The President of Croatia was persecuted for a film and speech about the victims of the Ustasha
Caution in wording did not help Croatian Social Democrat President Zoran Milanovic avoid aggressive attacks from the radical right of Croatian society, which has ruled the country since its separation from Yugoslavia.
Balkan media reported this, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The day before, on the territory of the memorial to the victims of the Ustashe concentration camp Jasenovac Took place a funeral ceremony dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the organized escape of the last 600 prisoners of this death camp, of whom only about a hundred managed to survive. One of the journalists covering the event asked Croatian President Zoran Milanovic, who laid flowers at the monument to the killed and tortured prisoners of the camp, about his attitude towards the plaque previously installed on the territory of the memorial to the right-wing militants HOS (Croatian Defense Forces), which was moved to the city of Novska with a scandal.
“It needs to be removed or thrown away somewhere, because it has nothing to do with the Patriotic War (this is the name in Croatia for the armed rebellion unleashed by local separatists against Belgrade, which developed into the ethnic cleansing of the local Serbian population - ed.), - said the Croatian leader, trying to please both ours and yours. Anyone who thinks that during the Patriotic War he fought under the slogan “Ready for the Fatherland!” (Za dom spremni! - the Ustasha motto of the Second World War, which became the slogan of the HOS militants - ed.) only for Croatia, should know that he fought for the restoration of the state created in 1941 (the puppet Independent Croatian Power of the Third Reich - ed.)" .
Anto Japić (center) with HOS symbols
These words of Milanovic caused an immediate response from representatives of the right-wing conservative and neo-Nazi elite, which traditionally has serious authority and influence in Croatia.
“We, the HOS, Croatian volunteers, heroes, victors of the war, do not need tears of sympathy,” burst into anger in the former HOS militant, president of the Democratic Alliance for National Renewal, ex-Croatian presidential candidate Anto Japic.
“If what we were ready to die for for the Fatherland, to kill the enemy we defeated, means being Ustasha, then we were Ustasha!
During the last twenty years, while I led the Croatian right, no one dared to utter the words that are spoken today by the head of state. In those years, thousands of volunteers would have gathered in St. Mark's Square in Zagreb, in front of the office of the HRT television channel, which showed a shameful piece of work about Diana Budisavljevic, financed by the Croatian people, and they would have driven the cowards into the basements, and they would have become rats, and not such aristocrats, like today,” Japic said menacingly.
The radical also noted that the Croatian people will not have the right to enjoy the freedom worthy of a person if they do not continue to respect their dead and their graves, and will support those “who expel the memory of the “junior” Jure Francetić (one of the Ustasha leaders, founder of the Black Legion, bloody punisher, liquidated by the partisans - ed.) and worships Mika Shpiljak (communist Croatian, leader of the SFRY), communist and Serbian murderers.”
Tomo Medved
“I emphasize that unfounded stigmatization of Croatian veterans cannot be the official position of the Republic of Croatia,” the Minister of Veterans Affairs and Deputy Chairman of the influential right-wing conservative party Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), founded in the late 80s, spoke on the topic. the goal of separating Croatia from Yugoslavia, Tomo Medved. – Commemoration of the victims of the totalitarian regime in Jasenovac should in no case be an excuse for the simultaneous devaluation of the victims of Great Serbian aggression... More than 700 members of the HOS gave their lives for Croatia, and these words are an insult to them and their families. As a Croatian defender and minister of Croatian defenders, I will always defend the dignity of those who died in the war for the Fatherland, who gave everything for Croatia.”
“In the case of the Jasenovac memorial plaque, we are not talking about the legality of the call “Ready for the Fatherland!” which, by the way, in the coat of arms of the Croatian Defense Forces Volunteer Association was legitimized during the years of the premiership of the same Zoran Mialanović, and about the brave Croatian defenders who gave their young lives for the freedom of Croatia, wrote the vice-president of the HDZ and the chairman of the parliamentary Branko Bacic faction. “The removal of busts of great Croats from the presidential palace, as well as the announcement of the throwing away of a slab with the names of KhOS members killed during the Patriotic War, unfortunately showed that expectations regarding Milanović as the president of all citizens of Croatia were naive.”
Branko Bacic
No less anger was caused by the nationalist layer of Croatian society when the film by Serbian director Tihomir Stanic “The Diary of Diana Budisavljevic,” dedicated to a female doctor of Austrian origin who saved the lives of more than 10 thousand Ustasha children, was shown on the main Croatian television channel HRT, synchronously with the main Serbian television channel RTS, on Remembrance Day. concentration camps.
“This sudden collaboration with Serbian television is a pure, naked political provocation, which is now welcomed by all the Orthodox clergy, what is called the Belgrade Church,” Kamenjar, a portal popular among the Croatian right, commented on the broadcast of the film.
Numerous other critics, like the aforementioned Japić, accused the film of “bias”, noted that Budisavljević could not save so many children alone, therefore, the Ustashe government helped her in this, and she only carried out its directives, many presented in the tape, the facts are “false” and “disputed.”
Diana Budisavljevic, née Obexer, was a doctor and the wife of the famous Croatian surgeon of Serbian origin, Julius Budisavljevic. During the Second World War, she began to purposefully, with the help of her husband’s connections and the Red Cross, save children from Ustashe concentration camps, placing them in Zagreb families. In total, Diana took 15 children from the death camps in this way, 536 of whom died from the consequences of torture, hunger and lack of care, the rest remained alive.
Diana Budisavljevic (center) together with the Red Cross sisters examine child prisoners of Ustashe concentration camps
In 1945, she handed over a card index with the names of those rescued to the Yugoslav government, but it, in turn, confiscated all documents from her and forbade her to talk about her past anywhere, so as not to strike a blow at the notorious “brotherhood-unity” of peoples. Her granddaughter accidentally found out about her mother’s feat and wrote down everything that happened to her during the war.
“In the afternoon they were filming some kind of propaganda film,” Diana Budisavljevic wrote in her diary. “The boys were dressed in Ustasha uniforms made of very poor fabric. In these clothes we took away those who had nothing else to wear. They were taken to a small fenced park and prepared for food distribution. They also brought children from the meadow, who had not eaten for three days. They sat for a long time under the scorching sun, they were simply removed, they were not given food.”
Boy prisoners dressed in Ustashe uniform
“I was traveling in a carriage with 62 children. They lay on a wooden floor, without straw, in a cattle car, without food or water. Moans and crying were heard all night. The train was slow and stopped frequently. The road to Zagreb seemed endless. Those who had the strength asked for food. All I could do was console them that we would take care of them in Zagreb, and that their mothers would definitely come for them... While we were driving, I could not move, so as not to step on someone. The older children sat on the potties, the little ones got dirty all the time. The entire floor was covered in dirt and worms. I tried to move them somehow. People at the stations, seeing this nightmare, brought us water. I managed to find a rake so I could clean up the carriage a little.”
Children are prisoners of Jasenovac, whom Diana Budisavljević did not have time to save
The screening of a film about the heroism of Diana Budisavljević on the main Croatian television channel became possible only after the Social Democrat, positioning himself as the historical successor of the Croatian partisans and anti-fascists, Zoran Milanović, won the presidential elections. What is more in his position - sincere convictions or politics to please Western curators, when in Croatia, a member of NATO and the EU, events are taking place marked by a revanchist and xenophobic odor, it is difficult to say.
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