Balkan Repository Project

The Serbian Unity Congress Jasenovac War Crimes Project presents a series called,
The Ustasha Genocide - A Historical Review.
Each of the Historical Reviews presented are written by an authority on the
Ustasha genocide committed against the Serbian, Jewish and Romani people
during World War II in the Ustasha, Independent State of Croatia (NDH).
The death camp, Jasenovac, the third largest in occupied Europe has
become the symbol of the brutalities of the Ustasha crimes of hate.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE USTASHA,
THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF CROATIA (NDH),
ITS LEADERS AND THE
"MYTH WHICH MUST DISAPPEAR"

The Ustasha are members of a fascist movement, of an ultra-nationalist and terrorist orientation, aiming at a Greater Croatia (Ustasha means "rebel").

After the end of World War I and the breakdown of Austria-Hungary, the South Slav nations united into a common state, the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. But, contrary to the aspirations for a common life of these people in a common state, there was in Croatia an extreme chauvinist movement, the most eminent representative of which was, at the time, the lawyer Dr. Ante Pavelic. In carrying out his policy, he and his followers relied on the anti-Yugoslav revanchist and irredentist wings in Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria, and also on the Austrian legitimists, and the ravanchist forces in Germany. At the end of October 1928 Ante Pavelic founded the illegal "Croatian Ustasha Movement", the program of which was:

The secession of Croatia from Yugoslavia into a "greater Croatia", a state which in addition to Croatia, would also include Bosnia, Herzegovina and Srem, while the Serbian (Orthodox) population on these territories would be forcefully eliminated.

Having emigrated from Yugoslavia in 1929, Pavelic assembled the Ustasha emigrants abroad, and founded an Ustasha terrorist organization. In Hungary, Italy and Austria, in Ustasha centers and camps, the Ustasha were trained to perform terrorist and subversive acts. While living abroad, Pavelic elaborated the Ustasha program ("Ustasha Salutes" in 1932 and "Principles", amended in 1941).

Although not numerous in Yugoslavia, the Ustasha infiltrated the Croatian Peasant Party on the eve of World War II, making intense efforts to attract its right-wing separatist elements. Some of their secret bases in the country were certain Catholic convents and seminaries.

On the eve of the war between the German Reich and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the Ustasha established, in Tuscany an "Ustasha Army" of several hundred of their followers, and moved to the Italian-Yugoslav border. The German Ustasha group had formed a "Croatian legion" in Austria, intensifying their anti- Yugoslav propaganda.

Yugoslavia was defeated in the short April war (April 6-17, 1941), between Yugoslavia on one side, and Nazi Germany and their allies, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria, on the other. But even before Yugoslavia was fully occupied, the Ustasha, under the protection, and with the help of the fascists and Nazis, took over power in Croatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina and Srem, and on April 10, 1941, proclaimed the puppet and Quisling State, The Independent State of Croatia, (NDH) led by Ante Pavelic.

With the establishment of Ustasha power, a reign of terror began. From the middle of 1941 to the end of April 1945, Pavelic was carrying out his plan to annihilate the Serbs. The whole military, administration and police were directed to the achievement of this goal. Several dozen cruel laws were proclaimed, giving legal form to the Ustasha criminal policy. The Ustasha carried out horrible mass massacres of Serbs, but also of Jews and Gypsies, as well of those Croats who were not in sympathy with the Ustasha (Yugoslav-minded citizens, anti- fascists, partisan prisoners). The Orthodox (Serbian) population was subjected to unbelievable terror and massacres, and mass executions were cruelly carried out in many concentration camps, organized by the Ustasha in the NDH, modeled on the Nazi concentration camps. The largest among such "death factories" in the NDH was Jasenovac.

At the end of the World War II a certain number of Ustasha leaders managed to escaped. Pavelic also fled abroad in 1945, and with the help of Catholic dignitaries was transferred to Argentina. And so, one of the most blood- thirsty war criminals ended his life unpunished by men for the Satanic evils which he had caused among them. He died in Madrid in 1959 of the consequences of an assassination attempt made against him. Almost all the escaped Ustasha continued their terrorist activities abroad.

By the initials of the infamous Ustasha Independent State of Croatia (NDH), this puppet State was called Endehazija, and their rulers and followers, Endehazists.

All the larger concentration camps in Europe dating from World War II, have been preserved or reconstructed, as a reminder to future generations, so that a similar tragedy of annihilation will never be repeated.

On the territory of the former NDH, the traces of these monstrous institutions designed by distorted minds, and of the unimaginable horrors performed in them, "had to" be obliterated, or at least gradually be removed and constantly reduced. Then everything would pale in the memory of the contemporaries, and little by little forgotten so that then, it could be suggested to the minds of Cain's descendents that everything had been "exaggerated", even that it is "a myth that must disappear", and that it is a case of "historic forgeries" and "tendentious inventions".

Even today attempts are made to reduce the dimensions of the crime to spread a veil over the genocide carried out against the Serbian people at the time of the infamous NDH. In articles written by the present day Ustasha �migr�s, one can read the statement: "The alleged Croatian crimes against the Serbs have always been artificially inflated" (!) And, unfortunately, we can also read in the Catholic press in Yugoslavia, for instance that, "it is important to inform the world that the number of Jasenovac victims is at least ten times lower (!), that among them probably (only) one third were Orthodox (!) And finally that, among the (alleged) Jasenovac skeletons is a still un-established but considerable number of liquidated members of the NDH armed forces (Ustasha), taken prisoner near Bleiburg" (when they were fleeing the country in 1945, along with the forces of occupation).

In addition, absurd so-called "Serbian theses" are being formulated and circulated about the genocidal character of the Croatian people and the Catholic Church among Croats, so that, defending themselves from these theses, although no sensible person is alleging this, pro-Ustasha positions could be asserted.

In Yugoslavia, up to the end of the seventies, the Ustasha crimes committed against the innocent Serbian population during World War II were taboo. During the first twenty post-war years, nothing was done to safeguard the authentic remains of the former Ustasha concentration camps. And then the largest death factory in the Ustasha "State", the Jasenovac concentration camp, third in number of victims, and first in horror and suffering in occupied Europe during World War II, was turned into a horticultural park, in which the actual buildings have been replaced by allegories and symbols. Such an attitude permitted later manipulation of the facts, lowering by many times the number of victims of genocide. It is significant to note that, although an exhibition about Jasenovac was organized in 1945 in Geneva, the United Nations files regarding war crimes have no documents about this death camp!

Foreign historians who operate without constraints have published, mostly in German, Italian and French, several books and other publications dealing "with a crime such as the world had not seen before", as the authors themselves so state. Those among whom Nazism originated have a heavy burden to bear and that burden would disappear if the world were able to forget the horrors of Nazi rule. This also applies to the milieu from which the Ustasha movement issued. At least up to a point, one can thus explain the systematic and persistent post-war efforts to obliterate the bloody traces and to deny the horrors, in attempts to reduce the severity of the crimes committed in the Ustasha NDH in 1941-45. But " what has been done cannot be undone" -

Edited and prepared for printing by Dr. Borivoj Andjelkovich and Gradimir Stanich, translated by Vida Mladenovich; Published by The Holy Synod of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church, 1990. 7 July Str. No. 5, 11000 Belgrade; Printed by Graficka Radna Organizacija "Prosveta", pages 352-354.

This book was published to commemorate the 50^th Anniversary of Martyred Jasenovac and the 7^th Anniversary of the Consecration of the New Church of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist-Memorial Church Jasenovac