Commend yourselves to our beloved Lord with whose help we will
gain the final victory together with our dear friends and
allies. Therefore, with faith in God and with devotion to our beloved
leader, we must always be ready to die for the Chief and for the
Fatherland.
(
Novi List, November 10, 1942)
7. Nazi Doctrine in the Catholic Press
The most important means for propagating Ustashi ideas in Croatia was
the Catholic press which, playing upon the deep religious nature of
the people, represented Pavelic and the Ustashi as having been sent by
God to the Croatian people. This press was especially skillful in
sowing the seeds of religious hatred toward the Serbs, racial hatred
toward the Jews and hatred for Yugoslavia. Immediately after
proclamation of the Independent State of Croatia the Catholic press
placed itself without reservation at the disposal of the Ustashi and
the occupiers.
“CHRIST AND USTASHI MARCH TOGETHER …”
Glasnik Biskupije Bosanske i Sremske (The Voice of the Bosnian and
Srem Bishoprics), No. 13, of July 15, 1941, wrote as follows of the
establishment of the puppet state:
Holy is this year of the resurrection of the Independent State
of Croatia. The gallant image of our chieftain appeared in the
rainbow. It can and it must be said of him that he is a man of
Providence. He is the symbol of the 13-century-old religion, the
faith, courage, gallantry, prudence, nobility, honesty and character
of the Croatian people.
Glasnik Sv. Ante (The Voice of Saint Anthony) in the issue of December
12, 1941, said that the creation of the independent State of Croatia
was God's work:
The Croatians who are mostly a Catholic people consider such a
great historical event as some fortunate accident, or as a stroke of
luck. No, this is the work of God and providence.
Vjesnik Pocasne Straze Srca Isusova (The Courier of the Honorable
Guards of Christ's Heart) wrote in a similar vein in issues Nos. 5
and 6 of 1941. An article entitled “The Banner of
Croatia—the Heart of Christ” said:
In the early spring the Croatian people experienced their
resurrection at the time of Christ's resurrection. The great son
of the Croatian people returned and gave their liberty and ancient
rights. And this is also the work of God, the Lord did it all and that
is why it is strange to our eyes.
The voice of the Crusader movement, Nedelja compared the Ustashi with
Christ. In its issue of June 6, 1941, an article entitled
“Christ and Croatia” reads:
Christ and the Ustashi and Christ and the Croatians march
together through history. From the first day of its existence the
Ustashi movement has been fighting for the victory of Christ's
principles, for the victory of justice, freedom and truth. Our Holy
Savior will help us in the future as he has done until now, that is
why the new Ustashi Croatia will be Christ's, ours and no one
else's.
CATHOLIC PRESS IN CRUSADE FOR FASCISM
The Catholic press served as an effective instrument in paving the way
for fascism. The Catholic Church and its lay organizations were owners
and publishers of about 50 newspapers and periodicals. The entire
Catholic press was controlled and directed from the headquarters of
“Catholic Action.”
The leading Catholic papers, especially Hrvatska Straza (Croatian
Guard) in Zagreb, Katolicki Tjednik in Sarajevo, organ of
“Catholic Action,” Katolicki List in Zagreb and Katolicka
Rijec (Catholic Expression) in Split wrote in the spirit of
fascism. This most influential part of the Catholic press greeted with
joy and sympathy the successes of fascism in all European countries
and systematically poisoned public opinion with some sort of
national-socialist ideology, while concealing all the horrors of
fascism and Nazism. It deceived the people by portraying for them the
“beauties” and “successes” of fascist
regimes. This Catholic press was engaged, before the war, in preparing
the ground for establishment of a fascist regime in Yugoslavia. It
attacked all citizens who opposed the fascist assaults. Every person,
whether liberal or conservative, who did not side with the
clerical-fascist view was labeled “communist.”
The Catholic press reached people in all walks of life especially in
the villages and small towns, and had a wide circle of readers. Its
influence was great. An interesting example of how the Catholic press
felt about itself is contained in an article in the Hrvatska
Straza. Reviewing the first 10 years of its existence on July 2,
1939—two years before the war in Yugoslavia—this newspaper
said:
In place of aimless wanderings, ideological disputes and party
factionalism, the Croatian people need an era of building up a firm
and definite national, cultural and social ideology.
Today, 10 years after the first appearance of this Catholic
daily, thousands of its pages and millions of lines show not only the
enormous exertions of our staff, but also our clear line from which we
never deviated. Since our beginning we were radical Croatians and
always radical Catholics … that has been our slogan, which we
have never betrayed.
This newspaper concentrates its attention on the currents of
ideas and defends and promotes a clear and definite stand. Such
newspapers have a special significance when they conduct a
campaign. At first what they write does not attract unusual attention,
but persistent repetition of the chosen thesis and its illustration by
examples and quotations and always with new evidence are
fruitful….
We started many struggles. An example of the success of our
campaign is our struggle against the Popular Fronts….
Our unyielding and objective reporting about Spain is also well
known, so much so that Spain itself admitted that we possessed better
and more effective material than the editorial boards of the
well-known Spanish papers. . . .
In all our struggles we became known as a dangerous
opponent….
How this crusading for fascism met with the approval of Archbishop
Stepinac was shown in the 1942 New Year's issue of this newspaper
in an article entitled: “Our Highest Shepherd on Hrvatska Straza
on New Year's Day.” This declaration by Archbishop Stepinac
read:
Hrvatska Straza has always defended the religious ideals of the
Croatian people without which the nation itself means nothing. Let it
continue on that road in the Independent State of Croatia. It can
render no greater service to its people than by spreading and
defending the principles, which God has placed as the foundation of
the lives of individuals and peoples. May the blessings of God
accompany it in that work.
The Catholic press in Yugoslavia played an important role in the
pre-war propagation of Nazi-fascist ideas under the cloak of religious
principles. It praised Nazism and Hitler's “New Order”
while at the same time it persistently attacked the Western powers,
the United States, Great Britain and France, terming them countries of
“decayed” democracy and Jewish plutocracy.
The Katolicki Tjednik, organ of “Catholic Action”
published under the direction of the Archbishop of Sarajevo, Dr. Ivan
Saric, printed an article entitled “A New Order Must
Come.” It appeared in No. 4, 1941—before the war—and
repeated the Nazi leitmotiv that the Axis powers were fighting for a
new social order and just distribution of wealth as well as for space
in the world. The article branded English hegemony and “Jewish
capitalist plutocracy”. The main Catholic daily, Hrvatska Straza
whose editor, Dr. Janko Shimrak, became a bishop under Pavelic, openly
and consistently praised Hitler's successes in domestic and
foreign policy. In the issue of March 12, 1938, Hitler's
occupation of Austria was defended and praised. Later this paper
hailed Hitler's successes in Czechoslovakia, Poland and France.
Priest Dragutin Kamber, mentioned previously, published an article in
the Sarajevo newspaper Osvit of December 18, 1942, under the title:
“Why Do I Want the Germans and Their Allies to Win?” This
developed the thesis that, “1. Without the Germans, that is, the
Axis, our nation would die and we would not have an Independent State
of Croatia; 2. From the international point of view, Germany and the
Croatians have the same enemies.”
The Ustashi supported the “theory” that the Croatians were
not of Slav descent at all, but were Gothic-German, with the aim of
more successfully inciting Croat hatred against the Yugoslav state,
the Serbs and other Slavs. One of the founders of this race theory was
the well-known priest Kerubin Segvic. In 1931, he wrote a book
entitled “The Gothic Descendance of the Croats.” The book
was published in the German language in Germany long before the war,
and later was translated into Italian. It played an important part in
disseminating fascist ideas among the Croatian people because it
purported to show racial and blood ties between the Croatians and the
Germans, paving the way for union of the Croatian people with Nazi
Germany.
The Catholic Crusader paper Nedelja, in its issue of June 15, 1941,
printed on the front page an article directed against the defeated
Yugoslav Army. Contrasting the Yugoslav soldier and the Nazi
conquerors, the article stated:
Later we learned to know a different kind of soldier—the
German soldier. In him we saw something diametrically opposed to that
soldiery which collapsed, as if struck by lightning, exactly at the
time it was supposed to justify its ‘reputation.’ While
every Yugoslav soldier looked like a beggar, the German soldier showed
us that even a soldier can be a gentleman … They always behaved
in a fine and noble manner like their leaders.
PROPAGANDA FOR CLERICAL-FASCISM
Much space in the Catholic press was devoted to praising the so-called
“Corporate State,” the authoritarian system of various
countries, in which the Roman clergy played a dominant role. Frequent
reports and articles about the achievements of the clerical
dictatorship under Msgr. Josip Tiso in the “Independent State of
Slovakia,” and about the influence of the Catholic Church in
Hungary, in Vichy France and Franco Spain were printed in the Catholic
papers. Tiso's Slovak national socialism, under which all
political power was concentrated in the hands of Catholic priests, was
praised as the ideal corporate state. The Catholic daily Hrvatska
Straza of July 1, 1940, stated that in the Independent State of
Slovakia (which the Germans had created with the help of clerical
quislings) the people became sovereign citizens after they were freed
from their political oppressors. The same paper in its issue of August
6, 1940, praised the Slovak Minister of Internal Affairs, Alexander
Mach, who was a sort of Himmler in that country, as “a man of
action” and added: “We need such men today, only they can
create a new world and a new order.” Hrvatska Straza of March 2,
1938, in an article “Young Croatia for Anschluss” greeted
the Anschluss of Austria: “Hitler, the leader of the German
people, proclaimed it his life work to build on the ruins of old
Germany and Jewish-democratic social order a new, happy and satisfied
great Germany.”
The Zagreb Katolicki List, the organ of Archbishop Stepinac, in
January, 1940, carried an article entitled “Catholicism and
Slovakian National Socialism” which read in part:
In a modern state, which placed the interests of the people
above all other considerations, the church and the state must
cooperate in order to avoid all conflicts and misunderstandings. Thus,
in accordance with the teachings of Christ, the Church in Slovakia had
already exerted itself to arrange a new life for the Slovakian people.
The views of Dr. Tuka are fulfilled by the formation of a
people's Slovakia,’ which has the approval of the President
of the Republic, Msgr. Dr. Josip Tiso. In the National-Socialist
system in Slovakia, the Church will not be persecuted. Persecutions
will be used against the opponents of National-Socialism.
Similar articles were published in other Catholic papers to convince
the Croatian people that the clerical corporate state was on the march
everywhere. In the Catholic daily, Hrvatska Straza, fascist Hungary
was praised as early as April 3, 1938, for “solving the social
problems by accepting the main principles of the Christian corporate
state.” There can be little doubt that this idea of the
so-called corporate state was in the minds of the Ustashi in their
plot against pre-war Yugoslavia. The pattern would be to help Nazi
Germany overcome and dominate the Balkans and in return be allowed to
set up their own Independent State of Croatia.
8. Exterminate the Jews
Following the example of the Nazis, the Ustashi and their clerical
backers repeated all the slogans and lies of the ill-famed Streicher
brand in their anti-Semitic campaign.
While the civilized world was expressing horror at the manner in which
the Jewish question was being solved by the Axis through mass murder,
the Catholic press in Yugoslavia prepared the people to accept similar
measures. The Catholic daily Hrvatska Straza of August 24, 1940,
published an article under the title “The Jewish Question in the
Near Future.” The article approved the anti-Jewish measures in
the Axis countries and put special emphasis on the proposal that Jews
from all parts of the world be sent to the island of Madagascar. The
article concluded with the statement that the Jewish question existed
in many other countries and that final solutions should be put into
effect everywhere.
The Catholic University Society Domagoj published various pamphlets
propagating fascist-Ustashi ideas. Before the war, the Domagoj
distributed a brochure entitled: “Why Jews are Persecuted in
Germany,” which voiced approval of Hitler's terror against
the Jews. The following is from that brochure:
There are measures which the Germans can and must undertake for
their own protection…. Let us remember that people with weak or
incorrect Christian concepts opened the doors to domination by Jews in
Germany. What was spoiled by some is now being put aright by
others.
The Catholic Crusader paper Nedelja voiced approval of the Nazi racist
theories and wrote in an article about “Jewish Atavism”:
Up to the birth of Christ, Jewish atavism proved its sinful
inclinations toward knavery, its lack of gratitude to God, its
ruthless selfishness, its disobedience toward the heads of the state,
its anarchism, its love of profit-making through the accumulation of
worldly goods by means of corruption, bloodthirstiness, despotism,
lasciviousness and homosexuality, incorrigible stubbornness and
haughtiness … Having realized all this, we dare to conclude that
the Jews have always been destructive regardless of whether they
governed themselves or were governed by others. The Jews will never
change, because according to the laws of psychology their national
soul cannot change for the better as long as the human race continues
to exist.
This religious and race hatred spread through the entire Catholic
press. Glas Sv. Ante (Voice of St. Anthony), nos. 7 and 8, 1942, for
instance, wrote of the Jews:
The ‘Talmud’ is a work which the Jews created
through the centuries. That type of work, however, must also come to
an end. The struggling peoples' movements have uncovered the work
of the Jews among the nations and have warned of its dangers, which
threatened to ruin the best and most positive forces in all
nations. The Croatian people have also had an accounting with such
Jewish activity and have shown, under the leadership of the Ustashi
movement, how deceitful and ruinous is the activity carried on by the
Jews among the Croatian people.
While the slaughter of the Jews was at its height in the puppet state,
Katolicki Tjednik of May 25, 1941, carried an article entitled
“Why are the Jews Being Persecuted?” This article, written
by the editor of this Catholic Action publication, Priest Franjo
Kralik, said in part:
In order to maintain a correct point of view in evaluating the
Jewish movement in the world, it is necessary to keep in mind a number
of important facts. It is an undeniable truth that the Jews, a small
people, scattered throughout the world and pursued by God's curse,
are an object of ridicule and scorn on the part of all other
peoples. They succeeded through their commercial talents in forcing
themselves upon governments and rulers either as financiers or as
secret manipulators and occasionally as open, bloody dictators….
The descendants of those who hated Jesus, who condemned him to
death, who crucified him and immediately persecuted his pupils, are
guilty of greater excesses than those of their forefathers. Greed is
growing. The Jews, who pushed Europe and the entire world into a
disaster—a world disaster, moral, cultural and
economic—developed an appetite which nothing less than the world
as a whole could satisfy … As soon as a revolution is engineered
by them, they slaughter mercilessly the intelligentsia. The Satan
helped them to invent Socialism and Communism. And they invented them
and directed this liberal world movement of the workers—they,
the most cruel and soulless of men, the most awful capitalists, the
Jews….
And did the Socialists and Communists not begin to defend them
and praise these Jews who are the greatest criminals in the world?
… Love has its limits … We must not permit the grain of
the secretly organized world Jewry to teach us the meaning of justice
in order to enable them criminally to plunder while all others are
slaves. The movement for freeing the world from the Jews is a movement
for the renaissance of human dignity. The Almighty and All-wise God is
behind this movement.
The “renaissance of human dignity” in the Independent
State of Croatia reached its peak with the deliberate mass slaughter
of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
9. The Nightmare of Horrors …
It has been shown that in the very first days of the Ustashi uprising
a Catholic priest boasted in “there will be purges.”
More or less “spontaneous” killings of Serbs and Jews
occurred during the days when with the help of German and Italian
troops, the Ustashi destroyed the legal authorities and created the
“independent” puppet state.
As soon as the Ustashi were firmly in control they began to prepare
murder on the largest scale, carrying out a carefully prepared plan of
physical extermination of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies. Horror and
frightful slaughter struck down hundreds of thousands of innocent
people. Neither the aged nor the young were spared. The brutality of
these acts is difficult for those who did not witness them to
comprehend. Those who by chance escaped death were compelled by
measures of extreme oppression to accept the Catholic faith.
It should not go unnoticed that this campaign of slaughter fitted in
very well with the plans of the Nazis. Hitler had just launched his
attack against the Soviet Union, on July 22, 1941, and Ustashi
terrorism that would, it was hoped, keep the people of Croatia
subdued, would obviate the necessity of maintaining large German
garrisons there.
“CATHOLIC RADICALISM”
What happened in the late summer of 1941 and thereafter in Yugoslavia
was the final triumph of the “Catholic radicalism” of
which the newspaper Hrvatska Straza had spoken so proudly and which
Archbishop Stepinac had praised. The real nature of “Catholic
Radicalism” became manifest in outbursts of fanatical hatred
towards the Orthodox religion, the Serb people and the Yugoslav
state. Raised in a spirit of “Catholic Radicalism,” many
Catholic priests actively participated in the Ustashi mass
murders. Never was one of those priest-criminals called to task by
Archbishop Stepinac or by any other Church authority. Many priests
were the chief organizers of the massacres in their districts, and
many personally dipped their hands in the blood of the Serbs and the
Jews. They killed with even greater hatred the Croat-Catholics when
the latter sided with the partisans.
The Italian fascist journalist Corrado Zolle wrote in the newspaper Il
Resto del Carlino, September 18, 1941, an article entitled Gli
Ucellini di Gracac (The Birds of Gracac) on the occasion of a massacre
of Serbs by the priest Morber in the village of Stikada near
Gracac. Contrasting the Catholic priests in Croatia with the great
Saint, Francis of Assisi, Zolle wrote:
The first Franciscan from Assisi fraternized with the birds,
but these his students and spiritual successors in the Independent
State of Croatia are filled with hatred and kill innocent people,
their brothers by the heavenly father, brothers by language, brothers
by blood and brothers because they came from the same mother country,
suckled from the same breasts; they kill, they murder, they bury
people alive in ditches, throw the dead headlong into the river, into
the sea or into the many ravines. There are bands of murderers who
were led and who are still led by Catholic priests and monks.
Throughout the world the deeds of these Catholic priests were
known. Archbishop Stepinac of Zagreb also knew; it was under his
jurisdiction that they took place; but never once did he voice a
protest against these horrors. Nor were the priest criminals called to
answer for their crimes throughout the life of the Independent State
of Croatia.
Not even when he received the protest sent him by Dr. Prvislav
Grisogno, a Catholic Croat and former Minister in the Royal Yugoslav
cabinet, did Archbishop Stepinac speak up. This letter, dated
Belgrade, February 8, 1942, is quoted on pages 57 and 58 of Ally
Betrayed, by David Martin, (Prentice Hall, New York, 1946, foreword by
Rebecca West) where it reads in part:
In all these unprecedented crimes, worse than pagan, our
Catholic Church has also participated in two ways. First, a large
number of priests, clerics, friars and organized Catholic youth
actively participated in all these crimes; but more terrible, even,
Catholic priests became camp commanders and, as such, ordered or
tolerated the horrible tortures, murders and massacres of a baptized
people. One Catholic priest slit the throat of an Orthodox Serbian
priest. None of this could have been done without the permission of
their Bishops, and, since it was done, they should have been brought
to the ecclesiastical court and unfrocked. Since this did not happen,
then obviously the Bishops gave their consent, by acquiescence at
least.
Friars and nuns carried Ustashi knives in one hand and a cross
and a prayer-book in the other. The province of Srem is covered with
the leaflets of Bishop Aksamovic, which were printed in his own print
shop at Djakovo. He calls upon the Serbs, through these leaflets, to
save their lives and property, recommending the Catholic faith to
them.. .. In our country not one Bishop has decried the fate of the
innocent Christian Serbs who have suffered more than the Jews in
Germany…. “I write you this … to save my soul and I
leave it to you to find a way to save your soul.
“WITH A MALLET ON THE FOREHEAD …”
Archbishop Stepinac could even read the incitements to murder in his
own Catholic newspapers. The Crusader weekly Nedelja on August 10,
1941, published an article which stated “the talk about
so-called religious tolerance is now stopped.” This article
appeared at a moment when the slaughter of the Serbian people was at
its height. A little later, in its issue of August 24, 1941, Nedelja
printed an article justifying the mass murders being committed in many
parts of Croatia. Declaring the time had come for a final accounting
with the Serbs, the paper said: “They have been hit with a
mallet on the forehead; evil must be punished!” The
“evil” was Yugoslavia, where the Serbs and Croats could
live together. How some spokesmen for the Roman hierarchy felt about
the mass murder of Serbs was indicated in the official newspaper of
the Sarajevo Archbishopric, Katolicki Tjednik, on July 21, 1942, when
it carried an article recounting the highlights in Ante Pavelic's
life and recalling the great moment when Pavelic shouted in the
parliament: “I shall be most happy when it becomes possible for
me and the entire Croatian people to tell you Serbians
‘good-night’…” The same article declared that
all instructions of the chieftain must be carried out in order to
clean up the “barbarian East,” and concluded :
Through various protective laws the Ustashi state is
exterminating foreign influences and domestic evils. Death penalty is
provided for those who are morally destroying the offspring of the
Croatian people.
The paper Nova Hrvatska of June 28, 1941, lauded priest Marko Calusic,
who led 180 armed Ustashi, as a man who was “always ready to
shoulder a gun.”
FROM THE RECORD …
Some Roman Catholic priests, especially Franciscans, who had become
sworn members of the Ustashi, had taken an oath to fight with dagger
and gun for the “triumph of Christ and Croatia.” How some
of these priests conducted themselves after Pavelic, in July, 1941,
gave the signal that inaugurated the mass killings, may be illustrated
by a few cases from the files of the Yugoslav State Commission for the
Investigation of War Crimes. Out of hundreds of cases, mention is made
here of only a few which are typical: Priest Bozo Simlesa in the
village of Listani was one of the most active members of the
Ustashi. He was entrusted with the post of chief in the District of
Livno. During the slaughter of the Serbs in the county of Listani he
told the people from the pulpit that the time had arrived to
exterminate all Serbs living in Croatia. He personally organized the
Ustashi militia and obtained arms for it. On July 27, 1941, he held a
meeting in the village and when he was informed that all Serbian men
had been murdered and that women and children were to be killed that
night, he told them not to wait for the night, for 24 hours had
already passed since the chief had issued his order that not a single
Serb must be left alive in Croatia.
The first Ustashi confidante in the District of Udbina was the
Franciscan priest Mate Mogus, who had organized the Ustashi militia
and disarmed the Yugoslav troops. At a meeting in Udbina on June 13,
1941, he said:
Look, people, at these 16 brave Ustashi, who have 16,000
bullets and who will kill 16,000 Serbs, after which we will divide
among us in a brotherly manner the Mutilic and Krbava fields.”
This speech was the signal for the beginning of the slaughter of the
Serbian people in the District of Udbina.
In the village of Tramosnica, priest Ante Klaric became the first
Ustashi commissar, and personally led Ustashi units in attacks on
Serbian villages. He organized the Ustashi militia and, according to
witnesses, spoke from the pulpit as follows :
You are old women and you should put on skirts, you have not
yet killed a single Serb. We have no weapons and no knives and we
should forge them out of old scythes and sickles, so that you can cut
the throats of Serbs whenever you see them.
One practice of Klaric and the Ustashi in Serbian villages was to line
up the Serbs in two rows, face to face, and then order them to slap
one another's faces and insult and curse one another. In one
instance he kept the victims locked in a school house for several days
without food or water. Then before his eyes, the Ustashi beat them
with gun butts and whips, and, by prior agreement, beat them all the
harder the more Klaric asked them not to. Relics plundered from
Serbian churches later were found in his home in most unbecoming
places.
Jesuit priest Dr. Dragutin Kamber, a sworn Ustashi before the collapse
of Yugoslavia, was appointed Ustashi confidante for the District of
Doboj. He ordered the killing of about 300 persons in Doboj, and had
about 250 more court martialed, of whom most were shot.
Priest Ivan Raguz was in close contact with prominent Ustashi in
Stolac. Two days before the slaughter he declared there would be
“scrambled eggs” and that he would take care of all
Serbs. He boasted openly in the cafes that all questions were being
solved by him jointly with the Ustashi, and urged the killings of all
Serbs, including children, so that “even the seed of these
beasts is not left.”
Slaughter of the Serbs in Bosanska Gradiska was organized by priest
Dr. Branimir Zupanic. As an Ustashi before the fall of Yugoslavia and
a personal friend of Ante Pavelic, his words were decisive at the
meeting at which the decision was reached to kill the Serbs. By his
command in the village of Ragolje alone, more than 400 men, women and
children had their throats cut.
Fra Franjo Udovic, priest in the village of Koricane, organized and
commanded the militia, which he personally led when it burned the
property of the Serbian people in the villages of Koricane and
Imljane. He personally divided cattle plundered from the victims among
his Ustashi.
Chief organizer of massacres of the Serbs in Bosnia was curate Bozidar
Brale from Sarajevo. He took part in the killings with gun in hand and
advocated “liquidation of the Serbs without compromise.”
Archbishop Saric later named the same Brale to the presidency of the
Spiritual Board of the Archbishopric of Sarajevo.
Priest Srecko Peric of the Gorica monastery near Livno declared in one
of his sermons in the church in Gorica:
Kill and massacre all Serbs. First of all, kill my sister, who
is married to a Serb and then all Serbs. When you finish this work,
come to me here in the church and I will confess you and free you from
sin.”
The massacre then began, and by August 10, 1941, 5,600 Serbs had been
killed in the District of Livno alone.
Franciscan Miroslav Filipovic was a member of the illegal Ustashi
organization before the war. After establishment of the Independent
State of Croatia he participated in massacres in the villages of
Drakulic, near Banjaluka. According to his own admission at a hearing
his first victim was a child, whom he killed personally while telling
the Ustashi:
Ustashi, I re-christen these degenerates in the name of God and
you follow my example.
That was in the village of Drakulic, where 1,500 Serbs were killed in
one day. Ustashi authorities later made this Franciscan commandant of
Jasenovac, an Ustashi concentration camp which equaled Dachau in
horror. When captured, Filipovic admitted he had ordered the murder of
40,000 men, women and children in the camp. Besides Filipovic, the
Catholic priests Zvonko Brekalo, Zvonko Lipovac, Franciscan Culina and
others also worked at the Jasenovac camp.
In Dvor na Uni priest Anton Djuric kept a diary of his activities as
an Ustashi functionary. The diary shows that at his order the Ustashi
plundered and burned the village of Segestin, where 150 Serbs were
murdered, and that in the village Goricka he arrested 117 people, who
were sent to a concentration camp, where most of them were killed.
A group of Franciscan priests who tortured and finally killed 25 Serbs
in the village of Kasle took pictures of the “execution.”
In Hercegovina the center of the Ustashi movement was located in the
Franciscan monastery and the high school of Siroki Brijeg. The
Catholic Dean in Stolac in Hercegovina, priest Marko Zovko, was
responsible for the murder of 200 persons, whose bodies were thrown
into a ditch in a field in Vidovo. Curate Ilija Tomas from the village
of Klepac was responsible for the death of many Serbs in that
district. In order more easily to capture frightened victims who were
fleeing to the mountains, he promised them that no harm would befall
them if they would embrace the Catholic religion.
Many of them believed this and called on him, whereupon he turned them
over to the Ustashi, who murdered them.
In the village of Stikade, in Lika, the Ustashi were under the
leadership of the Catholic priest Morber. Morber invited the Serbs to
be converted to the Catholic religion. Those of them who accepted in
good faith his proposal to be converted the Ustashi surrounded and
massacred with rifles and hammers and threw the bodies into a
ditch. When the bodies were dug up later it was established that many
had been alive when buried.
Franciscans from the monastery in Sinj, Ivan Hrstic, Stanko Litre and
Joso Olujic, personally maltreated captured Partisan Serbs and
Partisan Croats. Hrstic was a major and Litre a captain in the Ustashi
army.
Franciscan Mijo Cujic of Duvno personally gave instructions regarding
the massacre of Serbs in the villages of Prisoje and Vrila, where not
one person was allowed to remain alive.
This Ustashi program of mass murder as a way of helping Hitler and
Mussolini resulted in the death of over 800,000 persons—Serbs,
Croat anti-fascists, Jews.
10. Forcible Conversion
One of the most cynical chapters in the activities of one section of
the Catholic Church in Croatia was conversion of the Serbs.
The compulsory change from the Orthodox faith to the Roman Church was
part of the Ustashi program of “ridding Croatian territory of
foreign elements.” The policy of forcible conversion was
officially adopted by the Catholic hierarchy in Croatia. On November
17, 1941, Archbishop Stepinac convened a Bishops' conference in
Zagreb, at which the program of forcible conversion of Serbs was given
canonic sanction. At this conference, the so-called Committee of Three
was chosen, whose task was to solve the question of conversions in
conjunction with the Ustashi Ministry of Justice and Religion. The
Committee consisted of Archbishop Stepinac, the Bishop of Senj, Viktor
Buric, and the Apostolic Administrator, Dr. Janko Simrak. The
conference also issued a resolution, numbered 253, in which directions
were given relating to the way conversions were to be carried out.
On the basis of these directives, many Catholic priests engaged
actively in the work of conversion. According to Stepinac's report
to the Pope of May 18, 1944, 240,000 Serbs were converted. The man who
became Archbishop Stepinac's right hand in pressing a large part
of the Orthodox Serbs into the Roman Church was Bishop Janko
Simrak. Before his elevation into the hierarchy, Dr. Janko Simrak was
editor-in-chief of the Catholic daily Hrvatska Straza.This newspaper
all through its existence was most outspoken for fascism, and its
chief, Dr. Simrak, played a most important role in the Ustashi
movement.
In October, 1941, Dr. Simrak was appointed Apostolic Administrator of
the Greek-Catholic Bishopric of Krizevci. His task was to force as
many Serbs as possible into the Roman Church. In June, 1942, he was
appointed Bishop of Krizevci, and in December of that year he was
consecrated in the presence of Archbishop Stepinac and other members
of the hierarchy. A short time after the Bishops' conference at
Zagreb had decided to force the conversion of Orthodox Serbs, the
Apostolic Administrator, Dr. Simrak, issued a directive which was
published in the official “Bishopric News” of Krizevci,
No. 2, 1942. The text reads in part as follows:
Directive regarding the conversion of members of the Eastern Orthodox
Church in Slavonia, Srijem and Bosnia.
Special offices and church committees must be created immediately for
those to be converted. These committees will help the curates with
their work, not only in organizing the conversions, but in creating
parishes of those convertees. Let every curate remember that these are
historic days for our missions, and we must under no circumstances let
this opportunity pass by but must work with all our strength to attain
our goals. Now we must show with our work what we have been talking
about for centuries in theory. We have done very little until now as
far as conversion is concerned, simply because we were undetermined
and afraid of small obstacles and complaints from people. Every great
work has someone opposing it, but we must not allow our spirits to be
lowered. Our universal mission, the salvation of souls and the
greatest glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, is involved in this
issue. Our work is legal because it is in accord with official Vatican
policy, with the directives of the saintly congregation of the
Cardinals for the Eastern church … and with the circular of the
government of the Independent State of Croatia of July 30, 1941, which
desires that members of the Eastern Orthodox Church be converted to
the Catholic faith.
One of the biggest mass conversions of Serbs took place in the
bishopric of Djakovo under the leadership of Bishop Aksamovic. There
were some priests who thought that forcible conversion was not in the
spirit of Christian teaching, but pressure from their bishops obliged
them to fall into line. Bishop Aksamovic's chaplain, Dr. Djuka
Maric, at a hearing before Yugoslav authorities said:
I and my friend and colleague Stjepan Bogutovac were forced by
our bishop, Aksamovic, to go as missionaries to the Orthodox towns of
Paucje and Cenkovo and to perform there the rituals of rechristening
all the inhabitants within a week's time.
In 1941, the printer for the official Diocesan journal of Djakovo
issued a leaflet which was widely distributed among the Serbs. It
read:
A FRIENDLY SUGGESTION
The Lord Jesus Christ said that there shall be one pasture and one
shepherd. This unity must be carried out in the Independent State of
Croatia. Inhabitants of the Greek-Eastern faith, hear this friendly
advice! The Bishop of Djakovo has already received thousands of
citizens in the Holy Catholic Church, and these citizens received
certificates of honesty from the state authorities. Follow these
brothers of yours, and report as soon as possible for rechristening
into the Catholic Church. As Catholics, you will be allowed to remain
in your homes. You may increase your property in peace and rear your
children for God and for the Independent State of Croatia. In the
Catholic Church you will insure the saving of your immortal souls.
As soon as the mass conversions of Serbs began many priests and
Ustashi went to Serbian towns and began forcibly carrying out the
program. Serbian Orthodox Churches were turned into Catholic ones. A
hint of how these mass conversions were carried out was given on
February 25, 1942, in Nova Hrvatska, an Ustashi newspaper:
The rechristening was carried out in a very solemn manner by
the curate of Petrinja, the most honorable Mihael Razum. An Ustashi
company was present at this solemn occasion.
Katolicki List, organ of the Bishopric of Zagreb, whose columns were
controlled by Archbishop Stepinac, wrote in its issue No. 38 in 1941:
The entire village of Budinci was rechristened to the Catholic
faith. A parish of over 2,300 souls was created in the village. The
preparation for the rechristening was made by the Franciscan from
Nasice, Father Sidonije Scholz, and other priests such as the chief
curate from Osijek. At a banquet in the public hall many significant
speeches were made and the Chieftain and Croatia were
acclaimed.
Ustashi authorities organized a special government division for
religion to expedite the work of rechristening the Serbs. The Ustashi
priest Dionizija Juric, a Franciscan and close friend of Pavelic, was
appointed to head this division, which devised a plan for the
systematic conversion of those Serbs who had been spared from
persecution and massacre. Then a veritable race began among some
Catholic bishops and priests to see who could convert the most Serbs
to the Catholic faith and take the most property from Serb parishes.
A few cases out of hundreds from the files of the Commission for
Investigating War Crimes may be cited. One of the most fanatical
missionaries for conversion was priest Ante Djuric in the District of
Dvor. He ordered the slaughter, plunder and burning of many villages
and sent hundreds of Serbs to the concentration camp in Kostajnica. He
personally mutilated and killed Serbs from Bosanska Kostajnica. In his
speeches he always emphasized that the Serbs in the District of Dvor
“have only three ways out: to accept the Catholic faith, to move
out or to be cleansed with the metal broom.”
Priest Ambrozije Novak, Guardian of the Capucine Monastery in
Varazdin, went in 1941 to the village of Mostanica, accompanied by
Ustashi and ordered the Serbian people to assemble. He told them,
according to the testimony of many witnesses, “you Serbs are
condemned to death and you can only escape that sentence by accepting
Catholicism!”
Franjo Pipinic, priest in Pozega, carried out mass conversions of
Serbs toward the end of 1941 with the assistance of the Ustashi
Captain Peranovic. He told the Serbian people that acceptance of
Catholicism was the only way in which they could save themselves from
death in concentration camps.
Priest Dr. Peter Berkovic, well known as a fascist, participated in
mass conversions in the vicinity of Osijek. The services rendered by
him are described in the Ustaska Velika Zupa No. 1372, of April 27,
1942, in connection with his transfer to the “Office of
Colonization.” This report reads in part:
… His work covers the period from preparation of the
members of the Eastern Orthodox Church for conversion to Catholicism
until they were actually converted, and thus in the counties of Vocin,
Cacinci and Ceralije he converted more than 6,000
persons. . . .
The curate of Ogulin, Canon Ivan Mikan, wrote leaflets addressed to
the Serbs asserting they would suffer unless they allowed themselves
to be rechristened. He charged 180 dinars for each conversion so that
in one Serb village alone—Jasenak—he collected 80,000
dinars from the Serbs.
Ante Djuric, priest in Divusa, became an Ustashi administrator
immediately after establishment of the Independent State of
Croatia. He took part in compulsory conversions of the Serbian
people. Serbian Orthodox priests, the Very Reverend Mladen Ostojic,
from Zirovac, and the Very Reverend Ilija Vranjesevic, from Ljubina,
gave the following testimony about Djuric's activities:
Before our escape, all (Serbian) government employees and
teachers received an order from priest Djuric to submit their
petitions for conversions to Catholicism or to leave their residence
and posts. After they applied for conversion they were told
confidentially to coerce all other Serbs to accept Catholicism or else
to move wherever they could if they wanted to escape execution.
In this manner, all heads of families were compelled to come to
their local teacher, with a 10 dinar tax stamp, to make out a petition
for conversion to Catholicism for themselves and their
families….
The Serbs in the District of Dvor na Uni shook with fear at the
mention of the name of Priest Djuric, who imprisoned the Serbs in his
stable and barn where he tortured them with hunger and whipping until
they accepted Catholicism.
Josip Orlic, priest in Sunja, an old sworn Ustashi, compelled the
Serbs in his district to accept Catholicism by threatening them with
concentration camps. A great majority of the Serbs there changed to
Catholicism in fear for their lives. But even many of those
rechristened were carried away to the Jasenovac concentration camp in
May, 1942, where practically all of them were killed. In this district
the Ustashi destroyed the Serbian Orthodox churches in Drljace,
Brdjani. Kinjacka, Cetvrkovac, Petrinja and Svinjica. Priest Sidonije
Scholz was one of those missionaries “not afraid of small
obstacles” in the conversion of the Serbs. Peter V. Kovacevic,
teacher from Belenice, gave the following testimony about this priest:
All evils were endured by the Serbs from the Catholic
priests. We accepted the Catholic faith under conditions of most
frightful terror. In our district (Nasice) the thunderer among those
priests was Pater Sidonije Scholz. He ordered our local priest, George
Bogic, to be killed in a most bestial manner. They took him out of his
home at night and butchered him—cut off his nose, his tongue,
his ears and beard; they cut open his belly and wound the intestines
around his neck…
ARCHBISHOP STEPINAC WAS KEPT INFORMED
In all villages where Serbs had been converted or
“rechristened,” the people were compelled by the local
Roman priests to send congratulatory telegrams to Archbishop Stepinac
expressing their profound devotion. Stepinac was informed of every
mass conversion performed in the individual parishes. Many of these
telegrams were printed in full in the Ustashi paper Nova Hrvatska and
in Archbishop Stepinac's own official Diocesan Journal,
“Katolicki List.” As an example, the Ustashi paper
“Nova Hrvatska” in its issue of April 9, 1942, printed
four such telegrams, all addressed to Archbishop Stepinac, in which
mass conversions in villages were reported. One of the four telegrams
runs as follows:
2,300 persons, assembled in Slatinski Drenovac from the
villages of Drenovac, Pusina, Kraskovic, Prekorecan, Miljani and
Gjurisic, accepted today the protection of the Roman Catholic Church
and send their profound greetings to their Head.
11. The Roman Church and the Ustashi Regime
As has been shown, many Catholic priests, both in spoken word and
written article, welcomed the Independent State of Croatia as their
own state and greeted Ante Pavelic as a leader sent by God. It was not
surprising, then, to find numerous members of both the higher and
lower clergy filling official army and administrative posts in the
Pavelic state regime.
Many served in the Sabor or Ustashi state parliament. According to a
stenographic report of the Ustashi Sabor, the following priests were
members: Dr. Aloysius Stepinac, Croat metropolitan and Zagreb
archbishop; Dr. Ante Aksamovic, bishop of Djakovo; Bozidar Bralo,
curate from Sarajevo; Mijo Etinger, curate from Drvar; Ante Irgolic,
curate from Farkasic; Dr. Ante Loncaric, canon from Senj; Stjepan
Paunic, curate from Koprivnica; Matija Polic, canon from Bakar;
Dr. Tomo Severovic, canon from Krizevac; Bonifacio Sipic, curate from
Tucep; Franjo Skrinjar, curate from Zelekovac; Stipe Vucetic, curate
from Ledenica, etc., etc. Others held important positions in the
executive branch of the government. Priest Bozidar Bralo was for a
time Ustashi commissioner for Bosnia and Hercegovina. Others served as
Ustashi district administrators.
As for the Ustashi army, Dr. Aloysius Stepinac himself held the
position of supreme apostolic vicar. The military vicariat of the
armed forces of the quisling Independent State of Croatia was founded
in 1941. Archbishop Stepinac was made supreme apostolic vicar by order
of the Vatican. As deputies he appointed the Ustashi priests Vilim
Cecelja and Stipe Vucetic. In accepting the position as vicar of the
army, Archbishop Stepinac indicated to the rest of the Catholic clergy
in Croatia by his own example how they should help strengthen
Pavelic's regime. Following his lead, 120 Catholic priests
volunteered for service in the Ustashi army as military
chaplains. These chaplains went everywhere with Pavelic's military
units—into battle and plunder and massacre. Some even incited
the Ustashi to further criminal acts. It will be recalled how the
Franciscan Miroslav Filipovic admitted that, on his orders, 40,000
persons were killed in the concentration camp at Jasenovac.
The Catholic press constantly reported youth meetings and celebrations
in Catholic seminaries where Pavelic and the Ustashi regime were
enthusiastically acclaimed. The Glasnik Biskupije Bosanske i Sremske
of April 15, 1942, carried a review of a celebration given by the
Society of Religious Youth in connection with the first anniversary of
the Ustashi state. In the presence of Bishop Aksamovic and many high
clerics a resolution was adopted praising the Pavelic regime and the
“social reconstruction on the basis of the principles of the
Ustashi movement.”
According to Archbishop Stepinac's own paper, Katolicki List, of
April 30, 1942, the students of the Theological Seminary of Zagreb,
accompanied by their professors, paid a solemn tribute to Pavelic and
praised him as the founder of a new Croatia. In his answer Pavelic
stressed the role the Catholic seminaries played in the national
reconstruction:
…I know that the seminaries, especially the seminary of
Zagreb, have at all times kept open the doors through which noble sons
went to take part in our national reconstruction. I am familiar with
all of the bright moments that came to light under the roof of this
seminary. The great patriotic enthusiasm, which today prevails in it,
is known to me, and I am certain that through education the future
generations of the seminary will follow in your footsteps.
In April, 1944, the Minister of Education, Dr. Makanec, and other
members of the Pavelic cabinet, visited the college of the Franciscan
monastery in Visoko where they were greeted by priest Drljic who
declared:
Our hearts and the hearts of all our students and clerics are
full of joy on this day … In the name of the entire faculty as
well as in the names of hundreds of youthful Ustashi hearts, of our
entire student body, we greet you with the call: Ready for the
Chieftain and for the Fatherland!
(Sarajevo
Katolicki Dnevnik, No. 4 and 5, 1944).
In other speeches, the ministers were asked to “tell the
Chieftain that the Franciscan youth is ready to follow the bright
traditions of the past under the wise rule of the poglavnik.”
It was only natural that under such pressure tens of thousands of
youngsters filled the cadres of the Ustashi militia and the Black
Legion.
Early in 1944 Pavelic's War Ministry issued a special prayer book
for soldiers entitled “The Croatian Soldier.” The book was
prepared by priest Vilim Cecelja, Stepinac's deputy in the army
vicariat, and was issued with permission of the Archbishopric
Spiritual Board in Zagreb. The Spiritual Board at that time comprised
the following members: Archbishop Stepinac, and Bishops Dr. Salis
Sevis, Dr. Josip Lah, Ignacije Rodic and Valentin Malek. The prayer
book is full of pleas to God on behalf of Pavelic, the Independent
State of Croatia and the Ustashi. In one of these the priest asks for
blessings of the Ustashi or the Domobranci on the occasion of their
taking an oath of loyalty to Pavelic. This blessing reads:
Almighty and immortal God, father of strength and mercy, who
will not allow anyone who believes in you to fail, turn your mercy,
Father, to those your children, the Croatian Ustashi and Domobranci,
who today take an oath of allegiance to their country and to their
chieftain. Help them, God, in your mercy, to accept with all their
heart and soul the words that they pronounce, so that they will be
ready to give everything for the Croatian fatherland and for the
Chieftain, even their lives. Thus may the blessings of the Father, the
Son and the Holy Ghost be upon you and stay with you
always. Amen.
As supreme vicar of the Ustashi army, Archbishop Stepinac was present
at all of the bigger Ustashi army parades and thus again made clear
his connections with Pavelic and the Ustashi.
The army chaplains took an oath before a cross and two candles in
front of which were a dagger and revolver. The main task of these army
“chaplains” was to take advantage of the religious
feelings of the soldiers, to raise their morale in the battle against
the allied armies and the Yugoslav Partisans, to goad them on to
merciless acts against those who were against them, and to give the
soldiers religious support, pardoning their crimes on the grounds that
they were battling for the Roman Catholic Church. This may be seen
from the speech of one army chaplain, priest Sabic, who told Ustashi
recruits on November 12, 1942:
Be proud as you take the Ustashi oath, for with it you become
members of the great Ustashi family, brothers and co-workers to our
great Chieftain, brothers of those Ustashi who saved the honor of the
Croatian people and who with pistol, bomb and dagger have gone further
than our enemies ever dreamed they would go….”
Several hundred Catholic priests received high decorations for the
support given to the Ustashi authorities. All bishops, with Archbishop
Stepinac at their head, received in 1944 the highest Ustashi
decoration “The order of Merit.” All these priests were
cited for their political services to the Ustashi state or for active
participation in battle, either on the Eastern front or in fighting
the Partisans.
Some chaplains went with their army units to the Eastern front, where
they were decorated with German medals. Niko Daresic, curate from
Trsten, fought as a volunteer on the Eastern front with the 369th
Legion Regiment, and was decorated with the German medal “Ost
Medaille.” Priest Grujo Balokovic was active on the Eastern
front as a volunteer and as such received two medals. Dr. Stjepan
Bogutovac, a priest, was killed fighting on the Eastern
front. Celebrated Ustashi chaplains included Dr. Ivo Guberina,
chaplain of Pavelic's personal guard, and priests Josip Galesic,
Ante Mikulic, Ivan Sehalja, etc.
The Vjesnik Minorsa of October 3, 1942, reported that Joseph
Kaurinovic, priest in Prijedor, was decorated posthumously with the
Great Silver Medal for Bravery, and cited for “his courageous
and determined behavior on the occasion of the attack of the rebels on
the locality Prijedor, in the spring of 1942, when with gun in hand he
perished as a brave defender of the Independent State of
Croatia.
The head of the Franciscan monastery in Knin was decorated with the
Order of King Zvonimir III with Swords because of “the
sacrifices he made in assisting the Croatian and German troops in
connection with the capture of Knin and Drnis in September,
1943.”
Catholic sisters, of various orders, played an active part in such
organizations as the “Ustashi Women's Shoot.”
According to a report in Katolicki Tjednik of December 6, 1942, many
Catholic sisters were decorated by Pavelic because of the assistance
they gave Ustashi military units in the struggle against the Yugoslav
Liberation Army.
Many priests worked directly in the Ustashi propaganda services, and
some even in the Gestapo itself; others were active in the Ustashi
party and army units. Archbishop Stepinac himself had connections with
an agent of the Gestapo, Wilhelm Haeger. Hans Helm, police attaché in
the German Legation in Zagreb, declared at his hearing September 3,
1945, that Archbishop Stepinac had very close contact with the Gestapo
agent Haeger. Haeger performed many favors for Stepinac; among other
things, he brought three Catholic priests from Czestochova,
Poland. With the help of Archbishop Stepinac, Wilhelm Haeger was able
to make a trip to Rome. In 1944 Haeger was ordained a Catholic priest
in Vienna.
Dr. Stjepan Lackovic, Archbishop Stepinac's secretary, who today
lives in Youngstown, Ohio, had close contact with the Ustashi
intelligence service, according to Franjo Figuric, chief of Ustashi
military police. At his hearing on September 15, 1945, Figuric stated
that Dr. Lackovic was in close touch with Zvonko Katalenic, Ustashi
intelligence service agent.
The Bishop of Krk, Dr. Josip Srebmic, gave information to German and
Italian secret police. One proof of this was a circular letter he sent
on March 6, 1944, No. 50, ordering the priests of his diocese to
report on all happenings in their territory. He wrote:
“Representatives of the military and civil authorities are
coming to see the Bishop. They assume that he is informed on
everything that is happening in his diocese.”
The Bishop of Split, Dr. Bonifacic, performed similar services. He
suggested that the Italians hold Partisan families responsible for all
misfortunes that might befall the occupation army. A letter from the
office of the Italian Governor of Dalmatia on December 3, 1941,
No. 9139, to the police and VI Army Corps in Split reads:
In connection with what we reported in our letter No. 51 of
November 18, 1941, concerning fighting the Chetnik-communist bandits
in the Districts of Sinj, Livno and Bosansko Grahovo, I inform you
that the Bishop of Split, recommending warmly the request of Catholic
clergy from the above mentioned districts about which you are
informed, submits new proposals that for all crimes and damage caused
up to now, and for those perpetrated in the future, the families of
the bandits who live in those districts be proclaimed
responsible. . . .
Since some high Catholic functionaries engaged in such activities it
is easy to understand that parts of the lower clergy did not scruple
to maintain contact with the Gestapo, with OVRA and with the Ustashi
propaganda services. Two Franciscans from the monastery in Poljud,
Marijan Stasic and Ciprijam Lisica, were shown to have given the
Italian authorities in Split information regarding Partisan
families. Matija Crnkovic, curate from Ludbreg, at his hearing on
June’ 13, 1945, admitted that he gave the occupation authorities
names of members of the National Liberation Movement and had many sent
to concentration camps. The organizer of the Ustashi intelligence in
northern Dalmatia was the Franciscan Josip Poljak, curate from
Perusic. The priests Miroslav Buzuk from Sanski Most and Josip Bekman
from Prijedor, at their hearing December 17, 1944, admitted they were
Gestapo agents and had collected data about the National Liberation
Movement which they sent to the Gestapo in Banja Luka and Prijedor by
courier and carrier pigeon. Franciscan Vendelin Gasman, head of the
monastery in Bjelovar, at his hearing October 2, 1945, revealed how he
became an agent of the Gestapo. Among other things, he said:
“Knowing very well the surrounding territory of Budrovac and
being in good relations with members and sympathizers of the National
Liberation Movement, who looked upon me with confidence, not knowing
that I was in Gestapo service, I was able to find many active members
of the National Liberation Movement… I chose the most active
collaborators of the National Liberation Movement and gave their names
to the Gestapo officers in Bjelovar. I reported Bogdan Goldmajer, Mijo
Magic and Grinfeld. They were imprisoned in March, 1944, by the German
Army.”
PRAISE FOR GERMANY
In November, 1943, Army Chaplain, Captain Teobald Takac, at the
conclusion of the celebration of Military Week and after the swearing
in of recruits, spoke of the services rendered by the Ustashi soldiers
fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Germans. The newspaper Granicar
of November 12, 1944, carried his speech in full. Among other things,
he said:
Our heroes stood out on the Eastern front in the course of all
great battles. At Stalingrad the soldiers of the Croatian infantry
regiment even lived to see that epic end of the battle with the
encircled VI German Army of General Field Marshal Paulus. With their
blood and lives they sealed their loyalty to their great German
ally.
On the occasion of the departure of the Pavelic Navy for the Black Sea
to fight with its German Ally against the Soviet Army a celebration
was held in Zagreb which was attended by members of the Catholic
hierarchy, headed by Archbishop Stepinac and the Papal Legate
Dr. Ramiro Marcone. A photograph of this celebration was published in
many Catholic papers. Archbishop Stepinac never missed an opportunity
to stress the significance of the Ustashi state both in his speeches
to the faithful and in his use of the authority of his
position. Katolicki List of March 19, 1942, carries a speech which he
delivered to Catholic university students, reading in part as follows:
This is the first time that I speak to you from this platform
since the dream of your youth has come true and the Independent State
of Croatia has become a reality—for which the bones of
innumerable heroes of our people have rotted away.
Archbishop Stepinac frequently participated in Ustashi
celebrations. Hrvatski Narod of April 11, 1942, reported that he took
part in a parade of Ustashi military units celebrating the first
anniversary of the puppet state. Before the parade Stepinac celebrated
a solemn mass which was attended by Pavelic and the Axis diplomatic
representatives. The Archbishop welcomed Pavelic at the entrance to
the church on this occasion and escorted him inside.
Hrvatski Narod of March 13, 1942, reported that in connection with the
celebration of the Pope's crowning, following the solemn mass in
the Cathedral Archbishop Stepinac gave a reception in his palace which
was attended by many members of the Ustashi government and by Axis
diplomats. He did not miss this opportunity to praise the quisling
regime, while an Ustashi military band played in the street outside.
Two days later the Hrvatski Narod reported that Archbishop Stepinac
held a Thanksgiving Mass on the occasion of the third anniversary of
the quisling Slovakian state.
Following the pattern set by Archbishop Stepinac, Katolicki Tjednik,
the organ of “Catholic Action,” wrote in its issue of
April 5, 1942:
Upon the anniversary of the founding of the Independent State
of Croatia, we Catholics will piously clasp our hands and pray to God
to let his blessing fall upon our land and our people. Of the
individual leaders of our state, the main subject of our prayers and
sacrifices will be our Chieftain, Ante Pavelic.
Glasnik Biskupije Bosanske i Sremske No. 9, on April 15, 1942, said:
Every thought of our State independence is closely tied to the
name of Ante Pavelic. We must admit that those basic principles upon
which the life of our new state must develop are in agreement with the
principles of God, nature and positive justice.
Two archbishops, Stepinac and Saric, and one bishop used the
inauguration of the new Bishop of Mostar as an occasion for a special
pro-Ustashi manifestation. According to two Catholic periodicals,
Katolicki Tjednik of October 25, 1942, and Vrhbosna, Nos. 9-10, 1942,
the new bishop, Cule, stated in his address that his task was
“to cooperate as closely as possible with the Ustashi
authorities, to work loyally to strengthen the Independent State of
Croatia, and to support with all means the Chieftain, Ante
Pavelic.” Music was provided by several bands and the choir sang
the Ustashi song and the state hymn, while the audience stood at
attention with arms stretched out in fascist salute, according to
these Catholic publications.
According to Novi List of March 8, 1942, Archbishop Saric sent
instructions to the clergy to support the Ustashi authorities in all
their efforts. The Archbishop often expressed his deep devotion to
Dr. Pavelic and he was a most intimate friend of the Ustashi
executioners, Dr. Viktor Gutic and Juro Francetic, commander of the
“Black Legion.” He used the Ustashi salute and employed
every opportunity to glorify the Chieftain and the Ustashi
regime. Novi List of November 10, 1942, reported a speech in which
Archbishop Saric said:
The good Lord loves the Croatian people whose slogan is God and
the Croatians. In order to be such we must follow the example of our
noble Chieftain, who can serve as a model to us in every way,
including religion. For that purpose you can pray and commend yourself
to God with whose help along with that of our great and dear allies we
will finally be victorious. With faith in God let us, therefore,
always be ready for the Chieftain and for the fatherland.
In connection with the first anniversary of the Independent State,
Archbishop Saric published an article in the Sarajevo Novi List in
which he glorified the Chieftain and expressed his complete loyalty to
him and to Ustashi principles. He added that the Chieftain fills every
heart with light and love for the fatherland and that he “lives
and works as an apostle.” The article concluded: “He was
given to us by God in whom he, as a man of God, has faith. We have to
thank Providence for having given him to us.”
Saric's golden jubilee as a priest gave Ustashi authorities and
followers another opportunity for manifesting their Ustashi
ideology. Saric himself on this occasion published an article in
Hrvatski Narod of July 30, 1944, entitled: “Thanks to God and to
the Poglavnik.”
According to the organ of the Split-Makarska bishopric, Nos. 1-5,
January-May, 1944, Bishop Bonifacic, of Split, gave a sermon in thc
cathedral on April 11, 1944, in which he said:
Today the Croatian people are celebrating their great holiday,
the anniversary of the establishment of the Independent State of
Croatia. We should be proud of our state, established by the unselfish
work of our Chieftain. This state manifests our only political
salvation, our true Croatian national life and our
resurrection.
Bishop Aksamovic of Djakovo received a medal from one of Pavelic's
delegates, who, in presenting it observed that “His Excellency
the Bishop has from the very beginning cooperated with the Ustashi
authorities.” According to Hrvatski List of April 28, 1944, the
bishop answered with a speech full of devotion to the Chieftain and
the Ustashi regime, concluding: “A few days ago the Chieftain
told the people clearly that the Croatian state exists and will remain
in existence, and we will add: Every Croatian, young and old, lives
for Croatia and will die for Croatia. In that company you will have
your bishop.”
Neither the capitulation of Italy nor the growing strength of the
National Liberation Movement caused the Catholic Episcopate to change
its pro-Ustashi and pro-Axis policies, The worse the situation became
for the Axis the more firmly Archbishop Stepinac and the Episcopate
defended the existence of the Ustashi regime. In his report of May 18,
1943, Stepinac implored the Pope to do something for the rescue of
Croatia. Thus, throughout the war, Archbishop Stepinac and a
considerable part of the higher and lower clergy bound the fate of the
Catholic Church in Croatia to that of the Axis and the Ustashi regime.
12. At the End of the Rope
When Hitler's fascist fortress began to crumble under attacks from
the Allies and when the quisling Pavelic had to flee, Archbishop
Stepinac undertook all possible measures to relieve the situation for
the Ustashi and to help them. On the insistence of the Ustashi
authorities Archbishop Stepinac held a bishops' conference on
March 24, 1945, from which emanated a pastoral letter to the Croatian
people. The letter defended the criminal policies of Ante Pavelic
during the war and sharply attacked the National Liberation Movement
as bolshevistic and anti-religious.
It was supposed that the pastoral letter would raise the morale of
Pavelic's Croatia, a morale falling because of the swift progress
of the Allied armies on all sides. The president of the Ustashi
government, Dr. Nikola Mandic, in a hearing before the court, said
that Pavelic and the Ustashi government expected great results from
the action of the Episcopate. They hoped that the situation would
change, and especially that Germany would use her “secret
weapons,” about which there was much talk. Furthermore, it was
supposed that the pastoral letter would have an effect on the
Americans and English as well, by emphasizing the battle of the
Croatian people was an ideological struggle against
“bolshevism,” and convincing them of the necessity of
retaining the Independent State of Croatia in one form or another.
As the situation for Pavelic and the Ustashi became more difficult,
Archbishop Stepinac came to be regarded as the last hope by all those
elements that wished to save the Independent State of Croatia. Ten
days before the collapse of the Ustashi regime Pavelic asked Stepinac
to take over authority. Stepinac requested time to think it over, and
began consultations regarding the offer. In the meantime the debacle
came quickly. When the Ustashi had to flee Zagreb in disorder before
attacking Yugoslav armies, they again turned to Stepinac with the
request that he recommend their cause to the Holy See. Many Ustashi
ministers, such as Canki, Balen and Petric, left their personal
belongings in the care of Archbishop Stepinac, and Minister
Alajbegovic buried the files of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the
Archbishop's palace. When the last hopes for continuing the
Independent State of Croatia vanished, Archbishop Stepinac helped
high-ranking Ustashi functionaries, such as Mints, Smelled, Skull,
Maric and others, go into hiding.
13. Sharing the Spoils
After the liberation of Yugoslavia the official War Crimes Commission
established that one part of the Catholic clergy had used the Ustashi
terror not only to force the Eastern Orthodox Serbs to accept the
Roman faith, but also to obtain possession of the property of the
Orthodox Church. This is how it was done.
In June, 1941, the Ustashi Prime Minister issued a decree, No. 11689,
which set up an “Office on Religious Affairs.” This office
was in charge of “all matters pertaining to questions connected
with the conversion of the members of the Eastern Orthodox
Church.” Pavelic appointed his intimate friend, priest Dionizije
Juricev, as Chief of the Religious Office. Juricev was a member of the
Franciscan order, and one of the oldest sworn members of the
Ustashi. He had shared exile with Pavelic. The transfer of confiscated
property of the Eastern Orthodox Church to the Roman Catholics was
made in a “legal” manner through the Office of Religious
Affairs. Rich monasteries, valuable real estate, many Orthodox
Churches and a great volume of religious art and treasure thus passed
to the Roman Church. The greatest share went to the Order of the
Franciscans, who had played a leading part in extermination of the
Serbs. In 1941 Pavelic gave to the Franciscan Province of St. Cyril
and Methodius in Zagreb the great estate of the Serbian Orthodox
Church in Pakrac. The Franciscans moved into the building of the
Pakrac Serbian Bishop and from there managed the estate. On October
29, 1941, Pavelic gave the property of the Serbian church in Gospic to
the Franciscans of Zagreb.
According to a letter from the Ordinariat of the Bishopric of Djakovo
No. 2733/942 of June 8, 1942, twenty-eight Serbian churches had been
changed into Catholic churches by that time in the territory of that
Bishopric alone.
Archbishop Stepinac himself petitioned Dr. Pavelic to permit the
Trappist monks to take over the Serbian Orthodox Monastery in
Orahovica, which was confiscated by the Ustashi authorities. A
photostat copy of this petition, dated September 3, 1941, bearing the
signature of Archbishop Stepinac, is reproduced on pages 80-81.
Much of the loot, including art objects, church articles, gold and
precious stones, was never recovered. One incident in particular must
be mentioned. After the liberation of Zagreb, Yugoslav authorities
found in the crypt of the Franciscan monastery on the Kaptol in
Zagreb—very close to the Archbishop's quarters—36
boxes of gold which had been stolen from victims of the Ustashi. Among
the articles were watches, bracelets, earrings, gold teeth, pendants,
etc. These boxes were concealed under the bones of long-dead
Franciscans. The gold was hidden, it was later established, by the
priest Radoslav Glavas acting in agreement with the head of the
Franciscans, Modest Martincic, and the head of the Monastery Father
Klemen and with the knowledge of Archbishop Stepinac.
14. The Conspiracy against the Yugoslav Republic
In April 1941—while the Royal Yugoslav Army was still
fighting—Archbishop Stepinac joined the enemy. After the
liberation of Yugoslavia in 1945, however, he not only did not
participate in the work of reconstructing the country but maintained a
hostile attitude toward the Federal Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia.
Scattered Ustashi groups, hiding in the woods after liberation, soon
established contact with the Archbishop's quarters through local
curates. The secretary of Dr. Stepinac, priest Viktor Salic, kept the
groups in touch with one another. In the fall of 1945 Pavelic sent to
Yugoslavia from abroad one of his most trusted lieutenants, the former
Ustashi chief of police, Colonel Erik Lisak. Col. Lisak entered
Yugoslavia illegally through Trieste. There he immediately got in
touch with the Archbishop's secretary Salic, and thus was able to
meet Stepinac. In the Archbishop's quarters he received
information regarding the location of the remnants of the Ustashi
groups, to whom he sent orders to increase their terrorist
activities. On receipt of these directions the Ustashi terrorists
launched a program of sabotage and assassination of officials of the
new Yugoslav Republic, hoping to render consolidation impossible. One
of those killed was Colonel Omerovic, and an attempt was made to
assassinate Lt. Colonel Klobocnik.
To camouflage their activities, these groups adopted a
“new” name—The Crusaders. Actually this was the name
under which they had worked legally in pre-war Yugoslavia. Again the
Catholic church became the basis that enabled them to work out their
schemes. After the collapse of the puppet state Pavelic and a large
number of accused Yugoslav war criminals found refuge in Italy, some
of them in various churches and monasteries. From there directives
were given to the remnants of the Ustashi-Crusader groups in
Yugoslavia.
The quarters of Archbishop Stepinac became the control center for
contacts between these Ustashi-Crusader groups. In the
Archbishop's headquarters help was collected for the Crusaders in
the woods. All kinds of aid, including medicine and sanitary
materials, were dispatched. Thc Archbishop's secretary, Dr. Salic,
helped people to the woods; he sent the Ustashi ensign Safet Pajic to
the woods after Pajic had entered Yugoslavia, illegally from Italy. A
flag was consecrated to the Ustashi-Crusader forces in the chapel of
the Archbishop's quarters.
It is significant that the meeting between Archbishop Stepinac and the
Ustashi chief of police, Col. Lisak, who had entered Yugoslavia
illegally, took place just at the time of the Bishop's Conference
in Zagreb at which a pastoral letter was issued. This pastoral letter,
of September, 1945, was directed against the federal authorities in
Yugoslavia and sought to arouse to action all enemies of the new
Yugoslav Republic. The role this pastoral letter played call be judged
from the encouragement it gave to the Ustashi groups, Some of the
captured Ustashe admitted it was the most important propaganda in the
battle against the national authorities. The Franciscan Kruno Miklic
said at his hearing on January 15, 1946:
I began working to organize the Crusaders after the Pastoral
letter was issued, when I saw what our religious leaders thought of
the present government.
In the fall of 1945 Pavelic sent thc: notorious Ustashi criminal
General Moskov to Yugoslavia to help Lisak in the task of activating
the Ustashi-Crusader groups On his arrival General Moskov immediately
got in touch with Archbishop Stepinac. To help Moskov in his travels
through the country, the Archbishop's headquarters obtained five
travel permission cards and sent them to him by Dr. Gulin. Dr. Gulin
disclosed after his capture that Moskov had told him the Bishops'
Conference was the greatest event in the Ustashi struggle after the
fall of the independent State of Croatia. When he did not succeed in
his mission, General Moskov went back to Pavelic. Before his return he
gave Dr. Gulin a letter for Archbishop Stepinac, in which he thanked
the Archbishop and bade him “defend firmly the cause of justice
and faith.” All this was brought out at the Stepinac trial in
Zagreb.
Help for the terrorist work of the Crusader bands did not come from
the Zagreb Archbishop's quarters alone, but from other Catholic
religious centers throughout Yugoslavia as well. The Archbishop's
Ordinariat in Sarajevo also played the role of an organizer of
terrorist Crusader organizations in Bosnia and Hercegovina. There the
main organizers were the Sarajevo Archbishop's deputy, canon Marko
Alaupovic; Franciscan Ljudevit Josic, from Tuzla; Reverend Ivan
Cindric, who organized the Crusader groups in Zenica and
Busolac. Franciscan Franjo Slafhauzen drew up a plan for the terrorist
attack by the Crusaders on the railroad station Semizovac near
Sarajevo. Franciscan Valerijan Voloder printed Crusader leaflets in
the Franciscan monastery in Sarajevo. Franciscan Ante Kozina forged
travel permits and sent them to the Crusaders in the woods to
facilitate their movement throughout the country. Franciscan Kruno
Miklic formed Crusader terrorist organizations in Vares.
How various priests took advantage of their positions to work for the
Crusaders can be seen from the case of Franciscan Mamerto
Margetic. Franciscan Margetic was the economist of the Zagreb
Franciscan monastery. Under the pretext of collecting food, Margetic
traveled from one end of the country to the other keeping the various
illegal Crusader groups in communication with one another and giving
them directives. Thus he got in touch with a Crusader group which
worked in the Virovitice region of Slavonia, and then with terrorist
groups in the regions of Slavonski Brod, Nova Gradiska, and even with
a Ustashi-Crusader group in Lika. In an effort to keep his work secret
he used another name—Veseli. Captured Crusaders and Ustashi said
at their hearings that a Franciscan named Veseli told them they must
hold out because the English and Americans would soon come to
Yugoslavia and liquidate the existing government.
Not even the honorable Sisters were excluded from this conspiracy of
one section of the Catholic clergy in Yugoslavia. The Sisters Brigita
Jurkovic, Karitoza Caleta and Teofanija Djaja collected sanitation
materials and sent them to an Ustashi-Crusader group in Papuk. Sisters
Marija Diosi, Josipa Hrastek and Marija Martinec from Zagreb collected
sanitary materials and sent them to an Ustashi-Crusader group on the
mountain of Ivancic.
As to Archbishop Stepinac's aims, an interview that he gave to a
British liaison officer, eighteen months before his trial, may be
quoted. This officer's report published in the New Statesman and
Nation in London, read in part:
As I recently had an opportunity of visiting Archbishop
Stepinac in Zagreb, I have followed the reports on his trial with
great interest. “Eighteen months ago, while serving as a British
Liaison Officer in Yugoslavia, I read in the German controlled press
and heard over the Zagreb radio the call of Archbishop Stepinac to his
people to rally to the crumbling Croat State and resist the Allied
armies which were advancing towards final victory. A few weeks later
Zagreb was freed, Pavelic had fled and the archbishop remained.
Back in Zagreb a year later, I was surprised, in view of the
many changes which had taken place in Yugoslavia, to find that
Mgr. Stepinac was still Primate of Croatia. I called on him in his
palace and he talked with me alone for over an hour. He told me
frankly that he and those of his priests who had collaborated with the
Germans had done so because this issue in the war had been a clear
one, between Fascism and Communism; he had chosen the former while
Britain had chosen the latter. He regretted the horrors of the Nazi
occupation, but he preferred them to the present Federal
regime. “He assured me that, though many might now be infatuated
with the new regime, the peasants would one day rise, and he looked to
the West to use its atomic power to impose Western civilization on
Moscow and Belgrade before it was too late.
Not only the Ustashi themselves, but their supporters in other parts
of the world, including the United States, persist in their intrigues
against Yugoslavia. As recently as May, 1947, a group of nine priests
sent Secretary of State Marshall a petition “on behalf of the
American Croatian Catholic Clergy in the United States.” Among
the signers was Nicholas Sulentic of Waterloo, Iowa, vice-president of
the Croatian National Representation for Independence of
Croatia—an organization whose activities were considered so
harmful to America's war effort that it and its newspaper,
Nezavisna Hrvatska Drzava, were suppressed during the war by the
F.B.I. The petition sought American intervention on behalf of fugitive
Ustashi war criminals. Sulentic and his organization have always been
a part of the fascist-Ustashi movement, and in 1935 distributed in the
United States a leaflet soliciting funds on behalf of three men
sentenced to life imprisonment for the Barthou-King Alexander
assassinations. The leaflet featured a photograph of Ante Pavelic.
15. The Stepinac Trial
Archbishop Stepinac was arrested in Zagreb on September 18, 1946, on
charges of having participated in a conspiracy against the Federal
Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia. Evidence against Stepinac had
accumulated during the course of other trials, especially that of a
number of priests accused of having been in close contact with Pavelic
and other war criminals in foreign countries. These priests had
plotted with Eric Lisak, a former Ustashi colonel and police commander
in the Pavelic regime, against the Yugoslav Republic. When it became
known to the general public through testimony in court that Lisak, who
had entered Yugoslavia illegally as an agent of Pavelic, had also
established contact with Archbishop Stepinac and had secured the
assistance of the Archbishop's headquarters, Yugoslav authorities
had no alternative but to arrest Stepinac. He was placed on trial
before the Supreme Court in Zagreb, with 15 other defendants, as a
collaborationist and plotter.
Archbishop Stepinac's trial started on September 30, 1946. His
attorney was Dr. Ivo Politeo. After ten days of hearing evidence, the
court sentenced him, on October 11, 1946, to 16 years imprisonment at
forced labor. The official indictment of 51 pages contained the
following main charges against the Archbishop:
During the war and enemy occupation, the defendant Aloysius
Stepinac participated in political collaboration with the enemy,
giving the enemy and his agents, the Ustashi, help during the entire
period.
Thus, on April 12, 1941, while battles were still being fought
against the German and Italian aggressors, he visited the Commander of
the Army’ Slavko Kvaternik, and congratulated him on the
establishment of the Independent State of Croatia; on April 16, 1941,
he officially visited the criminal Pavelic. During the first days of
the occupation he gave in the archbishop's quarters a dinner to
Ustashi emigrants and had his picture taken with them. On April 28,
1941, he issued an official circular to the clergy in the Zagreb
archbishopric calling upon the priests to collaborate with the
traitors, and told them to influence their parishioners to support the
Independent State of Croatia. On June 26, 1941, as chairman of the
bishops' conference, after a session at which it was decided to
give wholehearted support to the Ustashi authorities, he led a group
of Catholic bishops in an audience with Pavelic, and on that occasion
greeted this fascist agent as head of the Independent State of Croatia
and promised him sincere and loyal cooperation.
Thus the defendant Stepinac even during the first days of the
occupation of our country helped the occupier and the Ustashi,
collaborated with them and called upon his clerical subordinates to
collaborate with them as well, which hundreds of priests did very
actively. He therefore set many priests and believers on a road which
ended with treason and betrayal of their country and brought about
many war crimes. “The collaboration stand, work and declarations
of the defendant Stepinac made easier the treason of those Ustashi
priests who had already been with the Ustashi and incited many other
priests to participate in the disarming of the Yugoslav Army, to take
over and to organize Ustashi authority, to organize Ustashi
commissions, camps, and even Ustashi militia and so on.
The Catholic press during the occupation was completely in line
with the work and declarations of the defendant Stepinac who, as
chairman of the bishops' conference and chairman of Catholic
Action, had supreme control over the writing of the entire Catholic
press in Yugoslavia. In that capacity he actively influenced the way
this press wrote, and approved and supported its stand against the
Yugoslav people.
The Catholic press propagated fascism even before the war, as
well as other undemocratic programs. From the very beginning to the
very end of the occupation this press was pointed in one
direction—making propaganda for the fascists and Ustashi, and
praising Hitler and Pavelic. This press was full of slander and lies
against the National Liberation Movement and sowed the seeds of
national, religious and race hatred. How far these activities went can
be seen from newspapers such as those that were directed to children
and to the youth, Andjeo Cuvar(The Angel Guardian),Glasnik Sv. Josipa
(St. Joseph's Courier),Crnce(The Little Negro),Glasnik Sv. Ante
(St. Anthony's Courier),Mali Vrtic (The Little Garden), and so
on. Many of Pavelic's pictures were published in these newspapers,
and he and his Ustashi were praised and described as God's
missionaries, the executors of God's providence, and of God's
justice. In this manner the minds of young people were poisoned. From
the children's and youth newspapers up to the adult ones, the
newspapers, weeklies, official organs such as Katolicki List,
Katolicki Tjednik, Bosna Iznad Svega(Bosnia Above All), Nedelja and so
on contained continuous and inflexible propaganda for the Ustashi and
fascists, most energetically defended the Pavelic regime and the
occupiers, and called upon the people to fight against the National
Liberation Movement and the Allies.
This entire press, under the top leadership of the defendant
Stepinac, industriously took note of all the activities of clerical
fascist organizations which were in favor of the occupiers and the
Ustashi.
Various Catholic organizations from the group Catholic Action,
of which the defendant Stepinac was president, Great Crusaders
Brotherhood, Great Crusaders Sisterhood, Domagoj, etc., answered the
call of the defendant Stepinac to collaborate with the Ustashi. They
became pith and pillar of Utashism. The members of these organizations
participated in disarming the Yugoslav Army, established Ustashi
authorities, and many of them became functionaries in Ustashi
commissions, camps, concentration camps and district councils. Many
officers of Pavelic's army were recruited from their ranks and the
majority of priests in the Crusaders organizations volunteered for
Ustashi and Domobran army units. The president of the Great
Crusaders' Brotherhood himself, Dr. Feliks Niedzelski, became an
Ustashi vice district chief and administrative head for Ustashi
youth.
The defendant Stepinac upheld and approved such activities on
the part of the Crusaders organizations. Many organizers of massacres
of the Serbian and Croatian populations came from the ranks of the
Crusaders.
The defendant Stepinac misused even traditional religious
ceremonies and turned them into political manifestations for the
criminal Pavelic and the Ustashi. This can be seen from the
organizations for which he held such ceremonies and by the sermons
which he gave.
At the beginning of 1941 and until liberation, the defendant
Stepinac held holy masses every April 10th to celebrate the
Independent State of Croatia, and transformed the church holiday of
Saint Anthony into a political manifestation for the criminal
Pavelic.
The defendant Stepinac used every possible way during the war
and enemy occupation to express his solidarity with the German and
Italian conqueror, participating in many official functions,
celebrations and congratulations which the representatives of the
German and Italian occupation authorities prepared in Zagreb. Thus,
for instance, he attended the opening of University Week for German
and Croatian soldiers in company with the Ustashi government and
German generals led by General Gleise von Horstenau; and also the
opening of the Zagreb convention with German, Italian and Ustashi
functionaries; as well as the anniversary of the fascist march on
Rome, and so forth.
When the Ustashi threatened the Serbs in Croatia, Bosnia and
Hercegovina with massacre unless they joined the Catholic faith,
Stepinac accepted this and rechristened’ tens of thousands of
Serbs, who had a knife at their throat. In this way he approved and
incited the Ustashi to commit further crimes.
In numerous cases those ‘rechristened’ were later
killed in spite of the fact that they had passed into the Catholic
faith. In many cases groups of them were killed even as they gathered
to be rechristened.
During such ‘rechristenings’ of the Serbs, a plenary
session of the Catholic episcopacy was held on November 17, 1941,
under the chairmanship of the defendant Stepinac. At this meeting
Stepinac and the other bishops not only did not condemn but on the
contrary accepted the Ustashi ‘rechristenings' and gave
canonic sanction to this revolting war crime.
At the beginning of 1942 the Vatican appointed the defendant
Stepinac apostolic army vicar for Pavelic's Ustashi and Domobran,
and the defendant Stepinac accepted this duty and appointed as his
deputies the famous Ustashi priests Stipa Vucetic and Vilim
Cecelja. Thus the defendant Stepinac officially became the highest
military clergyman in Pavelic's army. All other army priests were
subordinate to him and these are the priests who in the ranks of
Ustashi and Domobran formations incited the soldiers to commit crimes
or themselves committed crimes against the people.
Before the fall of the Independent State of Croatia the
defendant Stepinac kept the files of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
of the Independent State of Croatia as well as papers from the
Chieftain's office in the Archbishop's headquarters. He did
this with the intent of hiding them and in agreement with
Pavelic. Besides this, the defendant Stepinac hid phonograph records
containing all of Pavelic's speeches in the Archbishop's
quarters. These records were found carefully concealed among the files
of the Archbishop's Spiritual Board in Zagreb.
Early in the spring of 1945 the Yugoslav Army finally liberated
our country from the occupiers and was cleaning them out. Pavelic,
Macek, Stepinac and all anti-people's elements could see the
evident fall of the Axis. They made a plan for the renewed occupation
of our country by other foreign powers, and in that way planned to
overthrow the people's government which had already been
established throughout Yugoslavia.
The Ustashi government found itself in a terrible position. It
drew up a memorandum which was submitted to the Supreme Allied Command
for the Mediterranean asking for occupation…. Thus they
represented the situation in Yugoslavia as a civil war to the Allies,
and on the basis of that asked for intervention. According to the
plan, contact with Anglo-American armies was to be made as soon as
possible. “The defendant Stepinac was active in these plans. He
met with Pavelic, talked with Pavelic's delegates Alajbegovic, Edo
Bulat and others, and in that connection went to visit Mack with
Moskov.
The defendant Stepinac, remaining in the country after the
liberation, had a systematic plan for sustaining the hope that the
‘regime’ (as he called it) would soon change.
On September 19, 1945, the defendant Stepinac received in his
Archbishop's quarters the Ustashi colonel and former director for
public security, Erich Lisak, and on September 17 and October 3, 1945,
he received two letters from the Ustashi colonel Ante Moskov. Both
Lisak and Moskov came illegally from abroad to organize, activate and
gather together the scattered Crusader groups. On November 8, 1945,
Stepinac received an Ustashi student-emigrant who brought him from
Salzburg ‘The Pledge of Ustashi Intellectuals' that they
would fight on for the liberation of the Croatian people. He also
received the spy Lela Sopijanec, who went illegally to and from
Trieste several times with messages for him. He approved of and
covered up the terroristic activities of his secretary, Ivan Salic and
the priest Josip Simec who, encouraged by the attitude and activities
of the defendant Stepinac, created a terrorist organization together
with Dr. Pavle Gulin and Josip Crnkovic, which organization served as
a center for the various terrorist groups in the country, and helped
them.
The evidence produced by the state prosecutor in support of these
charges consisted of files of the Catholic press, confiscated letters
and reports and the sworn statements and testimony of numerous
witnesses.
On the basis of the evidence Archbishop Stepinac was found guilty of
collaboration with the enemy and of conspiracy against the Federal
Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia. The manner in which Archbishop
Stepinac conducted himself during the trial should be noted. No
serious attempt was made to deny the charges. The argument with which
Stepinac most frequently contented himself was that he could not be
held accountable for misdeeds of the lower clergy, and that in any
case he was responsible only to God. With the world press in
attendance at the trial, Archbishop Stepinac thus failed to take
advantage of an unequalled opportunity to state his case and clear
himself, if he felt able to, before mankind.
All officials participating in the trial were Croatians and Roman
Catholics. Following the conviction, the Vatican excommunicated all
persons who had taken part in or were considered responsible for the
prosecution of the Archbishop, on the grounds that no member of the
Catholic clergy could be prosecuted without consent of the Vatican.
