WW2 revizionizam

How to Combat Croatian Revisionists’ Culture of Lies
   
Stories of resistance to Croatia’s fascist Ustasa can help counter revisionists’ attempts to rehabilitate the World War II regime and whitewash the truth about its concentration camp at Jasenovac and its role in the Holocaust.

Rory Yeomans
Princeton

In early 1944, Mirjana Babunovic-Dimitrijevic, a 22-year-old middle-class woman living in Sarajevo, was arrested by the Ustasa police. After she was arrested along with her mother and aunt, they were all deported to the Jasenovac concentration camp, for refusing to convert to Catholicism. All three women died there in late 1944.

These women were among more than 80,000 victims who perished at Jasenovac between 1941 and 1945. While we don’t know precisely how they died nor what happened during their short lives in the camp, two things are certain.

First, their deaths were the direct result of deliberate political decisions. Second, they died not because of anything they had done but because of what they were. They died because they were different in a state which not only criminalised difference but considered it legitimate grounds for extermination.

To listen to Igor Vukic, a guest on the popular afternoon chat show ‘Dobar Dan Hrvatska’ (‘Good Day Croatia’) on Croatian Radio-Television, HRT last week, was to enter a parallel universe in which Jasenovac was not a concentration camp but rather a ‘labour and collection camp’ for opponents of the regime, in which inmates like Mirjana were offered opportunities to learn new professions and skills, given access to drama clubs and sporting facilities and treated with compassion by Ustasa guards.

The furore caused by the appearance of Vukic, a former journalist and the secretary of the Society for Research of the Threefold Jasenovac Camp, on a popular afternoon show, is, in some ways, hard to understand. After all, Vukic and other revisionists have been making the rounds of television shows for years, promoting their theories.

Yes, it’s true there was something slightly shocking about how normalised the set up was: the hosts even thoughtfully plugged the society’s book about Jasenovac to viewers at the end of the segment.

But leave aside the prime-time kitsch, and the episode only seems outrageous if you ignore the past 25 years of public discourse in Croatia about the Holocaust and the Ustasa regime.

It was, after all, in the 1990s, not last week, that the idea of mixing the bones of dead Partisans and Ustasas together and refashioning Jasenovac death camp into a site of ‘reconciliation’ was seriously considered.

Which isn’t to say that people shouldn’t be alarmed by what’s happening now: they should.

I would argue there are two reasons why last week’s programme has cuased such a stir. First, unlike the revisionists of the Tudjman era who tended to minimise the crimes of the Ustasa regime or only rehabilitate only certain aspects of it, the new cohort of revisionists are, by their own admission, aiming to rehabilitate the regime in its entirety.

Second, revisionism in the 1990s had its strongholds in the academy and mainstream politics which had a constraining effect on all but the most committed acolytes.

Now, in an age of mass media it has migrated to media platforms. Revisionism hence seems more prevalent and dangerous now because it has essentially become a branch of the entertainment industry, amplified by the ubiquity of social media.

Lest we forget, only a couple of years ago, director Jakov Sedlar’s highly revisionist and fraudulent film about Jasenovac received its premiere in Zagreb, attended by then Culture Minister Zlatko Hasanbegovic.

But no one should be so naïve as to think the current wave of revisionism began last week or even two years ago. The problem goes much deeper than that.

Arguably, Croatia’s leaders have never really known how to deal with the legacy of the Ustasa regime and Jasenovac, the most enduring symbol of its terror.

The narrative offered by the victorious Partisans provided a useable model, initially at least, emphasising the mass participation of Croats in the Partisan movement and the marginality of the Ustasa movement while placing most of the blame on the German occupiers. This was not exactly false but it was a simplified and idealised version of the truth.

The government of Franjo Tudjman, by contrast, offered a different kind of resolution, combining Ustasa nostalgia and Holocaust minimisation with a much more ambitious project to reconcile Croatian fascists and anti-fascists on the basis of their supposed shared fight for an independent Croatian state.

It also linked Croatia’s struggle for independence in the 1990s to the Croatian ‘independence struggle’ of the 1940s under the Ustasa movement.

In the post-Tudjman years, especially during Croatia’s application to join the European Union, Holocaust memory was Europeanised. As Ljiljana Radonic has written, memory culture transformed Jasenovac into a universal story in which the specifically Croatian identity of the perpetrators was pushed to the margins and the role of the Nazi occupation stressed.

At the same time, the narrative emphasised the specifically Croatian role in the ‘good’ parts of the story, in particular the political oppression of the Croats in inter-war Yugoslavia and the mass participation of Croats in the resistance.

The continued ambivalence regarding the Holocaust in Croatia was apparent at the opening of the Jasenovac Memorial Museum permanent exhibition in 2006 which, as a matter of policy, de-emphasised the national identity of both the victims and the Ustasas as well as their crimes.

Natasa Jovicic, the director of the museum, wrote that the exhibition aimed to restore the individuality of the victims, arguing that the collective identity of the victims and perpetrators had been manipulated in the cause of Serbian nationalism in the early 1990s to generate new hatred.

But this argument was misleading. The people who died in Jasenovac, while they were individuals, were incarcerated in Jasenovac precisely because of their perceived collective identity.

Moreover, in linking the World War II and the wars of the 1990s, the museum exhibition actually legitimated a narrative which has become a leit motif of revisionist forces in Croatia in recent years: namely, that commemorating the crimes of the Ustasa movement constitutes an attempt to blacken the name of Croatia, declare the Croats a genocidal people and criminalise the Homeland War.

On the surface, a narrative which implicated not just ordinary Croats but Croatian identity itself in the crimes of the Ustasa movement through linking defence of the Ustasa regime to patriotism should have permanently discredited revisionists.

After all, when it came to power in 1941, the Ustasa movement enjoyed no popular mandate and was very quickly rejected by a large number of Croats. Still today, the majority of Croats reject the legacy of the Ustasa movement.

Moreover, the constitution of the Republic of Croatia states unambiguously that it is founded on the principles of anti-fascism.

That revisionists have seen their influence actually grow in Croatia is a reflection of the weakness of civil society, a testament to the failure of institutions such as the Catholic Church in Croatia to confront their role in the horror of the 1940s and evidence of the increasingly receptive political climate in which groups such as these are operating.

As the recent controversy about the location of the commemorative plaque for fallen Homeland defenders (1990s Croatian war veterans) in Jasenovac illustrates, invoking the sacrosanct Homeland War has become an increasingly profitable strategy for revisionists and Ustasa nostalgists.

It is no coincidence that Vukic has been a frequent guest on right-wing veteran television shows nor that some of the loudest revisionist voices belong to right-wing war veterans.

At the same time, the growing reach of revisionists would not be possible without the funding and support they have received from the Ministry for Veterans.

In 2017, for example, Vukic’s society was awarded 6,700 euros by the ministry to conduct research on archives related to the Jasenovac camp. Meanwhile, a veterans’ group was awarded 2,700 euros for the publication of a collection of revisionist essays about the Ustasa children’s camp at Jastrebarsko, as part of a scheme which awards funds for applications which “promote the values of the Homeland War.”

What can be done? On the one hand, revisionism and Ustasa nostalgia in Croatia is a problem only Croats themselves can resolve. As the protests of 2016 demonstrated, when large numbers of people come onto the streets across Croatia to say enough is enough, politicians notice.

But there are also more modest actions that can be taken. Paradoxical as it might seem, denying crimes against entire groups of people is much easier than negating crimes against individuals.

As much as anything, perhaps, the Holocaust is made up of small stories and the personal lives of the victims, perpetrators and bystanders. In that sense, the failure of Yugoslav historiography to individualise the victims or perpetrators has been a gift to Holocaust minimizers since it has enabled them to dismiss the official history as an anti-Croatian conspiracy and reframe the victims as opponents of Croatian independence.

One of the reasons, I would argue, why Holocaust denial has tended to be marginal in Austria is because there are reminders of the victims of the Holocaust in every neighbourhood where Jews once lived.

Walk down any street in the old Jewish quarter of Praterstern in Vienna, for example, and there are countless street plaques memorialising the dead, many of them right under your feet.

By contrast, the buildings in the Derecinova district of downtown Zagreb or Tuskanac are unmarked.

If such an initiative is unthinkable in Croatia at the moment, journalists, researchers and activists can play their part in restoring to the victims of the Holocaust their individuality while emphasising the collective reasons for their fate.

By the time Mirjana Babunovic-Dimitrijevic was arrested by the Ustasa police in 1944, her familiy was scattered: her husband was in Macedonia, her father had long since been detained, one brother was in Dachau, another was a refugee in Serbia. Her identity was the one thing she had which the regime could not take from her.

Her story and the thousands of similar small, personal stories are not only the history of Jasenovac and the Holocaust, but universal stories of resistance and courage.

They are perhaps the most powerful weapon we have in the preservation of a culture of memory and truth against the revisionist culture of lies.

Rory Yeomans is a historian and member of the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University , author of the book Visions of Annihilation: The Ustasha Regime and the Cultural Politics of Fascism, 1941-1945.

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/how-to-combat-croatian-revisionists-culture-of-lies-06-05-2018

Србадија
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Чувени народни херој Коча Поповић са Немцима и усташама у Загребу 1943.године.

Nedić nije rehabilitovan
V. CRNjANSKI SPASOJEVIĆ | 26. jul 2018. 07:30 | Komentara: 0

Viši sud u Beogradu doneo rešenje u slučaju kolaboracionističkog premijera. Ostala Uredba iz 1949. kojom je proglašen za ratnog zločinca, kada su mu oduzeta prava i imovina

VIŠI sud u Beogradu odbio je zahtev za rehabilitaciju Milana Nedića, premijera Srbije tokom Drugog svetskog rata - saznaju "Novosti". Rešenje je napisano na stotinak strana, na kojima sud obrazlaže da je uvidom u sve priložene dokaze i nakon saslušanja svedoka zaključio da se nisu stekli pravni uslovi da bude rehabilitovan.

To znači da sud nije ukinuo Uredbu FNRJ iz 1949. godine, kojom je kolaboracionistički premijer proglašen za ratnog zločinca, i na osnovu koje su mu oduzeta građanska prava i imovina. Na ovu odluku Višeg suda predlagači sada imaju pravo žalbe Apelacionom sudu u Beogradu.

Postupak rehabilitacije aktivno je trajao pune tri godine, tokom kojih je održano 12 ročišta. Prvo je održano 7. decembra 2015, i to je bio pokušaj vraćanja građanskih prava ratnom premijeru iz trećeg pokušaja. Naime, prethodna dva zahteva Srpske liberalne stranke, pa posle Srpskog liberalnog saveta i Udruženja političkih zatvorenika i žrtava komunističkog režima, sud je odbacio iz formalno-pravnih razloga, ali su te odluke ukinute u žalbenom postupku.

ISTORIČARI GA "OSUDILI"

OD četvoro istoričara koji su davali iskaze pred sudom, dvojica njih javno su iznela stav o Nedićevoj krivici. Prof. dr Milan Ristović tvrdio je da je on govorima podsticao zločine i antisemitizam, a njegov aparat učestvovao je u hapšenju Jevreja i antifašista, i streljanjima. Dr Aleksandar Stojanović optužio ga je za izdaju, jer je, suprotno ustavu, negirao pravni subjektivitet Kraljevine Jugoslavije.

Od 2015. saslušano je ukupno šest svedoka, među kojima su bili i, sada već pokojni, Žarko Vidović, čuveni istoričar i filozof, bivši skojevac i zatočenik Jasenovca i Starog sajmišta, kao i monahinja Jevrosima iz manastira Trojeručica, svetovno ime Bosiljka Kujundžić, majka bivšeg ministra kulture Bratisalava Petkovića. Sudu je dostavljeno na hiljade strana dokumenata, od kojih je najviše pristiglo iz Arhiva Srbije.

Zahtev da se "srpska majka", kako su zvali Nedića, rehabilituje podneli su Srpski liberalni savet, Udruženje političkih zatvorenika i žrtava komunističkog režima i porodica Nedić. Nedić je bio na čelu Vlade nacionalnog spasa od avgusta 1941. do oktobra 1944. Predlagači rehabilitacije tokom celog postupka pokušavali su da dokažu da za to vreme nije bio odgovoran ni za Holokaust u zemlji, ni za osnivanje logora, kao ni za masovna streljanja. Tvrdili su i da nije prekršio međunarodne konvencije koje su regulisale ponašanje premijera u jednoj okupiranoj zemlji. Kako je tvrdio advokat Zoran Živanović, Vlada koju je vodio formirana je i radila u skladu sa tadašnjim pravnim normama, jer međunarodno pravo kaže da kada neka država kapitulira, nema dalje borbe.

Predlagači su navodili i da je spasao 350.000 Srba iz NDH, 50.000 Slovenaca, plus Srbe koji su bežali od Italijana, Albanaca s Kosova, Bugara i Mađara. Izneli su i dokaze da je pomogao mnogim uhapšenim skojevcima, iako je bio u ratu sa komunistima, smatrajući ih odgovornim za masovne nemačke odmazde nad civilima u Srbiji. Među njima je i reditelj Puriša Đorđević. Da bi ih spasao sigurne smrti, osnovao je Zavod za prevaspitavanje srpske omladine u Smederevskoj Palanci.

Tokom suđenja bilo je više protesta

Nedićeva vlada raspuštena je 4. oktobra 1944, a on je dva dana kasnije, sa većinom ministara, prebačen iz Beograda u Beč, a zatim u Kicbil. Britanci su ga predali jugoslovenskim snagama 1. januara 1946. Prema zvaničnoj verziji, ubio se skokom kroz prozor zatvora Ozne u Zmaj Jovinoj 21. Nedić nikada nije formalno optužen, ni osuđen.

Виши суд у Београду дана 11. јула 2018. године, донео je решење којим је одбио као неоснован захтев предлагача за рехабилитацију сада покојног Милана Недића, којим су тражили да се утврди:

-да је генерал Милан Недић лишен слободе без судске или административне одлуке као жртва прогона из политичких и идеолошких разлога;

-да је ништаво решење Трећег народног среског суда за град Београд Дн.487/46 од 31.01.1946. године о конфискацији имовине генерала Милана Недића од дана доношења и да су ништаве све његове правне последице;

-да су ништаве административне Одлуке Државне комисије за утврђивање злочина окупатора и његових помагача Ф.802 без датума, Ф.802/I од 02.05.1945. године, Ф.802/II од 03.08.1945. године, Ф.802/III од 17.09.1945. године, Ф.802/IV од 13.08.1945. године и Ф.802/V од 01.12.1945. године, Одлука Земаљске комисије за утврђивање злочина окупатора и његових помагача бр. 2407 од 5.07.1945. године од тренутка њиховог доношења и да су ништаве све правне последице, укључујући и казну конфискације имовине, а рехабилитовано лице се сматра неосуђиваним.

Одбијен је и предлог предлагача за преиначење захтева за рехабилитацију Милана Недића из поднеска од 09.07.2018. године којим захтевом је тражено да суд утврди „да је генерал Милан Недић лишен живота без судске или административне одлуке као жртва прогона из политичких и идеолошких разлога“.



Против овог решења дозвољена је жалба Апелационом суду у Београду у року од 30 дана од дана пријема решења.

Kako je tvrdio advokat Zoran Živanović, Vlada koju je vodio formirana je i radila u skladu sa tadašnjim pravnim normama, jer međunarodno pravo kaže da kada neka država kapitulira, nema dalje borbe.

Kako je tvrdio advokat Zoran Živanović, Vlada koju je vodio formirana je i radila u skladu sa tadašnjim pravnim normama, jer međunarodno pravo kaže da kada neka država kapitulira, nema dalje borbe.

Tvrdili su i da nije prekršio međunarodne konvencije koje su regulisale ponašanje premijera u jednoj okupiranoj zemlji.

Creepy Uncle wrote:ovo mi je baš wtf. koje to međunarodno pravo nalaže da ne smeš da se boriš protiv okupacije? implikacija ove rečenice je da je otpor Trećem rajhu bio nezakonit, jednom kad te osvoje više nemaš pravo da se buniš  

Kako je tvrdio advokat Zoran Živanović, Vlada koju je vodio formirana je i radila u skladu sa tadašnjim pravnim normama, jer međunarodno pravo kaže da kada neka država kapitulira, nema dalje borbe.

https://www.portalnovosti.com/goloruki-wehrmacht

Goloruki Wehrmacht




Gotovo mjesec dana u centru Gline stoji ploča na kojoj se ustaše i pripadnici Wehrmachta nazivaju ‘mučenicima’. Spomen-ploču s ‘bijelim križem istine’ podignula je 8. srpnja sisačka podružnica Hrvatskog domobrana, u znak sjećanja na pripadnike njemačke okupatorske vojske, domobranskih postrojbi i ‘drugih grana oružanih snaga NDH’ koje su likvidirane u Glini i okolici’, pri čemu barataju s potpuno nevjerojatnim brojkama i klimavim pravopisom. ‘Goloruki su mučenici bez sudski dokazane krivnje 1945. ubijani na Poglediću, u Šibinama, Šaševoj, Majskim Poljanama, Stankovcu i Brnjeuški. Najviše ratnih gubitaka, oko 30.000 iz postrojbi njemačkog Wehrmachta, nestalo je s livada i stadiona na desnoj obali rijeke Gline’, stoji među ostalim na ploči koju je blagoslovio biskup Vlado Košić. Na svečanosti su bili HDZ-ov gradonačelnik Stjepan Kostanjević te predsjednik Gradskog vijeća i upravitelj glinske kaznionice Željko Šešerin, također član HDZ-a.

Gradonačelnika Kostanjevića nismo uspjeli dobiti za komentar, jer je, riječima službenice u njegovom uredu, nekoliko puta bio odsutan. Zamjenica gradonačelnika Branka Bakšić, predstavnica srpske manjine, rekla nam je da ‘ne zna ništa o tome’.

- Nisam bila nazočna kad se spomen-ploča otkrivala niti sam upoznata s tom temom -poručila je dogradonačelnica, dodajući da je njen djed poginuo u partizanima, tako da su poznati njeni stavovi o tome. Na zamolbu da iznese te stavove i komentira činjenicu da su na javnoj glinskoj površini ustaše i njemački vojnici proglašeni ‘mučenicima’, gospođa Bakšić nas je uputila na gradonačelnika.

Župan sisačko-moslavački Ivo Žinić, još jedan HDZ-ovac, bio je u travnju ove godine na skupštini Hrvatskog domobrana. Tamo je izjavio kako ‘nažalost, domobrani u Drugom svjetskom ratu nisu uspjeli u svom naumu’ uspostave ‘hrvatske slobode’. Hrvatski domobran je organizacija koja pod firmom nositelja domobranske ideje, godinama veliča ustaštvo, i u svojim publikacijama, kako smo pokazali nedavno u Novostima, najotvorenije radi na umanjivanju ustaškog udjela u holokaustu. Ta je ideološka potka sastavni dio njihova očuvanja sjećanja na žrtve Drugog svjetskog rata, najčešće u prisustvu lokalnih ogranaka HDZ-a. Postavljanje glinske ploče usred ljeta trebalo bi razmatrati u svjetlu totalnog revizionizma koji se provodi u ovom gradiću od 1995. sa svrhom minoriziranja ustaških zločina koji su odnijeli oko 2000 života tamošnjih Srba, Židova i Roma.