[DRAFT COPY]

Jasenovac

Proceedings of the First International Conference and Exhibit

on the Jasenovac Concentration Camps

October 29-31, 1997

Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York

DallasPublishing Mt. Pleasant

JASENOVAC: PROCEEDINGS OF THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE AND EXHIBIT ON THE JASENOVAC CONCENTRATION CAMPS. Copyright © [Kingsborough Community College History Dept.?], 2003. All rights reserved. For information, address Dallas Publishing Company, P. O. Box 1144, Mt. Pleasant, Texas 75456-1144. editor@DallasPublishing.com; www.DallasPublishing.com Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: Jasenovac: First International Conference Jasenovac: proceedings of the first international conference and exhibit on the Jasenovac concentration camps/ ISBN 0-912011-64-5 Conference photo images and audio transcribed from First International Conference and Exhibition on the Jasenovac Concentration Camps video series. Copyright © Memory Films, Joe Friendly, Chief Producer, 203 West 107th St., Apt. 8A, New York, NY 10025. Map of Jasenovac area from Miletić, Antun. "Koncentracioni Logor Jasenovac 1941-1945, Dokumenta" (Concentration Camp Jasenovac 1941-1945, Documents), Volume 3, Narodna Knjiga, Beograd, Spomen-područje Jasenovac, first edition 1987. Map of Nazi division of Yugoslavia, 1941, from U.S. Department of State, Documents on German Foreign Policy. Series D (1937-1945), Vol. XII, Washington, DC: USGPO, 1962 Archival photos from Kozara: Photographic History. Belgrade, BIGZ, 1986. Jasenovac: Photographic History. Belgrade, BIGZ, 1986. Dragoje Lukić. Bili Su Samo Deca (They Were Only Children). Banja Luka: Grafomark, 2000. Dr. Nikola Nikolić. Jasenovac: Camp of Death. ______ (1948) 1976. Publisher’s Cataloguing-in-Publication First International Conference on the Jasenovac Concentration Camps Jasenovac: First International Conference and Exhibit on the Jasenovac Concentration Camps / First International Conference on the Jasenovac Concentration Camps ; edited by Petar Makara and Wanda Schindley ; translations: Vladimir Bibić ; Petar Makara ; Vesna Najfeld ; Snezana Vitorović. ― 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. LCCN 2003______ ISBN 0-912011-64-5 1. First International Conference on the Jasenovac Concentration Camps 2. World War, 1939-1945―Personal narratives, Yugoslavian. 3. Jasenovac (Concentration Camp) 4. World War, 1939-1945―Prisoners and prisons, Croatian. 5. Croatia―History―1918-1945. I. Title D804.3.F47 940.53’18F

Dedicated to the memory

of the victims of the Balkan genocide

1941-1945

Table of Contents Acknowledgements Editors’ Notes and Pronunciation Key Map: Nazi division of Yugoslavia Map: Jasenovac area Map: Jasenovac area Snapshots of a Holocaust: Quotations from Western Literature Compiled by Petar Makara

Survivor Testimonies Conference Sessions Three and Six; Post-conference Interviews

Ms. Mara Vejnović Ms. Ljiljana Ivanišević Mr. Savo Petrović Mr. George Živković Mr. Božo Švarz Mr. Miloš Despot Mr. Sadik Danon Mr. Čedomil Huber Mr. Josip Erlih Ms. Štefica Serdar Sabolić Mr. Edo Šajer Mr. Savo Delibasić

Presentations and Proceedings

Opening Session Chair, Dr. Bernard Klein Mr. Michael Zibrin Mr. Vladimir Jovanović Dr. Milan Bulajić

Conference Session One Dr. Bernard Klein Mr. Antun Miletić Mr. Vladimir Žerjavić Dr. Milan Bulajić Dr. Savo Bosnitch Audience Discussion

Lunch Sessions Two Dr. Michael Berenbaum Question and Answer Session

Conference Session Four Session Four Chair, Dr. Zeljan Shuster Dr. Henry Huttenbach Mr. Dragoljub Acković Dr. Eta Najfeld Mr. John Ranz

Conference Session Six Session Six Chair, Mr. Barry Lituchy Dr. Thomas Popovich Dr. Eli Rosenbaum Mr. Christopher Simpson Mr. Charles R. Allen Question and Answer Session

Lunch Session Seven Mr. Aleksandar Mošić Question and Answer Session

Conference Session Eight Chair, Dr. Bernard Klein Mr. William Dorich Dr. Vladimir Umeljić Audience Discussion Session

Press conference at the United Nations Epilogue Appendix Archival Photographs Jasenovac: Then and Now, by Bill Dorich (Prepared for and donated to the First International Conference) Index

Acknowledgements Kingsborough Community College, Department of History Dr. Bernard Klein, Conference Chair Exhibit Dr. Milan Bulajić Memory Films conference videographers Mr. Vladimir Bibić, Mr. Joe Friendly (Video tapes Volume 1 through 12 available from Joe Friendly, 203 West 107th St., Apt. 8A, New York, NY 10025) [Yugoslav TV? conference videographers: Ms. ] Conference Translators Dr. Vesna Najfeld, Mr. Petar Makara Post-conference Interviews Ms. Nadia Tesich, Translator: Mr. Vladimir Bibić Editors Mr. Petar Makara Dr. Wanda Schindley Translations: Dr. Vesna Najfeld Mr. Petar Makara Ms. Snezana Vitorović Transcription draft of presentations: Jasenovac Research Institute Transcription draft of survivor testimonies: Ms. Jovanka Malkovich Final transcriptions: Mr. Tika Janković Mr. Petar Makara Mr. Igor Najfeld Dr. Wanda Schindley Ms. Snezana Vitorović

Notes on the compilation and presentation of conference proceedings

Pronunciation key

U.S. Department of State, Documents on German Foreign Policy. Series D (1937-1945), Vol. XII, Washington, DC: USGPO, 1962

From Miletić, Antun. "Koncentracioni Logor Jasenovac 1941-1945, Dokumenta" (Concentration Camp Jasenovac 1941-1945, Documents), Volume 3, Narodna Knjiga, Beograd, Spomen-područje Jasenovac, first edition 1987.

The Sava River is the dividing line between what is now Croatia (top) and Bosnia (bottom). Five concentration camps under Jasenovac reached from Krapalj to Stara Gradiska, an area of 131 square miles. Others of the 24 concentration camps in Croatia were at times also under the command of Jasenovac. (Croatian State Commission)

[Draft] Snapshots of a Holocaust

Through quotations from Western literature Compiled by Petar Makara

ETHNIC SLAUGHTER

“The greatest ethnic slaughter took place as Yugoslavia was carved up after the German invasion in April 1941. The creation of a separate Croatia . . . controlled by the fascist, Catholic, extremist Ustasha movement was the catalyst for the tragedy... Now, historic Croatia was expanded to include Bosnia-Herzegovina and other territories, and the Ustasha were left . . . to govern a population of nearly 7 million people, of whom about half were Croats, just over 2 million were Serbs, about 750,000 were Muslims, and small numbers were Protestants and Jews. . . . The Minister of Education, Mile Budak, made clear the Ustasha aims: 'Our new Croatia will get rid of all Serbs in our midst in order to become one hundred percent Catholic within ten years.’”

Professor Clive Ponting, Armageddon, Random House, Inc., New York, 1995, pp. 231-232.

UNSURPASSED SAVAGERY “In Bosnia . . . the Croatian fascists began a massacre of Serbs which, in the whole annals of World War II, was surpassed for savagery only by the mass extermination of Polish Jews.”

Encyclopedia Britannica 1971 ed., Vol. 23, p. 922

Entry: Yugoslavia, WWII (The above quotation was repeated in all versions of Encyclopedia Britannica from 1971 until 1987. You can find it for example in Encyclopedia Britannica Edition 1971, Volume 23, page 922 or in Encyclopedia Britannica, Edition 1987, Volume 29, page 1054. (The entry is entitled, “Yugoslavia, W.W.II”) In recent subsequent editions of Britannica, Yugoslavia is deleted altogether.)

METHODS OF MURDERING 'FOREIGN ELEMENTS' “Croatia [under Fascist control called itself the 'Independent State of Croatia' or 'Nazavisna Drzava Hrvatska,' hence the initials NDH] . . . Established during W.W.II. . . [it] was in existence from April 1941 to May 1945. Its area . . . consisted of what are today the Federative Republic of Croatia and the Federative Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina... Its capital was Zagreb. It had a population of 6.3 million, of whom 3.3 million were Catholic Croats, 1.9 million Serbs, 700,000 Muslims... 40,000 Jews, 30,000 Gypsies... “. . . Shortly after taking control, the Ustasha, with the support of many Croats, embarked upon what it called 'The Purge of Croatia from Foreign Elements,' which had as its main purpose the elimination of the Serb minority. “In a brutal terror campaign, more than half a million Serbs were killed, a quarter of a million expelled, and 200,000 forced to convert to Catholicism. “The Ustasha regime in Croatia, and particularly this drive in the summer of 1941 to exterminate and dispossess the Serbs, was one of the most horrendous episodes of World War II. “The murder methods applied by the Ustasha were extraordinarily primitive and sadistic: thousands were hurled from mountain tops, other were beaten to death or their throats cut, entire villages were burned down, women raped, people sent to death marches in the middle of winter, and still others starved to death.”

Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Vol. 1, p. 323, Entry: Croatia.

EXTERMINATION OF SERBS AND JEWS

“In April 1941 separatist Croats of the fascist terrorist organization 'Ustasha' set up in Zagreb an Independent Croat regime with Dr. Ante Pavelic as fuehrer, or "Poglavnik," and with Marshal Slavko Kvaternik as minister of war. . . . “The new state, organized on strictly fascist and authoritarian lines, excelled quickly by the special ruthlessness and cruelty with which it persecuted, and partially exterminated the large Serb minority and the small Jewish population..."

Encyclopedia Britannica, 1943: Book of the year, page 215, Entry: 'Croatia'

SHOCKED THE GERMANS “Slavko Kvaternik explained [in a radio program on April 10, 1941, the day the 'Independent State of Croatia' was formed] how a pure Croatia should be built―by forcing one third of the Serbs to leave Croatia, one third to convert to Catholicism, and one third to be exterminated. Soon Ustasha bands initiated a bloody orgy of mass murder of Serbs unfortunate enough not to have converted or left Croatia on time. “The enormity of such criminal behavior shocked even the conscience of German commanders, but Pavelic had Hitler's personal support for such actions which resulted in the loss of the lives of hundreds of thousands of Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

Worldmark Encyclopedia of the Nations: Europe, 1995 ed., p. 91. Entry: Croatia.

'ONLY' KILLED 750,000 “A Croatian crusade of destruction directed against the Orthodox Serbs erupted, a crusade that belongs among the most brutal mass murder undertakings in the entire history of the world. . . . “ “The Orthodox recipe of Ante Pavelic, Ustashi leader and Croatian Fuehrer, reminds one of the religious wars in [their] bloodiest aspects: one-third must become Catholic, one-third must leave the country and one-third must die. The last item was executed. When the leading men of the Ustashi movement are stating that they have slaughtered one million Serbs (including infants, children, women and aged) this in my opinion is a self-praising exaggeration. According to the reports that have reached me, my estimate is that the number of those defenseless slaughtered is some three-quarters of a million. [750,000].”

Dr. Hermann Naubacher, Sonderaufrag Sudost 1940-1945. Bericht eines fliegenden

Diplomaten, Gottingen, 1956, p. 18-31. (Dr. Naubacher was Hitler's personal assistant for Southeastern Europe and Balkan affairs.)

INDESCRIBABLE BESTIAL “The Ustashi murdered and tortured Jews and Serbs in indescribably bestial fashion. One of the most notorious camps in Hitler's Europe, Jasenovac, was in Croatia. Here the Ustashi used primitive implements in putting their victims to death - knives, axes, hammers and other iron tools. A characteristic method was binding pairs of prisoners, back to back, and then throwing them into the Sava River. One source estimates that 770,000 Serbs, 40,000 Gypsies and 20,000 Jews were done to death in the Jasenovac camp.”

Dr. Nora Levin, The Holocaust―The Destruction of European Jewry

1933-1945, Schocken Books, New York, Edition 1973, page 515

OUTDOING THE NAZIS “In Croatia the indigenous fascist regime set about a policy of 'racial purification' that went beyond even Nazi practices. Minority groups such as Jews and Gypsies were to be eliminated, as were the Serbs: it was declared that one-third of the Serbian population would be deported, one-third converted to Roman Catholicism, and one third liquidated. ... Ustasha bands terrorized the countryside. The partial collaboration of the Catholic clergy in these practices continues to be a component of Serb-Croat suspicion.”

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991 ed., Macropedia, Vol. 29, page 1111.

CLERICAL SPONSORSHIP “Nonpartisan sources agree that mass genocide was authorized by the state of Croatia. They concur the state instigated, planned, and executed masses against the Serbian Orthodox minority... and that the Catholic clergy approved, led, or failed to denounce these massacres. The Croats' collective hatred of the Orthodox Serbs was explicit in folk sayings such as ["Srbe o vrbe" -] "Serbs to the willows [hang the Serbs].” . . .

“By June 1941, signs on public establishments read, 'NO SERBS, JEWS, NOMADS ['Gypsies'] AND DOGS ALLOWED.”

Professor Helen Fein, Accounting for Genocide―Victims and Survivors of

the Holocaust, The Free Press, New York, Edition 1979, p. 102, 103.

CATHOLIC CLERGY ALLEGEDLY TOOK PART “Catholic monks and other priests are alleged to have taken an active part in this struggle for the 'purity' of the Croatian land.”

The New Encyclopedia Britannica, edition 1986, Macropedia (Knowledge in Depth), Volume 27,

p. 467, entry: Fascism in the Balkans (1930's).

THE GREATEST GENOCIDE IN PROPORTION

TO THE POPULATION “The greatest genocide during World War II, in proportion to a nation's population, took place, not in Nazi Germany but in the Nazi-created puppet state of Croatia. There, in the years 1941-1945, some 750,000 Serbs, 60,000 Jews and 26,000 Gypsies - men, women and children - perished in a gigantic holocaust. These are the figures used by most foreign authors, especially Germans, who were in the best position to know. . . . “. . . The magnitude and the bestial nature of these atrocities makes it difficult to believe that such a thing could have happened in an allegedly civilized part of the world. Yet even a book such as this can attempt to tell only a part of the story.”

Professor Edmond Paris, Genocide in Satellite Croatia, 1941-1945, Chicago, 1961,

The American Institute for Balkan Affairs, from the introduction of the book.

NIGHTMARE RIVER “Even the most extraordinary massacres in the darkest era of history would not soil its name―Croatia. . . Kill, kill, scream the Ustashi against Serbs. And they cut their heads off and throw bodies away into the Sava River which flows slowly and gravely in the direction of Belgrade. . . “Go back to your motherland, go back to your motherland. “Neither Fascists nor Nazi have the remotest resemblance to the Ustashi, they are a fauna absolutely extraordinary and strange...”

Alfio Russo, Revoluzione in Jugoslavia, Roma 1944

ANTE PAVELICH, THE CROATIAN FUEHRER “The real ruler [of W.W.II Croatia] was Ante Pavelich, a zealous Croatian nationalist and fanatical hater of Serbs... Pavelic lead a terrorist group called the Ustashi in a brutal campaign against Jews and Serbs in Croatia. 'A good Ustashi,' he told his men, 'is he who can use his knife to cut a child from the womb of its mother.' According to an Italian correspondent, Pavelich once put a wicker basket on his desk - filled with 40 pounds of eyes gouged from victims of the Ustashi.”

Partisans and Guerillas, W.W.II, Ronald H. Bailey, Time-Life Books, Edition 1978, page 87.

UNREPEATABLE ATROCITIES

“For now I began to get news from Croatia that told of slowly rising tide of murders, of unrepeatable atrocities, of massacres of defenceless Serbs by berserk-mad Croatians and by [fascist] Moslems in Bosnian Croatia. In the little back parlors of trusty men, the tales were whispered. I could not believe a quarter of them. Unfortunately, I was soon to know that they were a weak understatement of the truth. Men were to arrive in Dubrovnik itself, hung with strings of Serbian tongues and with bowls of Serbian eyes for sale.”

Ruth Mitchell, The Serbs Choose War, Doubleday, Doran, 1943, page 148.

(Ms. Mitchell, sister of the founder of the U.S. Air Force, General Bill Mitchell, was in Dubrovnik, Croatia, in April 1941, when Yugoslavia fell to the Nazi occupation and the Ustashi came to power.)

BASKET OF EYES ON FUEHRER’S DESK “While he [Dr.Pavelic] spoke, I gazed at a wicker basket on the Poglavnik's [fuehrer's] desk. The lid was raised and the basket seem to be filled with mussels, or shelled oysters - as they are occasionally displayed in the window of Fortnum and Mason in Picadilly in London. Casertano looked at me and winked, "Would you like a nice oyster stew?" "Are they Dalmatian oysters?" I asked the Poglavnik [Dr.Pavelic] Ante Pavelic removed the lid from the basket and he revealed the mussels, that slimy and jelly-like mass, and he said SMILING, with that tired good-natured smile of his, 'It is present from my loyal Ustashas. Forty pounds of human eyes.'”

Curzio Malaparte, Kaputt, 10th edition (Rome, Milan, 1948), page 313.

(Mr. Malaparte was in Italy's diplomatic service and from 1922 to 1931. He even belonged to the Fascist Party. During WWII he was a captain in reserve and war correspondent when he visited Pavelic and Independent State of Croatia.)

THE LIVING TRUTH “I wish to declare, having held during the war a high position in Rijeka (Croatia) where I was in constant touch with the Army Commandant Prefecture... What Malaparte wrote is the living truth, because our soldiers and officers and I saw heaps of gouged out human eyes. Copies of all photographs of Croatian crimes were received by me, the Second Army, and the Prefecture... I never heard of the Serbs having engaged in such bestiality, toward our soldiers or toward anyone else....”

Francesco Bassottti in Il Borghese magazine, Rome, 1960.

THE CLERGY TOOK A LEADING PART “Pavelic's onslaught against Orthodox Serbs remains one of the most appalling civilian massacres known to history... [In Pavelic's Croatia the] Orthodox Serbs faced 'radical solutions,' as did the Jews, who were immediately marked down for elimination... From the outset, the public acts and statements concerning ethnic cleansing and the anti-Semitic programs were well known to the Catholic episcopate and Catholic Action, the lay associations so vigorously promoted by [Pope Pius XII, Eugenio] Pacelli... These racist and anti-Semitic measures were therefore also known by the Holy See, and thus by Pacelli, at the point when he greeted Pavelic at the Vatican [on May 18, 1941]. Ustashe leadership embarked on their massacres with a cruel and haphazard barbarism that has few parallels in history... [The Croat] clergy often took a leading part. Priests, invariably Franciscans, took a leading part in the massacres. Many went around routinely armed and performed their murderous acts with zeal... Individual Franciscans killed, set fire to homes, sacked villages, and laid waste the Bosnian countryside at the head of Ustashe bands. In the Foreign Ministry archive [of the Catholic Church] in Rome there is a photographic record of atrocities: of women with breasts cut off, gouged eyes, genitals mutilated; and the instruments of butchery: knives, axes, meat hooks.”

John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, Penguin Books, New York 1999, pp 249-254

(Mr. Cornwell was a research fellow at Jesuit College, and as devout Catholic got to study Vatican archives.)

THE JASENOVAC CONCENTRATION CAMP: 600,000 PEOPLE MURDERED AT ONE PLACE

“Jasenovac [was] the largest concentration 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... established in August 1941 and was dismantled only on April 1945...

"Some six hundred thousand people were murdered at Jasenovac, mostly Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and opponents of the Ustasha regime... The living conditions in the camp were extremely severe... A particularly cruel regime, and unbelievably cruel behavior by the Ustashe guards... "The acts of murder and of the 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." "In April 1945 the partisan army approached the camp. In an attempt to erase traces of the atrocities, the Ustashe blew up all the installations and killed most of the inmates. An escape attempt by the prisoners failed, and only a few survived.”

Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Vol. 2, page 739.

THE MOST WICKED CONCENTRATION CAMP “We now went into the concentration camp in a converted factory. Frightful conditions. Few men, many women, and children, without sufficient clothing, sleeping on stone at night, pining away, wailing and crying. A camp commandant - in spite of the later, favorable judgment of the Poglavnik - a rogue; I ignored him but instead told my Ustase guide: "This is enough to make you puke." And then worst of all: a room along whose walls, lying on straw which had just been laid down because of my inspection, something like fifty naked children, half of them dead, the other half dying. One should not forget that the inventors of the KZ were the British in the Boer War. However, such places have reached their peak of abomination here in Croatia, under a Poglavnik installed by us. The most wicked of all must be Jasenovac, where no ordinary mortal is allowed to peer in.”

Gen. Edmund Glaise von Horstenau, En General in Zweilicht: Die Erinnerungen

von Edmund Glaise von Horstenau, vol 3, p. 167. (General Edmund Glaise von Horstenau was the German Plenipotentiary General in Croatia during WWII.)

CHILDREN BURNED ALIVE

“...It is estimated that a total of about 200,000 people met their death [in Jasenovac] during 1941-1942 [alone!]. Crowds of Jewish children were burned alive in the old brick ovens, transformed into crematories. "Vjekoslav Luburic, commander-in-chef of all the Croatian camps, announced the great 'efficiency' of this slaughterhouse at a ceremony on October 9th, 1942... During the banquet which followed, he reported with pride: 'We have slaughtered here at Jasenovac more people than the Ottoman Empire was able to do during its occupation of Europe.’”

Professor Edmond Paris, Genocide in Satellite Croatia 1941-1945, The American Institute for

Balkan Affairs, edition 1961, page 132

ONE NIGHT “In the concentration camp at Jasenovac, on the night of August 29, 1942, orders were issued for executions. Bets were made as to who could liquidate the largest number of inmates. Peter Brzica cut the throats of 1,360 prisoners with a specially sharp butcher's knife. Having been proclaimed the prizewinner of the competition, he was elected King of the Cutthroats. A gold watch, a silver service, and a roasted sucking pig and wine were his other rewards...”

Avro Manhattan, The Vatican's Holocaust, Ozark Books,1986, p. 48.

(During World War II Mr. Manhattan operated a radio station called "Radio Freedom" which broadcast to occupied Europe.)

DO YOUR JOB, CHILD “The Ustashi genocidal criminal-slaughterer, Mile Friganovic told the incredible story about how Fransiscan Pero Brzica, a scholarship holder of the Siroki Brijeg monastery, slaughtered 1,360 prisoners in the Jasenovac camp in only one night:

Franciscan Pero Brzica, Ante Zrinusic, Sipka and I waged a bet on who would slaughter more prisoners that night. The killing started and already after an hour I slaughtered much more than they did. It seemed to me that I was in seventh heaven. I had never felt such bliss in my life. And already after a few hours I slaughtered 1,100 people, while the others only managed to kill 300 to 400 each. And then, when I was experiencing the greatest ecstasy I noticed an elderly peasant standing and peacefully and calmly watching me slaughter my victims and them dying in the greatest pain. That look of his shook me: in the midst of the greatest ecstasy I suddenly froze and for some time couldn't make a single move. And then I walked up to him and found out that he was some Vukasin [Mandrapa] from the village of Klepci near Capljina whose whole family had been killed, and who was sent to Jasenovac after having worked in the forests. He spoke this with incomprehensible peace which affected me more than the terrible cries around us. All at once I felt the wish to disrupt his peace with the most brutal torturing and, through his suffering, to restore my ecstasy and continue to enjoy the inflicting of pain. “I singled him out and sat him down on a log. I ordered him to cry out: 'Long live Poglavnik Pavelic!', or I would cut his ear off. Vukasin was silent. I ripped his ear off. He didn't say a word. I told him once again to cry out 'Long live Pavelic!' or I would tear off the other ear too. I tore off the other ear. Yell: 'Long live Pavelic!', or I'll tear off your nose. And when I ordered him for the fourth time to yell 'Long live Pavelic!' and threatened to take his heart out with a knife, he looked at me, that is, somehow through me and over me into uncertainty and slowly said: 'DO YOUR JOB, CHILD!' ['Radi ti, dijete, svoj posao.'] After that, these words of his totally bewildered me, I froze, plucked out his eyes, tore out his heart, cut his throat from ear to ear and threw him into the pit. But then something broke within me and I could no longer kill that night. Fransiscan Pero Brzica won the bet because he had slaughtered 1,360 prisoners and I paid the bet without a word.”

Dr. Milan Bulajić, The Role of the Vatican in the Breakup of the Yugoslav State,

Belgrade 1994, pp. 156-157.

BOSNIAN MUSLIMS JOIN IN “It so happened that Husseini made his contribution to the Axis war effort in his capacity as a Muslim, rather than as an Arab leader, by recruiting and organizing in RECORD TIME, during the spring of 1943, BOSNIAN MUSLIM BATTALIONS in Croatia comprising some TWENTY THOUSAND MEN. These MUSLIM VOLUNTEER units, called Hanjar (Sword), were put in WAFFEN-SS fought Yugoslav partisans in Bosnia, and carried out police and security duties in Hungary. THEY PARTICIPATED IN THE MASSACRE OF CIVILIANS IN BOSNIA and VOLUNTEERED TO JOIN IN THE HUNT FOR JEWS IN CROATIA... The Germans made a point of publicizing the fact that Husseini had flown from Berlin to Sarajevo for the sole purpose of giving his blessing to the Muslim army and inspecting its arms and training exercises.”

Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Edition 1990, Volume 2, Pages 706 and 707, entry Husseini,

Hajj Amin Al; The main Hitler's supporter among Palestinian Arabs...

THE PAST RETURNS... “And there can be no return to the past, to the times when they the Serbs were spreading cancer in the heart of Croatia, cancer which was destroying the Croatian national being and which did not allow the Croatian people to be the master in its own house and did not allow Croatia to lead an independent and sovereign life under this wide, blue sky and within the world community of sovereign nations...They [Serbian refugees driven from their homes by the Croatian Army] didn't even have the time to take with them their filthy foreign currency or their knickers.”

Croatian Radio, transcribed by BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, August 28, 1995

(That quotation was from Franjo Tudjman, President of the Independent State of Croatia. This state was modeled on its Nazi predecessor. It was created when Croatia violently seceded from

Yugoslavia in June, 1991, as a direct result of the German-U.S. strategy of using terrorist forces to break up Yugoslavia. Tudjman was speaking during a train tour of what had been Serbian Krajina, near Croatia in August, 1995. Trained by U.S. forces, armed by Germany, with U.S. fighter-bombers flying air support, the Croatian Army had just driven some 250,000 Serbs from their ancestral homes. Serbian farmers owned the land and lived in the Krajina for over 400 years, but the New York Times called these Serbs "rebels," thus lending legitimacy to this nightmare. The New York Times caption under pictures of Serbian refugees being stoned as they fled the neo-Ustashi offensive read: "Thousands of Serbs have been displaced in the Croatian offensive that recaptured three-quarters of a territory seized by Serbian forces in 1991.” ―The New York Times, August 10, 1995.)