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Croatian Holocaust Denial Encouraged by Shameful Silence
1940s — Fascist Croatia committed a genocide against Serbs, Jews and Gypsies: Entrance into
Jasenovac death camp number 3, with the sign presenting it as a “Labor Service of the
Ustasha Defense ‐ Concentration Camp No. III” The coat of arms above is inscribed:
“Everything For the Fuhrer, Ustasha Defense.”
On November 27, 2006, Croatian government has opened a new “memorial” at the site of the
notorious Jasenovac death camp complex in Western Slavonia. The “democratic” Croatian
government apparently made sure the “Ustashas [Croat Nazis] would’ve been proud” of this
shameful exhibit, as one of the Jewish survivors of the Croat WWII bestiality commented at the
time.
While Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, Efraim Zuroff, criticized
organizers of the exhibition for failing to name any of the perpetrators of horrendous Jasenovac
mass murders, for omitting to explain background of the furious extermination of the Croatia’s
Serbian, Jewish and Roma population and Ustasha ideology that led to pathological hatred and
genocide, Zuroff seemed to accept the scandalous reduction of a number of the people
murdered in Jasenovac death camp complex, leaving an overall impression that Croatia is
making steps in the right direction after all.
Another researcher, who has dedicated more than a decade to unveiling the truth about
Serbian plight and demonization during the civil wars in the 1990s, and about the true nature of
Ustasha pathology successfully revived in the 1990s — Jared Israel — was as insulted with
none‐to‐mild reaction to what amounts to Croat Holocaust denial on a state level, as most
Serbs are. Covering the mockery of Croat exhibit, Mr. Israel also analyzed Efraim Zuroff’s
response and has subsequently published an interview with one of the Jasenovac survivors,
President of Serbia’s Organization of Survivors, Mrs. Smilja Tisma.
In the interview by Jovan Skendzic, as well as in her December 22, 2006 open letter to Belgrade
daily Politika, Mrs. Tisma confirms the charges against Croatian death camp “memorial,” as a
disgraceful attempt to minimize, obscure and effectively erase the memory of the hundreds of
thousands of innocent victims of Ustasha bestiality, while erecting a mockery of a sanitized and
hollow “exhibit.”
_____________________
“Far more than shameless...”
A Survivor Talks About Croatia’s
Holocaust‐Denying Exhibition
Interview with Smilja Tišma
President, Organization of Survivors
Interviewer: Jovan Skendžić
====================
1. The exhibits at the Jasenovac ‘museum’ are inaccessible and incomprehensible.
Mr. Jovan Skendžić: Would you have some time to tell us your impressions of the opening of
the Jasenovac exhibition?
Ms. Smilja Tišma: Of course. I would find time for this even if I did not have it.
They pretend that it is a Museum and a new presentation ‐ but it is not a Museum. You enter
into dark corridors, dark rooms with only weak electric bulbs illuminating the so‐called exhibits.
At the places of presentation there are monitors that show photographs in a loop. For example,
one depicts the transport of miserable, poor children. You do not know who these children are,
or where they are from, or where they are being taken, or whom they belong to. You do not
know what is happening or where.
At other places you will have to squat down almost to the floor, as there is a bulb there, or
bend all the way down, if you are able to bend so much and have had the luck to notice the
light in the first place. Bending, you will read a label telling you what will be presented. After
this you will have to wait what feels like ten minutes until the presentation starts and then you
will have to quickly read the text they show on the monitor.
It is inaccessible for an average person and even worse for old, frail individuals who are already
under considerable anxiety, as their families perished here.
2. The exhibition falsely cuts the number of people murdered at Jasenovac and trivializes the
genocide against the Serbs.
Tišma: At another place, just by chance, I noticed a panel which claims that sixty‐nine thousand
people perished in the Jasenovac death camp. That’s a fraction of the real number. The Serbs
are presented seventh on the list of groups that were killed, after others, such as Slovenes and
Slovaks, who in fact comprised a small percentage of the victims and who were killed because
of politics, not because of their ethnicity, whereas hundreds of thousands of Serbs were
murdered in an attempt to eliminate the Serbian people.
3. The exhibition does not even name any Ustaša (pronounced oo‐stash‐ah) leaders; it does not
display the Ustaše’s horrific murder weapons; it does not display evidence of the key role of the
Catholic Church.
Skendžić: Does the exhibition contain Ustaša artifacts such as knives, chains, mallets?
Tišma: The physical tools the Ustaše used to murder people are nowhere to be seen there. I
was at the Croatian government’s earlier exhibitions, in 2004 and 2005, and it was the same as
at this latest exhibition. They never display the artifacts the Ustaše used to murder people.
Skendžić: Do they present any documentary evidence such as clergymen’s letters, church
newspapers or testimony from post‐war trials, showing the role of the Catholic clergy in
sanctifying the Ustaše and carrying out the actual killings?
Tišma: No. Nothing is mentioned.
Skendžić: Is there at least a map of the Independent State of Croatia or some information
about Croatian fuehrer Ante Pavelić? At least a photograph of him on the wall panels?
Tišma: Not even a photograph of Pavelić; all the less of his henchmen.
4. Like the Ustaše before them, the exhibition’s creators falsely portray Jasenovac as a ‘labor
camp.’
Skendžić: Does it say in the exhibition that Jasenovac was a death camp?
Tišma: No, they say it was a concentration and work camp.
Skendžić: They actually say it was a labor camp?
Tišma: Yes. They have the same explanation in their brochure and that’s also what they said in
their speeches at the opening ceremony.
I’ve written about this. What kind of a ‘work camp’ is it when they take children, some of them
just born, some still in their mother’s womb, to be murdered there? In Sisak [a camp 160 km
from Jasenovac] where I was first taken, there was a huge room where they separated children
from their mothers. Croatian Ustaša families adopted some; others they sent to Jasenovac;
thousands, including me and my two sisters and brother, they sent to Jastrebarsko, which they
set up exclusively for children. That’s without even mentioning Jasenovac itself, or Stara
Gradiška, or Sisak, or all their other camps.
On 27 January 2007, which the United Nations has designated as Holocaust Remembrance Day,
the government of Serbia and the Jewish community held a commemoration in Belgrade. Mr.
Cadik Danon, a former Jasenovac inmate – he spent 17 months there, escaping in 1943 – gave a
speech. Braco – that’s his nickname – said that at the end of the war the Croats managed to
wipe out all traces of Jasenovac. Now they have done it again, in a new way: none of the Ustaša
murder tools, the heavy mallets, the knives, the brick factory oven that was constructed for
baking bricks but was used to burn people, who were thrown in alive and fully conscious or
already half dead, none of that is on display or can be read about there.
Skendžić: What about the infamous photographs that the Ustaše took, staging phony scenes
presenting Jasenovac as a labor camp in preparation for the [World War II] International Red
Cross visit? Are those photographs displayed on panels?
Tišma: There is nothing left of any of the photographs that were displayed before, in the
museum that was at Jasenovac before the breakup of Yugoslavia, no photographs of any kind
on the panels. Again, you have to stand next to TV monitors and wait until some photographs
appear, but these will be presented without explanatory text, so a visitor enters some space
and views something and then exits without any notion where they were or what they have
seen. It is all really well thought out with a clear intention to camouflage the crimes, the
murders, to camouflage who did it and how it was done and why. Braco Danon mentioned in
his speech that the Ustaše took pleasure in their craft, mutilating their victims, making them die
over periods that easily lasted for hours. The exhibition hides all this. The organizers did their
best to present Jasenovac as a labor camp.
5. The Museum committee contacted and made plans with the Organization of Survivors, then
snubbed them.
Skendžić: It seems to me quite brave that you dared to go there, to that place of your suffering.
Tišma: They invited us. The museum contacted the Organization of Survivors in Belgrade
proposing that we contribute to the exhibition. We agreed that they would film ten or fifteen
survivors giving eyewitness accounts about various Ustaša death camps: Jasenovac, Jastrebac,
Stara Gradiška, Sisak, Jastrebarsko.
They were to send a cameraman, at their expense, in May of 2006, maybe mid‐June at the
latest. I found the survivors who were to participate. People started asking when it would
happen. I phoned the museum but nobody answered. I wrote to Nataša Jovičić, the exhibition
director. Nobody replied.
Despite this, we went to the opening. Three of us represented our Organization of Survivors:
me, as President; Mr. Dragoljub Acković, a Roma representative, the child of a survivor; and Ms.
Brigita Knežević, who had been ‘arrested’ as a child, not two years old, and brought to the
Jastrebarsko camp. She was later adopted; that is why she survived. All told, there were 40 to
50 survivors at the opening.
6. The survivors were ignored and abused at the opening ceremony.
Skendžić: Did they ask you to make a speech?
Tišma: They did not even acknowledge our presence.
Skendžić: Not even to introduce you and say – ‘We have some survivors with us’?
Tišma: Their speakers did not address us or even mention our presence to the public.
We came by invitation. They gave us name tags. We were told that right after speeches by
Croatian Prime Minister Sanader and President Mesić, and after the ribbon was cut, then we,
the survivors, would enter first. You see, we were supposed to be important, but when the time
came to enter, we were pushed around.
The event was on a concrete‐paved area in front of the Museum. After the speeches, we were
shoved aside by the crowd, pushed off our feet, onto the grass. As there had been some rain for
a few days, we got quite muddy. We were among the last to go in.
Entering the exhibition, many could not orient themselves. As I told you, the corridors are
barely lit.
7. The exhibition claims to be focused on the victims as individuals, but in fact even their
names are unreadable.
Skendžić: In 2004, Dr. Milan Bulajić, founder of the Museum of Victims of Genocide in
Belgrade, wrote that Croatian authorities were planning a Jasenovac exhibition that would not
include Ustaša murder‐tools or photographs of Ustaša crimes and that this suppression of
evidence was justified with the absurd argument that, as Jasenovac Memorial director Nataša
Jovičić was quoted saying, "‘We are not going to legitimize the killing, but will instead
commemorate the victims.’" As if it somehow legitimizes a crime to show who did it, how they
did it and why. This goes along with what you reported – that the museum deliberately fails to
inform people about the Ustaša crimes, personnel and beliefs, including their fanatical and
murder‐justifying Catholicism, and falsely portrays Jasenovac as a labor camp.
After the exhibition opened 27 November, Associated Press quoted Nataša Jovičić saying that,
regarding the list of sixty‐nine thousand names that you mentioned, "The list’s aim was to
‘present victims by showing their individual fates, collective and individual suffering, their plans
and hopes that were destroyed when their lives were taken.’" And Associated Press quoted an
advisor from the US government’s Holocaust Museum in Washington agreeing with Jovičić,
"saying it was ‘important to present the individual victims. It’s about me, about you, about
everyone. It’s about human beings.’"
So my question is, are there any displays that "present the individual victims"?
Tišma: I don’t know what they are talking about. The list of 69,000 includes no details about
the victims and nothing about how families were destroyed. As for individual names, all you can
see, hung up high in the air and fluttering around, are some plastic strips with prisoners’ names,
which you can’t easily read, and the areas they came from, Slavonia, Kozara [mountain], Kordun
or Lika [in Serbian Krajina – J.S.]. It does not say whether the prisoners were ethnic Serbs, Jews
or Roma, or that some few may have been honest Croats. Our estimate is that ethnic Croatians
made up 0.3 percent of death camp prisoners ‐ three in one thousand.
Again, these thin strips of plastic are high up, close together, and the air circulating from the
windows moves them about making them very hard to read.
Skendžić: So, the whole affair of the opening was shameless?
Tišma: It was far more than shameless. It felt to me as if I had been poisoned; I felt like that for
days after the event. As soon as I recovered, I wrote about it, and this was published as a letter
from the Organization of Survivors in [the Belgrade paper] Politika. Even though I had to
shorten it twice to make it fit, and they published it in abbreviated form, still they gave it a full
three columns, which is unprecedented for a letter to the editor at Politika, and it included all
the most important issues. People in our organization were satisfied.
Everything is difficult here, very difficult. This government of Serbia is reluctant to do anything.
We have no help from them, as if we were foreigners in our own country. There are still around
a thousand of us survivors, still alive. Almost all were children at the time of the Ustaša
genocide. Mr. Josip Erlih and Mr. Stepanović are the ones among those [a bit older] who broke
out of Jasenovac and who are still living. Around five or six of these older Jasenovac survivors
are still among us.
8. On the Ustaše’s mass murder of children; the documentary work of Dragoje Lukić is
discussed.
Skendžić: I think most people outside Yugoslavia are unaware that the Ustaše incarcerated so
many thousands of children.
Tišma: At least fifty‐six to sixty thousand were murdered. I assume you heard that Mr. Dragoje
Lukić gathered information published in a book documenting the deaths of more than nineteen
thousand of these children, all killed just in the one camp in Jasenovac village and in Stara
Gradiška.
Mr. Lukić and a group of volunteers worked for a couple of years after World War II in five
counties in the Kozara mountain district, talking to families. [Kozara is a Serbian majority area in
Bosnia that had a strong partisan resistance. It is the area where the German force in which
Kurt Waldheim, who later became UN Secretary General and President of Austria, and who was
a Nazi officer in World War II, committed infamous atrocities – J.S.]
They listed only those children about whom they could find all biographical information ‐ the
first and last names, date and place of birth, parent’s names ‐ and in this way documented that
more than nineteen thousand children from one district were murdered in two camps. But
what about children from Banija, Kordun [in the Serbian Krajina]? What about other districts in
the Ustaše’s ‘Independent Croatia’? For example, for many counties in my region, Slavonia [also
in Krajina], there is no town and no child listed in Mr. Lukić’s book. What about all the children
who died in other camps, such as Jastrebarsko?
An exhibition about the murdered children created by the late Mr. Lukić is now in Bari, Italy, as
part of the Serbian‐Italian cooperation project, ‘Bridge Belgrade‐Rome.’ In Italy there are still
some people who respect truth and justice and hate fascism and what it did during WWII. This
exhibition, with photographs, was presented at Dom Armije [the Army Club in Belgrade] for the
first time a few years ago. Again the exhibition includes only some nineteen thousand names
that Mr. Lukić's helpers were able to collect. The children from Kozara mountain only.
That has to be said every time one talks about this exhibit, and people don't always do that.
For example, in a speech given at the Holocaust Remembrance ceremony, Mr. Mirković from
the Museum of Genocide Victims [founded in Belgrade], speaking in the name of the Museum,
forgot to mention that nineteen thousand represents only a small portion of the entire number
of children that perished. He also forgot to mention which areas of Ustasha Croatia this
exhibition is about, and what areas are not covered.
9. On the attempt to minimize the Croatian Holocaust by claiming that most Croatian death
camps were not part of the Jasenovac system.
Skendžić: Is Jastrebarsko considered part of the Jasenovac camp complex?
Tišma: No, the Croats cleverly excluded Jastrebarsko, which is in Zagreb [capital of Croatia]; by
their calculation, the Jasenovac system would include only adjacent places like Stara Gradiška.
But what about the town of Sisak [about 160 km upriver from Jasenovac – J.S.]? Nowhere is it
mentioned as part of the Jasenovac system. I was in Sisak with my mother and siblings for a
couple of months and that is where so many were separated from their parents. Many people
were taken from there to Jasenovac. All those satellite camps were intertwined parts of a single
Jasenovac system.
[Note: It is important whether or not Jastrebarsko and other Croatian Ustaša death camps are
counted as part of the Jasenovac complex. In 1989, Franjo Tudjman, leader of the Croatian
secessionists, published a book that became infamous. Its title, Bespuća povijesne zbiljnosti, is
obscure in Serbo‐Croatian and worse when you translate it into English, something like
Wastelands of historical reality/truth. But there is nothing obscure about the contents.
Tudjman claimed that no more than 900,000 Jews died in the Holocaust and that it was Jews
(not the Ustaše) who murdered Serbs and Roma in Jasenovac. He also claimed that not 600,000
or more, but some tens of thousands of people died at Jasenovac. Tudjman's campaign to
revise the number of Ustaša victims downward by 90 to 95% served the most powerful forces
in the US and Germany, whose attempt to depict Croatian secessionists as fighting for freedom
was easier if people did not know that the last time Croatia seceded they wiped out a third of
the Serbian population. One way to limit the perceived number of Ustaša victims has been to
limit the number of camps counted as part of the Jasenovac system. That is why, in her
response to my question, Smilja Tišma says, with bitter irony, that the Croats are "clever" not to
count Jastrebarsko as part of Jasenovac. – J.S.]
10. How Smilja Tišma’s family was destroyed by the Ustaše.
Skendžić: Please tell us more about your family.
Tišma: I am a Serb. My father, exactly because he was a Serbian patriot, was seized by the
Croatian Ustaše almost immediately after the collapse of Yugoslavia and the establishment of
the NDH ['Independent State of Croatia,' set up 10 April 1941 under Nazi German sponsorship. ‐
J.S.]
The Ustaše took him away on 17 May 1941 and we never saw him again. I only learned much
later and by accident, from one of the survivors who participated in the break‐out from
Jasenovac and who had been arrested at the same time as my father and went through the
same experiences, that one morning they found my father, next to that brick factory oven,
dead. How did he die? The Ustaše were killing those poor inmates wherever they wanted and in
any way they wanted. Quite probably they killed him there and so he simply remained there.
We children were later picked up by the Ustaše, together with our mother. Such instances
where the Ustaše would first arrest the father and then come for the rest of the family
happened by the thousands.
My father was from the village of Kistanje, in Krajina, about 20 km away from the city of Knin,
toward the Adriatic sea. The area is called Dalmatinska Zagora and was overwhelmingly
Serbian‐populated. My family came to this area in the 16th and 17th centuries, when the
Serbian people ran away from Turkish atrocities. Portions of the family came from Kosovo and
also from parts of Bosnia.
My mother was from Slavonia [part of Serbian Krajina] and her family came there from then
Turkish controlled Herzegovina.
I was born in Western Slavonia. Grandpa Andreja, my father’s father, was a volunteer who
joined the Serbian troops in WWI. He was wounded and as a result of his severe wounds he
died in 1923. My grandmother Marija then sold what they had in the Knin area and moved to
Slavonia thinking that we would be less hungry there, so I was born in Slavonia in the house we
bought. It was from Slavonia that the Ustaše picked up my family and brought us to death
camps. The name of our village in Slavonia, populated by Serbs, was Zrinjska [pronounced Zree‐
nyska], in Grubisko Polje [pronounced Groo‐beesh‐ko Polye] county. The villages around ours
were also Serbian populated villages.
11. Ms. Tišma returns to her village, which is no more.
My dear friend, I went to visit my village in October 1990 [half a year before Croatia declared
its secession, but when Serbs in Slavonia were already under violent attack. – J.S.]. My dear
brother who died three years ago and who had been a partisan fighter (he joined the partisans
at the age of eleven!) told me then, "You must be crazy to go there, as if to the cave of a she‐
bear." But I went there with the intention to list the people who perished in Jasenovac. I was
able to list three hundred and seventy‐two names of victims but you should know that for many
victims there was no one left to tell me their names. Trees, trees as they existed at the time
when the Serbs first settled in that area, in the 15th and 16th century, such trees grew where
my village had been.
That is how it looked in 1990. Then there were still a few old and isolated people scattered
here and there. How it looks now after Croatia’s "Storm" military assaults during the 1990s, we
can only imagine.
End of interview
Source: http://emperors‐clothes.com/interviews/tisma.htm
__________________________
Jasenovac: Massive Croatian Holocaust Revision Encouraged
“Croats put to death over 100,000 Serbian children under the age of ten years.” Corpses of
Serbian children killed in Croatian Death Camp of Stara Gradiska (part of Jasenovac complex
of Croat extermination camps), Croatia.
Nicholas Wood (NY Times) Scrambling the Croatian Death Camp
Letters to the New York Times editor, in reaction to Nicholas Wood’s revisionist article about
Jasenovac — according to historians “the third most productive death camp” — run by
monstrous Croat Ustashas, where over 750,000 Serbs were exterminated, along with tens of
thousands of Jews and Gypsies, during the WWII.
Letter by William Dorich
Arrogantly Nicholas Wood’s article, “Unscrambling the History of a Nazi Camp” was like
handing Mr. Wood an egg beater as he did more scrambling than many Holocaust deniers.
Calling this a “Nazi Camp” is a misleading distortion of the facts. Jasenovac was a Croatian
Death Camp run by Croatian Nazi collaborators who murdered their own neighbors. Your
headline implies that this was another German Concentration Camp.
Hell Run by Wild Bloodthirsty Animals
In my 1997 book Jasenovac Then and Now: A Conspiracy of Silence, I document dozens of eye
witness testimonies which place the number of victims at Jasenovac at well over 400,000 as
early as 1942, including the testimonies of a number of German officers. Croatian revisionists
who now place the number of dead as low as 40,000 or to an insulting high of 97,000 imply that
there were no atrocities committed against the Serbs and Jews for the remaining 3 years of the
war? There were only 87 survivors of the Jasenovac Concentration Camp, named the
“Auschwitz of the Balkans” by most historians. These survivors place the number of dead in
excess of 800,000.
Unparalleled cruelty: Croat Ustashas used farm tools, axes, sledgehammers and blades
instead of gas chambers, and took pleasure in meticulous butchering of their victims before
putting them to death. Two Serbian men held by their Croat captors before slaughter,
Jasenovac, Croatia.
One of those survivors was Antun Miletich, a Croatian. Here is his 1948 testimony: “There is not
a pen capable of describing the horror and terror of the atmosphere at Jasenovac. It surpasses
any human fantasy. Imagine Hell, the Inquisition, a terror more dreadful than any that ever
before existed anywhere, run by bloodthirsty wild animals whose most hidden and disgusting
instinct had come to the surface in a way never before seen in human beings — and still you
have not said enough.”
The Jasenovac system of Croatian camps also included a camp for children run by Catholic nuns
who used toxic soda to save bullets. They put to death over 100,000 Serbian children under the
age of ten years. There are hundreds of documents to attest to these hideous crimes. There are
countless documents that also attest to the fact that 743 Roman Catholic priests were members
of the Ustashi and personally murdered Serbs, Jews and Gypsies. Jasenovac was for a time, run
by Fr. Filipovic‐Majstorovic, a Catholic priest who admitted to killing “40,000 Serbs with his own
hands.” The 40,000 figure was used in 1991 by the late Croatian president, Franjo Tudjman,
who was quoted in the Jerusalem Post on December, 1991 as saying, “I am a doubly lucky man,
my wife is neither Serbian nor Jewish.” His insistence that “only 40,000 Serbs perished at
Jasenovac” exposes the level of cover up of this genocide by the Croatian people.
Fr. Petar Brzica, a Catholic priest and camp guard at Jasenovac was nicknamed “King of the
Killers.” In a contest on August 29, 1942 to see who could kill the most Serbs in one night Fr.
Brzica won by slitting the throats of 1,350 Serbs.
The 743 Roman Catholic priests who participated in the killing of tens of thousands of Serbs,
Jews and Gypsies and the running of Jasenovac escaped Europe through the “Vatican Ratline”
run by Fr. Draganovich, a Croatian Catholic priest who helped morons like Clause Barbe escape
from Europe. Those Catholic priests escaped to Argentina where they also escaped justice.
I am the first plaintiff in a class action law suit against the Vatican Bank to recover $100 million
in damages for the Vatican’s participation in these war crimes and money laundering the
proceeds from their Serb, Jewish and Roma victims. Vatican lawyers have three times tried to
get this case thrown out of court. The Supreme court has rejected their claims.
Dire Consequences of Jasenovac Whitewashing: Croatia Remains a Bastion of Neo‐Nazism
and Anti‐Semitism
Barry M. Lituchy: “Croatia remains a bastion of neo‐Nazism and anti‐Semitism.” Photo from
Split, Croatia, 2000.
Letter by Barry M. Lituchy, editor of the book “Jasenovac and the Holocaust in Yugoslavia:
Analyses and Survivor Testimonies” and a founder of the Jasenovac Research Institute.
Politicizing the Holocaust is nothing new, nor is it particular to Yugoslavia. Nevertheless, your
article (“Unscrambling the History of a Nazi Camp,” Dec. 6) engages in the very same kind of
diversionary debate over the “correct number” of victims at the Jasenovac death camp that
gives rise to this problem. This debate is used as a smokescreen to block serious efforts at
restitution, thus permitting the government of Croatia to evade responsibility for some of the
worst crimes of genocide ever committed.
Beneath the smoke are a few facts worth mentioning: not a penny of compensation has ever
been paid to the victims of Croatian fascism; the U.S. government and the E.U. appear ready to
allow Croatia to evade all responsibility for its past crimes; if no pressure is put on Croatia to
compensate and properly recognize its victims there will never be peace or reconciliation in the
Balkans. The consequences of this whitewash will be dire. Croatia remains a bastion of neo‐
Nazism and anti‐Semitism. Those who permit Croatia to escape its responsibilities will be as
culpable for the consequences as those who failed to stop Hitler in 1933.
Vatican, the Power Behind Ustasha
Dr. Johnatan Levy: “...the real impetus behind the Second World War slaughter of Jews,
Serbs, and Roma by the [Croat] Ustasha was clerical fascism.” Before joining the Ustasha,
Croats had to swear an oath on knife, hand‐grenade, pistol and Roman Catholic Crucifix.
Letter by Dr. Jonathan Levy, Co‐counsel for Plaintiffs in the Alperin v. Vatican Bank, US District
Court for Northern California, Vatican Bank Claims
I believe the renowned Dr. Zuroff is being overly politically correct when he omits to mention
the real impetus behind the Second World War slaughter of Jews, Serbs, and Roma by the
Ustasha was clerical fascism. The Ustasha ideology was intertwined with militant Catholicism.
One of the most notorious commandants of Jasenovac was a Franciscan monk known as
Brother Satan.
Today the survivors of Jasenovac and their families are suing the Franciscans and Vatican Bank
for the post war laundering of the profits of Jasenovac, gold teeth and victim gold for the
Ustasha exiles and the notorious ratlines. There can be no reconciliation until the real power
behind the Ustasha, the Vatican, apologizes and makes amends to victims. Where is Dr. Zuroff
on this issue? Conspicuously silent I am afraid.
The Story Behind the Mainstream Smokescreens: Horrific Tales of Murder and Torture as
Pope Justifies Killing
November 20, 2006 article by Greg Szymanski, an independent investigative journalist.
In a recent hearing in the case of Alperin v. Vatican Bank, Pope Benedict’s personal attorney
admitted the Vatican was involved in the genocide committed in Croatia during World War II,
killing more than 500,000 Serbs and Jews.
Vatican was behind the genocide: Croat Ustasha unit in Vatican with Pope Pius XII, 1943. Click
to view large.
It is also undisputed that the Vatican worked hand‐in‐hand with the Nazi Party to accomplish
this horrendous mass murder, as attorney for the genocide victims, Jonathan Levy, is now trying
to get financial reparations for his clients, accusing the Vatican Bank of post war money
laundering of genocide profits.
Pope Benedict’s Attorney: Genocide was Permissible Under International Law
What’s incredible about the case being argued in a San Francisco federal court, besides the
media keeping the case away from the public eye, is the Pope’s attorney had the audacity in a
November hearing to claim the Vatican was justified in partaking in mass murder as it was
“permissible under international law.”
Although the Pope’s attorney stopped short in saying the Vatican is above the law, his
outlandish arguments fit nicely with Canon Law, stating the Roman Catholic Church has the
right to kill heretics without the killings being a violation of Church or international criminal law.
And for purposes of clarification, a heretic, as defined by Canon Law, is anyone who does not
give his undying loyalty to the Pope or follow the [Roman Catholic] Church’s doctrines, which in
the eyes of the [RC] Church officials justifies murder of innocents such as the Serbs and Jews
during World War II.
Vatican’s Office of Inquisition (Still in Existence) is Above the Law
“The same Canon Law applies today,” said author of Vatican Assassins, Eric Jon Phelps. “The
Vatican justifies murder, acting above the law and they plan on using its Office of Inquisition,
still in existence today, to exterminate anyone they determine to be heretics and do not render
complete obedience and loyalty to the Pope.”
Although not part of the law suit, a recent video came to light implicating the Vatican and the
Nazis, connecting them to the horrors of a concentration camp called Jasenovac. Previously, a
well‐guarded secret from the West, the following is an explanation of what when on in
Jasenovac by the presenters of the video.
Jasenovac Never Acknowledged in the West
Vatican reserves the right to exterminate “heretics” — those who do not render loyalty to
the Pope: Croat Ustashi with the severed head of Serbian Orthodox Priest, Drakulići, 7
February, 1942.
“Situated not really behind the iron curtain, Jasenovac concentration camp and its unsurpassed
cruelty on Serbs, Jews and Gypsies have never been acknowledged in the west. One is for the
desire of communist president Tito (of Croatian descent) to impose ideology of ‘brotherhood
and unity’ to former Yugoslavia, and the other is lack of awareness in the West, of the
victimization of Serbian people fighting the fascism, including the cruelest Ustashe (Croatian
Nazi), the only Hitler’s puppet state that imposed the same racial laws as Nazi Germany against
Jews, Gypsies and Serbs.
Shameful Role of Vatican: Documentary
“Watch this educational documentary (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw6A034Yfxo,
Jasenovac ‐ The cruelest death camp of all times) and discover the shameful role of Vatican in
the genocide. Citizens of the world owe it to 700.000 victims.“ [As a matter of fact,
documentary the author points to cites the number of 840,000 Serbs, Jews and Gypsies killed in
Jasenovac during the WWII.]
Regarding Alperin, Levy said the case is reaching a very delicate point and is reserving
comment, but stands on a recent statement he made in November:
“On the one hand the Vatican is quick to condemn Israel and Serbia in recent years but in
essence says it’s OK to butcher 500,000 people, steal their belongings and stash it in the Vatican
Bank. Pope Benedict should be concerned that the moral integrity of his Papacy is being
undermined in a Federal Court.”
According to Levy, Alperin v. Vatican Bank was originally filed in Federal Court in San Francisco
in November 1999. The plaintiffs are concentration camp survivors of Serb, Jewish, and
Ukrainian background and their relatives as well as organizations representing over 500,000
Holocaust victims.
Croat Nazi Treasury Transferred to the Vatican Bank
The plaintiffs also seek an accounting and restitution of the Nazi Croatian Treasury that
according to the U.S. State Department was illicitly transferred to the Vatican bank and other
banks after the end of the war.
Named defendants currently include the Vatican Bank, Franciscan Order, and the Croatian
Liberation Movement. Levy said these defendants combined to conceal assets looted by the
Croatian Nazis from concentration camp victims, Serbs, Jews, Roma and others between.
Levy is also quick to point out the heart of the Vatican Bank lawsuit is based on information
chronicled in the book, The Secret War Against the Jews, co‐authored by John Loftus who also
serves as the plaintiffs expert witness in this case.
He added that from the authors of the bestselling, The Secret War Against the Jews , comes
another explosive work, Unholy Trinity, exploring links between the Vatican and the Nazis,
featuring startling new information that redefines the [Roman] Catholic Church’s role in
twentieth‐century history.
“I have filed another lawsuit, Levy v. CIA, filed under the Freedom of Information Act, seeking
release of U.S. Intelligence agency files regarding the notorious Vatican spymaster, Fr.
Krunoslav Draganovic. New records on Draganovic were released as a result of that lawsuit in
2001,” said Levy.
Levy, who has appeared several times on Greg Szymanski’s radio show, The Investigative
Journal, is licensed in California and the District of Columbia , as well as having represented
organizations and individuals in a variety of Holocaust and World War II related lawsuits
including banking, insurance, and slave labor matters. Levy is also a member of the
International Criminal Bar in The Hague.