sympathy in the others.

Consistent with this mixed pattern of actions was the refuge offered by the neutral nations to more than 250,000 Jews fleeing the Holocaust. Acts of humanity and even heroism rose above the harshness or insensitivity of wartime refugee policies and reflected well on their governments and peoples:

• An estimated 100,000 refugees, mostly Jews, fled through or into the Iberian peninsula. Spain allowed 20,000 to 30,000 refugees to cross the French border from the fall of France until the summer of 1942, and another 7,500 refugees entered Spain by the end of 1944. The Portuguese Government allowed Jewish organizations to relocate from occupied Europe to Lisbon during the War. During 1941 and 1942 the Portuguese Government allowed 5,000 refugees to pass through Portugal to the United States.

• The Swedish Government provided refuge for about 7,000 Danish Jews who fled to the safety of Swedish shores. Sweden’s protection, spearheaded by the personal heroism of Raoul Wallenberg, was extended to 20,000 to 30,000 Jews who faced extermination in the last phase of the Holocaust.

• Turkey, which had protected Jews since their expulsion from Spain in 1492, had, it is estimated, more than 100,000 Jewish refugees pass through its borders during the War.

• Argentina received a large number of Jewish refugees between 1933 and 1945. Many of these 25,000 to 45,000 refugees reached Argentina before and during the War, more than any other country in the Western Hemisphere (including the United States).

• Switzerland admitted over 50,000 Jewish refugees from 1933 until the end of the War, of whom some 30,000 remained and survived in Switzerland during the War.

NAZI GOLD

Now let me address the new findings in this report that bear on the issue of Nazi Gold as distinct from the broader role of the wartime neutrals that I have just highlighted.

We have arrived at new figures of looted gold. Our first report estimated that Switzerland received as much as $414 million in total (looted and non-looted) gold from Nazi Germany. These estimates were confirmed by the recently released Bergier Report which estimated that some $440 million in total gold went through Switzerland. These figures, taken together, now give us a higher, more definitive range on total gold that flowed through Switzerland.

One other new finding is presented as a separate annex prepared by the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations. New sources have come to light that provide additional information about the Melmer account at the Reichsbank, in which the SS deposited the gold and other valuables that it looted from individual citizens and from its victims at killing centers and concentration camps. These sources provide the most detailed data currently available for the value of the gold in the Melmer account and yield an estimate for the total value of this gold ($4.6 million in wartime value, $40.5 million in today’s gold values) that is markedly higher than previous estimates -- indeed, two times the Melmer estimates in the Bergier Report.

These new, more definitive figures are based in part on our assessment of the records of the DeGussa company and Reischbank microfilm found in Vienna. Of particular importance is the analysis of the postwar study by Albert Thoms, the head of the Reischbank’s Precious Metals Department, that details the Melmer Shipment of SS loot to the Reischbank. The Thoms’ study lists in gruesome detail in 29 columns the loot of victims under such headings as Gold Bars, gold and silver coins, (Purses, knives and forks, jewels, gold and diamond rings, watches, Dental Gold, broken gold, etc.).

If the analysis of the Thoms Report is correct, the total value that the Reischbank credited to the SS for the gold in its loot shipments was between $3.9 million and $5.4 million. The Justice Department historians make the conservative estimate for the gold in the loot shipment at $4.65 million. And this does not include the estimated $3.9 million in gold bullion and coins forwarded to the Reischbank as a result of Operation Reinhard, the Nazi program to exploit Jewish property and labor and murder millions of Jews in killing centers in eastern Poland.

This supplemental study further reveals that victim gold from the Melmer account was also included in gold that the Dresdner Bank and the Deutsche Bank -– both German commercial banks -- sold on the Turkish free market as part of a scheme to supply the Reichsbank with foreign currency, and to help Axis diplomats and agents finance their operations in Turkey. Some of the nearly $1 million in victim gold from the Melmer account obtained by Dresdner Bank and Deutsche Bank likely was part of the gold sold by those banks on the Turkish free market.

Nazi Germany financed a substantial portion of its war effort by paying for its wartime imports from the neutral nations in gold, much of it looted from occupied Europe and some of it stolen from the millions of victims of the Holocaust. Most of this looted gold was sent to the Swiss National Bank, which converted it into Swiss francs or deposited it in the accounts of other central banks.

In this trade, more than $300 million ($2.6 billion in today’s values) in Nazi gold reached Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey during the War. We arrived at this figure by adding up all the allied estimates of the gold the individual neutral countries received from Germany. Chart 3 (Appendix) on Allied assets and gold presents these estimates. Three-quarters of this amount was transferred from Germany through the Swiss National Bank, the principal gold trading center on the continent.

This flow of gold from Germany to the neutrals persisted through the War despite Allied warnings in January 1943 and February 1944 against accepting transfers of assets from Nazi Germany that had been looted from occupied countries. The European neutral countries continued to accept looted gold from the Reichsbank even after 1942 when it became clear that the Reichsbank had long since exhausted its own prewar gold reserve and was using the reserves of the looted central banks of the countries overrun by Nazi forces.

The Allies estimated that Germany financed its imports from Spain and Portugal with as much as $204 million in looted gold; more than $20 million in gold financed German trade with Sweden. Almost all of the gold that reached Turkey was traded through the free commercial market, not through the Turkish Government. Chart 3 also includes Allied estimates of looted gold that reached each neutral country.

Postwar Negotiations

The next new set of findings I want to highlight is the postwar negotiations that the United States, Britain, and France conducted with the wartime neutrals were protracted and failed to meet fully their original goals: restitution of the looted gold and the liquidation of German external assets to fund the reconstruction of postwar occupied Europe and to provide relief for Jewish and other non-repatriable refugees. This resulted from the intransigence of the neutrals after the War, conflicts within Allied ranks and between the State and Treasury Departments, as well as from competing priorities stemming from the onset of the Cold War. Less than $20 million ($14.9 million from Sweden alone) of the up to $240 million in looted gold acquired by the wartime neutrals, apart from Switzerland, was returned to the Tripartite Gold Commission to meet the claims from the central banks of 15 countries.

Chart 3 also summarizes the terms of the various accords that the allies and the neutral countries reached after the war regarding the restitution of gold and the liquidation of German external assets.

Ustasha Gold

Finally, the report deals with the question of Ustasha Gold. We became aware that the U.S. Government possessed important documents bearing on Ustasha gold in particular. The chapter raises questions about aspects of the Vatican’s record during and immediately after the War, to which answers may only exist in Vatican archives.

The Ustasha regime in Nazi Germany’s wartime puppet state of Croatia systematically and mercilessly robbed, murdered, or deported its Serbian, Sinti-Romany, and Jewish populations. Gold and other valuables of the victims became a part of the Ustasha treasury, which may have been as much as $80 million. Portions of this treasury appear to have been transferred to Switzerland in the last year of the War. Very little of it was accounted for in the postwar arrangements made by Yugoslavia with the Allies and Switzerland.

With the defeat in May 1945 of Hitler and his satellites, including puppet Croatia, the leaders of the Ustasha regime fled to Italy, where they found sanctuary at the pontifical College of San Girolamo in Rome. This College was most likely funded at least in part by the remnants of the Ustasha treasury, and may have operated with at least the tacit acquiescence of some Vatican officials. It helped fugitive Croatian war criminals escape to the Western Hemisphere in the early postwar years, and cooperated with the "rat line" being used by the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps after the War to assist the escape from Europe of anti-Communists including the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie.

The record of the terrible legacy of the Ustasha assembled for this study is very incomplete. A full accounting should be made now to achieve a complete understanding of these issues. The opening of relevant archives in Croatia, Serbia, and the Vatican and cooperative international research will be essential in this effort.

OTHER HISTORICAL RESEARCH EFFORTS

These conclusions are based largely on the limited perspective of our almost exclusive reliance on U.S. documents (as well as captured Nazi documents in possession of the U.S.) which our interagency team has located, declassified, and evaluated. We hope that each country with a stake in these issues will intensify its efforts to examine its own record and confront its own history on its own terms and in its own way. It is essential that these studies move forward quickly so that a more comprehensive historical record of the looting and ultimate disposition of Holocaust-era assets can finally be completed.

I want to salute those countries who are already undertaking such efforts – not only Switzerland with its Bergier Commission – but also the commissions which have been established, in Argentina, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and Croatia - to address these issues which are the focus of our report. It is our hope that our two studies combined with these and other efforts underway in other countries will complete the historical record on these complex and painful issues. We share a common commitment -- not only to come to terms with the past, but to galvanize the urgent quest for justice for Holocaust victims and survivors.

U.S. HOLOCAUST ASSETS HISTORICAL COMMISSION

This second and final report that I will personally direct will not end our search for truth and our quest for justice. Under your leadership Chairman Leach, you have introduced and been the principal sponsor in the House of Representatives HR 3662 that would establish a U.S. Holocaust Assets Historical Commission – the counterpart to the bill introduced in the Senate by Senator D’Amato. We urge this Committee and the House to act as soon as possible on this legislation which has the strong support of the President.

This legislation was introduced in Congress on April 1 to create a Presidential Commission to examine the fate of Holocaust assets in the United States. The bill was introduced with bipartisan support and the strong backing of the Clinton Administration. The substantive mandate of the Commission will focus on two key areas: first, to conduct original research on the collection and disposition of Holocaust-era assets that came under the control of the U.S. Government after Hitler came to power in 1933 (assets such as gold, gems, bank accounts, financial instruments, and art works); and second, to review research being conducted more broadly in the public and private sectors. The Commission will be charged with issuing a final report to the President summarizing its findings and making recommendations no later than December 31, 1999. Establishing a strong Commission that can meet its mandate by this deadline will send a message that the United States Government is determined to address the fate of Holocaust assets here at home.

WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

Mr. Chairman, we will also maintain our historical research efforts in other ways as well. In order to build on the landmark London Nazi Gold Conference held last December, and continue the international search for truth, the Department of State and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum will co-host from November 30 to December 3 the Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets. The objective will be to review our progress on the gold issue, to renew the drive to open archives and to share research on other assets, especially on artworks and insurance.

As at London, the Washington Conference will not be a forum for governmental decision-making. But we plan to use the conference and our preparations to work with a wide range of governments and NGO’s to help shape a non-binding international consensus on principles and processes for redressing injustices in these categories of assets. We hope that this consensus can give new impetus to the encouraging initiatives already underway in many countries and that this intergovernmental forum can be a catalyst for many other related efforts to address this great unfinished business of the twentieth century.

Mr. Chairman, your personal leadership and the activity of this Committee have played an important role in encouraging the international community to make significant progress in exploring issues of Holocaust-era assets. The hearing conducted in February, which shed much light on the art and insurance issues, was itself a landmark event in focusing long-overdue attention on these areas. I personally appreciate your contribution, and as we prepare for this important international conference, we want to work very closely with you, this Committee, and your staff, as well as with other interested Members of Congress.

Mr. Chairman, the examination of the complicated issues of Holocaust-era assets is a difficult undertaking. While archival research and international conferences have provided the framework for achieving a greater understanding of the fate of Holocaust assets, these issues have naturally had a vast public political impact beyond the academic and diplomatic arenas. They have come to command the attention of the world and touch the conscience of humanity.

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Land	Percentage
België	50,9 % (15109)
Nederland	39,6 % (11738)
Verenigde Staten	1,8 % (545)
Frankrijk	1,5 % (431)
Duitsland	1,2 % (364)
Verenigd Koninkrijk (Groot-Brittannië)	0,8 % (235)
Zweden (Sverige)	0,3 % (101)

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U.S. News and World Report

Monday, March 30, 1998

A vow of silence

Did gold stolen by Croatian fascists reach the Vatican?

BY SUSAN HEADDEN, DANA HAWKINS, AND JASON VEST

Through the nightmare of World War II that would end with 56 members of her family perishing in concentration camps, there were two days that Eta Najfeld will never forget. The first was April 10, 1941, when Najfeld, a 25-year-old Jewish medical student, watched as exuberant crowds lined the streets of Zagreb to cheer the Ustashas—the ultranationalist fascist party that the Nazis had just installed at the helm of an "independent" Croatian state. The other was three months later, when a band of Ustasha soldiers burst into her family's shop, an elegant emporium stocked with Oriental rugs, English linens, and French silks. "They took everything," says Najfeld, now 82 and living in Belgrade.

As the Nazis and their allies sent millions of Jews and others to their deaths, they stole billions of dollars from their victims. In the postwar chaos, and the horror of their anguish, Najfeld and most other survivors cast from their mind any thought of recovering the property they had lost. Najfeld still worries that any talk about lost wealth will somehow diminish the enormity of the Holocaust.

But in recent months, new evidence has forced victims and accomplices alike to confront that nearly forgotten question: What happened to the loot? The Nazi plunder has been traced to banks in Switzerland, Sweden, Portugal, and other neutral countries that were secretly helping the Nazis stash stolen gold or launder it to buy war materiel. One state after another has opened its archives and banking records to aid the search, with one glaring exception: the Vatican.

The Vatican's continuing secrecy means the evidence is incomplete, but already declassified documents from the archives of the United States and other nations suggest that—with the aid of Croatian Catholic priests—Ustasha plunder made its way from Croatia to Rome, and possibly to the Vatican itself. Some of the stolen wealth was used to help Croatian war criminals flee to South America.

"We make no charges against the Vatican, but we keep building a very damning picture," says Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress. "Because of their silence in the face of accumulated evidence, the failure to uncover the truth can only be laid at the doors of the Vatican."

Next month, a task force headed by Under Secretary of State Stuart Eizenstat that is investigating the role of the neutral countries is expected to issue a report that raises questions about the Vatican's wartime financial dealings. Among the documents reviewed: a declassified 1944 intelligence report noting a transfer of funds, via a Swiss bank, from Berlin's Reichsbank to the Vatican. Although there may be innocent explanations for such dealings—church assets being moved out of Germany, perhaps—the discovery of similar transactions by Swiss banks led to revelations of a huge Nazi operation to launder stolen gold with the help of neutral countries.

Church blessing. The Croatian connection, however, is the core of the new evidence that suggests the Vatican might have directly handled funds stolen from the victims of the Nazis and their allies. From 1941 to 1945, the Ustashas exterminated an estimated 500,000 Serbs, Jews, and Romany (Gypsies) and looted their property. They demanded ransom amounting to 1,00 kilograms of gold from all the Jews in Zagreb, only to ship them to concentration camps and kill them anyway. It is a matter of historical record that the Croatian Catholic Church was closely entangled with the Ustashas. In the early years of World War II, Catholic priests oversaw forced conversions of Orthodox Serbs under the aegis of the Ustasha state; Franciscan friars distributed Ustasha propaganda. Several high Catholic officials in Yugoslavia were later indicted for war crimes. They in eluded Father Dragutin Kamber, who ordered the killing of nearly 300 Orthodox Serbs; Bishop Ivan Saric of Sarajevo, known as the "hangman of the Serbs"; and Bishop Gregory Rozman of Slovenia, a wanted Nazi collaborator. A trial held by the Yugoslav War Crimes Commission in 1946 resulted in the conviction of a half-dozen Ustasha priests, among them former Franciscan Miroslav Filipovic-Majistorovic, a commandant of the Jasenovac concentration camp where the Ustashas tortured and slaughtered hundreds of thousands with a brutality that shocked even the Nazis.

As more secret documents become public, however, one priest emerges as the most significant player of all. The Rev. Krunoslav Draganovic, a Franciscan, had been a senior official of the Ustasha committee that handled the forced conversion of Orthodox Serbs. In 1943, the Ustasha arranged with the Croatian Catholic Church to send Father Draganovic to Rome. There he served as secretary of the Istituto San Girolamo, a seminary for Croatian monks that was in fact a center of clandestine Ustasha activity. Draganovic also became Ustasha leader Ante Pavelic's unofficial emissary to the Vatican, and de facto liaison to the Pontifical Relief Commission, a Vatican organization that aided refugees during and after the war.

The ratline. According to secret reports from the U.S. Army's Counterintelligence Corps (CIC), written just after World War II and since declassified, Draganovic and his collaborators at San Girolamo provided money, food, housing, and forged Red Cross passports for a number of Ustasha war criminals seeking to escape justice. Through an underground railroad of sympathetic priests, known as the "ratline," the Ustashas could move from Trieste, to Rome, to Genoa, and on to neutral countries—primarily Argentina— where they could live out their days unpunished and unnoticed. Along the ratline, virtually the entire Ustasha leadership went free. "All these people were escaping—and this at a time when just getting a meal in Rome was a major accomplishment," recalls William Gowen, a CIC officer in Rome after the war.

The copies of memos filed by Gowen and other members of the counterintelligence corps, now stored in U.S. Army archives at Fort Belvoir, Va., contain a wealth of detail on suspicious comings and goings at San Girolamo. The dispatches leave little doubt that the ancient walled compound at Via Tomacelli 132 was more than an ordinary monastery. "San Girolamo is honeycombed with cells of Ustasha operatives," Gowen wrote on Feb. 12, 1947. "In order to enter this monastery, one must submit to a personal search for weapons and identification.... The whole area is guarded by armed Ustasha youths in civilian clothes, and the Ustasha salute is exchanged constantly." From a source inside the compound, Gowen even managed to obtain Draganovic's secret files, which, Gowen reported on Sept. 5, 1947, "indicate clearly Draganovic's involvement in aiding and abetting the Ustasha to escape into South America."

Another Croatian priest living at San Girolamo was also active in smuggling war criminals, documents show. A recently declassified memo, believed to have been written in 1946 by an agent of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—the precursor of the CIA—reports that a priest called Father Golik was supplying false passports and money to members of the Ustasha. Golik, the memo says, was alleged to be "chief sponsor of all Croats resident in Rome, with special attention to the needs of former Ustasha members." The memo reports allegations that the Ustashas "are given a monthly allowance of 6,000 fire per person [the equivalent of $2,700 today], in addition to the privilege of cheap meals at the San Girolamo mess."

Croatian Catholic officials were funneling money to war criminals even after they escaped to Argentina, documents show. According to cable intercepts cited in a 1947 U.S. diplomatic report, Pavelic escaped in November 1947 to Buenos Aires, where he was said to have been met by a retinue of Catholic priests. Newly declassified documents also show that Bishop Rozman was funneling money to South America from a Swiss bank account set up "to aid refugees of the Catholic religion." U.S. military attaché Davis Harrington reported on March 9, 1948, that Rozman "is going to Bern to take care of these finances. The money is in a Swiss bank, and he plans to have most of it sent through to Italy and from there sent to the Ustashas in Argentina."

Further clues about the path of Ustasha gold are provided by Croatian National Bank records uncovered last fall by an American historian of Croatian descent. According to Jere Jareb, author of Gold and Money of the Independent State of Croatia Moved Abroad, the documents show that 288 kilograms of gold was removed from the Croatian National Bank and the state treasury on May 7,1945—the day that Germany capitulated. By Draganovic's own testimony, part of that treasure landed in his hands. The "Golden Priest," as Draganovic was known, acknowledged to the Yugoslav War Crimes Commission that he doled the money out to Ustasha soldiers and Croatian civilian refugees. (Though called to testify, Draganovic was never charged. He later returned to Yugoslavia and died there in 1983).

When in Rome. But does any of the evidence implicate the Vatican itself? The strongest indication so far is a memo that first prompted the State Department's interest. The memo, dated Oct. 21, 1946, was discovered last summer in the declassified files of the U.S. Treasury Department. Written by OSS agent Emerson Bigelow, it reports that money sent by Ustasha from Croatia to Rome after the war had been partly intercepted by the British, but that 200 million Swiss francs—the equivalent of $170 million today—were being held in the Vatican for safekeeping. According to "rumor," the memo says, the money was being used to finance Croatian war criminals in exile.

When the Bigelow memo was released last year, the Vatican swiftly dismissed it, insisting that the charges could not be true. But some researchers who have studied World War II intelligence matters note that other archival documents counter the notion that a Vatican-Ustasha link is implausible on its face. One is a British diplomatic memo from Oct. 17, 1947, cited in the 1991 book Unholy Trinity by journalist Mark Aarons and former Justice Department Nazi-hunter John Loftus. According to the memo, a San Giralomo priest named Father Mandic was a "liaison to the Vatican" who was involved in converting Ustasha gold, jewelry, and foreign exchange into Italian fire.

Other reports mention Ustashas meeting with Vatican officials or even living in the Vatican. The British Foreign Office reported in January 1947 that Pavelic himself, by that time a wanted war criminal, was living "within the Vatican City." An earlier report by Gowen, in October 1946, noted that Pavelic was in Rome and in contact with Draganovic. Documents include accounts of Ustashas being hidden at the pope's summer residence at Castel Gandolfo and being seen driving in Rome in cars with Vatican license plates. The recently declassified Golik memo reports that Ustashas ate at the papal mess and that Father Golik was "declared to be in close contact with the Vatican."

The Vatican's tolerance of the Ustasha during the war was no secret. On the recommendation of Zagreb Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac—who had blessed Pavelic at the opening of the Croatian parliament—the pope established informal diplomatic relations with the independent state of Croatia, and his envoy made regular rounds of Ustasha headquarters. In 1941 and in 1943, at a time when his excesses were known, Pavelic was granted two private audiences with Pius XII. The pope explained that he received the Ustasha leader simply as a Catholic, not as head of the Croatian state. The pontiff's decision was widely reported—and widely deplored—at the time. In July 1941, Francis D'Arcy Osborne, the British ambassador to the Vatican, wrote: "[Pius's] reception of Pavelic ... has done more to damage his reputation in this country than any other act since the war began."

Bound to silence. What all this intelligence means is at the heart of the State Department-led investigation. Vatican officials insist they are hiding nothing because they have nothing to hide. But they say they cannot allow outside researchers free access to their archives because the collection contains sensitive personnel files. As a general rule, the Vatican releases church documents only after about 75 years. "I am bound to silence," said the Rev. Marcel Chappin of the Vatican Secretariat of State, when pressed to comment. Chappin said that the Vatican has already published a voluminous account of its role in World War II, including a discussion of the controversy surrounding Pius XII, who kept silent on the Nazi atrocities because he believed provocation of the Nazis would lead to more persecution and because he considered the greater enemy to be atheistic communism. Vatican defenders note that the church saved tens of thousands of Jews during the war, and they urge that current suspicions be viewed in the context of the chaotic times: Refugees were streaming into Vatican City after the war, and it is quite possible that funds intended for these refugees were used to help war criminals without the pope's knowledge." The question is what did the Vatican's own leadership know?" says William Slaney, the State Department's historian and author of the Nazi gold reports. "We want the Vatican . . . to deal with [its] share of this dreadful event."

30-12-2009 om 23:18 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

30-12-2009 om 21:36 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

Miroslav Filipović

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Miroslav Filipović (1915 - 1946) was a Herzegovina-born Croatian nationalist and Roman Catholic priest (later known as Tomislav Filipović and Tomislav Filipović-Majstorović) who was convicted of war crimes by both a German military court and a Yugoslav civil court and hanged in Belgrade.

Early life

Filipović's date of birth was 5 June 1915, but little else about his early years has been recorded.^[1]. In 1938 he joined the Franciscan Order at Petrićevac monastery, Banja Luka, and took “Tomislav” as his religious name.^[2] During 1941 his superior at the monastery reportedly urged Filipović to distance himself from the Ustaša,^{[citation needed]} an organisation of extremist Croatian nationalists installed by the Axis Powers in April 1941 to rule in the Independent State of Croatia (ISC), a puppet state embracing Bosnia-Hercegovina as well as most of Croatia.^{[citation needed]}

Filipović was assigned to a chaplaincy in the Rama-Šćit region (in northern Herzegovina).^[3] He did not take up the assignment and in January 1942, after completing his theological exams in Sarajevo ^[4], he became a military chaplain with the Ustaša.^[5]

Ustaša Chaplain

Tomislav Filipović (later known as Tomislav Filipović-Majstorović) was assigned to II Poglavnik Bodyguard Battalion. Statements by two eyewitnesses and a senior German general alleged that on 7 February 1942, Filipović accompanied elements of his battalion in an operation aimed at wiping out Serbs in the settlement of Drakulić, on the northern outskirts of Banja Luka, and in two neighbouring villages, Motike and Šargovac. A few Serbs survived, but overwhelmingly the operation achieved its objective and more than 2,300 Serb civilians - men, women and children - were killed, usually with axe or pick-axe. He was nicknamed by his troops "the glorious one", and he ordered that little Serbian children be brought before him, so that he could laughter them with the traditional Ustaše weapons: the knife and gun. He and Father Zvonimir Brekalo would kill these children by cutting their necks.^[6]

Reports sent to Eugen Dido Kvaternik, head of the state internal security service, from his Banja Luka office and dated 9 and 11 February 1942, noted that the victims at Šargovac included 52 children killed at the village primary school. The first of these reports gives death tolls at the mine, the school and the three villages which together total 2,287. The second revises the death toll at the school from 37 to 52, bringing the toll to 2,302. ^[7] Two teachers survived the school massacre: Dobrila Martinović, who subsequently suffered a nervous breakdown, and Mara Šunjić (shown as Tunjić in some documents) who gave evidence against Filipović at his postwar trial in Belgrade. According to Šunjić's trial testimony Filipović not only participated in the atrocity but also incited fellow Ustaše to act with extreme cruelty.^[8]

By 1955 Martinović was teaching again, in the Bosnian village of Siprage southeast of Banja Luka. She described the Šargovac school massacre in conversations with a university professor, Jovo Jovanović and with her headteacher, and her account was published in 1968. She explained that she had no reason to be alarmed when Filipović arrived at the school because he was based at the nearby Prebićevac monastery and was often seen passing through the villages. On previous occasions his manner had been friendly. The teacher recalled that when Filipović and some Ustaše entered her classroom, the children looked on with curiosity but no fear. But Filipović took a child, Vasilija Glamočanin, and "slaughtered her with a knife" in front of the class. He urged the Ustaša troops who accompanied him to deal similarly with the other children and assured them that he would take the sin upon himself.^[9] Viktor Novak had attributed a similar account to Martinović in Magnum crimen, but embellished it, like some other passages in the same book, with grotesque and sometimes improbable detail: “As each child passed, an Ustaša would gouge out an eye and push it into the child's slit belly” etc. Similar atrocities occurred on 12 February 1942 at two more villages in the area, Piskavica and Ivanjska (now Potkozarje), but there is no concrete evidence that Filipović was involved in those events.^[10] Also available, as of August 2008, in English at www.serbianunity.net.

Officers of the German occupying authority were dismayed by the February massacres, fearing that they would provoke uprisings among the civilian population of the region.^[11] Filipović was court-martialed by the Germans for his involvement, possibly at the request of the Italian army which was then occupying part of the ISC territory.^[12] In his testimony to a Croatian state commission set up after World War II to investigate war crimes “by the occupation forces and their collaborators”, Filipović said he neither participated in, nor even attended, the 7 February massacres.^[13] However, General Edmund Glaise-Horstenau, the senior German officer in the region, implicated Filipović in a report where he stated that as well as being present "during the slaughtering" the priest had attended a planning meeting prior to the massacres, along with certain other Catholic priests. He reported that the Ustaša's former city chief in Banja Luka, Viktor Gutić, and the city's court president, a Dr. Stilinović, were also at the meeting.^[14] On 4 April 1942 Filipović was suspended from his chaplaincy post^[15] by the papal legate in Zagreb and jailed in Croatia.^[12]

Responsibilities at the Jasenovac camps complex

Appointment

Ustaše execute prisoners near the Jasenovac concentration camp.

Through the direct intervention of Vjekoslav "Maks" Luburić,^[16] who then headed Section III of the ISC internal security service (Ustaška Narodna Služba), which was responsible for administering the puppet state's system of prison camps ^[17], Filipović was quickly released and posted to the Jasenovac complex of labour and death camps where he was at first an inmate with benefited status, who aided the Ustase, and later appointed Ustase, commanding a small transit camp nigh Jasenovac, in early 1942, He reportedly killed an inmate there for hiding a loaf of bread.^[18] Shortly thereafter he became chief-guard, responsible for mass-executions and lieutenant of the commander Ljubo Milos and administrator Ivica Matković, and later, on 10 June 1942, administrator of the main camp in their stead, until the return of Matković, in March 1942.^[16][19] Luburić gave Filipović a new surname, "Majstorović", derived from a local word meaning "master" or "craftsman". From then on documents referred to him sometimes by that name and sometimes as Filipović-Majstorović. One event that had him noted for being overly-cruel, was his apparent victory in a bet placed by him, Marinko Polić and Jerko Maricić, both infamous NCOs in the camp. Witness Josip Riboli stated:

Majstorović, Polić and Maricić competed over which of them was a better butcher. Victims had to kneel in front of them until they were touching their foreheads to the ground, and the executioners would fire their revolvers at the backs of their heads. If death wasn't instant, one of them would grab a knife and slit the victim's throat.^[20]

Commandant of Jasenovac

After the war Filipović admitted that he had personally killed about 100 prisoners and had attended mass executions of many more. He estimated that under his command some 20-30,000 prisoners were liquidated at the main Jasenovac camp. He said prisoners would often be made to stand in prepared trenches where each was then killed with a sledgehammer blow.^[21] Filipović went on to describe his tenure in command of Stara Gradiška, a prison camp primarily for women which was designated Camp V within the Jasenovac system:

After hearing from 62 Jasenovac survivors, whom it listed usually with complete addresses, the war-crimes commission in 1946 counted Filipović among 13 Ustaše who “stood out” for their brutality and direct involvement in the killing. It reported that even the cruelty of Ljubo Miloš, notorious for slashing prisoners to death in a mock clinic, was “surpassed in sadism” by Filipović. The commission saw Filipović's statement as a “crucial” acknowledgement of his participation in atrocities, but in respect of the numbers he had given it noted: “All witnesses interviewed, who were prisoners themselves, speak with complete consistency and certainty of a far greater number, especially in regards to the number of victims killed by Majstorovic himself." The commission cited one witness, Tomo Krkac, who had described seeing Filipović “very often” shooting prisoners during so-called public executions and forcing prisoners to kill other prisoners with sledgehammers.^[22]

In one of the first published memoirs about life and death in the Jasenovac complex, a Croatian medical doctor and academic, Dr. Nikola Nikolić, who had been imprisoned in Camp III, described his first meeting with Filipović: “His voice had an almost feminine quality which was at odds with his physical stature and coarse face.” Nikolić recalled standing in the second row of a group of prisoners who had been lined up to watch as another group of prisoners were herded in front of Filipović. Filipovović called Nikolić to the front so that, as a doctor, he could witness “our surgery being performed without anaesthetic.” Filipović then shot dead two prisoners and told a colleague to “finish off the rest.”^[23]

Nikolić quotes another survivor, Josip Riboli: “Compared with Matković and Miloš, whose faces revealed the baseness of their inner natures, Filipović Majstorović seemed kind and gentle - except when the slaughtering was going on. Then he was incomparable. He was the leader of all the mass killings at Gradina. He went off to conduct the slaughtering every night and came back covered with blood.”^[23] Riboli also gave evidence to the Croatian war-crimes commission. According to the accounts of some survivors, Filipović continued to act as a chaplain while commanding the camp and sometimes wore his Franciscan robes while carrying out his crimes.^[24] As a result he came to be known among prisoners as “Fra Sotona” (”Brother Satan”). There is no evidence that he was excommunicated by the Catholic Church, but he was removed from the Franciscan order on 22 October 1942, the date on which he was transferred to Stara Gradiška.^[15] In 1981 a Banja Luka priest stated that Filipović told him, in the month after he relinquished command at Jasenovac, that he was guilty of crimes at the camp but was innocent of involvement in the massacres in and around Drakulić in February 1942.^[25] In September 1944, Filipović, along with Dinko Šakić and others, was appointed to sit on an ad hoc court-martial convened to try prisoners accused of forging links with the Partisans and plotting an escape. The Croatian War Crimes Commission in its report was at a loss to explain why such a process had been deemed necessary when Ustaše had already killed thousands of people “by heinous means, without any justification or procedure”. It reported that all 31 accused prisoners were hanged after undergoing severe torture including blindings, crushed fingers and blow-lamp burns. Filipović in his testimony said: “We (the court-martial) didn’t investigate anything, we only signed the verdicts.” A witness, Dervis Sarać, recalled how three gypsies were brought to play music before Filipović, who, disappointed by the music, shot one and sent the others to death.^[26] Another witness accuses him of having shot an inmate while eating lunch, after which deed he resumed eating.^[27]

Commandant of Stara Gradiška

As chief of camp Stara Gradiška, which predominantly housed women and children, Miroslav Filipović-Majstorović excelled in sadism. A Jewish survivor of Jasenovac, Egon Berger, has described Filipović’s sadistic killing of children,^[28] while two other witnesses, Šimo Klaić and Dragutin Škrgatić: Klaić recalls that in Christmas 1942, Miroslav ordered mass and later a muster, where he killed four inmates with a knife, while forcing a Jew of Sarajevo, Alkalaj, to sing, then ordering Alkalaj to near him, stabbing him in the chest and slashing his throat. Then he killed 56 Bosnian Jews by tying them with wire, hitting them with an axe so they all fell into a well. Then he shot 42 Bosnian villagers in the head^[29] Škrgatić confirmed that Filipović shot 40 villagers in the head after mass, adding:"In Majstorović's time, musters and executions were frequent. Friar Majstorović favored a mystical approach to the killings.... After he killed them, sat on a chair and said 'justice has been done".^[30] Ivan Palcec, a witness, added that Filipović shot nine inmates that day for an escape attempt^[31]. Witness Josip Erlih recalls Miroslav shooting at eight inmates to death.^[32]

Post-WW2

29-12-2009 om 22:15 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

De armen hebben hun geld aan de rijken gegeven

De Tijd schrijft:
"Auteur is Joseph E. Stiglitz is hoogleraar aan de Columbia University en kreeg in 2001 de Nobelprijs voor economie. Zijn jongste boek, ‘Freefall’, komt uit in januari.
Het beste wat we over 2009 kunnen zeggen, is dat het erger had gekund, dat we niet in de afgrond zijn gestort waar we eind 2008 leken voor te staan, en dat 2010 voor de meeste landen bijna zeker beterschap brengt. De wereld heeft ook een paar waardevolle lessen geleerd, weliswaar ten koste van onze welvaart. Eigenlijk hadden we daar niet zo’n hoge prijs voor hoeven te betalen, aangezien we die lessen al hadden moeten kennen.

De eerste les is dat de markten zichzelf niet corrigeren. Zonder een adequate regelgeving zijn ze geneigd tot excessen. In 2009 hebben we opnieuw vastgesteld waarom de onzichtbare hand van de Schotse econoom Adam Smith vaak onzichtbaar lijkt: hij is er niet. De bankiers jagen hun eigenbelang na (hebzucht) en dat heeft de samenleving weinig goed gedaan. Zelfs hun aandeel- en obligatiehouders hebben er weinig baat bij gehad. En de woningeigenaars die hun huis verliezen, de werknemers die hun baan kwijt zijn, de gepensioneerden die hun pensioenfondsen in rook zagen opgaan of de belastingbetalers die honderden miljarden hebben betaald om de banken te redden, al helemaal niet.

Door het dreigende vooruitzicht dat het hele systeem ineen zou storten werd het vangnet, dat bedoeld was om onfortuinlijke personen te helpen het hoofd boven water te houden, op gulle wijze ook gespannen onder commerciële banken, en vervolgens onder zakenbanken, verzekeringsmaatschappijen, autobedrijven en zelfs verstrekkers van autoleningen. Nooit eerder is zoveel geld van zoveel mensen getransfereerd naar zo weinigen.

We zijn gewend aan het idee dat de overheid geld van de rijken aan de armen geeft. In dit geval zijn het de armen en de middenklasse die hun geld aan de rijken hebben gegeven. De al onder een zware last gebukt gaande belastingbetalers moesten toezien hoe hun geld, dat de banken moest helpen weer krediet te verschaffen om de economie nieuw leven in te blazen, voor buitensporige bonussen en dividenden werd gebruikt. Dividenden zouden een deel van de winst moeten voorstellen, in dit geval was het gewoon een blijk van de vrijgevigheid van de regering.

De rechtvaardiging was dat het redden van de banken, hoe stuntelig ook, de kredietverschaffing weer op gang zou brengen. Maar dat is niet gebeurd. Het enige wat is gebeurd, is dat de gemiddelde belastingbetaler zijn geld heeft gegeven aan dezelfde instellingen die hem jarenlang hebben uitgeknepen door middel van roofleningen, woekerintresten op kredietkaarten en ondoorzichtige commissies.

De reddingen hebben overal een diepgewortelde hypocrisie blootgelegd. Wie voor budgettaire beheersing had gepleit als het om kleinschalige welvaartsprogramma’s voor de armen ging, stond nu te juichen om ’s werelds grootste welvaartsprogramma. Wie de transparantie van de vrije markt had geroemd, creëerde uiteindelijk financiële systemen die zo ondoorzichtig waren dat de banken niet meer wijs geraakten uit hun eigen balansen. En ten slotte stortte ook de overheid zich in steeds minder transparante reddingsoperaties, om haar vrijgevigheid ten aanzien van de banken te verdoezelen. Wie gepleit had voor ‘verantwoording’ en ‘verantwoordelijkheid’ vroeg de schulden van de financiële sector kwijt te schelden.

marktfalen

De tweede belangrijke les is begrijpen waarom markten vaak niet functioneren zoals bedoeld. Er zijn vele redenen voor marktfalen. In dit geval hadden de financiële instellingen die ‘too big to fail’ waren een perverse incentive: als ze succes hadden met gokken, staken ze de winst op zak. Als ze verloren, zou de belastingbetaler wel betalen.

Bovendien functioneren markten vaak niet goed als de informatie niet helemaal klopt, en laat het nu net daar schorten in de financiële sector. Externe factoren werken ver door: het faillissement van één bank zadelt andere banken op met kosten, en het falen van het financieel systeem deed belastingbetalers en werknemers overal ter wereld daarvoor opdraaien.

Stimulansen

De derde les is dat Keynesiaans beleid wel degelijk werkt. Landen, zoals Australië, die al vroeg omvangrijke en uitgekiende stimulansprogramma’s hebben uitgevoerd, zijn de crisis sneller te boven gekomen. Andere landen zijn bezweken voor de oude economische orthodoxie, daarbij geholpen door de financiële tovenaars aan wie we deze knoeiboel te danken hebben.

Wanneer een economie in recessie is, verschijnen de begrotingstekorten, omdat de belastinginkomsten sneller dalen dan de uitgaven. De oude orthodoxie hield voor dat je het begrotingstekort moest dichten - door de belastingen te verhogen of in de uitgaven te snoeien - om ‘het vertrouwen te herstellen’. Maar dat beleid heeft er bijna altijd toe geleid dat de geaggregeerde vraag daalde, de economie nog verder in het slop geraakte en het vertrouwen nog meer ondermijnd werd. Dat hebben we onlangs nog gezien toen het Internationaal Monetair Fonds (IMF) in de jaren 90 op zo’n beleid hamerde in Oost-Azië.

inflatie

De vierde les is dat een monetair beleid voeren meer omvat dan inflatiebestrijding. Te veel de nadruk leggen op inflatie betekende dat sommige centrale banken niet wisten wat er met hun financiële markten aan de hand was. De kostprijs van een milde inflatie is miniem in vergelijking met de kosten voor de economie als de centrale banken vermogensbubbels ongecontroleerd laten groeien.

innovatie

De vijfde les is dat niet alle innovatie een efficiëntere en productievere economie voortbrengt, laat staan een betere samenleving. En wanneer privé-incentives niet goed afgestemd zijn op het maatschappelijk rendement kan dat leiden tot het nemen van overdreven risico’s, tot overdreven kortzichtig gedrag en tot scheefgetrokken innovatie. Een voorbeeld: hoewel de voordelen van de vernieuwingen op het gebied van financiële financieringstechnieken van de voorbije jaren moeilijk kunnen worden aangetoond, laat staan becijferd, zijn de maatschappelijke en economische kosten die eraan verbonden zijn duidelijk en enorm.

De financiële engineering heeft geen producten opgeleverd die gewone burgers zouden helpen om het eenvoudige risico van het bezitten van een woning te beheren. Bijgevolg zijn miljoenen hun huis kwijt en zullen nog een paar miljoen hun huis waarschijnlijk verliezen. In de plaats daarvan waren de nieuwe producten bedoeld om wie niet zo hoog opgeleid is nog meer uit te buiten, en om regelgevingen en boekhoudkundige normen te omzeilen, terwijl die bedoeld waren om de efficiëntie en de stabiliteit van de markten te verhogen. Als gevolg daarvan hebben de financiële markten, die verondersteld worden risico’s te beheren en kapitaal efficiënt aan te wenden, risico’s gecreëerd en lukraak geld uitgegeven.

We zullen snel genoeg ontdekken of we deze keer meer van de crisis leren dan in het verleden. Maar als de hervormingen van de financiële sector in de Verenigde Staten en de andere geavanceerde industrielanden in 2010 niet sneller vorderen, zouden we jammer genoeg nog een tweede zittijd kunnen krijgen.

Bron: De Tijd 24/12/2009

29-12-2009 om 20:38 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

28-12-2009 om 21:30 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

Concentration and Death Camp Jasenovac

An adapted compilation, courtesy of Jasenovac Research Institute

JASENOVAC

Entry in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, edited by Yisrael Gutman, vol. 1, 1995, pp. 739-740

JASENOVAC, the largest concentration and extermination camp in CROATIA. Jasenovac was in fact a complex of several subcamps, in close proximity to each other, on the bank of the Sava River, about 62 miles (100 km) south of Zagreb. The women’ s camp of Stara Gradiška, which was farther away, also belonged to this complex.

Jasenovac was established in August 1941 and was dismantled only in April 1945. The creation of the camp and its management and supervision were entrusted to Department III of the Croatian Security Police (Ustaška Narodna Služba: UNS), headed by Vjekoslav (Maks) Luburić, who was personally responsible for everything that happened. Some six hundred thousand people were murdered at Jasenovac, mostly Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and opponents of the USTASA regime. The number of Jewish victims was between twenty thousand and twenty-five thousand, most of whom were murdered there up to August 1942, when deportation of the Croatian Jews to Auschwitz for extermination began. Jews were sent to Jasenovac from all parts of Croatia (and Bosnia and Herzegovina, e. n.) from Zagreb, from Sarajevo, and from other cities and smaller towns. On their arrival most were killed at execution sites near the camp: Granik, Gradina, and other places. Those kept alive were mostly skilled at needed professions and trades (doctors, pharmacists, electricians, shoemakers, goldsmiths, and so on) and were employed in services and workshops at Jasenovac. The living conditions in the camp were extremely severe: a meager diet, deplorable accommodations, a particularly cruel regime, and unbelievably cruel behavior by the Ustaše guards. The conditions improved only for short periods during visits by delegations, such as the press delegation that visited in February 1942 and a Red Cross delegation in June 1944.

Three slaughterers and a commandant of the Jasenovac camp: Stipe Prpić, friar Miroslav Filipović-Majstorović, and Jerko Maričić

The acts of murder and of cruelty in the camp reached their peak in the late summer of 1942, when tens of thousands of Serbian villagers were deported to Jasenovac from the area of the fighting against the partisans in the Kozara Mountains. Most of the men were killed at Jasenovac. The women were sent for forced labor in Germany, and the children were taken from their mothers; some were murdered and others were dispersed in orphanages throughout the country.

In April 1945 the partisan army approached the camp. In an attempt to erase traces of the atrocities, the Ustaše blew up all the installations and killed most of the internees. An escape attempt by the prisoners failed, and only a few survived.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Romano, J. Jews of Yugoslavia, 1941-1945: Victims of Genocide and Freedom Fighters. Belgrade, 1982. Sindik, D., ed. Sećanja Jevreja na logor Jasenovac, Belgrade, 1972.

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Map of Jasenovac camps

Drawing of the camp

Plan of the camp

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I. THE CREATION OF THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF CROATIA - 1941

After the short-lived war in April of 1941, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was divided among the aggressor countries: Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, Horti's Hungary and Boris III's Bulgaria. In the meantime, while the war was still being fought, the founding of the Ustasha's Independent State of Croatia (abbreviated as NDH from the Serbo-Croatian "Nezavisna Država Hrvatska") was proclaimed on April 10, 1941; territories besides those which were traditionally settled by the Croats were grafted into this state, including all of Bosnia- Herzegovina and parts of Serbia.

There were more than two million Serbs living in the newly created puppet state, who made up one third of the entire population of the NDH. There were also significant numbers of Jews, Romanies and members of other national groups. As soon as the NDH was proclaimed, the leader of this Italo-German fabrication, the head of the Ustasha named Ante Pavelić, began to carry out the Ustasha's program of the creation of a "purely Croatian area for living" and a "pure Croat nation". Namely, since the Ustasha were extreme nationalists, chauvinists and racists, they began to build their own state and institutions which reflected those of Nazi Germany. According to their ideologists, the condition for the creation of a purely Croatian state would be the expulsion of the Serbs ("Greek-Easterners"), the Jews ("Židovi") and the Romanies ("Gypsies"). Claiming that the Serbs were both racially and religiously different from the Croats, they killed them, deported them or forcibly converted them. The Jews and Romanies were to be completely annihilated as they were considered to be lower races. The Ustasha government and its jurisdiction passed a series of laws, orders and regulations by which Nazi-fascist methods of terror and ethnic genocide were made legal (the Regulation on the Outlawing of the Cyrillic Alphabet, the Regulation on Racial Affiliation, the Regulation on Citizenship, the Regulation on Conversion from One Religion to Another, and so on). Yet, the most massive crime against the Serbs, Jews and Romanies was carried out outside the framework of those laws and legal documents. The Ustasha acted on their racial, religious and national intolerance without regard for any kind of laws or norms. The Ustasha government was supported by the greater part of the Catholic clergy and the Muslim religious community, and the Croatian Peasant also pledged their allegiance to the Ustasha government.

II. THE BEGINNING OF THE GENOCIDE OF THE SERBS, JEWS, AND ROMANIES IN THE NDH

The Ustasha's organization was a typically fascist organization and its military strength was an instrument for the implementation of the Ustasha's Nazi ideology.

The Ustasha army („Ustaška vojnica“) was organized by Slavko Kvaternik, the „second in command“ and it was made up of Ustasha units (filled out with volunteers) under the direction of the Central Ustasha Headquarters, of special police units („redarstvo“) and the Home Guard („domobrani“), and in August of 1941 the Ustasha Secret Service (abbreviated UNS after the Serbo-Croatian („Ustaška Nadzorna Sluzhba“) was formed, with Eugen - Dido Kvaternik at its head. With the aid of these organizations, the greatest kind of genocide was carried out against the Serbs, Jews and Romanies in the NDH. In order to make it possible for only Croats and Muslims to live in the NDH, the mass physical destruction, expulsion and forcible conversion of the Serbs was carried out, along with the systematic extermination of the Jews, and the almost complete destruction of the Romanies. The mass murder of the Serbs began already at the end of April, 1941, with the massacres in the villages around Bjelovar, in Banija in May, in Lika in June, in Kordun, in Bosnian Krajina and in Herzegovina. It is thought that just in the period from April, 1941, to the middle of August, 1942, over 600,000 Serbs were killed in the most brutal ways imaginable, and during the entire war over 180,000 Serbs were deported to Serbia proper.

Jewish children being sent to Jasenovac

The terror of the NDH government was especially aimed at the Serbian Orthodox Church. Three Orthodox bishops and most of the Orthodox priests were murdered by the end of 1941 in the cruelest of manners. During the war, 450 Orthodox churches were demolished. The exact number of Serbs forcibly converted to Catholicism has never been established.

III. CONCENTRATION CAMPS IN THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF CROATIA

According to the example of their protectors, Nazi Germany and the other fascist regimes, concentration camps were founded in the NDH for the purpose of „purifying the nation“ of undesirables. The Ustasha called them „collection“ or „work“ camps, and they were designed for the mass internment and systematic total destruction of Serbs, Jews, Romanies, and „objectionable“ Croats. The so-called „Ustasha Secret Service“ (or rather its) „Department III“ which was also called the „Ustasha Guard“ was in charge of the founding, organization and management of the concentration camps in the NDH. Although they were actually the same, „Department III“ took care of the founding, organization and management of the camps, while the „Ustasha Guard“ was assigned to forming military units which guarded the camps and carried out the task of transporting the Serb and Jewish people from the surrounding territories to the camps, and they were also those who killed the prisoners.

The first camps in the NDH were founded on the island of Pag at the place called Slano, on Mount Velebit near Gospić at a place called Jadovno, and in Bosnia at Kruščica near Travnik. Besides Jasenovac, the larger camps were: Danica in Koprivnica, Kerestinec, Lobograd, Stara Gradiška, Lepoglava, Jastrebarsko and Sisak. In the beginning there were no legal regulations about sending people to camps or the length of sentences. Such things were decided by Pavelić's emissaries, district prefects, deputy prefects, camp supervisors and other Ustasha commanders. Such practices remained even later, and when the regulations were finally passed no one obeyed them.

The first commander of „Department III“ (the „Ustasha Guard“) and thus of the camps as well, was the Ustasha Mijo Babić alias „Giovani“, who was followed by Vjekoslav Luburić alias „Maks“. On the orders of Pavelić and Kvaternik, Luburić spent time in Germany as a guest of the Gestapo at the beginning of October, 1941, at which time he visited several German concentration camps. Upon returning to the NDH, he carried out a re-organization of the existing camps and founded new ones modelled after those in Germany, and formed a powerful military unit of the „Ustasha Guard“ who carried out mass crimes directly under his command.

IV THE FOUNDING OF THE JASENOVAC CONCENTRATION CAMP

The Ustasha camp called Jasenovac was founded according to the model of camps in Nazi Germany, on August 21, 1941. it was the largest place of torture and execution which ever existed in Yugoslavia. With its horrors it was the largest concentration camp, and it was the third in the number of victims in all of occupied Europe, during the war years 1941-1945. With their sadism and pathological crimes, the Ustasha outdid even their Nazi German masters.

Unlike the German camps where industrialized genocide was conducted, in Jasenovac that genocide was done in a way never recorded in the history of the human race. All which was negative, pathological and criminal, which characterized the Ustasha movement as a whole, reached its peak in Jasenovac.

The Jasenovac camp spread out over 210 square kilometers, along the Sava River from Stara Gradiška in the east to the village Krapje in the west, and from Strug in the north to the line between Draksenić to Bistrica in the south.

The choice of the wider region of Jasenovac for such a monstrous camp was made for several reasons. One of them was certainly the suitable geographic position. The Zagreb-Belgrade railway was in the vicinity and was important for the transport of the prisoners. The terrain was surrounded by the rivers Sava, Una and Velika Struga, in the middle of the swampy Lonjsko Polje area, so that escape from the camp was almost impossible. On the other side of the Sava, the Gradina region was hardly accessible and often flooded by the river, uninhabited and far from all witnesses. It was the ideal place for hiding mass murders. The other possible reason for the choice of this place were the existing factories there; these were workshops for the making of chains, blacksmith shops, locksmith shops, brick factories, lumber mills and so on, so the camp was easy to present in public as a work camp.

V THE JASENOVAC CAMP SYSTEM

The Jasenovac concentration camp encompassed a system of camps along the Sava River, on the flood plain of the Lonjsko polje area.

The Ustasha's newspapers announced to the public, on August 23, 1941, that the first barracks for prisoners had been built near the villages of Bročice and Krapje, and that the camps would be used for the draining of Lonjsko Polje. In fact, that was the founding of the Jasenovac camp, or more precisely, Camp II called Bročice - „Versajev“ and Camp 11 called „Krapje“, to which the first prisoners were brought, Jews and Serbs from the Ustasha camps of Slano and Jadovno. In the beginning the prisoners actually worked on building the dike, but under indescribably hard conditions and terror. Those who did not die from the exhausting work and hunger, being immediately buried in the dike, were killed when the camp was liquidated. In November of 1941, Camp III „Ciglana“ (which means „brickyard“) was opened - the so-called III which quickly became the camp with the central management function for all collection and concentration camps in the NDH. The center of the camp lay beneath the village Jasenovac in the area of the industrial complex where the brickyard actually was, and that is how it got its name. Three-fourths of Camp III were surrounded by a wall 3 to 5 meters high, into which seven concrete bunkers were built and which had several guard towers. In front of the wall were three lines of tangled barbed wire, and in some places they were electrified. The fourth side of the camp faced the River Sava. As an integral part of Camp 111-C there was a special Ustasha Secret Service prison for specially selected prisoners.

Camp IV „Kožara“ (which means „tannery“) was found in the village of Jasenovac, and prisoners worked in the tannery there under the most difficult of conditions. Camp V - Stara Gradiška belonged organizationally to the Jasenovac camp system. In the overall area of the Jasenovac camp three other special camps were organized. In the village Uštica, on the delta of the Una and Sava, an improvised „Gypsy camp“ was located, where mainly Romanies were brought and killed, and the villages Mlaka and Jablanac were turned into collection camps for women and children.

VI THE PLACES OF EXECUTION IN JASENOVAC

The system of mass murder in Jasenovac was already in place in the fall of 1941, as soon as the larger transports of people began to arrive. The men, women and children arrived here by rail, truck, horse-drawn cart, or simply running at the insistence of the Ustasha with rifles. Places of mass execution were found all over the Jasenovac camp. Most of them were located on the right bank of the Sava from the Dubički limepits downriver, and especially in the village Gradina. According to forensic science research, over half of all the victims were killed here. Murder of the prisoners was also carried out in the forest near the Krapje Camp, near the „Versaj“ Camp and „Uštica“ Camp on the whole left bank of the Sava, downriver from Jasenovac to Jablanac and Mlaka. Furthermore, within the complex of Camp III there was also a crematorium which was actually an oven for baking bricks; the Ustasha converted it according to the plans of Hinko Picili so that they could bum the prisoners in it. Within this circle, besides „Picili's Furnaceo, there were also other places where people were tortured and killed and they were called „Lančara“, „Tunel“, „Granik“. „Zvonara“, „Sablasno jezero“, and so on.

In the Camp of Stara Gradiška, torture and murder were done in the cellars of the old Austrian Fortress, in the tower of the fortress and on the banks of the Sava.

The extent to which the system of killing was developed is witnessed to by a memorandum from the Headquarters Chief on April 27, 1942, directed to all Ustasha units and institutions, stating „the collection and work camp at Jasenovac can receive an unlimited number of prisoners“.

VII METHODS AND MEANS OF THE MASS EXTERMINATION OF PEOPLE IN JASENOVAC

From the summer of 1941 to the spring of 1945, death in Jasenovac took numerous forms. The prisoners and all those who ended up in Jasenovac had their throats cut by the Ustasha with specially designed knives, or they were killed with axes, mallets and hammers; they were also shot, or they were hung from trees or light poles. Some were burned alive in hot furnaces, boiled in cauldrons, or drowned in the River Sava.

Here the most varied forms of torture were used: finger and toe nails were pulled out with metal instruments, eyes were dug out with specially constructed hooks, people were blinded by having needles stuck in their eyes, flesh was cut and then salted. People were also flayed, had their noses, ears and tongues cut off with wire cutters, and had awls stuck in their hearts. Daughters were raped in front of their mothers, sons were tortured in front of their fathers. Said plainly, in the concentration camps at Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška, the Ustasha surpassed all that even the sickest mind could imagine and do in terms of the brutal way people were murdered.

People in Jasenovac were no longer human beings, but rather objects which were available for the every whim of the Ustasha.

Even the Nazi generals were amazed at the horrors of Jasenovac. Thus, General von Horstenau, Hitler's representative in Zagreb, wrote in his personal diary for 1942 that the Ustasha camps in the NDH were „the epitome of horror“, and Arthur Hefner, a German transport officer for work forces in the Reich, wrote on November 11, 1942 of Jasenovac: „The concept of the Jasenovac camp should actually be understood as several camps which are several kilometers apart, grouped around Jasenovac. Regardless of the propaganda, this is one of the most horrible of camps, which can only be compared to Dante's Inferno“.

VIII WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN THE JASENOVAC CAMP

Many women, often with their children, were brought to Jasenovac. The whole village of Mlaka was turned into a women's work camp. Women were forced to do exhausting agricultural work in the vicinity. Executions were performed in the very close proximity of the villages of Mlaka and Jablanac.

Children at Jasenovac

In the process of „purifying the Croatian nation“, Serbian children were the first to be executed, together with the adults, even if they were still on their mothers's breasts. During the four years between April, 1941 to May 1945, tens of thousands of children were killed in the Ustasha's NDH. The youngest were still in the cradle, while the oldest were about 14 years of age. During the Second World War, the only place where there were special camps for children was Croatia.

From December, 1941, to April, 1945, in Jasenovac, the Ustasha killed 19.544 boys and girls of Serbian nationality, and their identities were later established. They were executed in atrocious ways and also died, more than the adults, from illnesses, famine, thirst, and frost. The Ustasha would drown small children in the Sava by tying up several of them in a sack and throwing them into the river. Many children (about 400 of them) were slaughtered in Jasenovac in mid-September, 1942. The children taken in 15 horse-drawn carts to the brickyard and burnt. A very similar fate befell the 300 kids who executed in Gradina on the afternoon of October -N. 1942.

IX PUBLIC PRESENTATION OF THE JASENOVAC CAMP

To the outside world, Jasenovac was presented as a work camp. The Ustasha's propaganda tried to present the concentration camps both to their own people and to the world as places of useful work and reformation.

The wider area of the camp was strictly guarded. Only the confirmed Ustasha with specific tasks were allowed in. Even the Germans, as „allies“ and friends, were not allowed to enter the camp freely. However, under pressure from abroad, especially from the Germans, on February 6, 1942, an „International Committee“ visited the Camp to see the way of living and working in it. In that delegation, the Pope's emissary was also included, Monsignor G. Massuci.

Three days before that, Ljubo Miloš, the commandant of the Jasenovac camps, had summoned all the prisoners and ordered them to clean the camp, tidy the dining room, kitchen, and hospital. The prisoners were given the sort of food that they had never had, or would have. After this visit the photographs of „the workers at their machines“ in well-equipped workshops, and of the camp clinics with the staff in immaculately clean white uniforms, were sent to the world from Jasenovac. The camp was presented in such a way that it seemed desirable to be in Jasenovac in that war time of general uncertainty, death, and poverty, without the slightest premonition of what was, actually hidden behind those photographs.

X THE BREAKOUT OF THE PRISONERS AND THE LIBERATION OF THE CAMP

At the beginning of April 1945, the Ustasha were preparing the liquidation of the Jasenovac camp in order to remove the traces of their crimes before escaping. The ultimate liquidation of the Camp was begun on April 20, when the last large group of women and children was executed. On April 22, 1945, under the leadership of Ante Vukotić, about 600 people armed with bricks, poles, hammers and other things, broke down the doors, shattered windows and ran out of the building. About 470 people were sick and unable to fight barehanded with the armed Ustasha, so they did not take part in the rebellion. The 150 meter long path to the east gate of the camp was covered by the crossfire of the Ustasha machine-guns, and many prisoners were killed there. A large number of them was killed on the wires of the camp. A hundred prisoners managed to break through the broken gate of the camp. Only 80 prisoners survived while 520 of them died in the first assault. The remaining 470 within the camp were later killed by the Ustasha.

The captives, 167 of them, from the so-called „Kožara“ part of the Jasenovac camp, about 8 p.m. on April 22 also began mortal combat under the leadership of Stanko Gaćeša and Zahid Bukurević. 150 of them managed to break through, but they were surrounded and fired at so heavily that only 11 prisoners survived.

The Jasenovac camp was not liquidated until the very last battles were being fought. The Yugoslav Army forces entered the Stara Gradiška camp on April 23, and Jasenovac on May 2, 1945. Before leaving the camp, the Ustasha killed the remaining prisoners, blasted and destroyed the buildings, guard-houses, torture rooms, the „Picili Furnace“ and the other structures. Upon entering the camp, the liberators found only ruins, soot, smoke, and dead bodies.

XI THE INVESTIGATION OF THE USTASHA CRIMES IN JASENOVAC IN 1945

It is difficult to establish the number of victims killed in the Jasenovac concentration camp, since many documents were destroyed. The prisoners' files were destroyed twice (at the beginning of 1943 and in April, 1945) and even if they had been preserved, they would have been of little help discerning the truth, because the Ustasha often killed the newly arrived prisoners immediately, without putting their names into the files. This is particularly true of those who arrived from Slavonia, Srem and Kozara, because it was only noted down that 9,830, or 155 wagons had arrived. For instance, a very small number of Gypsies was filed, only a few hundred, while it is known that all 25,000-35,000 of them from the NDH were killed in Jasenovac. The Jewish community in Yugoslavia has established the number of 20,000 Jews that were killed in Jasenovac. The numbers of killed Serbs are truly varied. The sources from abroad mention numbers from 300,000 to 700,000. Be that as it may, most of the people killed in Jasenovac were Serbs. Exact number being still unknown, but it surely amounts to several hundreds of thousands.

The National Committee of Croatia for the investigation of the crimes of the occupation forces and their collaborators stated in its report of November 15, 1945 that 500,000-600,000 people were killed at Jasenovac.

XII THE JASENOVAC MEMORIAL AREA

After the end of the WWII, the burial of the victims and cleaning up of the camp area were begun. The inhabitants of Jasenovac and the nearby villages used the bricks and other building material in the reconstruction and building of their houses. In that way, almost all material evidence disappeared from the place of the biggest crime in the former Yugoslavia, as if there had not been any camp in that place. It seems that the state and the authorities of that time, especially certain individuals in Zagreb, wanted it to be like that in Jasenovac. Under the „Brotherhood and Unity“ motto, with the aim of creating tolerance between the nations, the crime had to be forgotten as soon as possible.

It was only 20 years later, in 1965, under pressure of the victims' families and relatives, that the building of a monument was begun - a stone flower of which its author, engineer Bogdan Bogdanovic, said that „it suggests the idea of overcoming suffering and insanity“. A few years later, the Open Memorial Museum was built, the graveyards were put in order, and the labor organization named Jasenovac Memorial Park was formed, which functioned until the beginning of the next war in 1991.

No matter how hard the authors of the memorial Park tried, often stating that the memorial complex would not resemble a „city park“ or an „artificial structure“, that is exactly what happened to it.

Looking at it from the outside, Jasenovac Memorial Park, with its modern Museum building and its stylized stone flower really resembled a nice park more than a former concentration camp of the worst possible kind. If it had not been for the obvious museum material and films, the visitor would have hardly understood what had really happened there, or grasped all the horrors. The authentic buildings were not preserved or renewed. The monuments and the memorial plates were only inconspicuous marks of the biggest execution places and the places of other camps which constituted the Jasenovac complex of concentration camps, while some of them, Bročice and Jablanac, were not even marked. In spite of that, the site of the crime in Jasenovac was visited after the war by countless numbers of relatives and friends, and since the memorial area has been opened, hundreds of thousands of visitors have come who wished to pay homage to the innocent victims.

XIII THE DESECRATION OF THE MEMORIAL AREA (1991)

(...) At the end of September 1991 (beggining of civil wars in Tito's Yugoslavia, ed. n.), the Croatian Army entered the Jasenovac memorial park by force. According to the Hague Convention on the protection of historical and cultural monuments, the Croatian Army severely broke the agreement by entering the protected area. Although the international public informed about desecration of the memorial park. there was not much of a response.

The Serbian forces liberated Jasenovac Memorial Park on October 8, 1991. During the withdrawal the Croatian Army placed explosives (and) blew up the bridge on the Sava River which connected the two parts of the Memorial Park; they also blew up the graves, destroyed the Museum artifacts and stole the Museum equipment. Due to the courage and enthusiasm of individuals who worked at the Memorial Park, some historical materials and objects were saved. (After the Dayton Agreement in 1995. Jasenovac Camps area became part of Republic of Croatia, ed. n.)

28-12-2009 om 21:26 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

Anti-government protests turn deadly in Tehran

SLIDESHOW

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This photo, taken by an individual not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran shows an Iranian police officer, center with white shirt, is protected and is taken away by people after being beaten by protestors during anti-government protest at the Enqelab (Revolution) St. in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Dec. 27, 2009. (AP Photo) EDITORS NOTE AS A RESULT OF AN OFFICIAL IRANIAN GOVERNMENT BAN ON FOREIGN MEDIA COVERING SOME EVENTS IN IRAN, THE AP WAS PREVENTED FROM INDEPENDENT ACCESS TO THIS EVENT (Str - AP)

This photo, taken by an individual not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran shows Iranian protestors care the body of a man who allegedly was shot during anti-government protest at the Enqelab (Revolution) St. in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Dec. 27, 2009. (AP Photo) EDITORS NOTE AS A RESULT OF AN OFFICIAL IRANIAN GOVERNMENT BAN ON FOREIGN MEDIA COVERING SOME EVENTS IN IRAN, THE AP WAS PREVENTED FROM INDEPENDENT ACCESS TO THIS EVENT (Str - AP)

This photo, taken by an individual not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran shows Iranian protestors carry the body of a man who allegedly was shot during anti-government protest at the Enqelab (Revolution) St. in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Dec. 27, 2009. (AP Photo) EDITORS NOTE AS A RESULT OF AN OFFICIAL IRANIAN GOVERNMENT BAN ON FOREIGN MEDIA COVERING SOME EVENTS IN IRAN, THE AP WAS PREVENTED FROM INDEPENDENT ACCESS TO THIS EVENT (AP)

This photo, taken by an individual not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran, shows a dead body of a man who allegedly was shot during anti-government protest at the Enqelab (Revolution) St. in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Dec. 27, 2009. (AP Photo) EDITORS NOTE: AS A RESULT OF AN OFFICIAL IRANIAN GOVERNMENT BAN ON FOREIGN MEDIA COVERING SOME EVENTS IN IRAN, THE AP WAS PREVENTED FROM INDEPENDENT ACCESS TO THIS EVENT. (AP)

This photo, taken by an individual not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran shows an Iranian protestor throwing stone at anti-riot police officers, as their bikes are set on fire by protestors, during anti-government protest at the Enqelab (Revolution) St. in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Dec. 27, 2009. (AP Photo) EDITORS NOTE AS A RESULT OF AN OFFICIAL IRANIAN GOVERNMENT BAN ON FOREIGN MEDIA COVERING SOME EVENTS IN IRAN, THE AP WAS PREVENTED FROM INDEPENDENT ACCESS TO THIS EVENT (Str - AP)

This photo, taken by an individual not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran shows an Iranian police officer, center with white shirt, is protected and is taken away by people after being beaten by protestors during anti-government protest at the Enqelab (Revolution) St. in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Dec. 27, 2009. (AP Photo) EDITORS NOTE AS A RESULT OF AN OFFICIAL IRANIAN GOVERNMENT BAN ON FOREIGN MEDIA COVERING SOME EVENTS IN IRAN, THE AP WAS PREVENTED FROM INDEPENDENT ACCESS TO THIS EVENT (Str - AP)

This photo, taken by an individual not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran shows Iranian protestors beating police officers, during anti-government protest in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Dec. 27, 2009. (AP Photo) EDITORS NOTE AS A RESULT OF AN OFFICIAL IRANIAN GOVERNMENT BAN ON FOREIGN MEDIA COVERING SOME EVENTS IN IRAN, THE AP WAS PREVENTED FROM INDEPENDENT ACCESS TO THIS EVENT (Str - AP)

This photo, taken by an individual not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran shows an Iranian protestor flashing the victory sign during anti-government protest at the Enqelab (Revolution) St. in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Dec. 27, 2009. (AP Photo) EDITORS NOTE AS A RESULT OF AN OFFICIAL IRANIAN GOVERNMENT BAN ON FOREIGN MEDIA COVERING SOME EVENTS IN IRAN, THE AP WAS PREVENTED FROM INDEPENDENT ACCESS TO THIS EVENT (Str - AP)

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By Thomas Erdbrink

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 27, 2009; 2:57 PM

TEHRAN -- Security forces opened fire at crowds demonstrating against the government in the capital on Sunday, killing at least five people, including the nephew of opposition political leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, witnesses and Web sites linked to the opposition said.

"Ali Mousavi, 32, was shot in the heart at the Enghelab square. He became a martyr," the Rah-e Sabz Website reported.

In the heaviest clashes in months, fierce battles erupted as tens of thousands of demonstrators tried to gather on a main Tehran avenue, with people setting up roadblocks and throwing stones at members of special forces under the command of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. They in turn threw dozens of teargas and stun grenades, but failed in pushing back crowds, who shouted slogans against the government, witnesses reported.

A witness reported seeing at least four people shot in the central Vali-e Asr Square. "I saw a riot cop opening fire, using a handgun," the witness said. "A girl was hit in the shoulders, three other men in their stomachs and legs. It was total chaos."

Fights were also reported in the cities of Isfahan and Najafabad in central Iran.

The protests coincided with Ashura, one of the most intense religious holidays for Shiite Muslims. The slogans were mainly aimed at the top leaders of the Islamic republic, a further sign that the opposition movement against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed June election victory is turning against the leadership of the country.

At the Yadegar overpass, protesters shouted slogans such as "Death to the dictator" and "long live Mousavi." They fought running battles with security forces until a car filled with members of the paramilitary Basij brigade drove at high speed though the makeshift barriers of stones and sandbags that the protesters had erected.

About a dozen members of the Revolutionary Guards fired paintball bullets, teargas and stun grenades. When reinforcements arrived, they managed to push back the hundreds of protesters gathered at the crossing.

Similar scenes could be seen at several crossings of the central Azadi and Enghelab streets, witnesses reported. Large clouds of black bellowing smoke rose up as people honked their cars in protests.

"This is a month of blood. The dictator will fall," people shouted, referring to the mourning month of Muharram. Young men erected a flag symbolizing the struggle of the Shiite's third Imam Hussein, whose death was commemorated Sunday.

On Saturday, security forces clad in black clashed with protesters in northern Tehran after a speech by opposition leader and former president Mohammad Khatami. After the police intervened, thousands of protesters fanned out through the area.

The roads were clogged with cars, many honking their horns in support of the protesters. About 50 armed government supporters attacked a building used as an office by the household of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic republic, according to witnesses and the Parlemannews Web site, which is critical of the government.

"There are so many people on the streets, I am amazed," a member of the riot police said to his colleagues as he rested on his motorcycle in a north Tehran square. Two women in traditional black chadors flashed victory signs to passing cars, egging them on to honk in support of the opposition.

Earlier, hundreds of police officers supported by dozens of members of the elite Revolutionary Guard Corps and the paramilitary Basij force clashed with small groups of protesters along Enghelab (Revolution) Street, one of the capital's main thoroughfares, at times beating people in an effort to disperse them.

The protests, which followed anti-government demonstrations in other Iranian cities in recent days, come as Iran observes the 10 days of Muharram, a mourning period for Imam Hussein, the Shiite saint whose death in the 7th century sealed the rift between Sunni and Shiite Muslims over the succession of the prophet Muhammad. On Sunday, Shiites worldwide commemorate the day of his death during Ashura.

Special Correspondent Kay Armin Serjoie contributed to this report.

27-12-2009 om 23:46 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

27-12-2009 om 22:46 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

moreorless : heroes & killers of the 20th century en om geen enkele twijfel te laten ontstaan zeggen we er onmiddellijk bij dat hij een ereplaats heeft bij de "killers" en zeker niet bij de "heroes" maar lees zelf maar. En reeds in deze biografie zullen jullie verwijzingen vinden naar banden met het Vaticaan...

www.moreorless.au.com

Ante Pavelic

AKA 'Butcher of the Balkans', AKA 'Poglavnik' (Chieftain), AKA Anton Pavelitch, AKA Ante Pavelitch, AKA Pedro Gonner.

Country: Croatia.

Kill tally: 300,000 to one million, including up to 30,000 Jews, up to 29,000 Gipsies, and between 300,000 and 600,000 Serbs.

Background: The southern Slavic states of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Macedonia begin to emerge as a unified state following the First World War. But the legacy of a 400-year occupation by the Islamic Ottoman Empire and traditional tension between Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians frustrate attempts for unity.

The pre-existing rifts are deepened during the Second World War when varying ethnic and political groups use the cloak of the war to brutally pursue rivalries.

Mini biography: Born on 14 July 1889 in Bradina, about 35 km southwest of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina. He attends primary school at Travnik in Bosnia-Herzegovina. After completing his secondary education at a Jesuit seminary in Senj, Croatia, he studies law at the University of Zagreb. Following his graduation he establishes a small law practice in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia.

In his youth Pavelic joins the Croat Party of Rights (Hrvatska Stranka Prava, HSP), an extreme, right-wing nationalist political group advocating Croat separatism.

When the HSP breaks up in 1908 Pavelic joins a splinter faction lead by Josip Frank. The faction, often called frankovci (frankist) after its leader, considers itself to be the "pure" Party of Rights. Pavelic is made interim secretary on 1 March 1919.

Pavelic believes in "a free and independent Croat state comprising the entire historical and ethnic territory of the Croat people." He believes that the enemies of the Croat liberation movement include the Serbian Government, international Freemasonry, Jews, and communism.

1918 - The 'Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes' is formed on 1 December and recognised by the Paris Peace Conference in May 1919. The kingdom encompasses most of the Austrian Slovenian lands, Croatia, Slavonia, most of Dalmatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Vojvodina, Kosovo, the Serbian-controlled parts of Macedonia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is to be ruled by Serbian prince regent Aleksandar Karadjordjevicis.

As well as the ethnic Slav majority, the kingdom is home to Germans, Albanians, Hungarians, Romanians, Turks, Italians, Greeks, Czechoslovaks, Slovaks, Ruthenians, Russians, Poles, Bulgars, Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews, and Gipsies. It includes people of the Christian Orthodox faith, Roman Catholics, Muslims, Jews and Protestants.

The political mix of the kingdom reflects this multicultural base, with no single party ever gaining a majority. The Serbian Radical Party (SRP), lead by Nikola Pasic, and the Croatian Republican Peasant Party (CRPP), lead by Stjepan Radic, dominate but hold almost diametrically opposed views, with the Serbs advocating strong central control and the Croats favouring regional autonomy.

1920 - Following a general election where it wins the majority of Croatian seats, the CRPP boycotts the parliament, a position it will maintain until 1924. The boycott allows the SRP to take power by default and pursue its centralist policies.

1925 - The CRPP and SRP strike a compromise and form a coalition government. Under the agreement the CRPP recognises the monarchy, accepts the constitution and changes its name to the Croatian Peasant Party (CPP). However, the coalition is shortlived, lasting only until 1926, after which the parliament degenerates.

1927 - Pavelic is elected to the Zagreb City Council as a representative for the frankovci faction of the HSP. At national elections, the Croatian block that includes the frankovci faction wins 45,000 votes in the Zagreb region and is allocated two seats in the Yugoslav Parliament, one of which is given to Pavelic. He is later elected vice president of the HSP-frankovci.

1928 - Radic is shot and mortally wounded on the floor of parliament on 20 June. When he dies on 28 August representatives from Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina walk out of the parliament, demanding a federal state and refusing to acknowledge the authority of the king.

1929 - On 6 January, in an attempt to hold the federation together, the king suspends the constitution and declares a temporary 'Royal Dictatorship'. The parliament is dissolved, political parties are banned, civil liberties are cancelled, local self-government is abolished and laws are decreed against sedition, terrorism, and propagation of communism. A Serb is made premier, and the name of the country is officially changed to the 'Kingdom of Yugoslavia'.

However, it is soon evident that rather than cementing unity the king's plan is creating greater division. Croatian opposition to a Serb-controlled centralist system grows, while the Serbian political movement is fractured. Leaders of both groups flee the country, as does Pavelic, who is sentenced to death in absentia for his part in anti-Serb demonstrations organised by Bulgarian and Macedonian terrorists.

Pavelic travels to Vienna, the capital of Austria, arriving in February. While in the city he takes the leadership of the Croat Youth Movement, a nationalist group dedicated to resisting the royal dictatorship. Pavelic also makes contact with the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (VRMO), whose leader provides him with an introduction to Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator of Italy.

1931 - The royal dictatorship in Yugoslavia is ended and limited democracy reintroduced, although the political landscape remains tumultuous and divisive. Croatian discontent builds when the new leader of the CPP is arrested and jailed for terrorist activities.

1932 - Pavelic accepts an offer from Mussolini to relocate to Italy, where be begins to refashion the Croat Youth Movement into the terrorist group that will come to be known as the Ustase (Insurrection).

Provisioned with training camps, protection and financial support by Mussolini, and receiving further support from the government of Hungry and, later, from Nazi Germany, the Ustase begin a campaign of bombings within Yugoslavia.

In the so-called 'Lika Uprising' the Ustase attempt an armed invasion of Yugoslavia. About one dozen Ustase operatives covertly cross the Adriatic in motorboats, travelling from Italy to Zadar on the Croatian coast, which is then under Italian rule. From Zadar they travel overland to the Velebit Mountains. After attacking a police station and killing 17 police they are forced into a hasty retreat with a number of local Ustase who joined them during the action.

The base for Ustase terrorist operations then moves to Hungary.

1934 - On 14 October a Ustase agent assassinates King Aleksandar while he is visiting Marseille in France. Pavelic is thought to have bribed a high French official to ensure that security around the king was lax, even though the Ustase had made a previous attempt on his life.

Following the assassination, a three-man regency is appointed to rule in the king's place. The CPP leader is released from jail and, in 1935, elections are held. The resulting government eases political oppression but fails to restore full democracy or to address the Croatian separatist movement, which refuses to compromise.

Italy, meanwhile, arrests Pavelic and other leaders of the Ustase following the assassination of the king but refuses to extradite them to face the death sentences passed in absentia in France. Several months later they are released.

1939 - On 26 August, with the outbreak of the Second World War imminent, the Yugoslav Government signs an agreement, the 'Sporazum' (Understanding), with the CPP granting limited autonomy to Croatia. Six days later Germany invades Poland and the war begins.

Yugoslavia attempts to remain neutral but comes under mounting pressure from Germany to fall in with the other Balkan states and sign the 'Tripartite Pact', aligning the country with the 'Axis' powers - Germany, Italy and Japan.

1941 - The Yugoslav Government gives into the German pressure on 24 March, signing a protocol of adherence to the Tripartite Pact. Two days later, on 26 March, junior officers from the Yugoslav air force stage a coup d'état and overthrow the government, unleashing a wave of anti-German demonstrations across Belgrade, the national capital. Germany responds on 6 April, bombing the capital in a 'blitzkrieg' (lightning war) that kills thousands (sources estimate the number killed to be between 12,000 and 17,000). Axis forces then invade.

Pavelic seizes the opportunity. Broadcasting from Italy, he calls on Croatian soldiers to mutiny. "Use your weapons against the Serbian soldiers and officers," he says, "We are fighting shoulder to shoulder with our German and Italian allies."

Overwhelmed by the Axis invasion force, the Yugoslav Army collapses and the government flees.

On 10 April German troops occupy Zagreb. The same day, Slavko Kvaternik, a retired Austro-Hungarian colonel who is the Ustase leader in Croatia, Pavelic's deputy, and commander of the armed forces, proclaims the 'Independent State of Croatia' (Nezavisna Drzava Hrvatska, NDH), which incorporates Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Syrmia.

Pavelic arrives in Zagreb at 5 a.m. on Tuesday 15 April, ending his 12 years of exile.

By 17 April all Yugoslav resistance to the Axis forces has been crushed. On 18 April the Yugoslav Army officially surrenders. The invaders now begin to carve up the spoils.

The Germans recognise the NDH, occupy most of Serbia and annex northern Slovenia. Italy takes southern Slovenia, and much of Dalmatia, joins Kosovo with its Albanian puppet state, and occupies Montenegro. Hungary occupies part of Vojvodina and Slovenian and Croatian border regions. Bulgaria takes Macedonia and a part of southern Serbia.

On the urging of Mussolini, the Germans agree to make Pavelic Poglavnik (Chieftain) of the NDH. Almost immediately he declares that the primary aim of his government will be the "purification" of Croatia and the elimination of "alien elements." The "ethnic cleansing" of two million Serbs, Jews, and Gipsies in the NDH now begins.

Pavelic's Ustase storm troopers employ forced religious conversion, deportation and murder to achieve their goal of an ethnically pure Croatia. Their credo is "kill a third, expel a third, and convert a third." Serbs will be required to wear armbands bearing the letter P (for Pravoslavac, or Orthodox Christian), while Jews will have to wear armbands with the letter Z (for Zidov).

The Ustase will be supported by elements of the Croatian Catholic Church, including the Archbishop of Sarajevo, Ivan Saric. Some Franciscan priests will enlist in the Ustase and participate in the violence.

The massacres begin at the Serbian village of Gudovac in Bosnia-Herzegovina on 27 April. They will continue unabated until the end of the war and result in the genocide of tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Gipsies. Thousands more will flee to the relative safety of Serbia. Orthodox priests will also be targeted, with 131 out of the total of 577 practicing in the region being killed. Execution methods favoured by the Ustase included knifing and bludgeoning to death, throwing live victims from cliffs, as well as shooting.

The brutality of the Ustase violence of appals many high-ranking officers in the occupying forces. General Edmund Glaise von Horstenau, the German commander of the NDH, reports to Berlin that "according to reliable reports from countless German military and civilian observers ... the Ustasha have gone raging mad." Later he states that the "Croat revolution was by far the bloodiest and most awful among all I have seen firsthand or from afar in Europe since 1917."

The German commander of southeastern Europe calls the Ustase onslaught "a Croatian crusade of destruction." Italian commanders begin to provide civilians with protection against the Ustase, with some going so far as to ignore orders to cease the practice.

On 6 June Pavelic meets German dictator Adolf Hitler, who agrees to Pavelic's plan to expel much of the Serbian population of the NDH and replace them with Croats and Slovenes from lands annexed by the Germans. Pavelic will meet with Hitler again in November 1942.

In September 1941 an Ustase-run concentration camp is opened at Jasenovac, on the Bosnia-Herzegovina border about 90 km southeast of Zagreb. Up to 200,000 Serbs, Jews, Gipsies and political prisoners are killed at Jasenovac, which is the largest in the 26 camps established in the Balkans. Along with the Ustase, Catholic clergy staff the camp and participate in the executions.

Meanwhile, the Yugoslav resistance movement begins to coalesce around the nationalist 'Chetnik' groups and the communist-led 'Partisan' guerrillas.

Yugoslav Army Colonel Dragoljub 'Draza' Mihailovic becomes the best know of the Chetnik commanders, and in October 1941 is recognised by Britain as the leader of the Yugoslav resistance movement. In 1942 the Yugoslav government-in-exile promotes him to commander of its armed forces. Mihailovic's strategy is to avoid clashes with Axis forces and prepare for a general uprising to coincide with an invasion of the Balkans by the Allied forces of Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union.

Josip Broz Tito, the secretary-general of the Yugoslavian Communist Party, leads the Partisans. Their slogan is "Death to Fascism, Freedom to the People." Tito favours direct action, and in July 1941 launches uprisings that win the Partisans control of much of the Yugoslav countryside. However, thousands of civilians are killed in Ustase reprisals.

In September 1941 Germany also hits back, warning that 100 Serb civilians will be executed for every German soldier killed by the resistance. In October about 7,000 Serbian men and boys are executed at Kragujevac in Serbia after a squadron of Germans is wiped out in an ambush. A further 1,700 are executed at Kraljevo.

Tito ignores the reprisals and continues with the Partisans' campaign, extending their attacks to the Chetnik forces, which are largely anti-communist. Mihailovic in turn targets the Partisans as the main enemy of the Chetniks. The Chetniks also begin to cooperate with the Germans and Italians to prevent a communist victory.

1942 - On 16 April Pavelic announces that a scorched earth policy will be used to combat the resistance. Under the policy, anyone in those regions of the NDH subject to resistance activity can be summarily executed.

1943 - In December British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin agree to give their full support to the Partisans, effectively marginalising the Chetniks. The Partisans' position is further strengthened in September 1944 when the exiled king calls on all Yugoslavs to back them.

1944 - The advancing Soviet Army crosses the Yugoslav border on 1 October, joining with the Partisans to liberate Belgrade on 20 October. The Red Army then moves on toward Germany, leaving the Partisans and the Western Allies to mop up the remaining Germans, Ustase, and Chetniks. The bloodiest fighting breaks out when the Partisans advance into Croatia.

1945 - The Partisans capture Sarajevo on 6 April. Ustase leaders and collaborators flee to Austria, along with regular Croatian and Slovenian troops and some Chetniks, leaving the Partisans in control of all of Yugoslavia.

On 7 May Germany surrenders unconditionally. The war in Yugoslavia ends on 15 May. It has claimed between one million and 1.7 million Yugoslav lives, or up to 11% of the pre-war population. The majority of the dead have been killed by their fellow countrymen.

The Ustase is estimated to have murdered up to 30,000 Jews, up to 29,000 Gipsies, and between 300,000 and 600,000 Serbs.

The Partisans are estimated to have killed up to 300,000 Croat refugees turned back from Austria at the start of May. The massacre of the Croats takes place near the Austrian border village of Bleiburg and during the so-called 'Way of the Cross' death marches back to Croatia that follow.

Pavelic evades the Partisans. Fleeing Zagreb on 15 April, he travels overland to Austria, and then on to Rome. He is reported to be living in the city under the protection of the Catholic Church and with the knowledge of the Allied occupational forces, who fail to arrest him even though they are provided with credible information on his whereabouts.

On 12 September 1947 the American Counterintelligence Corps office in Roman reports that "Pavelic's contacts are so high, and his present position is so compromising to the Vatican, that any extradition of Subject would deal a staggering blow to the Roman Catholic Church."

Early in 1948 Pavelic moves to a monastery near Castel Gandolfo, 25 km southeast of Rome, where he lives disguised as a priest. Later the same year Vatican operatives smuggle him to Buenos Aires in Argentina, where he revives the Ustase movement (now called Hrvatska Drzavotvorna Stranka) and acts as a security adviser to Argentine President Juan Perón. About 7,250 other members of the Ustase find refuge in Argentina between 1946 and 1948.

Meanwhile in Yugoslavia, the communists, backed by the Soviet Union, take control of the government. The Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia is proclaimed on 29 November. It comprises the republics of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia. An ethnically mixed Autonomous Province of Vojvodina and a mostly Albanian Autonomous Region of Kosovo are created within Serbia. Tito heads the Communist Party, the government and the armed forces.

Retribution against wartime collaborators begins. Ustase members, Croatian and Slovenian collaborators and innocent refugees who had fled to Austria are captured and returned to Yugoslavia, where thousands are summarily executed by the Partisans. Thousands of Chetniks are jailed. Mihailovic and other Chetnik leaders are executed for collaboration after a show trial in 1946.

Over 200 priests and nuns charged with participating in Ustase atrocities are also executed.

In September 1946 the head of the Croatian Catholic Church, Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac, is sentenced to 16 years jail for complicity with the Pavelic government. He serves five years before begin released.

1957 - The Yugoslav secret police catch up with Pavelic in Argentina, organising an assassination attempt that is implemented on 9 April. Pavelic survives but is badly wounded. He subsequently flees to Spain, which is ruled by the fascist dictator Francisco Franco.

1959 - Pavelic dies in Madrid on 28 December from injuries sustained in the assassination attempt. It is later revealed that his body is secured at a secret location in Madrid waiting for the time when it can be returned to the "homeland" to lie in state in Zagreb.

Postscript

1999 - Former Chetnik Blagoje Jovovic claims that it was he who fired the shots that eventually led to the death of Pavelic. Jovovic, originally from Montenegro, had emigrated to Argentina following the war.

2003 - Croatia and Serbia-Montenegro move towards reconciliation on 10 September when the presidents of both countries apologise to one another for "all the evils" done by their countries in wars. In an earlier trip to Israel the Croatian president had apologised for crimes committed by the Ustase during the Second World War.

Comment: The horror of events in the Balkans during the Second World War has been displaced in recent memory by further horrors committed there at the end of the century. But it could be argued that the genocide allegedly committed by the likes of Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic pales in comparison to that of Ante Pavelic and his fascist regime. One thing is certain - the suffering of the Serbs at the hands of the Ustase during the Second World War was and continues to be a key factor in the paranoia that informs much of their national chauvinism.

And there is legitimate cause for their concern. Pavelic has gone but the Ustase lives on. Since Pavelic's death, the movement has been implicated in numerous terrorist attacks in Europe and the United States. Between 1962 and 1966, three Yugoslav diplomats were murdered by the Ustase. In 1968 a bombing attack on a theatre in Belgrade killed one person and wounded 85. The Yugoslav ambassador to Sweden was assassinated in Stockholm in 1971. The following year Ustase terrorists hijacked a Swedish airliner and successfully demanded that the ambassador's assassin be freed. The Ustase also claimed responsibility for the bombing of a Yugoslav JAT airliner flying from Denmark to Croatia in 1972. The attack killed 26.

An explosion in a storage locker at New York's La Guardia airport in December 1975 that killed 11 people and injured 75 may have been set by the Ustase. In September 1976 four Ustase agents hijacked an American TWA plane, resulting in the death of one police officer. The same year the Yugoslav embassy in Washington was bombed. In 1980 the Ustase detonated a bomb in the Statue of Liberty in New York.

More worrying still, there are many within contemporary Croatia who continue to view Pavelic as a national hero and long for a time when his goal of an ethnically pure "homeland" is finally realised. The founding of the NDH on 10 April 1941 is still openly commemorated in parts of the country, and renegade priests still give eulogies to Pavelic.

27-12-2009 om 22:35 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

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Was Pius XII really 'Hitler's pope'?

Pope Benedict's recent visit to Auschwitz helped rekindle the controversy over the actions of Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust. Although some Jewish leaders and Catholic writers often condemn Pius XII today, the wartime Jewish press had a favorable opinion of the pope.

In March 1939, many Jewish newspapers in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Jerusalem welcomed Pope Pius's election and described him as a friend of democracy. In an editorial (March 6, 1939), The Palestine Post, the predecessor of The Jerusalem Post, observed, "Pius XII has clearly shown that he intends to carry on [Pius XI's] work for freedom and peace...we remember that he must have had a large part to play in the recent opposition to pernicious race theories and certain aspects of totalitarianism..."

On October 27, 1939, the pope's first encyclical, "Summi Pontificatus," was made public. The American Israelite in Cincinnati (November 9, 1939) asserted that the encyclical "contains a ringing denunciation of all forces which put the state above the will of the people, a condemnation of dictators and disseminators of racism who have plunged the world into chaos."

On January 26, 1940, the Jewish Advocate in Boston reported, "The Vatican radio this week broadcast an outspoken denunciation of German atrocities and persecution in Nazi [occupied] Poland, declaring they affronted the moral conscience of mankind."

This broadcast graphically described atrocities against Jews and Catholics and gave independent confirmation to reports about Nazi atrocities, which the Reich previously dismissed as Allied propaganda.

On March 14, 1940, London's Jewish Chronicle commented on Pius's five conditions for a "just and honorable peace," which he articulated in his 1939 Christmas message. The Jewish Chronicle described the pope's conditions, especially the protection of all racial minorities, as a "welcome feature," and praised him for fighting "for the rights of the common man."

In the same month, Italy's anti-Semitic laws went into effect, and many Jews were dismissed from the government, universities, and other professions. Pius XII responded by appointing several displaced Jewish scholars to posts in the Vatican library. In aneditorial, the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle (March 29, 1940), concluded that the pope's actions showed "his disapproval of the dastardly anti-Semitic decrees."

ON AUGUST 28, 1942, the California Jewish Voice hailed Pius XII as a "spiritual ally" of Jews after noting that the Vatican, through its diplomatic representatives, protested the deportations of Jews from France and Slovakia.

On April 16, 1943, the Australian Jewish News published a brief article about Pierre Cardinal Gerlier of Lyon, France who protested the deportations of French Jews. The newspaper quoted the cardinal as saying that he was obeying Pius XII's orders by opposing the Vichy regime's anti-Semitic measures.

On October 17, 1943, the Nazis began to arrest Jews in Rome. On October 29, 1943, the Jewish Chronicle wrote, "The Vatican has made strong representations to the German Government and the German High Command in Italy against the persecutions of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Italy..."

Along with the Vatican's protests, thousands of Jews found refuge in Rome's convents, monasteries, and the Vatican itself.

In June 1944, the Allies liberated Rome, and Pius XII protested the deportations of Hungarian Jews. "With Rome liberated, it has been determined, indeed, that 7,000 of Italy's 40,000 Jews owe their lives to the Vatican," the American Israelite (July 27, 1944) editorialized. "Placing these golden deeds alongside the intercession of Pope Pius XII with the Regent of Hungary in behalf in behalf of the Hungarian Jews, we feel an immense degree of gratitude toward ourCatholic brethren."

On October 8, 1958, Pope Pius XII died. Many Jewish newspapers around the world eulogized him, recalling his wartime opposition to Nazism and role in saving Jews. In aneditorial (October 10, 1958), The Jerusalem Post stated that "Jews will recall the sympathetic references to their sufferings contained in many of his pronouncements, the refuge from Nazi terror which he gave to many in the Vatican during the last war, and the very cordial way he received his Jewish visitors."

In his article for the Jewish Post (November 6, 1958) in Winnipeg, Canada, William Zukerman wrote that no other leader "did more to help the Jews in their hour of greatest tragedy, during the Nazi occupation of Europe, than the latepope."

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Jewish editors and reporters had no fears about condemning Father Charles Coughlin, the anti-Semitic radio broadcaster, andCatholic youth gangs in the Bronx and Boston who frequently assaulted Jews.

This much is clear: the contemporary Jewish press repeatedly have Pius XII favorable coverage from 1939 to 1958.

The writer, based in New York City, is working on a book about Pope Pius XII.

Criticism

The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis, by Rabbi David G. Dalin

Hal G.P. Colebatch

Rabbi David Dalin, a professor of history and political science, and the splendid Regnery publishing house, have done a great service in producing this book. Meticulously detailed, it completely destroys the myth that Pope Pius XII was pro-Nazi or did less than his utmost to save Jews from the Nazis, and pays tribute to what he actually did. Its wealth of information, much previously unknown, has been praised by commentators like Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University, who has said:

“David Dalin’s search for the truth about Pope Pius XII led him to the discovery that the tragedy of the Jewish people has been shamelessly exploited by foes of traditional religion. With righteous indignation, Dalin sets the record straight, documenting the dishonesty of Pius’s leading attackers and demonstrating that the wartime Pope was a friend and protector of the Jewish people in their hour of greatest need.”

Rabbi Dalin commences with the words:

“It is ironic that sixty years after the Holocaust—with anti-Semitism virulent among Islamic fundamentalists and growing rapidly among secular Europeans—that the left-liberal media in the West has tried to blame Pope Pius XII (and even the Catholic church as a whole) for anti-Semitism.
“No-one believed this at the time. From the end of World War II until at least five years after his death in 1958, Pope Pius XII enjoyed an enviable reputation among Christians and Jews alike …”

He points how the campaign of vilification against the Pope began with the play The Deputy, by German Rolf Hochhuth (later a close friend and defender of David Irving, and the subject of a limerick in Robert Conquest’s The Abomination of Moab), and made into a Hollywood film, Amen, in 2002.

Rabbi Dalin is also scathing of the book Hitler’s Pope, by John Cornwell, pointing out that even the cover photograph (approved by Cornwell) is viciously dishonest in its inference: it shows the future Pope Pius XII, then Cardinal Pacelli, a Vatican diplomat, leaving a reception in Germany given by the pre-Hitler President Paul von Hindenburg, in 1927, six years before Hitler came to power. He is dressed in Vatican diplomatic regalia, which could easily be confused with Papal garments, and is being saluted by two German soldiers in distinctive German steel helmets. It is not possible to see the uniforms and insignia of the soldiers clearly, and though they were actually soldiers of the Weimar Republic they could be taken for soldiers of the Third Reich. Dalin quotes the historian Philip Jenkins:

“The casual reader is meant to infer that Pacelli is emerging from a cosy tete-a-tete with Hitler—perhaps they have been chatting together about plans for a new extermination camp? … Perhaps photographs do not lie, but this particular book cover—offered in the context it was, and under the title Hitler’s Pope—comes close.”

(The picture can be seen at John Cornwell’s Wikipedia entry.) To compound this, the caption on the English edition claims the photograph was taken in Berlin in 1939, when Hitler was in power—a falsehood without any qualification whatsoever. Rabbi Dalin’s dissection of both these works leaves them without a shred of credibility. The film Amen is also totally false, presenting as fact incidents which never happened—anyway it was a box-office failure. Dalin documents how the left-liberal media has been quick to publicise, generally uncritically, the myth of “Hitler’s Pope”, but has generally denied even mentioning the scholarly works written in the Pope’s defence.

In fact the Pope never met Hitler, and when Hitler visited Rome in 1938, Pius very publicly snubbed the Nazis by leaving for Castel Gandolfo.

Rabbi Dalin has collected many eyewitness accounts of how Pope Pius XII and the Vatican were directly responsible for sheltering thousands of Jews in the Vatican and in church properties in and about Rome, as well as 3000 in Castel Gandolfo. As a result about 85 per cent of Rome’s Jews were saved from deportation and murder. This was despite the fact that Rome was first under the Italian Fascist regime, and then Nazi military occupation, making the Pope in the Vatican a virtual prisoner (though some of the German officers appear to have given clandestine help and warnings). In the case of Slovakia alone, the Pope’s moral pressure on the government was, according to the French Jewish scholar Leon Poliakov, directly instrumental in saving about 20,000 Slovakian Jews.

Thus while the Pope denounced and worked against Nazism, he was in a hideously difficult position in that more outspoken activity could lead to greater reprisals against the innocent. I was surprised that Rabbi Dalin did not quote the case of Edith Stein, though this was very much to the point: Edith Stein (now canonised) was a Jewish-born convert, a Carmelite nun and an outstanding philosopher and theologian. During the Nazi occupation of Holland she was in a Dutch convent. The Dutch Bishops’ Conference had a public statement read in all the churches of the country on July 20, 1942, condemning Nazi racism. In a retaliatory response on July 26, 1942, the Reichskommissar of the Netherlands, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, ordered the arrest of all Jewish-born converts to Catholicism, who had previously been spared. Stein and her sister Rosa, also a convert, were captured and shipped to Auschwitz, where they died in the gas chambers a few days later.

The Pope’s anti-Nazi statements and activities, up to the very limit that he could press them, are a matter of record. These included the encyclical Summi Pontificatus, issued shortly after the outbreak of war, and a number of homilies, and he gave bishops instructions to help all victims of Nazism. Early in the war he stated that the Nazi atrocities in Poland affronted the moral conscience of mankind, leading the New York Times to declare: “now the Vatican has spoken with authority that cannot be questioned, and has confirmed the worst intimations of terror that have come out of the Polish darkness”. In Britain the Manchester Guardian called Vatican Radio “tortured Poland’s most powerful advocate”. In 1940 Albert Einstein, a Jewish refugee from Nazism, said: “Only the Catholic church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign … I now praise [it] unreservedly.” On July 3, 1943, Judge Joseph Proskauer, president of the American Jewish Committee, declared:

“We have heard … what a great part the Holy Father has played in the salvation of the Jewish refugees in Italy, and we know from sources that must be credited that this great Pope has reached forth his mighty and sheltering hand to help the oppressed of Hungary.”

Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, stated: “No keener rebuke has come to Nazism than from Pope Pius XI and his successor Pope Pius XII.” Dalin has documented many other contemporary tributes from Jewish leaders of different countries, including Isaac Herzog, Chief Rabbi of Israel: “The people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness and his illustrious delegates … are doing for our unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history, which is living proof of Divine Providence in this world.”

The Pope’s Christmas messages were clear condemnations of Nazi attacks on Jews, to the fury of the Nazis. There were even Nazi plans to kidnap the Pope, which Hitler discussed in July 1943, and Mussolini said the Pope was “ready to let himself be deported to a concentration camp rather do anything against his conscience”. It is extraordinary that this overwhelming evidence has been not merely overlooked but actually suppressed.

Before the war, when the Italian Fascist regime began implementing anti-Semitic legislation and driving Jews out of universities, the Pope saved Jewish academics by giving them posts at the Vatican or helping them escape to America.

This book also illuminates a little-known aspect of history: from very early times Popes including Gregory the Great (590–604) protected Rome’s Jews and denounced anti-Semitism in general. Even the “Borgia” Pope, Alexander VI, had a notable record here, creating the first Chair of Hebrew at the University of Rome and frequently entertaining the Chief Rabbi at the Vatican. He created a safe haven for Jews fleeing persecution in Spain and Portugal.

Rabbi Dalin also shows that the religious leader who was the greatest enemy and persecutor of the Jewish people in the Second World War was in fact the Mufti of Jerusalem, who was in constant touch with the Nazi leaders and a friend of Himmler, and whose constant urging upon them of a policy of extermination may well have been crucial in bringing about the decision to proceed with the Holocaust—the decision was made at the Wannsee conference, two months after the Mufti’s initial meeting with Hitler.

Adolf Eichmann’s deputy, Dieter Wisliceny, said at the Nuremberg trails that the Mufti was “one of Eichmann’s best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures”. On a visit to Auschwitz he told the guards at the gas chambers to “work more diligently.” Among other activities he recruited a Muslim SS unit, the “Hanjar Troopers”, who murdered 90 per cent of Bosnia’s Jews as well as, while the going was good, countless Christians. He made regular broadcasts on Berlin radio, exhorting his audience to “Kill the Jews wherever you find them.”

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, President of Towards Tradition, writes of this book:

“Courage is contagious, so clutch this book close to your heart. Righting great wrongs requires great courage, and that is what The Myth of Hitler’s Pope delivers. With devastating effectiveness, Dr Dalin exposes their motives and subdues the assailants who with rashness and folly attempt posthumously to assassinate Pope Pius XII. This restoration of a good man’s good name is a mitzvah—a Jewish good deed.”

Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust

By Shira Schoenberg

The Early Years
Cries for Help
Papal Reasons and Responses
The Pope Protests
The Politics Behind the Policy
Recent Developments
Conclusion

Pope Pius XII's (1876-1958) actions during the Holocaust remain controversial. For much of the war, he maintained a public front of indifference and remained silent while German atrocities were committed. He refused pleas for help on the grounds of neutrality, while making statements condemning injustices in general. Privately, he sheltered a small number of Jews and spoke to a few select officials, encouraging them to help the Jews.

The Early Years

The Pope was born in 1876 in Rome as Eugenio Pacelli. He studied philosophy at the Gregorian University, learned theology at Sant Apollinare and was ordained in 1899. He entered the Secretariat of State for the Vatican in 1901, became a cardinal in 1929 and was appointed Secretary of State in 1930.

Pacelli lived in Germany from 1917, when he was appointed Papal Nuncio in Bavaria, until 1929. He knew what the Nazi party stood for, and was elected Pope in 1939 having said very little about Adolf Hitler’s ideology beyond a 1935 speech describing the Nazis as “miserable plagiarists who dress up old errors with new tinsel.” Pacelli told 250,000 pilgrims at Lourdes on April 28, “It does not make any difference whether they flock to the banners of the social revolution, whether they are guided by a false conception of the world and of life, or whether they are possessed by the superstition of a race and blood cult.”

Even as Cardinal, Pacelli's actions regarding Hitler were controversial. Hitler took power on January 30, 1933. On July 20 that same year, Pacelli and German diplomat Franz Von Papen signed a concordat that granted freedom of practice to the Roman Catholic Church. In return, the Church agreed to separate religion from politics. This diminished the influence of the Catholic Center Party and the Catholic Labor unions. The concordat was generally viewed as a diplomatic victory for Hitler.⁽¹⁾

Pacelli was elected Pope on March 2, 1939, and took the name Pius XII. As Pope, he had three official positions. He was head of his church and was in direct communication with bishops everywhere. He was chief of state of the Vatican, with his own diplomatic corps. He was also the Bishop of Rome. In theory, at least, his views could influence 400 million Catholics, including those in all the occupied eastern territories - the Poles, Baltics, Croatians, Slovaks and others.⁽²⁾

As soon as he was appointed Pope, Pacelli did speak out against the 1938 Italian racial laws that dealt with mixed marriages and children of mixed marriages.⁽³⁾ However, he issued no such condemnation of Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass) which occurred in November 1938, and which recent evidence shows he was informed of by Berlin's papal nuncio. As the security of the Jewish population became more precarious, Pius XII did intervene the month he was elected Pope, March 1939, and obtained 3,000 visas to enter Brazil for European Jews who had been baptized and converted to Catholicism. Two-thirds of these were later revoked, however, because of "improper conduct," probably meaning that the Jews started practicing Judaism once in Brazil. At that time, the Pope did nothing to save practicing Jews.⁽⁴⁾

Cries for Help

Throughout the Holocaust, Pius XII was consistently besieged with pleas for help on behalf of the Jews.

In the spring of 1940, the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, Isaac Herzog, asked the papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Luigi Maglione to intercede to keep Jews in Spain from being deported to Germany. He later made a similar request for Jews in Lithuania. The papacy did nothing.⁽⁵⁾

Within the Pope's own church, Cardinal Theodor Innitzer of Vienna told Pius XII about Jewish deportations in 1941. In 1942, the Slovakian charge d'affaires, a position under the supervision of the Pope, reported to Rome that Slovakian Jews were being systematically deported and sent to death camps.⁽⁶⁾

In October 1941, the Assistant Chief of the U.S. delegation to the Vatican, Harold Tittman, asked the Pope to condemn the atrocities. The response came that the Holy See wanted to remain "neutral," and that condemning the atrocities would have a negative influence on Catholics in German-held lands.⁽⁷⁾

In late August 1942, after more than 200,000 Ukrainian Jews had been killed, Ukrainian Metropolitan Andrej Septyckyj wrote a long letter to the Pope, referring to the German government as a regime of terror and corruption, more diabolical than that of the Bolsheviks. The Pope replied by quoting verses from Psalms and advising Septyckyj to "bear adversity with serene patience."⁽⁸⁾

On September 18, 1942, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, wrote, "The massacres of the Jews reach frightening proportions and forms."⁽⁹⁾ Yet, that same month when Myron Taylor, U.S. representative to the Vatican, warned the Pope that his silence was endangering his moral prestige, the Secretary of State responded on the Pope's behalf that it was impossible to verify rumors about crimes committed against the Jews.⁽¹⁰⁾

Wladislaw Raczkiewicz, president of the Polish government-in-exile, appealed to the Pope in January 1943 to publicly denounce Nazi violence. Bishop Preysing of Berlin did the same, at least twice. Pius XII refused.⁽¹¹⁾

Papal Reasons and Responses

The Pope finally gave a reason for his consistent refusals to make a public statement in December 1942. The Allied governments issued a declaration, "German Policy of Extermination of the Jewish Race," which stated that there would be retribution for the perpetrators of Jewish murders. When Tittman asked Secretary of State Maglione if the Pope could issue a similar proclamation, Maglione said the papacy was "unable to denounce publicly particular atrocities."⁽¹²⁾ One reason for this position was that the staunchly anti-communist Pope felt he could not denounce the Nazis without including the Communists; therefore, Pius XII would only condemn general atrocities.⁽¹³⁾

The Pope did speak generally against the extermination campaign. On January 18, 1940, after the death toll of Polish civilians was estimated at 15,000, the Pope said in a broadcast, "The horror and inexcusable excesses committed on a helpless and a homeless people have been established by the unimpeachable testimony of eye-witnesses."⁽¹⁴⁾ During his Christmas Eve radio broadcast in 1942, he referred to the "hundreds of thousands who through no fault of their own, and solely because of their nation or race, have been condemned to death or progressive extinction."⁽¹⁵⁾ The Pope never mentioned the Jews by name.

The Pope's indifference to the mistreatment of Jews was often clear. In 1941, for example, after being asked by French Marshal Henri Philippe Petain if the Vatican would object to anti-Jewish laws, Pius XII answered that the church condemned racism, but did not repudiate every rule against the Jews.⁽¹⁶⁾ When Petain's French puppet government introduced "Jewish statutes," the Vichy ambassador to the Holy See informed Petain that the Vatican did not consider the legislation in conflict with Catholic teachings, as long as they were carried out with "charity" and "justice."⁽¹⁷⁾

In a September 1940 broadcast, the Vatican called its policy "neutrality," but stated in the same broadcast that where morality was involved, no neutrality was possible.⁽¹⁸⁾ This could only imply that mass murder was not a moral issue.

On September 8, 1943, the Nazis invaded Italy and, suddenly, the Vatican was the local authority. The Nazis gave the Jews 36 hours to come up with 50 kilograms of gold or else the Nazis would take 300 hostages. The Vatican was willing to loan 15 kilos, an offer that eventually proved unnecessary when the Jews obtained an extension for the delivery.⁽¹⁹⁾

Pius XII knew that Jewish deportations from Italy were impending. The Vatican even found out from SS First Lieutenant Kurt Gerstein the fate of those who were to be deported.⁽²⁰⁾ Publicly, the Pope stayed silent. Privately, Pius did instruct Catholic institutions to take in Jews. The Vatican itself hid 477 Jews and another 4,238 Jews were protected in Roman monasteries and convents.⁽²¹⁾

On October 16, the Nazis arrested 1,007 Roman Jews, the majority of whom were women and children. They were taken to Auschwitz, where 811 were gassed immediately. Of those sent to the concentration camp, 16 survived.⁽²²⁾

The Pope Protests

The Pope did act behind the scenes on occasion. During the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, he, along with the papal nuncio in Budapest, Angelo Rotta, advised the Hungarian government to be moderate in its plans concerning the treatment of the Jews. Pius XII protested against the deportation of Jews and, when his protests were not heeded, he cabled again and again.⁽²³⁾ The Pope's demands, combined with similar protests from the King of Sweden, the International Red Cross, Britain and the United States contributed to the decision by the Hungarian regent, Admiral Miklos Horthy, to cease deportations on July 8, 1944.⁽²⁴⁾

In the later stages of the war, Pius XII appealed to several Latin American governments to accept “emergency passports” that several thousand Jews had succeeded in obtaining. Due to the efforts of the Pope and the U.S. State Department, 13 Latin American countries decided to honor these documents, despite threats from the Germans to deport the passport holders.⁽²⁵⁾

The Church also answered a request to save 6,000 Jewish children in Bulgaria by helping to transfer them to Palestine. At the same time, however, Cardinal Maglione wrote to the apostolic delegate in Washington, A.G. Cicognani, saying this did not mean the Pope supported Zionism.⁽²⁶⁾

The Politics Behind the Policy

Historians point out that any support the Pope did give the Jews came after 1942, once U.S. officials told him that the allies wanted total victory, and it became likely that they would get it. Furthering the notion that any intervention by Pius XII was based on practical advantage rather than moral inclination is the fact that in late 1942, Pius XII began to advise the German and Hungarian bishops that it would be to their ultimate political advantage to go on record as speaking out against the massacre of the Jews. ⁽²⁷⁾

One of the only cases in which the Pope gave early support to the allies was in May 1940. He received information about a German plan, Operation Yellow, to lay mines to deter British naval support of Holland. Pius XII gave his permission to send coded radio messages warning papal nuncios in Brussels and The Hague of the plot. The German radio monitoring services decoded the broadcast and went ahead with the plan.⁽²⁸⁾ This papal intervention is surprising due to the Pope's persistent claim of neutrality, and his silence regarding almost all German atrocities.

Recent Developments

The International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission (ICJHC), a group comprised of three Jewish and three Catholic scholars, was appointed in 1999 by the Holy See's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. In October of 2000, the group of scholars finished their review of the Vatican's archives, and submitted their preliminary findings to the Comission's then-President, Cardinal Edward I Cassidy. Their report, entitled "The Vatican and the Holocaust," laid to rest several of the conventional defenses of Pope Pius XII.

The often-espoused view that the Pontiff was unaware of the seriousness of the situation of European Jewry during the war was definitively found to be inaccurate. Numerous documents demonstrated that the Pope was well-informed about the full extent of the Nazi's anti-Semitic practices. A letter from Konrad von Preysing, Bishop of Berlin, that proved that the Pope was aware of the situation as early as January of 1941, particularly caught the attention of the commission. In that letter, Preysing confirms that "Your Holiness is certainly informed about the situation of the Jews in Germany and the neighboring countries. I wish to mention that I have been asked both from the Catholic and Protestant side if the Holy See could not do something on this subject...in favor of these unfortunates." The letter, which was a direct appeal to the Pope himself, without intermediaries, provoked no response. In 1942, an even more compelling eyewitness account of the mass-murder of Jews in Lwow was sent to the Pope by an archbishop; this, too, garnered no response.

The commission also revealed several documents that cast a negative light on the claim that the Vatican did all it could to facilitate emigration of the Jews out of Europe. Internal notes meant only for Vatican representatives revealed the opposition of Vatican officials to Jewish emigration from Europe to Palestine. "The Holy See has never approved of the project of making Palestine a Jewish home...[because] Palestine is by now holier for Catholics than for Jews." Some Catholic higher-ups violated this position of the Vatican by helping Jews to immigrate when they were able to; most did not.

Similarly, the attempts of Jews to escape from Europe to South America were sometimes thwarted by the Vatican. Vatican representatives in Bolivia and Chile wrote to the pontiff regarding the "invasive" and "cynically exploitative" character of the Jewish immigrants, who were already engaged in "dishonest dealings, violence, immorality, and even disrespect for religion." The commission concluded that these accounts probably biased Pius against aiding more Jews in immigrating away from Nazi Europe.

The claim that the Vatican needed to remain neutral in the war has also been refuted in recent months. In January of 2001, a document recently declassified by the U.S. National Archives was discovered by the World Jewish Congress. The document was a report in which Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, Pope Pius XII's secretary of state, detailed and denounced several abuses committed by the Soviet Army against German inhabitants of the Soviet Union. The report was widely viewed as demonstrating that the Vatican had no compunctions about speaking out against atrocities, even when doing so would violate neutrality.

The preliminary report released by the IJCHC also asked the Vatican for access to non-published archival documents to more fully investigate the Pope's role in the Holocaust. This request was refused by the Vatican, which allowed them access only to documents from before 1923. As a result, the Commission suspended its study in July 2001, without issuing a final report. Dr. Michael Marrus, one of the three Jewish panelists and a professor of history at the University of Toronto, expained that the commission "ran up against a brick wall.... It would have been really halpful to have had support from the Holy See on this issue."⁽²⁹⁾

In 2004, news was disclosed of a diary kept by James McDonald, the League of Nations high commissioner for refugees coming from Germany. In 1933, McDonald raised the treatment of the Jews with then Cardinal Pacelli, who was the Vatican secretary of state. McDonald was specifically interested in helping a group of Jewish refugees in the Saar region, a territory claimed by France and Germany that was turned over to the Germans in 1935. The Pope's defenders cite his intercession on these Jews' behalf as evidence of his sympathy for Jews persecuted by the Nazis. According to McDonald, however, when he disccused the matter with Pacelli, “The response was noncommittal, but left me with the definite impression that no vigorous cooperation could be expected.”⁽³⁰⁾ Pacelli did intercede in January 1935 to help the Jews, but only after McDonald agreed that American Jews would use their influence in Washington to protect church properties that were being threatened by the Mexican government.⁽³¹⁾

In 2005, the Italian daily, Corriere della Sera, discovered a letter dated November 20, 1946, showing that Pope Pius XII ordered Jewish babies baptized by Catholics during the Holocaust not to be returned to their parents. Some scholars said the disclosure was not new and that the Pope's behavior was not remarkable. The more important story, according to Rabbi David Rosen, international director of interreligious affairs for the American Jewish Committee, was that one of the recipients of the letter, Angelo Roncalli, the papal representative in Paris, ignored the papal directive.⁽³²⁾

In 2006, an Israeli scholar, Dina Porat, discovered correspondence between Haim Barlas, an emissary of the Jewish Agency sent to Europe to save Jews in the 1940s, and Giuseppe Roncalli, who later became Pope John XXIII. Roncalli expressed criticism of the Vatican’s silence during the war. In June 1944, Barlas sent Roncalli a copy of a report compiled by two Jews who escaped from Auschwitz documenting the mass murder at the camp. Roncalli forwarded the report to the Vatican, which had claimed it did not know about the report until October. Earlier, Roncalli had written to the president of Slovakia at the behest of Barlas asking him to stop the Nazi deportations of Jews.⁽³³⁾

Conclusion

The Pope's reaction to the Holocaust was complex and inconsistent. At times, he tried to help the Jews and was successful. But these successes only highlight the amount of influence he might have had, if he not chosen to remain silent on so many other occasions. No one knows for sure the motives behind Pius XII's actions, or lack thereof, since the Vatican archives have only been fully opened to select researchers. Historians offer many reasons why Pope Pius XII was not a stronger public advocate for the Jews: A fear of Nazi reprisals, a feeling that public speech would have no effect and might harm the Jews, the idea that private intervention could accomplish more, the anxiety that acting against the German government could provoke a schism among German Catholics, the church's traditional role of being politically neutral and the fear of the growth of communism were the Nazis to be defeated.⁽³⁴⁾ Whatever his motivation, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Pope, like so many others in positions of power and influence, could have done more to save the Jews.

23-12-2009 om 23:30 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever