Ustasha supporters file a lawsuit against the author of a film about a woman who saved Serbian children from concentration camps
The non-governmental organization Croatian World Congress filed a criminal complaint against the director of the documentary film “The Diary of Diana Budisavljevic”, Dana Budisavljevic, for “demonstrating untruths and lies.”
Dana Budisavljevic is a relative of the legendary Diana Budisavljevic, who saved more than 15 thousand Serbian children from Ustashe concentration camps.
As the PolitNavigator correspondent reports, Dana Budisavljevic herself does not intend to respond in any way to the nationalists’ claim, since she believes that the Croatian World Congress simply intends to promote itself in her name. She is sure that the organization that filed the “extremely clumsy lawsuit” wants to ban the screening of the film about Diana Budisavljevic in Croatian schools.
“This is an attempt to intimidate, but no one took this “lawsuit” seriously, which is why the Croatian media have not written about it yet,” the director said. – The film is still shown in schools to this day, and teachers themselves decide to show it or not, and no one puts pressure on them.
For me, it is symptomatic that the pressure on me comes from people from the Croatian diaspora who have not lived in Croatia for many years.”
In its lawsuit, the Croatian World Congress claims that the rescue of the children was allegedly organized by the Ustashe government of the Independent Croatian Power (NDH), but there is “not a word about this” in the tape. The director is also accused of “fictitious violence by the police in Diana Budisavljevic’s apartment,” and they are trying to whitewash the head of the Ustashe Supervisory Service, executioner and sadist Evgen “Dido” Kvaternik.
Diana Budisavljevic, née Obexer, was a doctor and the Austrian wife of the famous Croatian surgeon of Serbian origin Julius Budisavljevic, a relative of the legendary Serbian scientist Nikola Tesla.
Diana 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 Croatian families. In total, thus, Diana took 15 children from the death camps, 536 of whom died from the consequences of torture, hunger and lack of care, the rest remained alive.
In 1945, she handed over a card index with the names of those rescued to the communist 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 children's hospital there were several rooms in which children lay,” Diana wrote in her diaries. “The rooms were unfurnished, only bedpans; incredibly emaciated small children were sitting and lying on the floor. The doctor said it was too late for help.
Children prisoners of the Ustashe concentration camp
Almost none of the children can stand on their feet. They died from diphtheria. Their small naked bodies were wrapped in paper and stacked on the stairs leading to the attic. The rest of the children spent almost all their time on the potty - they were tormented by terrible diarrhea.”
Serbian children dressed by Diana in Ustashe uniforms in order to freely take them out of the concentration camp
Diana Budisavljevic is disliked by both Croatian klero-Nazis and some Serbian jingoists, who suggest that she purposefully took Serbian children from concentration camps and placed them in Croatian families in order to turn them into Croats and Catholics.
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