When I visited Croatia three years ago, the
book most prominently displayed in the leading bookstores of the
capital city Zagreb was a new edition of the notorious anti-Semitic
classic, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion". Next came the
memoires of the World War II Croatian fascist Ustashe dictator Ante
Pavelic, responsible for the organized genocide of Serbs, Jews and
Romany (gypsies) that began in 1941, that is, even before the German
Nazi "final solution".
However, if the Croatian fascists actually
led, rather than followed, the German Nazis down the path of
genocide, that doesn't mean they have forgotten their World War II
benefactors. After all, it was thanks to Hitler's invasion of
Yugoslavia that the "Independent State of Croatia" was set up in
April 1941, with Bosnia-Herzegovina (whose population was mostly
Serb at the time) as part of its territory. And the hit song of
1991, when Croatia once again declared its independence from
Yugoslavia and began driving out Serbs, was "Danke Deutschland" in
gratitude to Germany's strong diplomatic support for Zagreb's
unnegotiated secession.
In the West, of course, one will quickly
object that the Germany of today is not the Germany of 1941. True
enough. But in Zagreb, with a longer historical view, they are so
much the same that visiting Germans are sometimes embarrassed when
Croats enthusiastically welcome them with a raised arm and a Nazi
"Heil!" greeting.
So it should be no surprise that this year's
best seller in Croatia is none other than a new edition of "Mein
Kampf". This is not a critical edition, mind you, but a reverently
faithful reproduction of the original text by that great European
leader, benefactor of Croatian nationalism and leader of the Third
Reich, Adolf Hitler.
The magazine "Globus" reported that "Mein
Kampf" is selling like hotcakes in all segments of Croatian society.
For those who want to read more, there is a new book entitled "The
Protocols of Zion, the Jews and Adolf Hitler" by Mladen Schwartz,
leader of the Croatian neo-Nazi party New Right, and "Talks with
Hitler" by the Fuhrer's aide Herman Rauschning, as well as various
other memoires celebrating the Ustashe state whose violent massacres
of Serbs shocked the Italian fascist allies and even German
diplomatic observers at the time.
The dissident Croatian writer Predrag
Matvejevic, who has Italian citizenship, has sent the Rijeka daily
"Novi List" an open letter to the Association of Croatian Writers
and the Croatian center of the International PEN club denouncing
their failure to protest at this promotion of the absolute worst of
racist Nazi propaganda. "Passing through the streets of Zagreb,
Split, Dubrovnik and other cities in Croatia, countless Croatian
citizens whose parents took part in the anti-fascist Partisan
struggle are ashamed to see the works and photographs of Hitler and
other Nazi and Ustashe criminals displayed in bookshop windows," he
wrote. "Their publication is a disgrace to Croatia and its culture".
This is "no accident", he said, "in Tudjman's Croatia." For this is
the same regime, he noted, that has allowed the destruction of
thousands of monuments to the victims of fascism, from one end of
Croatia to the other, and in which mass is celebrated non-stop in
honor of the Ustashe "fuhrer" Pavelic in the churches of Split and
Zagreb, the Italian daily "Il Manifesto" reported on September
3.
In another report in "Il Manifesto", Giacomo
Scotti reported from Zagreb that the terrorist campaign by
nationalist bands led by the neofascist "Croatian Party of Rights"
has been stepping up its pogroms against the small number of Serbs
now living in the Krajina region. The overwhelmingly Serb population
was driven from the Krajina by the U.S.-backed "Operation Storm" in
August 1995. Officially, under heavy international pressure, the
Croatian government has allowed some Serbs to come back, mostly old
farmers. However, on August 25, the Croatian Supreme Court denied
local tribunals the right to hear complaints from citizens who had
not been allowed to enter their property, thus encouraging
lawlessness.
With the complicity of the authorities,
armed bands have been breaking into the few homes reoccupied by
their Serb owners, beating and threatening old people and
devastating their farms, chopping down trees and destroying crops to
force them to leave. These facts are contained in two letters to the
Croatian government from the Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human
Rights.
By now, however, it is abundantly clear to
everyone that crimes of intimidation, physical violence, murder,
robbery, vandalism or "ethnic cleansing" are of no interest to
Western governments, to international media or to any court in the
world so long as the victims are Serbs.
End quote.