videresender denne av Diana Johnstone.
Knut Rognes
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NAZI NOSTALGIA IN CROATIA
by Diana Johnstone
Sept. 6, 1999
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When I visited Croatia three years ago, the book most prominently displayed
in the leading bookstores of the capital city Zagreb was a new edition of
the notorious anti-Semitic classic, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion".
Next came the memoires of the World War II Croatian fascist Ustashe
dictator Ante Pavelic, responsible for the organized genocide of Serbs,
Jews and Romany (gypsies) that began in 1941, that is, even before the
German Nazi "final solution".
However, if the Croatian fascists actually led, rather than followed, the
German Nazis down the path of genocide, that doesn't mean they have
forgotten their World War II benefactors. After all, it was thanks to
Hitler's invasion of Yugoslavia that the "Independent State of Croatia" was
set up in April 1941, with Bosnia-Herzegovina (whose population was mostly
Serb at the time) as part of its territory. And the hit song of 1991, when
Croatia once again declared its independence from Yugoslavia and began
driving out Serbs, was "Danke Deutschland" in gratitude to Germany's strong
diplomatic support for Zagreb's unnegotiated secession.
In the West, of course, one will quickly object that the Germany of today
is not the Germany of 1941. True enough. But in Zagreb, with a longer
historical view, they are so much the same that visiting Germans are
sometimes embarrassed when Croats enthusiastically welcome them with a
raised arm and a Nazi "Heil!" greeting.
So it should be no surprise that this year's best seller in Croatia is none
other than a new edition of "Mein Kampf". This is not a critical edition,
mind you, but a reverently faithful reproduction of the original text by
that great European leader, benefactor of Croatian nationalism and leader
of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler.
The magazine "Globus" reported that "Mein Kampf" is selling like hotcakes
in all segments of Croatian society. For those who want to read more, there
is a new book entitled "The Protocols of Zion, the Jews and Adolf Hitler"
by Mladen Schwartz, leader of the Croatian neo-Nazi party New Right, and
"Talks with Hitler" by the Fuhrer's aide Herman Rauschning, as well as
various other memoires celebrating the Ustashe state whose violent
massacres of Serbs shocked the Italian fascist allies and even German
diplomatic observers at the time.
The dissident Croatian writer Predrag Matvejevic, who has Italian
citizenship, has sent the Rijeka daily "Novi List" an open letter to the
Association of Croatian Writers and the Croatian center of the
International PEN club denouncing their failure to protest at this
promotion of the absolute worst of racist Nazi propaganda. "Passing through
the streets of Zagreb, Split, Dubrovnik and other cities in Croatia,
countless Croatian citizens whose parents took part in the anti-fascist
Partisan struggle are ashamed to see the works and photographs of Hitler
and other Nazi and Ustashe criminals displayed in bookshop indows," he
wrote. "Their publication is a disgrace to Croatia and its culture". This
is "no accident", he said, "in Tudjman's Croatia." For this is the same
regime, he noted, that has allowed the destruction of thousands of
monuments to the victims of fascism, from one end of Croatia to the other,
and in which mass is celebrated non-stop in honor of the Ustashe "fuhrer"
Pavelic in the churches of Split and Zagreb, the Italian daily "Il
Manifesto" reported on September 3.
In another report in "Il Manifesto", Giacomo Scotti reported from Zagreb
that the terrorist campaign by nationalist bands led by the neofascist
"Croatian Party of Rights" has been stepping up its pogroms against the
small number of Serbs now living in the Krajina region. The overwhelmingly
Serb population was driven from the Krajina by the U.S.-backed "Operation
Storm" in August 1995. Officially, under heavy international pressure, the
Croatian government has allowed some Serbs to come back, mostly old
farmers. However, on August 25, the Croatian Supreme Court denied local
tribunals the right to hear complaints from citizens who had not been
allowed to enter their property, thus encouraging lawlessness.
With the complicity of the authorities, armed bands have been breaking into
the few homes reoccupied by their Serb owners, beating and threatening old
people and devastating their farms, chopping down trees and destroying
crops to force them to leave. These facts are contained in two letters to
the Croatian government from the Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights.
By now, however, it is abundantly clear to everyone that crimes of
intimidation, physical violence, murder, robbery, vandalism or "ethnic
cleansing" are of no interest to Western governments, to international
media or to any court in the world so long as the victims are Serbs.
...............
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